Goofin’ on Andy

Why make Man On The Moon?

by Jim Hanas

Early — very early — in the much-vaunted Andy Kaufman biopic Man On The Moon, Jim Carrey as Kaufman dines with manager George Shapiro, played by Danny DeVito.

“You’re insane …” Shapiro says, awe apparent in his eyes. “… but you might also be brilliant …” His voice trails off into wondrous speculation.

Who knows why this spoon-fed bit of dialogue doesn’t appear in the movie’s trailers, but it’s good that it doesn’t, at least for the filmmakers. It might have tipped viewers off to the entirely fathomable depths this film attains in illustrating the life of the late comic/performance artist.

The film begins with Kaufman the child playing in his room at his home in Teaneck, Long Island. This, like everything else in the movie, portends future greatness, or at least is supposed to. The trouble is, nothing here portends anything. As dry as a resume, the movie jerks along through a series of unconnected, unmotivated events that reveals exactly nothing, except perhaps Kaufman’s insatiable appetite for hookers. The filmmakers — writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, and director Milos Forman, all of The People vs. Larry Flynt fame — appear to be under the impression that the mere fact that something really happened makes it believable. Their movie demonstrates just how untrue this is.

Nothing in Man On The Moon is believable. The dialogue is canned and obvious (see the profound insane-yet-brilliant observation above); the Mid-South Coliseum, site of Kaufman’s infamous feud with Jerry Lawler, appears to be a children’s play-set; and if the character of Kaufman’s girlfriend Lynne Margulies, played by Courtney Love, were any less developed, she would surely cease to exist.

As for the matter of Mr. Carrey, reports of his brilliance are grossly exaggerated. He bugs his eyes, bites his lip, shrugs his shoulders, and contorts his fluent limbs in a somewhat accurate imitation of Kaufman, but anyone who thinks the overhyped superstar vanishes inside his character must have spent the last 10 years out of the country. The performance is doomed not only by Carrey’s fame, but also by Kaufman’s.

Ironically, it’s the relentless cross-promotion accompanying the movie’s release that makes its failure so painfully apparent. One can tune into cable and catch Kaufman — the real Kaufman — playing the naif on the television special Andy’s Funhouse or shouting down Lawler in the mockumentary I’m From Hollywood most nights of the week, and Carrey’s by-the-numbers portrayal suffers by comparison.

To be fair, playing the quirky comedian was an impossible task from the start. Kaufman’s business was fakery after all, and his work relied on an audience’s uneasiness about what is real and what is sham. But a movie, itself a bit of fakery, depicting a sham? Perhaps the filmmakers can be forgiven for not knowing how to pull that one off.

But what they made instead is a thin, made-for-TV ?biopic, studded with stars (and sub-stars) eager to re-enact their personal encounters with “The Genius.” The Improv’s Budd Friedman, Saturday Night Live’s Lorne Michaels, David Letterman, Richard Belzer, and Jerry Lawler all play themselves, as does the entire cast of Taxi. Watching these self-conscious trips down memory lane feels like attending someone else’s high school reunion.

So why make it at all? That’s the biggest question the movie raises, and the answer, unfortunately, suggests that Man On The Moon is the most cynical product to come out of Hollywood in years.

Biopics, by their nature, rely on the fame and recognition of their subjects to find commercial success. In the advertising business, it’s called “borrowed interest,” trading on a pre-existing fad, trend, or personality to sell your client’s product. Director Milos Forman’s descent into hackdom — and that of his current writing team of choice — is filthy with the abuse of this strategy.

First it was Larry Flynt, who, while he may be the poster-lech for the protections of the First Amendment, is also a shameless self-promoter who loves headlines and doesn’t care how he gets them. Kaufman, while perhaps a genius of some stripe, likewise thrived on keeping his name in the news with controversy after controversy. In other words, both spent their lives creating pre-release buzz that even Hollywood’s money can’t buy.

And so the specials and documentaries and Taxi marathons wash over the television dial like so many Prince of Egypt action figures; the marketing-schemes loaded into mock tributes run late into the night; and Forman et al. get to work on their next no-miss holiday blockbuster:

Coke: The Quirkiest Soft Drink. Coming soon to a theater near you.

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