SMITH: It's no secret that Tommy is not an easy person to be around or work with. The thing about Tommy is he is a perfectionist and he's won an Oscar and that Oscar win has given him an air about himself. He carries this certain air and he allows it to effect the people around him. He makes them very uncomfortable. His sense of humor is different than everyone else's. We had a ball together making MIB.
SONNENFELD: I saw Tommy in Batman Forever with Jim Carrey. Joel Schumacher the director on BF fell in love with the comedic genius of Carrey. It is no secret that Tommy hated Carey and voiced it loudly through the whole production of the movie. Schumacher left Tommy to make the character of Two Face his own. HE had heard what genius Tommy is at character portrayal. As a way to get attention, as Tommy felt he was being ignored and no one was paying him the attention and adulation that Carrey was getting, Tommy watched what Carrey was doing and tried to go where Carrey was coming from. He tried to be funny. Well don't try to be funnier than Carrey just go the other way and be yourself. Tommy ended up hating BF due to his childish behavior and treatment of Carrey.
When we shot MIB Tommy started every damn day complaining that the writer didn't know what he was doing and that Tommy could write better stories in grade school than this writer. When that didn't work he complained about the length of the lines of the other characters. He wanted their lines cut. When that didn't work, he complained about where his marks were and where he had to stand and for how long. Finally, my usual calm went up in smoke and I asked Tommy just what the hell his problem was and what did he want from all of us working on this movie. He said he wanted the movie to be his alone and why couldn't it be called Man In Black and Will dropped. This was almost half way through production! I just looked at him and laughed. I told him that Will was the driving force of this movie as he had the heavy comedic role and Tommy was the straight man that Will played off of. I told Tommy if I dropped anyone's part it would be his if he didn't stop complaining every damn day and shut up. He shut up but he made it miserable for anyone that he had to work with during the rest of the production of the movie. Tommy told me early on that he had just come out of a horrendous divorce and I felt great empathy for him when he first told me. I later found out the real truth as to why his wife divorced him and what he had done to destroy a marriage of some 15 years with young children.
I have one thing to say to anyone who works with Tommy, lives with Tommy, or tries to interview him:
APPROACH AT YOUR OWN RISK!
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