The Unauthorized Serial Novelization of the 1994 Film, The Mask

Part 1: Somebody stop me!

There should be a warning at the start of this movie. 

Like, big serious letters that say: Prepare to have your world rocked. 

The film starts. Weird shapes fly onto the screen—a square and two ladder-looking things. Dark, ominous music plays, and even though we’re not yet five seconds into the film, those are chills running up our arms. 

The shapes merge to become the New Line Cinema logo—an instantly recognizable icon for anyone who grew up watching the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies (or Nightmare On Elm Street if you were a freak whose parents let you watch rated-R movies).

The credits roll. The font appears to be some ‘30s modernist typeface. Because we’ve seen this movie so many times, we know this is a subtle nod to the swing-era gangster aesthetic of the film. “A Charles Russell film” a credit reads, and it’s a shame that his name isn’t as well-known as any other great artists. Spielberg, Picasso, Charles Russell. 

Then Jim Carrey’s name appears on the screen and we’re like “OOOOOOooooh.” We know that guy. He’s famous. 1994 was a banner year for that guy. We got three Carrey Classics in ‘94, so that makes it a banner year for us as well. 

Isn’t it strange to think that Kurt Cobain killed himself the same year that The Mask came out? It seems like two different timelines. You think Kurt would’ve liked The Mask? In my opinion, I think he would have. 

The picture fades in on a bleak, industrial cityscape, like a cross between New York and Pittsburgh. Titles tell us this is “Edge City.” More like “Edgelord City!” I would say if we were watching this together.  

Cut to an underwater shot of a guy in a scuba suit welding something. I’ve heard that this is actually one of the most dangerous professions. I can’t remember where I heard that fact, but I don’t doubt it. 

Something catches the scuba diver’s eye: a treasure chest is hidden beneath some rocks. “Oh!” says his eyes. “Let me check this out!” Whomst amongst us would not have the same reaction? 

As the scuba diver tries to open the chest, a large metal pipe falls on him, crushing him. Ohhhh fuccccck! he’s probably thinking. If only my greed had not blinded me to the hazards of this dangerous profession! 

In addition to crushing the diver, the pipe also knocks open the treasure chest. Out of it floats the titular mask, which is like like green and brown and wooden. Why was it in the treasure chest buried in the sea? I’m afraid we never know, but the lengths someone went to hide it give us the delicious impression that it might just be a tad dangerous. 

The mask floats past the camera in a bed of bubbles and it’s a really good shot. If we were watching together, I’d be all, “That’s a really good shot.”  As it floats out of the frame, the words “The Mask”—large and yellow, radiating an eerie green magic—zoom at us with alarming speed. The screen goes white. Bam. “That’s how you start a movie,” I would say if we were watching together.  

Cut to an exterior shot of Edge City Banking and Loan. As a kid watching this film, seeing this grown-up institution was like, “Boring! Get back to the mask!”, but as adults, we can appreciate the juxtaposition of the previous sequence of violence with this symbol of everyday banality. 

Inside the bank, we get an overhead shot of a hand opening a drawer to reveal two tickets to the Royal Crown Revue, a band that was part of the brief swing revival of the late ‘90s alongside the ranks of Cherry Poppin’ Daddies and Big Bad Voodoo Daddies. If there was a father figure in your band name in the late ‘90s, you were ski-bop-de-bop-a-la-booping all the way to the bank.

Stanley Ipkiss (Jim Carrey), picks up the tickets and presents them to his love interest, Maggie, a woman with curly red hair. And boy, is she stoked to get Royal Crown Revue tickets! But would it be possible to get one more ticket for her girlfriend? Stanley, oh pathetic Stanley, is all “they’re out, they’re sold out.” This interaction is not going as Stanley had planned. He tells her to take both tickets and have a fun time with her girlfriend. “Oh Stanley, you’re the nicest guy,” she says. 

Stanley’s friend/co-worker Charlie walks up and Maggie says, “Charlie, isn’t Stanley the nicest guy?” and Charlie says, “The best.” Figuratively, it’s like the two of them are taking turns jumping on Stanley’s testicles, smushing them into a bloody pulp. Cucking him, really. Charlie is not a great friend, but he’s all Stanley has. 

After Maggie leaves—with the Royal Crown Revue tickets, no less—Charlie makes an emasculating remark about Stanley’s handling of the situation.

It’s about this time that we get a credit saying “Introducing Cameron Diaz,” and those of us who haven’t seen the movie go wow wow wooza. 

Once we get over that little shock, we remember that Charlie is still talking out of his dumb mouth, goading Stanley into joining him at the Coco Bongo club later that night. It’s Charlie’s slimeball way of getting Stanley’s mind off his pathetic life. Coco Bongo is a new club and the place to be, according to all middle-aged bankers.

Suddenly, lightning strikes and a heavy rain begins to fall over Edge City, but if you look closely at the overhead shot, you can see it’s only raining in one concentrated spot. It’s not a big deal, but still kind of weird. 

Among the people rushing through the pretend rain, there’s a woman in a red dress that shows A LOT of leg. She enters the bank completely soaked. 

