Inspiring

Rating: Null/10 (25 December 1999)

I have been there. I've done stand-up, and been onstage bearing my griefs and rages for a room full of drunks who were all despising me, loathing my presence, NOT GETTING IT. "Man on the Moon", Milos Forman's biopic of much-misunderstood avant-comic Andy Kaufman, struck a serious personal nerve with me, and shook me as well as made me laugh.
Jim Carrey's complete sublimation of his own considerable comic persona to that of Kaufman's is truly impressive, and he sells the performance sequences with tremendous gusto. The film's screenplay, by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski ("Ed Wood", "The People Vs. Larry Flynt"), is intelligent enough to realize that we do not need a tremendous amount of background information and offstage hagiography to understand Kaufman. Andy WAS his work. He was a man who wrestled women while spouting chauvinist doggerel, who read aloud from "The Great Gatsby" to an audience expecting easy laughs, and who gave audiences expecting smiling, sweet Andy a loathsome, abusive lounge lizard named Tony Clifton (who Andy emphatically denied was himself under makeup).
It really hit a personal nerve with me, hearing Andy say that he was not a comedian, that he was not interested in going for "cheap laughs". He wouldn't pander, he wouldn't dumb down, he wouldn't betray his peculiar vision of entertainment, which basically consisted of seeing how much ridiculous, inane, and upsetting stuff he could get away with under the aegis of "entertainment". And he was HATED for it. I've been in that boat...not on the same immense, national scope as Andy, obviously, but it hurts, even if it's just coming from a room full of twenty drunks.
But he stayed true to himself, to his unusual, idiosyncratic vision of things, to the bitter, painful cancer-ridden end (at least we think it's the end...). I haven't been onstage in six months, and after seeing the film, it made me want to get back up there more than ever. So what if they boo? So what if they don't get it? Do what's yours, make your mark, and fulfill your dreams. That's the message of "Man On The Moon", and it's the heart and soul of the entertainer that Andy Kaufman was with every breath he took.