Nearly 40 years after outré comedian Andy Kaufman’s death from cancer, there remain fans who are certain that a faked demise was Kaufman’s most ambitious and committed hoax.
Until proven otherwise, this is a ridiculous conviction. That said, it’s probably no more or less absurd than believing that Andy Kaufman is a figure who could be explained or even adequately summarized in a conventional documentary. There are some outsized personalities so cloaked in mythology that even the tallest tales about them seem believable, but Kaufman’s personality was so cloaked in subterfuge that any attempt to deconstruct that personality or his behavior is going to come across as a bit within a bit.
This is the problem that Alex Braverman’s new documentary Thank You Very Much runs into. The documentary is filled with fantastic footage from Kaufman’s fearless performances, mostly familiar but still wildly iconoclastic. It...
Until proven otherwise, this is a ridiculous conviction. That said, it’s probably no more or less absurd than believing that Andy Kaufman is a figure who could be explained or even adequately summarized in a conventional documentary. There are some outsized personalities so cloaked in mythology that even the tallest tales about them seem believable, but Kaufman’s personality was so cloaked in subterfuge that any attempt to deconstruct that personality or his behavior is going to come across as a bit within a bit.
This is the problem that Alex Braverman’s new documentary Thank You Very Much runs into. The documentary is filled with fantastic footage from Kaufman’s fearless performances, mostly familiar but still wildly iconoclastic. It...
- 8/31/2023
- by Daniel Fienberg
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Ryan Lambie Nov 21, 2017
A documentary about Jim Carrey's method antics on the set of Man On The Moon turns out to be a profound and moving must-see, Ryan writes...
Why bother? It's a question occasionally worth levelling at the 'Method' - an immersive, all-consuming kind of acting created by the filmmaker and actor Konstantin Stanislavski. At its best, method acting brings us searing, self-searching performances like Robert De Niro's famous turns in Taxi Driver or Raging Bull.
See related Peaky Blinders series 4 episode 1 review Peaky Blinders series 4: Tommy has “atrophied emotionally” Peaky Blinders series 4: "there's no stopping" Aunt Polly Peaky Blinders series 4: who is Jessie Eden?
On the other hand, method acting can sometimes come across as needy and attention-seeking or, perhaps worst of all, a bit of a waste of time. For David Ayer's Suicide Squad, actor Jared Leto reportedly got so embroiled in his character,...
A documentary about Jim Carrey's method antics on the set of Man On The Moon turns out to be a profound and moving must-see, Ryan writes...
Why bother? It's a question occasionally worth levelling at the 'Method' - an immersive, all-consuming kind of acting created by the filmmaker and actor Konstantin Stanislavski. At its best, method acting brings us searing, self-searching performances like Robert De Niro's famous turns in Taxi Driver or Raging Bull.
See related Peaky Blinders series 4 episode 1 review Peaky Blinders series 4: Tommy has “atrophied emotionally” Peaky Blinders series 4: "there's no stopping" Aunt Polly Peaky Blinders series 4: who is Jessie Eden?
On the other hand, method acting can sometimes come across as needy and attention-seeking or, perhaps worst of all, a bit of a waste of time. For David Ayer's Suicide Squad, actor Jared Leto reportedly got so embroiled in his character,...
- 11/20/2017
- Den of Geek
You may not know this, but Jim Carrey kinda went completely insane when he was playing Andy Kaufman in the biopic Man Made Moon. Jim Carrey pretty much became Andy Kaufman in every way when he was making the movie and even when cameras weren't rolling, he was still going all out Kaufman. It was so bad and the studio was so embarrassed by his behavior that they never wanted to the on-set footage to be released.
Well, we have a very entertaining trailer for an upcoming documentary called Jim and Andy: The Great Beyond – With a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton. The film focuses on Carrey's madness during the shoot and the actor himself even talks about his experience shooting the film as he examines the behind the scenes footage of himself inhabiting the role of Kaufman for the first time. Carrey says in the trailer:...
