Man on the Moon

Season’s greetings everyone! Now seemed like the perfect time to pull Andy Kaufman’s 1999 biopic, Man on the Moon (trailer) out of the ‘ol backlog box. People who are keen to the seemingly endless amount of Netflix original content hitting lately are probably aware of their recent documentary, Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond (trailer). That documentary is all about the behind-the-scenes tomfoolery Jim Carrey was up to as he portrayed Andy Kaufman for the film, but stayed in character off-camera to everyone’s dismay.

I watched the documentary last week, and was surprised at the plethora of footage the studio captured of Jim Carrey embracing the spirit of Kaufman as he pulled modern day Kaufman-esque pranks on his cast and crew mates. After consuming that it seemed ideal to finally get around to watching my DVD of Man on the Moon after it sat in my backlog box since 2004 from a buy-two-get-one-free promotional offer with The Rundown and a director’s cut of Beyond the Mat.

I barely had a clue who Andy Kaufman was when I first saw the film in the theaters back when it hit theaters mere days before the turn of the century. Astute readers of this blog know I am an ardent wrestling fan. All I knew about Kaufman going into this film was from reading wrestling magazines and websites of the time that chronicled how Kaufman had a feud with wrestling legend Jerry “The King” Lawler in his wrestling territory based out of Memphis, Tennessee in the early 1980s. Their rivalry garnered some national attention when the duo got into a tussle on Late Night with David Letterman. So when wrestling was having its ‘Attitude era’ boom period in 1999, I eagerly attended the film because WWE promoted it on their programming because they brought in Jerry Lawler (who was announcing for WWE at the time) to reprise his role in his feud with Andy in the biopic.

I was trying to ponder recent examples of Andy Kaufman to compare his style of comedy to and the best I could come up with is Sacha Baron Cohen. Both performers conjured up personas and were both pioneers in uncomfortable reaction comedy in real life scenarios on unsuspecting strangers not enlightened to their act. Sacha filmed his adventures as Bruno and Borat while Kaufman had the alter ego of Vegas lounge singer reject, Tony Clifton unleash his brand of havoc on the cast of Taxi. Most of the cast of Taxi reprise their roles in cameo appearances in Man on the Moon along with a handful of other celebrity cameos throughout the film.

There is a fantastic bit at the beginning of Man on the Moon where Carrey does a bit as Andy with his trademark humor to scare away the casual moviegoer expecting slapstick laughs. The film perfectly captures how Kaufman was ahead of his time and doing daring bits of comedy and always trying to innovate and come up with something different every time he went on stage. He had help along the way with lifelong friend Bob Zmuda (Paul Giamatti) as the film captures how his improv act caught the eye of George Shapiro (Danny Devito). George opened doors for Andy for nationwide success with his infamous debut on the first episode of Saturday Night Live lip-synching the theme to Mighty Mouse and how that lead to Andy’s breakout success on the hit sitcom, Taxi.

Andy did not want all the fame and fortune however as he only complied to go along with the crowd-pleasing Taxi with the understanding that he would get his own special where he would do his own style of comedy. I love how Man on the Moon portrays Andy’s revenge when management tells Andy they would not run his special and how Andy reigned terror on the set of Taxi as Clifton to get himself off the show.

That brought the film to what 16-year old Dale at the time was anticipating the most, the wrestling section as Kaufman turned his attention to his secret favorite passion, professional wrestling. Andy did not have the most intimidating musculature so he instead wrestled over 60 matches against women and proclaimed himself the intergender champion of wrestling. This did not sit well with Jerry Lawler, and he challenged him to a match that saw Kaufman leaving the arena in a stretcher. Andy loved his new ventures in wrestling, but wrestling’s showbiz background carried a stigma with Hollywood at the time and film fairly encapsulates how Andy’s wrestling endeavors blackballed him from Hollywood.

Unfortunately, Andy developed lung cancer around this time in 1983 and he passed away a year later. The final act of the film is a tearjerker, and attendees of the funeral state in the extra feature interviews that Man on the Moon nailed the atmosphere and vibe of Kaufman’s one-of-a-kind funeral. In the buzz following the Netflix documentary, I heard several commentators and critics recently state how they believe Kaufman is still alive and how he faked his death for the quintessential prank.

There are a few noteworthy extras on the DVD. Spotlight on Location is a 19 minute EPK piece with standard cast and crew interviews promoting the film along with a few takeaway anecdotes on how Carrey stated how this was the first film in several years he had to audition for and how the cameos came to be. There are 12 minutes of delete scenes that I wish most would have made the cut where Kaufman has fun messing with the crowd during his standup and backstage antics after his wrestling performances. There is a text bio of Andy’s life that is quite thorough and covers a few more details the movie could not squeeze in and text production notes with several pages of behind-the-scenes information on what went on off camera during the film’s production. I ate up both features and devoured both entries.

Finally, this will probably be the only movie blog where I highlight the music videos as the standout extra feature, but that is the case today because this has two music videos from REM, with ‘Man on the Moon’ being the standout track and gaining fame beyond the soundtrack because it still gets regular nationwide radio play today. Whenever I hear it I cannot help but nod along to it as I recall a few of my favorite scenes from the movie.

After gleaming more knowledge on Andy’s life over the years I was able to appreciate Man on the Moon exponentially more than 16-year old me did 18 years ago. I want to slap myself for having this awesome film sit in my backlog for well over a decade, and it took a kickass Netflix documentary that dropped from out of nowhere to inspire me to watch it, but as the adage goes, better late than never. If you have yet to see Man on the Moon then by all means check this out to learn about one of the most groundbreaking comics of all time and then track down the Netflix documentary, Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond to discover all the craziness that transpired backstage.

Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs

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12 Angry Men (1957)
12 Rounds 3: Lockdown
21 Jump Street
Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie
Atari: Game Over
The Avengers: Age of Ultron
Batman: The Killing Joke
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice
Bounty Hunters
Cabin in the Woods
Captain America: The First Avenger
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Christmas Eve
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special
The Condemned 2
Countdown
Creed
Dirty Work
Faster
Fast and Furious I-VIII
Field of Dreams
Fight Club
The Fighter
For Love of the Game
Good Will Hunting
Gravity
Guardians of the Galaxy
Hercules: Reborn
Hitman
Ink
Joy Ride 1 & 2
The Interrogation
Interstellar
Jobs
Man of Steel
Marine 3-5
Mortal Kombat
National Treasure
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
The Replacements
Rocky I-VII
Running Films Part 1
Running Films Part 2
San Andreas
ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Shoot em Up
Steve Jobs
Source Code
Star Trek I-XIII
Take Me Home Tonight
TMNT
The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2
UHF
Veronica Mars
The War
Wild
The Wrestler (2008)
X-Men: Days of Future Past