Goofing on Elvis, ABC, Shapiro, You, Me and the Audience ...

Rating: Null/10 (3 May 2002)

The greatest comedians are those who do not care about being loved. Charlie Chaplin and a legion of lesser lights are exiled from my comic pantheon because they simper at the camera and at the audience. They look arch or hurt or helpless. Quite consciously, they appeal for our affection. They ingratiate; pathos is their effect of choice.
But Tony Hancock, W C Fields, Buster Keaton, Sid Field and other greats either do not care at all about our feelings or positively revel in our disapproval. They snarl at the camera, they sneer at their fellow human beings, they behave appallingly, and as a result they suffer outrage piled upon humiliation. They would die rather than appear pathetic. But they are indomitable and undefeated to the utmost end, and so we love them despite themselves.
Andy Kaufman took this comic insight to hitherto unheard-of extremes. In pursuit of the World Inter-Gender Wrestling Championship he would reduce halls of middle class women to howling hostility. In search of revenge on a college audience that wanted only to see his character from the sitcom "Taxi" he would assume the persona of an English gentleman and read the Great Gatsby from beginning to end without pause or inflection. As louche lounge singer Tony Clifton he would start by demanding that the audience extinguish their smoking materials ("There is an ARTISTE on stage!") and then light up a particularly smelly cigarette. Often only Andy, his faithful sidekick Bob Zmuda and (if they were lucky) his agent, family and girlfriend would be in on the joke.
"Man on the Moon" was a commercial flop in the United States and received very mixed reviews. Many Andy Kaufman fans expressed purist disdain for the movie's use of facts, although for a Hollywood movie it is really pretty accurate. Many movie critics thought Kaufman too trivial a subject for Director Milos Forman, whose previous subjects included Mozart ("Amadeus"). Others just won't take Jim Carrey, who plays Kaufman, at any price, and having seen a number of his other films I can sympathise with this position.
But they're all wrong. This is a good movie, with a magnificent central performance. Carrey's portrayal of Kaufman is by far the best film work he has done to date, and shows you just why so many film insiders spotted him as a future star. (Theorists of the decline of Western civilisation should find support in the fact that US audiences neglected this movie but flocked to "Ace Ventura, Pet Detective".)
Carrey's impersonation of Kaufman is remarkable - particularly since Carrey's angular features little resemble Kaufman's moon face. Sometimes - heresy as this will seem to Kaufman fans - Carrey is actually superior to the original. His Elvis Presley impersonation, the shock conclusion to the famous "Foreign Man" routine, has Kaufman's effort knocked cold. Of course, Kaufman did it first, but I think he would be the first to admit that Carrey does it better.
Sometimes Carrey misfires, but I doubt if any other actor could have done much better. His TV appearance with 50s puppet Howdy Doody appears as dull and pointless as the ABC moguls say it is, despite Danny de Vito's attempt in the role of Kaufman's agent to talk the performance up. But track down Kaufman's original, which is easy to find on the Internet, and you will see just how touching and beautiful it is. Kaufman had the capacity to bring his childhood wonder effortlessly and touchingly the surface, and to make us feel it too. Now we see Howdy Doody not as a lump of wood with strings but as a real and much-loved childhood friend who has been lonely and bored for fifteen years in his box, since his TV series was cancelled. Carrey is too knowing, too arch, to bring this effect off - and there is just that hint of a need to be liked ...
Forman also misses some chances to explore hidden parts of Kaufman's strange personality. At one point it is revealed that he regularly visits prostitutes, apparently in a variety of disguises, but this is never explored. (Andy Kaufman meets Belle de Jour - that would be a scene worth filming!) But Forman has a strong sense of narrative drive, and Kaufman's life is weird and gripping enough to hold the attention throughout. Episodes such as Tony Clifton's magnificent demolition of an episode of "Taxi" had me shouting with laughter. (The original cast of "Taxi" helps the effect a great deal by sitting as stony-faced through the Clifton outrages as they must have done when Kaufman first unleashed them.)
Supporting performances, particularly by Paul Giamatti as Bob Zmuda, are generally strong. The title song by REM is a delightful celebration of Kaufman, a man who was loved despite all his best efforts. There are some splendid shock comic effects, for example when Tony Clifton is performing on stage and Kaufman appears behind him. There is a pleasantly ironic final scene, which far too many viewers take literally (as you will see from the Frequently Asked Questions part of the Kaufman website). Even Kaufman's funeral, which might have been mawkish in the extreme, works rather well, and in the opening and closing moments Carrey frames the whole film much as Kaufman himself might have done.
I became a fan of Kaufman's after seeing this film. I think that's the best recommendation I could ever give it. Go see it with an open mind and I hope and believe that you'll agree.