I hadn't seen "Man On The Moon" (the biopic about performance comedian Andy Kaufman) and when it popped up on my Netflix streaming queue I wanted to give it a screening.
I had known about Andy Kaufman from his early days on "SNL" and "Taxi." To me, he had those two bright moments and the rest of his shtick left me varying degrees of uninvolved. I'm not alone. People tended to disagree about Kaufman's "genius" - some adored him, some were, uh...varying degrees of uninvolved.
And that can be a real problem in a film, especially when a good deal of the film is about his comedic stylings. Stylings that worked and didn't work. Yeah, we get to understand him a bit more through the story but honestly, there were sections that I really wanted to fast forward through. But I'm really glad I didn't.
Played by the rubber-faced comic (but also serious actor when given the right material) Jim Carrey interprets Kaufman with energy and sincerity. It's almost as if the real Kaufman had been given a second chance to say to the world: "This is what I was really doing - isn't this funny?" Yes and no would be my answer. There was a balanced approach to the storytelling with a lot of the scenes involving people and situations where Kaufman's gags went over as wildly successful but also those that hurt or bored or confused people. But I already knew a lot of this. I never felt all that close to understanding why Kaufman or Bob Zmuda, his off-times collaborator, thought a lot of this was funny or even amusing. I get that he wanted to push boundaries - but why? I was hoping the film would tell me, that's why I watched it. What I didn't anticipate is that even with explanation, I still felt like Kaufman was not all that entertaining and I had to watch a great deal of his stuff that I never liked.
Okay, so all that aside, as I mentioned, the danger is that if you don't pursue more insight, push the film, if you don't intrigue your audience in a way that really gets them anticipating answers or actually answers all these questions, you're gonna end up with a film that's just so-so. That was me going into the last act. And I thought it was going to be the entire experience of the film.
Until the ending.
"Man On The Moon" is truly redeemed by its ending. A coda, really, - the scene that ends the film where you suddenly realize that Kaufman's whole life was about the switch that was played at the Improvisation nightclub - after he's dead. Sudden insight into his absurdity overwhelms you - you suddenly understand his Pee-Wee Hermanish innocence and his desire to put people on despite the consequences.
It revolves around his Tony Clifton character, a boorish, no-talent lounge singer character that Kaufman played once in a while live, and who he demanded be given a NBC Special and guest appearances on "Taxi."
Everyone supposedly knew eventually that Kaufman was Tony Clifton. We're clued in quickly when we see a scene where Clifton performs in a club and his agent (played by (producer/actor) Danny DeVito - Kaufman's real life co-star on Taxi,) who doesn't know yet, goes backstage to talk to this terrible lounge singer who Kaufman insisted get the walk-on parts on "Taxi." He (Kaufman) reveals that he is indeed Tony Clifton, and like most things in Kaufman's life, he was/is fooling everyone. Mildly surprised agent smiles and chuckles and books his 'second' client, Tony Clifton, on "Taxi." The execs at NBC didn't care - they loved Kaufman's "foreign guy" Latka and would have agreed to almost anything even though the Tony Clifton character was nowhere as inspired as Latka Gravas.
Cut to later in the chronology of Kaufman's life where Clifton is on stage performing (badly) and by now everyone thinks they know that Clifton is really Kaufman so they get the gag. But then who shows up on stage simultaneously? Kaufman *and* Clifton. Huh?
It's revealed right afterward that that Zmuda in makeup and prostethics played the lounge singer in this instance so shame on you, you were all fooled. Again.
I might have shut this film down several times if Carrey wasn't so good and if I hadn't wanted to see it for so many years. If I was in a theater, I'd have stuck it out - I rarely leave any film no matter how much it either bores or irritates me. But I think that a lot of people who gave this film a pass (it was a commercial failure) probably did so because Kaufman, even as a look-behind-the-scenes story was irritating as sh*t at times and not funny at others.
The biopic of comedic genius John Belushi has a similar problem in that Belushi was terribly self-destructive - but, he was funny as hell and the gags they recreated in the movie were still funny recreated years later. Not so for Kaufman whose comedic experiments didn't play out a lot of the time and seem even more tedious recreated. But, and this is what you realize at the end of the film, his *social* experiments did work - the ones he always used to gauge people's reactions to situations that they couldn't be sure were real or not. That is the insight you get at the very end of the film.
The coda after Kaufman's funeral takes place at the Improvisation CLub. Lounge (lizard) singer Clifton shows up to do his act and everyone thinks, of course, that it's Zmuda in prosthetics like before. Except that Zmuda is actually in the audience *while* Clifton is on stage. So the film ends with the possibility that Kaufman *faked* his death. A lot of his fans actually thought this may have been the case since Kaufman faked absolutely everything, including what looked like a real life, bloody feud with professional wrestler, Jerry Lawler. He even got slapped and knocked down by Lawler on David Letterman's show. The gag, of course, is that since pro-wrestling is 'faked' a fued with a pro-
wrestler should also be faked. It was but it was perceived at the time to be real.
Point is, when you read the truth behind the stunt at the Improvisation that closes the film, you discover that Zmuda enlisted some of his actor buddies to help him make the gag work. He had a friend in Clifton-disguise so he could stand in the audience and confuse everyone. To the very end, from beyond the grave, with Zmuda's help, Kaufman was joshing us. And so was the film.
But this ending, and the actual truth behind it, made the entire movie suddenly accessible to me. Sort of like "Sixth Sense" when you find out that the kid is seeing dead people including Bruce Willis.
We *are* seeing dead people - people whose work lives beyond the grave and makes us question what's real and what isn't lest we get too complacent with what we think we know.
Exactly what Andy wanted us always to do.
"Andy are you goofing on Elvis?" The lyrics go.
Or us?
I'm glad this ending made me realize the answer to that question was only going to be answered by the passing of his life - which did not mean the ending of his reach and influence.
If it had ended on say a retrospective of all his bits, or his widow visiting his grave perhaps, or something equally as logical (predictable) the film would have failed me completely. As it was, it soared in those final few minutes and subsequently when I went looking for answers online about the Improvisation gag.
Comedic genius? Maybe. Social genius - most definitely.
The ending of this film made me an absolute believer and made this film an entirely different experience than I thought it would be.
And in my mind, saved (redeemed) the entire film.
