I just happened to have “Man on the Moon” on in the background while I was working. While I was once again struck by the sheer injustice of Jim Carrey not being Oscar nominated (his work on MOTM should have been a slam dunk for nomination, not to mention “The Truman Show” which I always cite as my favorite science fiction movie, much to the confusion of many), I found myself wondering for the first time in ages…
Andy Kaufman: Really dead? I mean, family and friends swear to it, but still, if *anyone* could pull it off…
PAD
• 
Certainly was a bizaree, April 1st coincidence, but I was playing the soundtrack yesterday asmy fiance and I were unpacking in our new place. I was also thinking that need to rewatch that film. It ranks as one of my favorite films and Carrey’s performance as surreal in capturing his essense.
A couple of years ago, a rumor started circulating that Kaufman had, indeed, faked his own death as part of some elaborate performance piece/gag. The story was debunked very quickly, but I remember the willingness of so many people (myself included) to believe this about him.
Like you said, if anyone could pull it off…
I am probably one of the very few people alive who can profess to having attended a performance of Teaneck Tanzi on Broadway featuring Andy Kaufman and Debbie Harry.
Andy was such a unique talent, did any of it make sense?
If there was one person who would look to escape celebrity by faking his own death it would be Kaufman – if he did it, it would be the ultimate Elvis homage.
PAD, have you read the Zmuda biography on Kaufman? Ðámņ, its fun. Its been criticized for accuracy, but still, great read.
How can people be so stupid as to not recognize Truman as a sci-fi movie? I know, I know, it wasn’t marketed that way, but STILL. It’s not rocket science.
“”The Truman Show” which I always cite as my favorite science fiction movie”
Yeah, I had to think for a second when I read that, but you’re right. They had a giant dome with its own ecosystem.
I guess it doesn’t seem like sci-fi because so much of the movie is so normal. Most of what isn’t normal feels like an aggressive reality tv show.
I consider The Truman Show to be the only existentialist story I’ve really liked. Most of them get to wrapped up in the cleverness of “OK, I’ve escaped the dream! But is this a dream, too?” I think the Truman show did it much better.
The Truman show is what I’d call real science fiction. Star Wars, even Star Trek to a lesser degree, are science fantasy. Or maybe even just plain fantasy. But Truman takes real life and real people and adds just a touch of science…the totally controlled environment…and plays with what happens next.
I loved MotM. It’s one of the few times I saw a Carey performance where I didn’t remark “yeah, it’s Jim playing X.” He really submerged his own self into the role, and if the Oscars really were more than just a big popularity contest, they’d not have even bothered nominating anyone else.
Doesn’t everyone know that Kaufman was an Elvis fan, and not only is he not dead, he is responsible for all the Elvis sightings that occur!
And Jim Carrey is in on it.
Jim Carrey is suffering the fate of many a comedian who turns to drama, it takes years for the academy to recognize that most comedians can do drama much better than dramatic actors can do comedy. (Ishtar anyone?)
How many great performance did Robin Williams turn in before Good Will Hunting?
Passing on what may have been the greatest performance the year the Truman Show was released was like passing up Peter O’Toole the year Lawrence of Arabia was released. Sometime I wonder if the real votes and decisions by the academy are really done in the primate cage at the Los Angeles zoo.
Bobb (in Irving)
Is faking his own death something that Andy Kaufman could have done? Yes
But on the other hand actualy dieing and making everyone else believe that you may actualy be alive still fall under Kaufman’s type of “entertainment”
To me I’ve always believed that 2nd theory was probably the real one but no one will never really know.
Haven’t seen TRUMAN SHOW but it sure sounds like an expanded [original series] TWILIGHT ZONE episode to me. And if that’s not SF, what is?
Posted by Bobb Alfred
The Truman show is what I’d call real science fiction. Star Wars, even Star Trek to a lesser degree, are science fantasy. Or maybe even just plain fantasy. But Truman takes real life and real people and adds just a touch of science…the totally controlled environment…and plays with what happens next.
Showing my age here – when i saw it, i was forcibly put in mind of The Space Merchants and Gladiator at Law, distopian futures by Frederick Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth.
Personally, i have never been much amused by (or impressed by) Andy Kaufman. This must, i assume, be due to some lack in myself, as i have also never been terribly impressed by Harry Potter of the Aubrey/Maturin novels a lot of my acquaintances rave about.
My loss, i guess.
Hmmmm. I thought that Jim Carrey was superb in MAN ON THE MOON, but the movie was kind of lacking. The movie was not as good a Carrey’s performance.
