Trivia / Man on the Moon

• Ability over Appearance: Jim Carrey doesn't have much of a physical resemblance to Andy Kaufman at all, but not only did he get the role over many other comers (getting the edge over Edward Norton, who has a slightly closer resemblance, partly because he was a bigger name) via mandatory video auditions — this is Carrey's, directed by Judd Apatow! — little alteration was made to his appearance aside from wigs, gaining about 15 pounds, and a bit of makeup to make him dowdier looking, as well as some further Dyeing for Your Art for the climactic stretch. Carrey would say that a prosthetic nose was originally designed for him, but the result didn't look good. Even so, people working on the film, many of whom actually knew Kaufman, were stunned by how convincingly Carrey adapted Kaufman's mannerisms and temperament. As Carrey put it, "I looked like Andy when I felt like Andy."
• Acclaimed Flop: Despite the film getting mostly positive reviews, especially for Carrey's portrayal of Kaufman, it only grossed $50 million on a budget estimated at $80 million or more. This was due in part to the 1999 Christmas movie season being unusually crowded with well-received Oscar Bait films and more traditional crowd-pleasers (Any Given Sunday, Magnolia, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Galaxy Quest, Titus and Angela's Ashes all opened in the same calendar week alone). Had the writers and Bob Zmuda had their way, the film would have been released in November on the festival circuit and then gradually rolled out, but Universal Pictures believed Carrey's star power could make the film a wide-release hit out of the gate.
• All-Star Cast: An offbeat example: Jim Carrey, Danny DeVito, and Courtney Love (Paul Giamatti's career was only picking up momentum at this point) head up an ensemble featuring many famous professional wrestling and and showbiz personalities playing their younger selves.
• Award Category Fraud: Jim Carrey straight-up said in his Golden Globe acceptance speech and backstage interview that he regarded this film as a drama rather than a comedy when he won Best Actor in the Musical/Comedy category. On the other hand, the film is a Dramedy and even verges on a diegetic musical.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: Crossing over with Promoted Fanboy, this is why Jim Carrey wanted to play Andy Kaufman — he was not only a huge fan of Kaufman but, especially by that point in his career, was excited about having the opportunity to lose himself in someone else's distinct persona(s) for a change.
• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $82 million. Box office, $47,434,430. This was the first of Jim Carrey's A-lister vehicles to not have a successful opening weekend. Miloš Forman would take another hiatus before his final film, Goya's Ghosts.
• Breakaway Pop Hit: "The Great Beyond" by R.E.M. completely eclipsed the actual movie, especially in the UK ^note  In the US it made the Hot 100 but peaked in only the top 60. , where it became the band's biggest hit while the film itself bombed so hard it didn't even chart!
• The Cast Showoff: Jim Carrey does all his own singing, dancing, and conga drum playing, and all this while affecting a myriad of different character voices for Andy Kaufman's various personas.
• Completely Different Title: In countries where the song "Man on the Moon" was not well-known and thus wouldn't serve as an indicator to the film's subject matter, the title was changed.
  • El lunatico in Mexico and Peru; arguably doubles as a discreet Pun-Based Title (it translates as The Lunatic and luna is the Spanish word for moon)
  • Mr. Entertainer in Hong Kong
  • The World of Andy in many Spanish or Portuguese-speaking territories
• Creator Killer: Because of the failure of this, Miloš Forman would go on later go into hiatus before directing one final movie, Goya's Ghosts, before his death in April 2018.
• Deleted Role: During an interview, Colin Mochrie revealed that he had a role, but his scenes were deleted from the final movie.
• Deleted Scene: The DVD/Blu-Ray releases include several deleted/extended scenes, mostly cut to keep the film at a two-hour runtime as mandated by Universal Pictures. Some were excerpted for trailers and TV ads.
  • The Taxi cast is introduced having to rehearse with a stand-in in the place of Andy (due to his contract demands), much to the annoyance of Judd Hirsch.
  • Andy attempts a date with a twentysomething in his downtime, but he doesn't know how to make small talk as they take a walk together. He suggests that they wrestle each other to break the ice, or drive down to Tijuana, Mexico for a quickie wedding, and she is so puzzled and uncomfortable that she asks to end the date. (Character-wise, this might be the most significant cut. Andy's inability to date in a conventional manner is a sharp contrast to both his frequenting the Mustang Ranch and dating the women he wrestles.)
  • Tony Clifton's Lake Tahoe intro and performance of "I've Got to Be Me" is a few minutes longer.
  • After Jerry Lawler's match with Andy ends with Andy being carted away on a stretcher in a neckbrace, he comes to backstage with a smile — to the shock and anger of his parents, who thought he was actually hurt. Andy assures them that nothing he does in public should be seen as real. While keeping this in would have better set up how the family reacts to his cancer diagnosis in the third act, the filmmakers wanted to hold off on The Reveal that the Kaufman-Lawler feud was Kayfabe.