Well, we have a very entertaining trailer for an upcoming documentary called Jim and Andy: The Great Beyond – With a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton. The film focuses on Carrey's madness during the shoot and the actor himself even talks about his experience shooting the film as he examines the behind the scenes footage of himself inhabiting the role of Kaufman for the first time. Carrey says in the trailer:...
- 10/19/2017
- by Joey Paur
- GeekTyrant
When Jim Carrey portrayed Andy Kaufman for the 1999 biopic Man on the Moon, he allowed himself to be swept up in the role, acting like the difficult comedian on set and off. He ultimately won a Golden Globe for the performance, but despite the success, the studio never released any making-of footage as DVD extras content. Now, nearly two decades later, a new documentary – Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond - With a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton, which will premiere on Netflix on November 17th – will show how the film was made.
- 10/19/2017
- Rollingstone.com
Netflix acquired Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond - Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton. The documentary film chronicles Jim Carrey's immersive role as experimental comedian/performance artist Andy Kaufman in 1999 biopic, Man on the Moon.
Oscar-winning filmmaker Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Where the Wild Things Are, Her) produced the project alongside Vice's Danny Gabai and Brendan Fitzgerald. Director Chris Smith utilized roughly 100 hours of footage filmed on the set of Milos Forman's acclaimed movie across a four-month span.
During the shoot, Carrey transformed into Kaufman.
Oscar-winning filmmaker Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Where the Wild Things Are, Her) produced the project alongside Vice's Danny Gabai and Brendan Fitzgerald. Director Chris Smith utilized roughly 100 hours of footage filmed on the set of Milos Forman's acclaimed movie across a four-month span.
During the shoot, Carrey transformed into Kaufman.
- 9/11/2017
- Rollingstone.com
Courtney Love: the unlikeliest comeback story of the year? The Hole frontwoman, onetime critical darling and '90s cultural icon has been racking up an impressive number of acting credits lately, from recurring guest arcs on shows like "Sons of Anarchy," "Revenge" and "Empire" to her new role in the James Franco-directed feature "The Long Home," an adaptation of the 1999 William Gay novel about a young carpenter (Josh Hutcherson) who's contracted to build a honky-tonk by the man who murdered his father ten years earlier (Tim Blake Nelson). As reported yesterday, Love is set to play the wife of Nelson's antagonistic character in the 1940s Tennessee-set drama, which represents her first feature-film credit since -- are you ready? -- the 2002 thriller "Trapped" co-starring Charlize Theron and Kevin Bacon. Could this be the beginning of a new chapter in Love's career? It's a little too early to make any grand pronouncements,...
- 5/6/2015
- by Chris Eggertsen
- Hitfix
This year marks the 30th anniversary of Andy Kaufman's death—but his brother, Michael, is anticipating a much lower-key Andy Kaufman Award celebration on Oct. 12 than last year's. In November 2013, Michael Kaufman introduced a young woman claiming to be Andy's daughter, who revealed that her father was still alive, living a peaceful life as a stay-at-home dad. Some stubborn conspiracy theorists had always doubted Andy's 1984 death, assuming it was part of some ultimate prank. Michael Kaufman initially seemed to endorse the young woman's claims, but quickly backpedaled in news interviews and claimed that he had been the victim of a hoax.
- 10/8/2014
- by Jeff Labrecque
- EW.com - PopWatch
Andy Kaufman is dead as a doornail and he's Not coming back, so says his last girlfriend -- who tells TMZ, she watched him die ... and the self-proclaimed "daughter" who revealed herself this week is a big fat phony.56-year-old Lynne Margulies tells us, she was present inside the West Hollywood hospital room when Kaufman passed away in 1984 from a rare form of lung cancer. She was there, and she insists she saw him die with her own eyes.