I don’t like biopics in general and I don’t like the fact that actors get nominated for acting awards for acting like some other real life person. Isn’t it really just an impersonation? “Congrats! You were the best at impersonating this other person!” Jim Carrey merely impersonated the way Andy acted in real life. I do a great Chris Farley, is anyone doing a movie about him?
“”Congrats! You were the best at impersonating this other person!” Jim Carrey merely impersonated the way Andy acted in real life.”
And Martin Landau “merely” impersonated Bela Lugosi, and Helen Mirren “merely” impersonated the Queen. If you don’t like biopics, that’s fine, but the Academy has a track record that doesn’t agree with your tastes. On that basis, I say again, Carrey was woefully overlooked.
PAD
I’m with Jake on this one. While it is acting, it almost seems like cheating. But Carrey did a great job and I agree, he should have been at least nominated. Yet, without those documentaries that aired on the Comedy Central would it have meant as much?
I disagree. It is really hard to take something familiar and make it seem fresh. If he was just doing an impression, everyone would have been bored quickly. Doing something we’ve all seen before and making the struggle that he’s going through compelling, that’s tricky.
I loved Jim Carrey in MAN ON THE MOON. That said, I preferred the non-sci-fi, but more realistic, EDTV for a look at “reality” television and how it affects its subjects.
Posted by: Jake at April 2, 2007 02:32 PM
I don’t like biopics in general and I don’t like the fact that actors get nominated for acting awards for acting like some other real life person. Isn’t it really just an impersonation? “Congrats! You were the best at impersonating this other person!” Jim Carrey merely impersonated the way Andy acted in real life.
No, he did not merely impersonate “the way Andy acted in real life.” An impression merely consists of mimicking some of the most superficial aspects of a person. A talented impressionist could study television interviews with Andy Kaufman and develop a good impression. If Jim Carrey had merely been doing an impression throughout MOTM, you’d have noticed. It would have been a wooden performance.
Biopics delve into the person behind the public persona. Jim Carrey certainly did a lot more prep work for MOTM than he would have if he had merely been doing a Kaufman impression. He probably spoke with Kaufman’s family, friends, and associates. He probably spent time trying to get inside Kaufman’s head to see what made him tick, so that he could bring credible emotion and depth to the role.
By the way, no one can do an impression of the way someone acts “in real life” unless they know them personally. “Real life” doesn’t happen in front of the camera, despite what shows like Survivor and its ilk would have us believe. Real life is what happens off camera. That’s why an actor in a biopic is doing more than an “impression.” Unless he or she is able to study the person he or she is to portray, an actor in a biopic must go beyond “impressions” and find a way to fill in the pieces of a person’s life that happened off camera.
The Truman Show is science fiction, and like alot of the best SF it’s now very close to actually happening one day.
Kinda reminds me of ‘The Seige’ in that way.
And Blanchet as Hepburn.
I liked how the “Sullivan’s Travels”-like theme of MotM — ending on Kaufman letting his audience in on the joke — made the story larger than Kaufman’s career.
So much of Carrey’s work is hammy caricature that I default to giving credit for his good performances to whoever’s directing, or in the TrumanShows case, Andrew Niccol’s screenplay in capable hands. But I think performing someone we are all familiar with increases the challenge to a movie rather than makes things easier.
Alright, I did some follow-up to my opinion. Here’s who was nominated and who won the same year MOTM was elligible:
ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Russell Crowe — The Insider {“Jeffrey Wigand”}
Richard Farnsworth — The Straight Story {“Alvin Straight”}
Sean Penn — Sweet and Lowdown {“Emmet Ray”}
* Kevin Spacey — American Beauty {“Lester Burnham”}
Denzel Washington — The Hurricane {“Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter”}
Interesting that 4 out of 5 were “real people” – look who won – the fictional person.
I think PAD made my point though when he said, “If you don’t like biopics, that’s fine, but the Academy has a track record that doesn’t agree with your tastes.” The Academy likes the “taste” of the familiar, the real. To me, there’s a difference of taking a fictional character and “acting” as opposed to “acting” like someone else.
While I enjoyed the Truman Show, I feel the trailer ruined the movie for me. If it did not give away the big reveal, I would have been really pulled into the mystery of what might be going on.
Instead I felt I was on a holding pattern until we see the big Christo scene. Which, of course, they showed in the commercial.
Soet of in keeping with the thread–Bobb, if you’re in Irving, doesn’t he want you out?