The camera slow-zooms on the woman, intercutting between her body and the two men being all humina humina humina, awooga. This woman is Cameron Diaz. To drive home the point of her beauty, we get not one but two zoom-ins on Stanley and Charlie as they heavily objectify Cameron Diaz. 

Charlie approaches Cameron Diaz first. She asks who she can speak to in order to open a new account. Charlie, like a little lapdog, says, “Right this way.” He offers to take her coat. But then Cameron Diaz turns to Stanley and asks him for help. We can’t help but feel a little happy at this twist, because we’ve quickly developed feelings of repulsion toward Charlie. 

Dejected, Charlie puts Cameron Diaz’s coat up to his face and takes a big whiff. 

If Cameron Diaz doesn’t need him, at least he has her scent. Charlie basically is an animal at this point. 

A goddamn fucking animal.   

As Stanley and Cameron Diaz settle down to business, it’s clear that Cameron Diaz is actually not there to open a checking account. She flirts with Stanley, handling his black and white tie in a provocative way. She equates it to a Rorschach test, but Stanley, aloof, pretends it’s his tongue and then does all sorts of weird prop-humor-y things. 

The tie, a phallus which Cameron Diaz can handle, but Stanley cannot. 

It’s Hitchcockian, really. Brilliant. 

Increasingly distracted by Cameron Diaz, Stanley accidentally puts a pen into his pencil sharpener. Oh Jesus, Stanley, we’re thinking. 

Stanley rattles off the type of accounts Cameron Diaz could open. While he’s doing this, Cameron Diaz moves her purse so a camera hidden inside is pointed at the bank vault. 

The scene cuts to the livefeed of what the camera purse is recording. We’re in a smoky, dimly-lit room where two bad guys are studying the footage. The main bad guy, Dorian (also owner of the Coco Bongo), has slicked back hair and wears this shirt that looks like a training turtleneck.

The man he’s talking to, Freeze, says that the vault should not be a problem to break into, despite motion sensors being a “pain the ass”. Dorian need not worry, though, because Freeze calls himself “the doctor,” which I guess means he’s very good at being a bad guy. 

Freeze has one concern, however: does Nico know about the bank hit? We don’t know who Nico is, but when Dorian says no, Freeze provides some nice little exposition: Nico runs the whole stinkin’ town. 

“Things change,” Dorian replies, icily. 

Freeze comes back with, “You mess with Nico, you end up taking a dirt nap,” which is such a weird euphemism for death. I don’t even know. 

Dorian ignores this warning. He takes a printed-out headshot of Nico and burns holes in the picture where Nico’s eyes are. It’s ominous, sure, but we’re also wondering where these professional headshots of Nico came from, and why does Dorian have one? I’d actually bet Dorian has more than one given how cavalier he is about destroying them. 

Dorian then tells Freeze that after they take out the bank, they’re going to take out Nico, and then the whole city is their playground. At that, Dorian puts the headshot of Nico with burned-out eyes over his own face. If we were watching this scene in the same room, I’d elbow you and be like, “Get it? It’s like a mask.”

Freeze then laughs—like a big, super fake burst of laughter. He then laughs again, as if the actor was expecting to hear “cut!” but they kept rolling, so he felt obligated to fill the scene. Feel like they could’ve edited that part better. They say that cinema is an editor’s medium. Who says that? I don’t know. I think I just heard it somewhere. 

So now we’re back with Stanley. He’s jaywalking through a busy street and almost gets hit by a station wagon. This guy cannot get a break. We learn that he’s headed to the auto mechanic shop to pick up his car. Fun fact: the set they use for the auto shop is the same they used in the Ghostbusters movies. You know the fire station that the Ghostbusters uh live? in? (I can’t remember: did the Ghostbusters have homes?). 

Man oh man, the auto mechanics are two scuzzy lookin’ dudes. When Stanley rings a bell for service, the boss yells “Don’t get your panties in a twist!” At that point, another mechanic rises from a disemboweled hood of a car, holding up a car part and asks, “Hey Burt, what the hell is this?” 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Burt says, studying it. “About a 700-bucks-er!” They laugh and laugh. It’s a solid burn on the entire auto repair industry. Mechanics: they rip us off! They make their own rulebook and then throw it out! True rogues, these people. 

Surprise, surprise, these mechanics have “found” many more problems with Stanley’s car. Based on the interaction we just witnessed, we really can’t take these guys for their word. But what really can Stanley do? He’s stuck in a world of consumer purgatory, so he signs off on the charges. At that moment, though, he realizes he’ll need a car that night in order to get to the Coco Bongo. Egads! The mechanics offer him “The Loaner,” which based on the way they keep saying “The Loaner” with increasing menace, is a real jalopy, a real piece of shit. 

We cut to a magnificent crane shot of sweeping down on the Coco Bongo. It’s a happening joint. This is what I thought all nightclubs looked like when I was little, but now that I’ve been to nightclubs, the Coco Bongo seems more like a casino (which I guess it technically is since, as we’ll see later, it has slot machines). A crowd of attractive and well-dressed people mingle outside waiting to get in, and red-jacketed valets are on hand to take care of everyone’s expensive cars. 