- 11/15/2013
- by TMZ Staff
- TMZ
Andy Kaufman still haunts our collective psyche 15 years after his early death, and the spectacle of seeing Jim Carrey transform himself into Kaufman will receive deserved critical praise. But Kaufman's act remains an acquired taste, one that is off-putting to many (as the movie makes amply clear). "Man on the Moon" enters the holiday market as a sleeper that, much like a Kaufman performance, may be a break-out hit or fall very flat.
Making a movie about Kaufman is like trying to pin Jell-O to a wall. There's no way to get at the "real" Andy Kaufman because it's very possible that part of his personality never existed -- or if it did, it got lost in Kaufman's psyche. So what a team of highly talented filmmakers -- screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, director Milos Forman and Carrey -- have managed to do in "Man on the Moon" is less a biopic than an assemblage of Kaufman's greatest hits as a comic.
Here we get the most famous, infamous, outrageous, innovative and mouth-dropping stunts from one of the quirkiest careers in the annals of show business. But how audiences will respond is not easy to predict.
Kaufman never liked being called a comic. He was closer to a performance artist. He assumed a number of guises -- wrestler, immigrant, Elvis Presley, lounge singer Tony Clifton, evangelist, robot butler and fakir. But his refusal to break character -- to let audiences realize it's all a gag -- often pushed the act into an uncomfortable area where the line between reality and illusion blurred.
Kaufman's anti-comedy causes his manager and mentor, George Shapiro, played by Danny DeVito, to declare at one point, "You're insane, but you might be brilliant!"
After a gangbuster opening, in which Carrey as Kaufman introduces his movie -- easily the funniest and most original new material in the entire movie -- "Man on the Moon" struggles to tell in a conventional, linear manner the story of this most unconventional of entertainers.
The writers at some point must have abandoned any hope of explaining their hero, for they don't even make the attempt. Instead we get highlights of Kaufman's performances on stage and television and a few key moments in his life.
And a few weird scenes where Carrey's Kaufman performs in the hit TV series "Taxi" with its original cast members -- Judd Hirsch, Carol Kane, Marilu Henner -- while DeVito, another series co-star, plays an entirely different character.
Forman and the writers never seem certain what part of Kaufman's life is put-on and what is not -- the insane vs. brilliant conundrum -- so they play everything straight, leaving the audience to decide.
It's impossible -- repeat, impossible -- to imagine any other actor in the role of Kaufman. Carrey so invades the personality and physical being of Kaufman as to perform a virtual act of transmigration. It's eerie and wonderful and the main reason to see this movie.
Courtney Love, rejoining the team with whom she made "The People vs. Larry Flynt", delivers a winsome and tender portrayal of Lynne Margulies, the editor who was Kaufman's last love. (The film never mentions any of Kaufman's other love affairs.)
Paul Giamatti ably plays Bob Zmuda, Kaufman's writer and co-conspirator in his act, making him the perfect foil for Carrey -- sane, grounded and the one person who definitely understands Kaufman.
DeVito has given himself a really unenviable role as Shapiro, who is portrayed as an eternal kvetch, in scene after scene complaining to Andy about his risky avant garde act and forever trying to tone him down.
The film ultimately disappoints because it doesn't share its subject's sense of the outrageous. It's too tame and conventional. The opening credit sequence by Carrey points the way to a more free-form examination of Kaufman. But Forman et al. choose not to go there. Maybe the producers should have hired Tony Clifton to direct.
MAN ON THE MOON
Universal Pictures
Jersey Films
Producers: Danny DeVito, Michael Shamberg, Stacey Sher
Director: Milos Forman
Screenwriters: Scott Alexander, Larry Karaszewski
Executive producers: George Shapiro, Howard West, Michael Hausman
Director of photography: Anastas Michos
Production designer: Patrizia Von Brandenstein
Music: R.E.M.