Mike–if Kaufmann, Carrey and Potter(right next to Dewey, Cheathem and Howe, I’m sure) aren’t you’re ilk, then you’re not missing anything. What they have to offer isn’t being offered to YOU. Don’t apologize. Hey, I even know some people that swear by Ed Wood and John Byrne, so people’s tastes are different.
Last thing, then I’ll shut up. For a minute, because otherwise my brain starts working. Jake, if you don’t like biopics being nominated because it’s just people acting like someone else, hoe id that different from Actor X playing fictional character X–presumably, even the most method of actors is a different person than the person they’re playing.
Bill–if you see someone in control either pick their nose or some other orifice, chances are you’re in reality. Or Jáçkášš.
While it would be GREAT if Andy Kaufman suddenly came out of the woods, walked up to the nearest TV camera, and said “Ta-daaaaaaa!”, we have to face facts; he isn’t coming back. Neither are Jim Morrison and Tupak.
But this is such an enduring urban legend, one that keeps adding names to the list, I have to wonder–is there any basis in reality? Has anyone famous ever actually pulled this off?
I agree with the comment above that the movie MOTM did not equal Carrey’s perfromance. That Jerry Lawler, after years of keeping quiet on the reality of the David Letterman appearance filmed a scene confirming th falseness of it was one of my biggest problems with the film. Kaufman wouldn’t want the secrets told.
on a related topic, it’s my belief that Michael Richard’s “breakdown” at the hecklers was based on what he learned from his friend Kaufman. Compare it to Kaufman’s heel wrestling comebacks to the wrestling fans….they’re rather similar.
Of course, a Kaufman today would be less appreciated than he was then.
Scavenger–ever seen the documentary “I’m From Hollywood”? It has some of Kaufman’s best bits from the Memphis wrestling feud with Jerry Lawler.
Andy was a pretty poor wrestler. He was an absolutely GREAT professional wrestler. They should make new wrestlers watch tapes of Kaufman to see how to raise heat without any high flying moves.
Posted by Bill Mulligan at April 2, 2007 07:44 PM
While it would be GREAT if Andy Kaufman suddenly came out of the woods, walked up to the nearest TV camera, and said “Ta-daaaaaaa!”, we have to face facts; he isn’t coming back.
That reminds me of the old joke that Kaufman, who really was alive and well, had planned on walking out and accepting the Oscar when Carrey won it. It didn’t go that way, obviously, so now Andy’s stuck in the real world – back bussing tables at the restaurant he worked at while on TAXI.
Never seen “Man on the Moon,” and I haven’t had enough exposure to Kaufman to have much of an appreciation for him. (The main thing I know him from is TAXI, and I was never especially fond of Latka.)
That said, three comments:
1) Playing a real person is absolutely more than just “doing an impression.” Anybody seen Rich Little polishing his collection of Oscars lately? (Now Frank Gorshin, on the other hand…)
2) I’m glad I’m not the only one who calls “The Truman Show” a good serious SF movie. It fits the definition a lot more closely than most films which DO make it into the SF category. (Besides, it must have been decent SF. My mom hated it. 🙂 I am not even remotely a Carrey fan on most days, so I went into the film with some serious doubts … but really a solid, solid piece of work.
3) Hearing the Oscar discussion here always reminds me of Carrey’s speech that year when he presented. “I’m here to present the Oscar for [whatever]. That’s … the only reason I’m here. To present. But that’s okay. It’s an honor just to be nominated. Oh, God…” (I may not have that totally right, but it was really hilarious.)
TWL
I’m reminded of one reviewer’s comment on MotM: “As someone who remembers Kaufman’s wrestling career, I appreciated the fact that in the film it took ten minutes and actually seemed funny.” (And Bob Zmuda, who knew Kaufman better than you or I, gave away the secrets of the wrestling feud in his book, so I wouldn’t hold it against Lawler or the movie–even if it hadn’t already been given away in the mid-90s. Besides, from everything I’ve heard, Kaufman accepted that he’d have to give up material that had played itself out, just as he couldn’t use his Foreign Man routine after Taxi–and he certainly hasn’t been using the wrestling routine lately.)
Jake –
Interesting that 4 out of 5 were “real people” – look who won – the fictional person.
Well, American Beauty was a great movie.
Crowe has been nominated twice for biopics (A Beautiful Mind, The Insider), yet won for the fictional character (Gladiator).