  • This scene is followed by Andy and Bob celebrating the press coverage of the former's "accident", with Andy particularly excited to be described as mentally unsound. He then muses that if he were to fake his own death it would be an even bigger deal, and reminds George not to reveal the truth about what's going on...while his celebrating is interrupted by his Incurable Cough of Death.
  • As Andy's star descends, he performs his classic "Foreign Man" set at a comedy club to the audience's pleasure. Bob's planted in the crowd, heckling him and making fun of his desperation to please people again, even revealing he's a plant to make the audience sympathetic to Andy, leading to Andy running him out of the room. (This is an adaptation of a set Kaufman and Zmuda performed at the Catch a Rising Star club's 10th anniversary show.) After the show George, who came to the just-announced performance, tells Andy that he isn't as hated as he thinks he is, but he needs to find a way to make his audiences love him again, and Andy promises he will find it. This would have directly led into the scene in which Andy reveals his cancer diagnosis, leading into Act Three, but was cut because the similar "celebrity cyst" bit did a better job in less time.
  • Other trailer footage reveals that scenes such as Andy's confrontation with Mr. Besserman, Andy celebrating Tony being thrown off the Taxi set, and Andy brainstorming ideas for the Carnegie Hall show were originally longer and/or had alternate dialogue takes.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Jim Carrey first gained 15 pounds to downplay his slender frame (it's why his face is rounder here than in other films); later he lost that weight and a bit more and had his head shaved to more accurately portray Kaufman dying of cancer, the shooting of those scenes saved for the last stretch of production.
• Executive Meddling:
  • Universal was adamant the film come in under two hours, so several scenes were dropped or shortened. This resulted in several missing trailer scenes (see below).
  • Universal also got cold feet when they saw the behind the scenes footage of Carrey and refused to let most of it surface for nearly twenty years out of fear that they'd be sued for allowing him to "create a stressful work environment."
• Fake Nationality: The Canadian Jim Carrey as American Andy Kaufman.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: According to Jim Ross, most of his wrestling commentary was ad-libbed.
• Hostility on the Set: During filming, it was widely reported that a fight ensued between Jerry Lawler and Jim Carrey. It was later reported the whole story was fabricated to promote the movie. But Lawler has since revealed that the story was true. Carrey was so into his character that he constantly harassed Lawler off-camera. At one point, Carrey spit in Lawler's face and Lawler grabbed Carrey's neck. The altercation was broken up, and Carrey demanded that Lawler be fired and that his scenes be reshot; he later relented. According to Lawler, when they later filmed the scene in which he slapped Kaufman on Late Night with David Letterman, he slapped Carrey much harder than he ever slapped Andy as revenge (according to Lawler, his and Kaufman's kayfabe was always completely consensual and Kaufman never mistreated him when they broke character, whereas Carrey was just using his method acting as an excuse to bully him and get away with it). George Shapiro also discusses these incidents in his interview for Judd Apatow's Sicker in the Head, saying that it was less Carrey's method acting at play than actual distaste for Lawler causing the trouble. In any case, Shapiro accompanied Carrey to the hospital after he was injured...just as he had accompanied Kaufman to the hospital after his first match with Lawler in Memphis ended in a minor injury.
• Method Acting: As detailed in the 2017 Netflix film, Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond, Jim Carrey's performance as Andy Kaufman (and, by extension, Tony Clifton) was more an out-of-body experience. During production, he absolutely refused to break character or respond to his real name, occasionally badmouthing "Jim Carrey" to keep up the illusion. Among other antics, he visited Kaufman's surviving family, who spoke to him as if he was their deceased son, argued with Gerry Becker (who played Kaufman's father) about not supporting him in front of the crew and sent Bob Zmuda dressed as Tony Clifton to the Playboy Mansion when "Jim Carrey" was invited, then showed up an hour later as Andy just to screw with people. He also seriously pissed off Jerry Lawler by getting too into Kayfabe, perpetually mocking him and even spitting on him as Kaufman did in 1982 until Lawler reacted physically, sending Carrey to the hospital with a hairline fracture in his neck. Towards the end of production, Carrey had to audition for How the Grinch Stole Christmas! while still in-character, meaning he had to play Andy Kaufman playing Jim Carrey playing The Grinch. The process was so exhaustive for him that he passed on appearing as Andy in R.E.M.'s tie-in video for "The Great Beyond".
• Playing Against Type:
  • Danny DeVito, who usually plays Jerkass or Jerk with a Heart of Gold characters, as friendly-but-exasperated agent George Shapiro. (See Celebrity Paradox on the main page.)
  • Vincent Schiavelli, best known for creepy roles such as the Subway Ghost, as the head executive at ABC who represents the Show Business establishment.
  • Courtney Love as Andy's grounded, savvy lover Lynne Marguiles. This plays against not only her musical reputation, but her previous role as the hard-living, ill-fated Althea in Forman's The People vs. Larry Flynt.