Then Stanley’s car, The Loaner, lumbers into the scene. It stutters in and out of life, jerking forward like a dangerous carnival ride. The Loaner kicks out exhaust as if trying to poison the world. The Coco Bongo crowd looks upon this rusted, twisted mass of metal—an affront to God—with horrified faces. Suffice to say, The Loaner fucking sucks. 

Stanley shoulders the car door open and stumbles out. He looks upon the disgusted crowd and says, “It’s a classic!” He pats the car and a piece of it falls off—which would’ve been a good bit if we had actually seen what fell off the vehicle, but we can’t. Probably another editing flub. The valet has trouble getting the car rolling, so Stanley helps by pushing it out of frame.

Stanley finds Charlie, who’s talking to two attractive women. Charlie introduces Stanley to the women, describing him as “humongo in the banking business.” Humongo.

Charlie has some sort of connection with the doorman at Coco Bongo, which really shouldn’t surprise us. He's a slimeball who revels in vice, and the Coco Bongo is his mecca. He’s been there many times, probably has spent lots of money. Charlie’s apparent social capital is not due to his charisma, but because he’s a valued consumer. We have to wonder how much of Charlie’s soul has been sucked up by this hedonistic paradise. Probably a lot, considering how little substance or integrity he possesses. 

Charlie’s doorman friend is Bobby, who we learn is a henchman/goon for Dorian. Bobby has a goatee. That’s about all you need to know about Bobby. With a little bribey-bribe, Bobby opens the rope for Charlie and co.

Stanley, awe-struck and distracted by this one instance of good fortune, falls behind the group, and before he knows it, Bobby replaces the rope. Access denied! Stanley watches helplessly as Charlie and the women walk into the Coco Bongo. Desperate, Stanley unlatches the rope in an attempt to get into the club, which is a HUGE faux pas. “NO ONE crosses the line,” Bobby says. Dorian has his goons throw Stanley out on the street, which is actually a pretty cool practical shot because we see the hard asphalt, and then the camera zooms into the guys carrying Stanley. In that brief moment when the camera rises above the asphalt, I imagine some production assistant pushing a cushion into the spot where they toss Stanley. We don’t actually see the impact, but we feel it. “A nice little bit of practical camera trickery,” I’d say if we were watching together. 

With both body and ego bruised, Stanley stands up, tries to regain some dignity, and then a car drives by and splashes mud all over him. A classic gag by any standards. 

The driver of the car opens the door and out steps Cameron Diaz. She’s wearing a black-and-white Beetlejuice-y dress, and the soundtrack highlights her sexiness by ushering in a sultry swing song. “Mr. Ipkiss,” she says. “Hi.” 

Stanley, nearly breathless with want, responds, “Hi.” 

There’s a brief pause as the two search for something to say. It’s a quiet moment in an otherwise chaotic movie, and one that restores our faith in the power of cinema. 

“Are you okay?” Cameron Diaz asks. 

“Me? I’m great. Really good. Never felt better actually,” Stanley says. 

Then, a valet pulls up with The Loaner, absolutely destroying the vibes. Stanley tries to pretend it’s not his car, and we’re just like, “Oh, Stanley. Oh no, Stanley.” He finally snatches the ticket from the valet’s hand, climbs into The Loaner and says something about usually driving a Porsche, which makes Cameron Diaz laugh. The chemistry between these two is purely delectable, we’re thinking, rubbing our hands together and breathing perversely through our noses. 

The Loaner makes a gun-go-bang sound as Stanley drives off. 

We cut to The Loaner driving down the middle of a wooden bridge. It’s completely empty; no other cars in sight. Is this the route Stanley always takes to get home? Are wooden bridges staples of Edge City’s infrastructure? 

Stanley’s car herky-jerks to a stop, finally vrooming its last vroom (vrooms = car breaths). Stanley gets out to open the hood, but it’s too hot. He kicks the bumper and The Loaner falls apart, keeps falling apart in stages until it’s finally just a pile. “Hahahaha,” I’d say if we were watching together. 

Emotionally destroyed, exhausted and dejected, Stanley walks to the side of the bridge to contemplate the hardness of life. As he’s looking at the water, he sees a man floating in it, unresponsive. Stanley breaks out of his fugue state and scampers down into the filthy Edge City river, but what he mistook for a  man is actually a garbageheap; what he mistook for a face is just THE MASK covered with cloth. 

THE MASK immediately holds some strange power over Stanley. As he’s inspecting it, an iridescent shine glimmers through it, beckoning Stanley. Despite the fact that Stanley is standing in what we must assume is shit-filled water, he looks upon THE MASK with almost sexual desire. It casts an unsettling spell. Stanley brings THE MASK up to his face. Closer, closer. 

Just before he puts it on, Stanley is hit with a beam of light. “Hey, what are you doing down there?” asks the police. 

“Oh, I was just looking for... MY MASK!” 

“That was the scene they used in the trailer to set up the movie’s premise,” I’d say if we were watching together. And you’d look over and see me smiling, like, really big.