Where to watch The Mask (1994)

Trivia & production notes

• Director Chuck Russell transformed the project from a horror film into a family-friendly comedy after finding the original comic's violence unsuitable for cinema.
• An early concept for the film involved a mask-maker harvesting faces from corpses to turn teenagers into zombies.
• Jim Carrey was cast after director Chuck Russell saw him perform live at The Comedy Store and followed his work on In Living Color.
• Nicolas Cage and Matthew Broderick were kept as backup options in case Jim Carrey declined the lead role.
• Jim Carrey powered through filming while suffering from the flu, including scenes where he was sick enough to vomit between takes.
• Anna Nicole Smith was originally offered the role of Tina but backed out at the last minute to appear in Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult instead.
• The character of Tina Carlyle was rewritten to be a genuinely good person after Cameron Diaz was cast, changing from the original version of a deceptive woman.
• Jim Carrey's daily makeup sessions lasted four hours, and he learned to wear fake teeth during dialogue scenes rather than just for silent moments.
• The Coco Bongo dance sequence was inspired by the 1943 animated MGM short Red Hot Riding Hood.
• Industrial Light & Magic estimated that Jim Carrey's physical performance saved approximately one million dollars in visual effects costs through his ability to execute the character's movements organically.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article The Mask (1994 film), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.