The ghost of late comedian Andy Kaufman invades Jim Carrey. | |
when
comedian Andy Kaufman died of lung cancer at age 35 in 1984, he had
completely changed the face of comedy. Before him, very simply, a comedian told a joke, and the audience laughed. When Kaufman burst onto national television on the first episode of Saturday Night Live in 1975, he blurred that distinction. Instead of telling a joke, he embodied it. Kaufman, the performer, would disappear into Elvis, Foreign Man (who would later become Latka Gravas on the TV show, Taxi), the "transgender" wrestler, or the obnoxious lounge singer, Tony Clifton. |
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He so effectively
erased the boundaries between the real and the unreal, that many even
thought he faked his own death. Fortunately, in Man on the Moon, Carrey isn't the whole show. Danny DeVito (L.A. Confidential) plays Kaufman's very sane manager, George Shapiro and Courtney Love is Kaufman's girlfriend, Lynne Margulies. Man on the Moon also features Carol Kane and Judd Hirsch, his former costars from Taxi. To make a movie about a great
talent, who was the sum of the masks he wore, can be a daunting task.
But Milos Forman was up to the challenge. "I saw Andy in 1976 and I
was on the floor laughing, and I didn't know why," Forman recalls.
"But don't try to explain Andy Kaufman. It's futile." Like
Andy Kaufman, Milos Forman, with Man on the Moon, believes in flying in
the face of futility. |