Hey folks, Harry here with Peter Blood's look at MAN ON THE MOON. Why run his look? Because... it's different than mine. I remember the first thing he said to me afterwards was something along the lines that Zmuda and Kaufman ought to grab co-screenplay credit, what with the amount of their material that Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski filled their screenplay with. But frankly... For me... that was important in establishing the character in my eyes as being the REAL ANDY... to me. But, if you want my opinion read My Review, otherwise continue on to Captain Blood's...
Last week I had the pleasure of seeing a film many are looking forward to, but few were looking more forward to than myself. It's always bad to go into a movie expecting so much. Some critics have said Star Wars fans were disappointed because they expected too much from Phantom Menace. With that film I expected the worst, hoped for the best, and got basically what I expected. With Man on the Moon, I purposefully disallowed myself to get overly "psyched up" and ensure my disappointment.
Let me back up a bit and begin by saying I really like Andy Kaufman. I grew up watching him torture the world, and I think more than a little of his brand of humor made its way into psyche and helped me become the person I am today. I saw him on SNL and Fridays (and of course Taxi). I followed the tabloids when he got sick (the web wasn't around yet, so the tabloids were still the least accurate medium of the time) because they were the only ones who seemed to really care. I remember watching a late-night news program one time showing in great detail what the charlatans like the one who treated Andy really did. I followed anything I could on Andy to the point that I even watched wrestling for a while (and believe me, back then, if you didn't live in a trailer park, you didn't admit to watching wrestling.) In high school, his bits were always some of my circles of friends' favorites to recite ad infinitum. But I never felt for a moment that I knew who Andy Kaufman really was, and unfortunately I still don't.
Man on the Moon is a really good movie; there's no denying that. Jim Carrey's performance is dead on. He deserves an Oscar nom here much more so than he did for the overrated Truman Show. But when you put Milos Forman together with writers Alexander & Karaszewski for a film about a comic genius, you expect GREAT. What Man on the Moon does is give almost perfect recreations of Kaufman's most famous bits. What it doesn't do is give any real insight to what made the man this way. If A & K get a writing nom for this one, they should defer it to Andy Kaufman and his longtime writing partner, Bob Zmuda, because those two wrote over half of everything seen in this film. The recreations were fantastic; they couldn't have been better if Kaufman had come back and performed them himself (as Harry contends he did). But when it came time to show what was going on in Andy's head, they were obviously stumped. Maybe the behind the mask stuff didn't test well and was cut out. I don't know. All I know is most episodes of A&E's Biography (www.biography.com for the unawares - interestingly enough, they've yet to do a segment on Andy) showed more insight in an hour than Man on the Moon did in two. Maybe, like Courtney Love said as Lynne Margulies, Andy's girlfriend, "There is no REAL (Andy Kaufman)."
The audience I was with (yeah, the same one as Harry) loved the film, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't laugh right along with them. The difference is they were mostly college students who were seeing a lot of this for the first time. Whereas I was remembering how much I enjoyed them the first time I saw them. When I watched The People Vs Larry Flynt (Forman and A & K's first collaboration), I was captivated by the man, himself. Here was someone I knew very little about, probably because most of what he did wasn't broadcast into my home during my adolescence, and I don't remember reading too many of his editorials. But I never got that insight from Man on the Moon, maybe because Andy never let anybody ever have it. Biographical films are hard to do really well. If you take somebody who isn't familiar with your subject and go too deep, you'll lose them immediately. On the other hand, if you just replay a person's life, the people who were fans and who remember it all when it happened will be disappointed. I'm sure there are a lot more people out there who barely know who Kaufman is, than who were "followers" like me, and those people will probably find the film a true joy. Those like me, who want a little more Andy and fewer of his bits, will be entertained, but left wanting more.
Peter Blood signing off
