If You Believed They Put a 'Man on the Moon'…

You might recognize the title of this review as the chorus-opening lyric for R.E.M.’s ‘Man on the Moon.’ Michael Stipe goes on to sing, “If you believe there’s nothing up my sleeve, then nothing is cool.” I had listened to this song dozens of times. I had heard Andy Kaufman mentioned throughout. And yet it was not until I finally sat down to watch Milos Forman’s 1999 biography of Kaufman named after the R.E.M. song that the significance of those words dawned on me. The lyric perfectly captures the essence of Kaufman’s brilliance, and Jim Carrey’s performance as the comedian – nay, song-and-dance man, as he liked to call himself – complements it flawlessly, if you are as curious and fascinated by his life as I was.

The film opens in black-and-white. Andy walks into frame, speaking as his foreign man character, announces that the film is over and plays a record as the credits roll, then walks off. He returns and, using his normal voice, says he had to “get rid of the people who don't understand me, and don't want to try." The film then starts proper, with Andy using a film projector to show us his childhood home, which we are then thrust into. This opening could not be more befitting. It establishes right at the outset that this will not be a typical biopic, as its subject is not a typical comedian or, in fact, a typical man. Kaufman even says in this opening scene that "all the most important things in my life are changed around and mixed up for dramatic purposes."

Andy was not a comedian in the traditional sense of the word. He did not tell jokes, and when he did do impressions, it was not about the impression itself, but rather about playing tricks on the audience and observing human behaviour. He would come on stage as his foreign man character, do a terrible impression of Jimmy Carter and, just when the audience had written him off as a hack, would do an Elvis impersonation so brilliant that the audience didn’t know whether to laugh or cheer or feel like fools because they had been duped. He had a character called Tony Clifton, a Vegas lounge singer who berated the audience and insulted everyone he came across. As Andy and his friend and creative partner Bob Zmuda took turns playing Tony, many believed him to be a real person, and an incident involving him throwing a tantrum on the set of Andy’s TV show ‘Taxi’ was reported in the newspapers, much to Andy’s delight. It’s hard to imagine how someone who looked at entertainment from such a unique and original perspective became as successful and lauded by the mainstream as he did, and this film follows the trajectory of his career and makes it clear that someone as talented and full of creative energy as Andy was destined to become a star.


Carrey’s performance is phenomenal. He won a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy for the second year in a row, after having won it for The Truman Show the previous year. Although the film has many hilarious moments, it is at its core a drama, as Carrey himself mentioned in his acceptance speech. Andy’s life was tragically cut short, when he was diagnosed with lung cancer, and he died shortly after at the age of 35. Carrey has made a career out of playing outlandish, over-the-top characters, and has been successful enough at it to demand $20 million a picture. Because his characters are often so far from the realm of reality, it can be hard to fathom that he can act, let alone infuse a character with as much depth and sincerity as he does in this film. Although his comedic talents help him nail Andy’s many voices and mannerisms in a way that not many could, his quiet and introspective moments are the most fascinating to watch in the film, especially a truly powerful scene towards the end, when Andy goes to the Philippines to try an experimental cancer treatment known as ‘psychic surgery’ and realizes that it is a ruse, much like the ones he performed on audiences all his life. His moment of realization and his subsequent laughter is truly a spectacular scene in a spectacular film about a spectacular man.


There is much to be said about the film aside from Carrey’s performance. Danny DeVito and Paul Giamatti do fantastic work as Andy’s agent George Shapiro and his friend Bob Zmuda, respectively. The recreations of Andy’s various performance highlights, including his appearances on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ ‘Late Night with David Letterman,’ ‘Taxi,’ ‘Fridays’ and his infamous Carnegie Hall performance, are a delight to watch and only elevate the viewer’s interest in seeking out the original versions of these performances and seeing the real Andy at work. His involvement with professional wrestling is one of the strangest and most fascinating aspects of his life and has to be seen to be believed. Another R.E.M. song, ‘The Great Beyond,’ written specifically for the film, caps it off immaculately and we are left in the dark, in awe and wonder of this force of nature that, for a brief but dazzling period of time, changed the definition of comedy and performance art. “Hey Andy, are you goofing on Elvis? Hey baby, are you having fun?”