The Grinch Movie: Original Reel

Face it, Christmas is ruined.

Now I know you’ve probably seen the CGI Grinch movie. When the guac is extra. But no one seems to talk about the live-action Grinch movie anymore, starring the ever-so iconic Jim Carrey. It’s a heart-warming comedy flick for all ages of the family to enjoy. But what I’m about to tell you will shock you, and maybe even make you question the sanity of your own self.

I had won an all-expenses-paid trip to Universal Pictures in the summer of 1998 to screen a random movie and hang out with the crew. I didn’t even know I entered anything. The last time I entered a raffle, I won a bag of cow brains. I gave them to my uncle Spencer to enjoy as a delicacy. Five minutes after consuming the aforementioned cow brains, he died at the kitchen table. Autopsy revealed that the cow brains were poisoned with potassium cyanide. In other words, someone didn’t like me and tried to off my ass.

So upon finding that I won a trip to Universal Pictures, I immediately packed my bags including one full of Snickers bars, and hauled ass. I was greeted at the entrance to the studio a la Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, you know the whole act, the president of the company walking out, falling over, doing a somersault, and standing up, all in style. I wasn’t impressed and outright asked for a briefing of what I was going to do. He subtly leered at the building I was supposed to go to with a less than collected look on his face, turned back to me, and gave me the 411 on what to expect.

The Grinch movie was finished filming, and I was about to see a rough edit. What you don’t know, is that this is not, and I repeat, NOT the version of the film you know. It was me, the editor, the producer, a few homeless people we picked off of the street as a test audience, and the director Ron Howard, who was Richie Cunningham on the hit 70s sitcom Happy Days. He frowned as he removed his baseball cap, revealing his shiny, balding head, a far cry from his days as Opie on the Andy Griffith Show.

“What you’re about to see is what happens when you take a masterpiece of a book like How The Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss, and turn it into a masterpiece of a movie that I directed. Also, I don’t like Star Wars, so if anyone asks me to direct a Star Wars movie, I’ll make sure it sucks dick,” Howard proclaimed. I was taken aback a bit, but shrugged it off as Howard having a bad day. He itched his angry, bald head and put his cap back on. He frowned some more and said, “Roll tape!” And just like that, the movie started.

There was no narration in this version of the movie. Maybe because it was a rough cut, but I digress. The first 5 minutes were really creepy. It starts with Jim Carrey walking into a dark room wearing nothing but his underwear, and the green makeup he wore in The Mask. He says nothing. He just poorly dances to Michael Jackson’s “Bad” which faintly echoed in the background from a boombox that was placed in the corner. He tries to do the moonwalk, and falls, breaking his shin on a marble coffee table. He screams in agony as he yells for his hero, Andy Kaufman to help and to possess him so he can get up.

All of a sudden, an abrupt flicker of color flashed on the screen, and a swooping aerial shot of the town of Whoville was shown, but instead of buildings, it was assorted Hershey, Mars, and Snickers bars propped up vertically as the camera slid through them. I assumed this was supposed to be a stand-in for the CGI sequences in the final film. After a few rows of candy bars go past, you see some traffic, which are just Hot Wheels cars being pushed by, including one that looked oddly like my car, being a brand-new Honda Civic.

Then it cuts to the Whoville set, with extras walking about and surrounding a department store which was about to open. A sign says “Black Friday Sale TODAY!” in big, bold Impact font. The camera cut to Little Cindy Lou Who and her father, who were near the front of the line, but they looked a bit different. The father was played by Bob Saget. You may know him from Full House as awkward father Danny Tanner, so I could definitely see why he was cast. Cindy Lou Who was played by a different, unknown actress. She asked Bob Saget why everyone was there. Saget just said “Because this is the Christmas spirit!” “What exactly is the Christmas spirit,” Cindy Lou Who asked. “You’ll see,” Saget responded under his breath.

Then, two store employees approached the double-door store entry from the inside, looking oddly Jim Carrey-shaped. It was also dimly-lit inside the store. Each grabbed onto one of the doors, and sneered out into the crowd. They hesitate for a moment, then finally pull back the doors, opening the store. The crowd went apeshit crazy trying to get in. People then suddenly started getting into a fistfight. Bob Saget got in the middle of the fight, getting knocked clean out, and falling to the ground unconscious. Whos started trampling Bob Saget’s head as they rush inside.

