A tale of an artist too dedicated to his art.

Rating: 7/10 (29 December 1999)

Coming in to see this film, I had watched a Biography episode on him and thought that Andy Kaufman was a real example of a pure artist who put his art ahead of commercial success. According to this film, that would seem to be the case, but also that that kind of stance is not always a good idea.
This film seems to show Andy as a performer with the soul of an artist, but lacked the instincts of a showman. In other words, he and Zmuda were boldly original in their humour, but they too often failed to convey the humour to the audience. For instance, when Andy orders the verticle hold on the footage of his special put deliberately monkeyed with, there is no effort to let the audience in on the joke, not even a knowing wink to the camera. Compare this with Monty Python, who put out equally crazed and original comedy of their own, but they had the essential performing skill to include the audience in the humour and let them enjoy it.
In short, this film is an intriguing testament of the need for the balance of artistic challenge for the artist and the need for the audience to entertained at the same time. This movie showed that Andy, however stunningly original he was, could not achieve that balance and paid the price.