For obvious reasons, masks are a very common topic of discussion nowadays. But these are very different masks than the one worn by Jim Carrey in his sleeper hit in the mid-1990s. While Jim wasn't paid all that much money for The Mask, it (as well as Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, which was released around the same time) made him a bonafide star. The Mask has also gone down as one of Jim Carrey's best films.
The movie received critical praise and earned over $350 million at the global box office after only costing the studio just $23 million to make... Let's hope Jim got some points on the back-end for that one!
The Mask also advanced visual effects in Hollywood, launched Cameron Diaz's career, and was just straight-up fun. And it all came from a comic... Yes, The Mask was actually a "Dark Horse" comic before it was a feature film. Here's the true origin of this hilarious and exciting flick...
The Mask Went Through Some Pretty Drastic Changes
Thanks to Forbes, we have given a complete oral history of the making of The Mask, and this includes the story's true origin... And it all comes down to Mike Richardson... the man who came up with the concept for The Mask. Although, it was initially called "The Masque"...
"Originally, I was gonna draw a comic and we were gonna submit it to DC, I think," Mike Richardson told Forbes. "I was gonna draw it [and] Randy Straldey was gonna write it. The idea I had was sort of a combination of a Steve Ditko character, The Creeper with a Joker sense of humor to it. I would say it was semi-evolved by the time I was done with it. We started Dark Horse [and] I explained the idea to a writer/artist who was working at Marvel at the time by the name of Mark Badger. We did the first series in the pages of Dark Horse Presents. He actually changed the spelling to MASQUE, which was, I guess, his way of making it his own."
In the Forbes article, artist Mark Badger described how Mike had the storyline of the good guy cop who "gets beaten up by bad guys and left for dead". He eventually gets the mask and comes back to seek vengeance.
"I talked to Mike some more and he didn’t know who the guy was, he didn’t have any of [the specifics]," Mike explained. "I wasn’t really interested in [the cop storyline or] redoing The Shadow. The problem of my career is probably I’m not obsessed enough with the comics about pulp characters. I thought, 'Well, what happens if [The Masque] centered around a priest from Central America coming to America to talk to people and he brings along with him sort of a spirit from Central America, who imposes some of that insanity on America?' That was sort of my starting point [and] all of that was, I’m pretty sure it’s safe to say, of little interest to Mike and most people because that’s not mainstream comics stuff."
Then It Became A Straight-Up Horror Story
This concept that Mike came up with ran for about 10 issues in "Dark Horse Presents" but it was discontinued. Eventually, Doug Mahnke was brought on board and revamped the story in 1989. He was the one who came up with the schlubby Stanley Ipkiss gaining the mask which gave him cartoonish invincibility. Although his Mask story was far darker than the movie. Essentially, the idea of the mask having grave consequences on the wearer was far more present.
The Mask came out at a time when comedy/horror was a popular genre, so it definitely leaned in that direction. The editors of "Dark Horse Presents" liked what they were doing with the strip and gave them free-reign. And it was around this time that Mike really wanted to adapt his story to the big screen. Eventually, he started working with screenwriter Mark Verheiden on the script, although Mike didn't want any credit as he wasn't part of the union at the time.
However, they had a challenging time getting the script made, particularly because they leaned more toward the horror elements than the comedic ones. The story was far more "violent and nihilistic" than the one we got with Jim Carrey.
"We had a lot of false alarms. It took five years before we actually got the film made and initially, one of the directors saw it as sort of a replacement for the Nightmare on Elm Street series," Mike Richardson explained to Forbes. "There was one version where it was about a mask-maker on the edge of town, cutting faces off corpses and putting them on teenagers and turning them into zombies, which as you can imagine, there wasn’t a lot of excitement on my part for that. So, I nixed that."
With the help of Mike Werb, Michael Fallon, and the director, Chuck Russell, the story became far funnier and eventually got the interest of the studio.
When it came time to discuss who would be the leading actor in the film, names like Martin Short, Rick Moranis, and even Robin Williams were discussed. However, New Line Cinema (the studio behind The Mask) wanted to take a chance on a virtually unknown actor from In Living Color... This being Jim Carrey.
"Mike DeLuca at New Line sent me this tape and said, 'Watch this. Do you know the white guy in In Living Color?' I was vaguely familiar with him, but he sent me this gag with Jim Carrey doing his version of the movie My Left Foot," Mike Richardson explained. "He was such a contortionist. It cracked me up and I called [Mike] and I said, 'That’s The Mask!' ... Jim was pretty much unknown then. I would tell people Jim Carrey was doing the movie and nobody knew who he was. Of course, he was amazing."