This is where it gets really freaky. Instead of cutting away or a comedic trampling with cartoony boink noises, Saget awoke, and screamed violently until all that could be heard was a breathy rasp emitting from his mouth. His head was violently trampled for a good 30 seconds until his head was a viscous, spasming pile of hyperrealistic blood and brain matter. I cringed at the intensity of the hyperrealism. Ron Howard was grinning from ear to ear, that sick fuck. I questioned the response children would have to this, and to that he just honked my nipples and told me to shut the fuck up. I grabbed my man tits in pain as we continued the screening. Cindy Lou Who was laughing cheerfully at the corpse of her father, believing this to be the true spirit of Christmas, her favorite holiday.

The camera cuts to the cave Grinch lives in, which is a lot smaller and more decrepit and messer than in the final film. Max the dog was nowhere to be found, but instead there was a cow that the Grinch talked to. The Grinch is pouring himself what seemed to be a cup of coffee, but upon inspecting the coffee pot he set down, I know you’re not going to believe me, but it was actually Who blood. He slurped the blood violently and smacked his lips realistically. “This Who wasn’t a very nice guy,” Grinch spoke to himself. “It’s not… sweet enough.” He goes into a back room where he has a Who tied up and gagged, looking terrifyingly like Jim Carrey in Who makeup. The Grinch grabs the Who by the face and spoke in a low tone. “Listen here, you little bitch,” What was with the fucking swearing? “You pissed me off a minute ago with that look you gave me. A rather... disheveled look. Like you wanted to kill me. Wrong-o.”

Grinch walked out of frame and came back with a TV/VCR combo on caster wheels. He held up a VHS tape that said “Cars” on it, and stuck it in the VCR. I thought to myself about how the Grinch couldn’t possibly torture someone with a video about cars of all things, and even gave a small chuckle. Oh, I was fed a huge piece of humble pie after thinking that, and it wasn’t delicious either. What followed was a terrifying CGI cartoon about a racecar and Satan himself competing in a rap battle. While this played, the Grinch broke the Who’s arm, exposing the bone in the elbow while hyperrealistic blood sprinkled out of the open wound. The Grinch pulled out the humerus bone and fed it into a grinder. Ultra realistic ground-up bone matter came out the other end and into his coffee.

This was all too much and I wanted to get out of that screening room, but I was scared of what Mr. Howard would do if I tried. The Grinch stirred up his Who blood and bone coffee and gave it another sip. “Just right!” He walked past the injured Who, which was shrieking in pain from his fucking bone being ripped out. The Grinch smiled a cheeky smile, gave him the middle finger, grabbed at his ballsack and jingled it a little bit before exiting the room, smiling away. He left his cave and entered Whoville, smiling some more. He entered the carnage ensuing at the department store, He smiled and he smiled, as he walked around the various aisles, even trying on clothes that matched his style. He surveyed the chaos, the dreadful brawl, then looked at the camera and said “Lol!” He saw all there was to see but wanted more, so he strolled on over to the grocery store. He scanned the fridge aisle, hungry for Eggo waffles, seeing more people fighting and he shouted “Rofl!” He decided afterall he was hungry for a Snicker, as the drunk Whos fought over the last bottle of liquor. He swiped the candy without paying, an awful crime, and I just realized the past few sentences I’ve been speaking in rhyme. Dammit.

The Grinch left the grocery store with his candy, cackling to himself for shoplifting. All of a sudden, he spotted Cindy Lou Who smiling at the massive fight back at the department store. He approached the girl, giving her a large serrated knife. “You know what to do,” Grinch said in an evil tone to Cindy Lou. She nodded with a macabre smile, and started stabbing Whos in the gut, slashing them open, sending tons and tons more realistic blood and insides flying in all directions while the song “Welcome Christmas” from the 1966 cartoon special played, but in a warping, wavering speed. This went on for 5 minutes before the camera panned out in a crane shot as Cindy Lou kills the last couple of Whos and the music slows to a total halt. She stood amongst the heaping pile of bodies and innards in complete silence before the Snickers bar hopped out of the Grinch’s hand and became a poorly-made CGI Snickers bar and started flying through the sky. This was way too much for me. I didn’t want to see a flying Snickers bar. My skin was crawling as the wrapper flapped in the wind like a cape, this was disturbing. The candy bar smiled and winked at the camera with its faceless, chocolate coated surface. What nightmares are made of…

The Snickers bar flew through the sky for a good 3 minutes, all the while I’m leaned back in my chair, clenching the arms tightly in fear at this chocolate and nougat monstrosity. Ron Howard was officially an asshole and a sick man in my eyes, having made this horrific sight and traumatizing me in the process. I told him how sick he was. He laughed and sank his teeth into a Snickers. I turned my attention back to the screen. The candy bar had no face, but I knew it was Jim Carrey under that confectionary mask. I knew it. All of a sudden, as if things couldn’t get worse, The cow from the Grinch’s home trotted up, and its brains fell out. The brains hopped around like the Pixar ball. In fact, this was a joint production with Pixar. The brains and the candy bar followed the Grinch and Cindy Lou Who, who smiled at the camera and spoke, “I’M JIM CARREY,” as they strolled down the bloody, snowy Whoville streets.