But then, just two years ago:
Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
Winner:
Ray (2004/I) – Jamie Foxx
Other Nominees:
Aviator, The (2004) – Leonardo DiCaprio
Finding Neverland (2004) – Johnny Depp
Hotel Rwanda (2004) – Don Cheadle
Million Dollar Baby (2004) – Clint Eastwood
4 biopics out of 5, with the winner being a biopic role.
Joaqin Phoenix was nominated for Best Actor for Walk the Line, and didn’t win, while Reese Witherspoon won for Best Actress in the same film.
So, in the end, it’s hit or miss. But good acting in a biopic seems to be a good way to get nominated.
Bill Mulligan –
Has anyone famous ever actually pulled this off?
Machiavelli? 🙂
Has anyone famous ever actually pulled this off?
Rasputin?
TWL
Posted by: Bill Mulligan at April 2, 2007 07:44 PM
Has anyone famous ever actually pulled this off?
Jesus?
Rasputin, Machiavelli, and Jesus. Coincidentally the 3 people I said I would invite to dinner in one of those college application essay question I had to do.
As I recall, I didn’t get accepted to that one. Should have gone with Laszlo Toth, William McGonagall, and Andy Milligan.
Mark Twain. Paul McCartney. Abe Vigoda.
“Truman Show” — A nice idea, but they screwed it up. Truman wasn’t written as a man who’s unknowingly lived his entire life inside a reality show. Why (for example) would he be shocked all of a sudden that people are doing product-placement shots around him, if (according to the movie) it’s been happening for his entire life?
I didn’t like it for another reason, one that wasn’t at all the movie’s responsibility: as I was watching, I was making up a movie that I enjoyed a lot more. Scene after scene, as more and more things happened that didn’t make any sense whatsoever according to the reality of the movie, I thought “Oh, cool: the director of the reality show, who feels like Truman’s father, is deliberately inserting these ‘mistakes’ into the guy’s world, to give Truman a chance to maybe figure all of this out” but nope, they were just dumb, implausible mistakes.
I thought “Truman Show” was the first act of a much better movie. What happens when you live the first thirty years of your life in a world in which everthing literally revolves around you and your choices…and then you find a door in the sky and you walk through it and emerge into a much _larger_ place, where you’re just one of 6 billion people?
(One of the most famous people in the world, but still…)
“Man On The Moon” — An OK movie that makes the usual mistakes of a middlin’ biopic: it just moves Andy from scene to scene, sacrificing true intensity and meaning in the interests of covering as much ground as possible. I don’t think JC was cheated out of an Oscar by the Academy. I think that was the fault of the screenwriters, who seriously underwrote the story. I got the Cliff’s Notes version of Kaufman’s life, beat to beat to beat, but was left with no clue as to who he was and what made him tick.
In any event, it’s hard to look at the list of nominees that year and say that Carrey’s performance was more effective than any of the actual nominees. Again, no slam on Carrey…it’s just that it wasn’t much of a role.
The best biopics are the ones that choose one significant period of time to land the greatest amount of information about the person’s personality and character. “The Queen” leaves you thinking that you know something of what makes this woman tick, even though you’ve only seen a week or two of her life.
“Why (for example) would he be shocked all of a sudden that people are doing product-placement shots around him, if (according to the movie) it’s been happening for his entire life?”
He isn’t shocked by it. The more he begins to question his everyday reality, the more suspicious of things that he took for granted or didn’t notice before.
This is the whole point of the movie: man questioning reality, and god’s resentment of it. For god-Christo-the Director to be an acomplice in Truman’s attempt to figure out and understand his world would have gone contrary to tthe whole metaphorical point of THAT movie. It might have made an, also good, different movie.
Oh, what I really liked about The Truman Show was that it wasn’t told just from the point of view of the person who discovers his reality his fake, but also from that of the person who created that reality andwants to keep the facade.
My friend and I had this argument once about Kaufman. I told him the proof that he was dead was that the man couldn’t resist a perfectly timed joke. He missed the ideal point for the punchline. That being the big Man on the Moon red carpet gala. If he were still alive you would have the ‘fake’ Tony Clifton and then out there greeting the fans. Then another limo would show up and it’d have the ‘real’ Tony Clifton and they immediately start ragging on each other. Until one was revealed to be Kaufman. It didn’t happen that way. That’s all the evidence I need.
Kaufman’s original plan was to fake his death, and make a return on the 20th anniversary of his ‘death.’