Co-executive producer: Bob Zmuda
Costume designer: Jeffrey Kurland
Editors: Christopher Tellefsen, Lynzee Klingman
Color/stereo
Cast:
Andy Kaufman: Jim Carrey
George Shapiro: Danny DeVito
Bob Zmuda: Paul Giamatti
Lynne Margulies: Courtney Love
Running time -- 118 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
Making a movie about Kaufman is like trying to pin Jell-O to a wall. There's no way to get at the "real" Andy Kaufman because it's very possible that part of his personality never existed -- or if it did, it got lost in Kaufman's psyche. So what a team of highly talented filmmakers -- screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, director Milos Forman and Carrey -- have managed to do in "Man on the Moon" is less a biopic than an assemblage of Kaufman's greatest hits as a comic.
Here we get the most famous, infamous, outrageous, innovative and mouth-dropping stunts from one of the quirkiest careers in the annals of show business. But how audiences will respond is not easy to predict.
Kaufman never liked being called a comic. He was closer to a performance artist. He assumed a number of guises -- wrestler, immigrant, Elvis Presley, lounge singer Tony Clifton, evangelist, robot butler and fakir. But his refusal to break character -- to let audiences realize it's all a gag -- often pushed the act into an uncomfortable area where the line between reality and illusion blurred.
Kaufman's anti-comedy causes his manager and mentor, George Shapiro, played by Danny DeVito, to declare at one point, "You're insane, but you might be brilliant!"
After a gangbuster opening, in which Carrey as Kaufman introduces his movie -- easily the funniest and most original new material in the entire movie -- "Man on the Moon" struggles to tell in a conventional, linear manner the story of this most unconventional of entertainers.
The writers at some point must have abandoned any hope of explaining their hero, for they don't even make the attempt. Instead we get highlights of Kaufman's performances on stage and television and a few key moments in his life.
And a few weird scenes where Carrey's Kaufman performs in the hit TV series "Taxi" with its original cast members -- Judd Hirsch, Carol Kane, Marilu Henner -- while DeVito, another series co-star, plays an entirely different character.
Forman and the writers never seem certain what part of Kaufman's life is put-on and what is not -- the insane vs. brilliant conundrum -- so they play everything straight, leaving the audience to decide.
It's impossible -- repeat, impossible -- to imagine any other actor in the role of Kaufman. Carrey so invades the personality and physical being of Kaufman as to perform a virtual act of transmigration. It's eerie and wonderful and the main reason to see this movie.
Courtney Love, rejoining the team with whom she made "The People vs. Larry Flynt", delivers a winsome and tender portrayal of Lynne Margulies, the editor who was Kaufman's last love. (The film never mentions any of Kaufman's other love affairs.)
Paul Giamatti ably plays Bob Zmuda, Kaufman's writer and co-conspirator in his act, making him the perfect foil for Carrey -- sane, grounded and the one person who definitely understands Kaufman.
DeVito has given himself a really unenviable role as Shapiro, who is portrayed as an eternal kvetch, in scene after scene complaining to Andy about his risky avant garde act and forever trying to tone him down.
The film ultimately disappoints because it doesn't share its subject's sense of the outrageous. It's too tame and conventional. The opening credit sequence by Carrey points the way to a more free-form examination of Kaufman. But Forman et al. choose not to go there. Maybe the producers should have hired Tony Clifton to direct.
MAN ON THE MOON
Universal Pictures
Jersey Films
Producers: Danny DeVito, Michael Shamberg, Stacey Sher
Director: Milos Forman
Screenwriters: Scott Alexander, Larry Karaszewski
Executive producers: George Shapiro, Howard West, Michael Hausman
Director of photography: Anastas Michos
Production designer: Patrizia Von Brandenstein
Music: R.E.M.
Co-executive producer: Bob Zmuda
Costume designer: Jeffrey Kurland
Editors: Christopher Tellefsen, Lynzee Klingman
Color/stereo
Cast:
Andy Kaufman: Jim Carrey
George Shapiro: Danny DeVito
Bob Zmuda: Paul Giamatti
Lynne Margulies: Courtney Love
Running time -- 118 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 12/13/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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