People started exiting their homes, joining the gang. These weren’t just ordinary people however, you thought I was done! No! These people were also Jim Carrey, in costume as characters he plays in the past, present, and possibly even the future.The Mask, Lloyd Christmas from Dumb & Dumber, Bruce Nolan from Bruce Almighty, Ace Ventura, Tom Popper from Mr. Popper’s Penguins, Dr. Robotnik, even characters he played on In Living Color such as Fire Marshall Bill, all joined and walked down the street. I was crying uncontrollably at this point. Ron Howard was laughing maniacally. One of the homeless people farted worriedly and collapsed from shock. He had shat himself.

As they continued to go down the street, more and more Jim Carrey characters joined the group, including the workers from the department store and the man that the Grinch had tied up earlier. He joined the group as his forearm was dangling by just a thread of skin from the rest of his arm. He shouted, “I’M JIM CARREY.” Even the cow brains shouted “I’M JIM CARREY!” They stopped at the end of the street as they faced a man dressed in a long black hooded cloak facing away from the group. The figure turned around to be, who other than Jim fucking Carrey. He smiled sinisterly as he looked onto the crowd of his characters. "WHO ARE WE," Carrey shouted. The crowd responded with a resounding "JIM CARREY!" Carrey smirked and thunder sounded. Then, it started raining blood. It rained so much realistic blood that it flooded the entire Whoville set. Soon, all of the characters were swept away in the ocean of blood. They were washed all the way out of Whoville, and across the world, to the United States. As it turns out, Whoville is a small island on Earth that we have never discovered before. This is fact. Soon, the characters were all washed up to California, and to Hollywood, where they started getting jobs in movies as the star, all throughout the late 80s and into the 90s.

The movie started coming to a close here. The last 5 minutes was just Jim Carrey standing alone in Whoville, peeling his skin off with a fork until he was a skeleton. He danced around for the last 30 seconds as the shot slowly fades to black. Then we got a split-second picture of Carrey with no eyes. I sat dumbfounded at what I had just witnessed. "What the fuck was that," I asked angrily. Howard smiled. "The documentary behind Jim Carrey," he responded. The homeless person that shat himself earlier started to convulse. His skin peeled off to reveal that he was Jim Carrey underneath. I screamed as Jim Carrey screamed back. He screamed so loud that my left ear was deaf for the next 2 hours. He stood up. He looked very off, very un-Jim Carrey-like. He stood 8 feet tall and had a blood-red aura around him. He pointed down at me with a long, gangly arm. "Never tell anyone about this affair, or you will cease to exist." He left the room and another Jim Carrey, nay, a more normal looking Jim Carrey entered. "Hey guys!" he said, smiling away. "Did you enjoy the movie?" I stood with my mouth wide open. "Great!" Carrey said. "Take in mind we might need to do some reshoots later on, but this is the meat of it!," Carrey smiled as he started eating a Snickers bar. I fainted soon afterwards and somehow woke up back at home in my bed. I thought it was a dream until I found a folded up piece of paper on my desk. It was a stock photo of Jim Carrey putting his finger to his lips in a cultish hand signal. Not to mention all of my Snickers bars were gone.

You see, this is the real story behind Jim Carrey. He isn't a single entity. He is multiple. He can clone himself as many times as he pleases. Once he has enough clones, he’ll wipe us out all of humanity. All that will be left is “Jim-anity” and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. I only relate this story now because I will soon be dead from an illness that I would rather not get into specifics about, and I don’t care if the master Carrey will be here to kill me for telling this. I lived an adventurous and fulfilling life, and don’t care what happens next.

Beware when you watch any movie starring Jim Carrey. They say that in during any of them, during a dark scene, you can pause the movie and spot in the far distance a wrinkled, deformed Jim Carrey, withered like a Snickers wrapper, pointing at the camera, smiling, and grabbing his nutsack.