We’ve already passed the 20-year anniversary mark, and despite ads placed in prominent publications by Bob Zmuda and Lynn Margulies, he never did make his comeback appearance.
Posted by: Bill Mulligan at April 2, 2007 07:44 PM
Has anyone famous ever actually pulled this off?
Keith Richards… no wait a minute, he actually died but refused to tell anyone and kept on going. Sorry for the confusion.
James
If playing a role in a biopic is “merely” impersonating someone, what’s the difference between that and playing a fictional role? Isn’t it much more difficult to protray a real person, because people will know if you’re getting it wrong. I do a passable Bill Shatner/Captain Kirk, but it’s notable more for the things I get wrong than for any great impersonation I can pull off. And I can only do it in limited doses. Anything past a couple minutes, and I start to crack.
I’m much better at “playing” my totally fictional characters, because I’m the only one that knows what I’m trying to portray. I’d say, if someone successfully portrays a real person, that’s the more notable acting achievement. Like Bruce Campbell in Bubba Ho Tep. 😉
Anyone who has presented something publicly is challenged to balance intimate and epic elements to his presentation. Vonnegut’s analogy to writing is holding a conversatoin in a restaurant — you have to keep the interest of the people at your table, but be accessible enough to allow anyone listening in to grasp the appeal of what you are saying.
With Kaufman as presented in the movie, he was attending to the people “at his table” at the expense of pìššìņg øff the other “restaurant-goers.” Then, at the end, he opens the access to what he was doing to let everyone in on the joke. That qualifies as true intensity and meaning.
In this sense, the movie is a descendent of Preston Sturges’s “Sullivan’s Travels” about a privileged director of popular slapstick comedies who preps for his masterpiece, “Oh Brother Where Art Thou?” by traveling as a hobo at the end of the depression. It also is a movie about the virtue of keeping the access of what you present to the widest audience.
Fellini’s 8½ is also in that tradition of movies, where the movie’s director-character is writers-blocked throughout the movie. It starts out styled-the-hëll-out, and ultimately has to completely sacrifice craftsmanship to finish the movie with a simple parade of charcters from his life led by him as a child — badass.
I’ve called The Truman Show one of the better Philip K. Ðìçk adaptations, as it’s quite similar in story and theme to Ðìçk’s Time Out of Joint. Both stories involve main characters who gradually come to realize they’re in created worlds, their attempts to break out and the attempts of the creators to keep them locked away, and both end where the main characters effect their escape into the “real” world. Ðìçk, at least, posits a direction for his main character after the end of Time Out of Joint, something The Truman Show doesn’t do.
Similar story different theme. The point of Time Out of Joint is to discover what is the truth behind the fake world, i.e. the real world. In the Truman Show we already know that. The purpose of the story is the struggle between Truman and the director and its symbolic meanings. What happens after the real world is found is maybe a subject for the sequal. It’s not important for this movie.
“Keith Richards… no wait a minute, he actually died but refused to tell anyone and kept on going.”
Ya know, to this day, I keep expecting Keith Richards to step up to the mike during a Rolling Stones concert, look around at the audience, pause for a moment, and mumble: “braaaiiiinns…”
Jake: “Congrats! You were the best at impersonating this other person!” Jim Carrey merely impersonated the way Andy acted in real life.
Marsh Mason was once nominated for her role in Chapter Two, which was written by her husband (Neil Simon) based on their own lives.
Someone on Saturday Night Live once commented “That isn’t acting. It’s behaving.”
“ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Russell Crowe — The Insider {“Jeffrey Wigand”}
Richard Farnsworth — The Straight Story {“Alvin Straight”}
Sean Penn — Sweet and Lowdown {“Emmet Ray”}
* Kevin Spacey — American Beauty {“Lester Burnham”}
Denzel Washington — The Hurricane {“Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter”}
Interesting that 4 out of 5 were “real people” – look who won – the fictional person.”
3 out of 5. Sean Penn was not playing a real person.
I agree with those who say Carrey deserved a nomination for MOTM (not so much for The Truman Show, though, although it’s a great movie). I’m not really a fan of biopics, but I really liked MOTM because, unlike most biopics, it actually told a story and contained a clearly defined narrative arc, rather than turning into the encyclopedia article that most biopics are. This is why only Milos Forman should be allowed to make biographical movies (Amadeus and The People Vs. Larry Flynt are probably the two greatest biographical movies ever made, along with Lenny).
I didn’t think Lawrence of Arabia is too shabby.
Gandhi was the best biopic I’ve ever seen.