Controversy surrounding Jim Carrey’s Cold Dead Hand has been very good for Funny or Die, the website co-owned by actor Will Ferrell where the video originated.
Funny or Die told The Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday that Cold Dead Hand is “the fastest video out of the gate since Charlie Sheen’s Winning Recipes just over two years ago.”
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Cold Dead Hand was released less than two weeks ago and, at 2.8 million views thus far, it has already cracked the Top 10 in terms of viewership within the first 30 days.
In the meantime, it has broken or is set to break very soon the record for most comments, at about 2,600 and counting. One insider joked it also broke a record for “most vile comments” at the Funny or Die Facebook page. It's also in the 99th percentile in emailing and sharing, even though it is just 9 days old and competes against hundreds of Funny or Die videos that have been around for years.
While Carrey's is one of Funny or Die's biggest politically-themed videos, it has a way to go to take the No. 1 spot from Paris Hilton, who has garnered 10.2 million views in five years for her video response to a John McCain campaign ad.
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Carrey’s Cold Dead Hand – which takes aim at Charlton Heston and gun owners -- has the potential, though, because it has been getting a tremendous amount of free publicity from political sources on both sides, but mostly from the right, which takes issue with Carrey conflating legal gun ownership with criminal behavior.
Last week, for example, the video was a hot topic on conservative talk radio. On TV, meanwhile, Fox News Channel commentator Greg Gutfeld pelted Carrey with unusually harsh insults, which led Carrey to fire back with a statement issued by a publicist. In it, Carrey called “Fux News” a “media colostomy bag that has begun to burst at the seams and should be emptied before it becomes a public health issue.”
“This is a guy that insulted most of America and danced on the grave of Charlton Heston.” Gutfeld said in an on-air response the same day. “Jim Carrey is, in this letter, threatening legal action -- something Charlton Heston can’t do because Charlton Heston is dead.”
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While the back-and-forth is great business for Funny or Die, Carrey might not be too thrilled with it, and late Tuesday he penned an opinion piece for the Huffington Post where he says, "I never wanted to take your guns away."
Carrey also criticizes those who say they'll boycott his movies because of his pro gun-control stance and attack on Heston. He calls some of his harsher critics "thugs" and "bullies" who wish him death.He also writes: "For those who say I'm a hypocrite because I have an armed bodyguard, lets make one thing clear: No one in my employ is allowed to carry a large magazine and NO ONE IS ASKING ANYONE TO GIVE UP THEIR RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS."Email: Paul.Bond@THR.com