• Promoted Fanboy: Jim Carrey is a huge fan of Andy Kaufman and got to play him on film. In Judd Apatow's book of interviews Sicker in the Head, Apatow's interview with the real George Shapiro has Shapiro recounting first meeting Carrey at a posthumous tribute to Kaufman in 1984. Touched by Carrey's admiration of Kaufman, and already aware of his talent, Shapiro told him that if there were ever to be a movie made about Kaufman, he'd want Carrey to play him.
• Reality Subtext: Enough that an entire other movie was made about it. As successful as Jim Carrey became over the course of The '90s, much like Andy Kaufman he was wary of being tied down to a few characters and catchphrases. For that matter Carrey was tired of maintaining a sunshiny public image (being "free from concern", as he put it) for the sake of career prospects. In Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond and this 2017 podcast interview he discusses how his more-than-Method Acting approach to playing Kaufman was partially rooted in his longing to be someone who could act exactly as they wanted without justification or apology to anyone confused and/or upset. As dangerous as that sometimes was (see Hostility on the Set above) and exhausting as it ended up for him mentally, to the point that he needed time after the shoot to reconstruct his own self, he found real personal growth in the experience.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • Jim Carrey's ex-wife Melissa Womer appears in passing in the final shot as a Comedy Store waitress.
  • The role of young Carol Kaufman (Andy's sister) was played by Andy Kaufman's granddaughter, Brittany Colonna, so she is playing her own great-aunt.
• Release Date Change: Originally slated for Fall 1999, Universal Pictures pushed it back to December 25th, then a few days forward to the 22nd, to serve as the studio's big Christmas release (an unusual case of a studio moving a film back to better its chances, though it infamously didn't work). This also had a knock-on effect on the soundtrack album, which was pushed back from October to November 23rd.
• Starring a Star as a Star: Jim Carrey playing Andy Kaufman could be one of the more extreme examples of this trope, as both rose out of the comedy club circuit (albeit in rather different ways), to say nothing of the Reality Subtext.
• Throw It In!: Comparing the shooting screenplay's dialogue to that of the finished film reveals a lot of significant differences and additions from the opening monologues on. Some of these were adlibbed by the performers — Jim Carrey was already famous for intensely preparing for roles, but even more so here — such as Tony arguing with the security guards after being dragged off of the Paramount lot, and Andy singing "Rose Marie" to Lynne when he asks her to move in with him.
• Troubled Production: In a sense, this shoot toed the line between a straight example of the trope and a spoof of one. Carrey's in-character approach throughout the shoot meant that he could be extremely difficult for anyone to work with, especially when he was in the Tony Clifton persona or interacting with Jerry Lawler...but not only did some of the people working on the film (in particular Danny DeVito) quickly get on board with the surprises and pranks in store, there were pleasant-if-surreal days especially for those who knew Kaufman in life. Courtney Love, for her part, thought Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond "poofed up" what the actual onset atmosphere was like ("Jim just seemed out of touch with things, like he gets"). And much to Carrey's surprise, the Teamsters working on the film, who never cared about actors from his experience, loved interacting with Tony Clifton!
• What Could Have Been:
  • Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski came very close to dropping out of the project entirely. After all the interviews they did with Kaufman's family, friends, and associates, they realized that there were so many contradictory details regarding his personality and motivations that they weren't sure which ones most accurately reflected who he was as a person — meaning they didn't have a baseline "real" Kaufman to tell a story about. But when Lynne Marguiles told them "Guys, there was no real Andy", they realized the story wasn't about who he was Beneath the Mask, but rather that he was Being the Mask.
  • Everyone who wanted the role of Andy was mandated to send in a videotaped audition of their interpretation of him. From there, the choice came down to Jim Carrey or Edward Norton. Universal higher-ups got the final say when the filmmakers couldn't choose, and went for the bigger box-office draw, though Carrey would say in an interview that Miloš Forman thought his take on Andy taunting Jerry Lawler was the tipping point in his favor. The issue of getting a name performer eliminated a third "finalist", Craig Anton, for being an unknown.
  • Hank Azaria, Nicolas Cage, John Cusack, Tom Hanks, Gary Oldman — or at least someone who claimed to be Gary Oldman, according to the writers — Sean Penn, and Kevin Spacey were also considered.
  • Artie Lange auditioned for the role of Bob Zmuda. According to Lange, Miloš Forman performed Kaufman's stand-up act and told Lange to heckle him.
    • The choice ultimately came down to either Paul Giamatti or...Phillip Seymour Hoffman.
  • According to Jerry Lawler's autobiography It's Good to be the King ... sometimes, Glenn Gilbertti was considered to play him in the film.
  • Tony Danza was unable to play himself along with the rest of the Taxi cast, as he was appearing in A View from the Bridge on Broadway.
  • The published screenplay was an early draft, while the shooting script still included multiple scenes/sequences that never made it to the filming stage, were orignally longer, and/or had very different dialogue than what made it to the final cut. The shooting script can be read here.
    • The story Kaufman told about spontaneously coming up with the Foreign Man persona during a mugging was dramatized after Andy was fired from the comedy club and walks through a back alley. It was cut because nobody believed it.
    • There was a brief scene in which Taxi producer Ed. Weinberger gets a call from Andy after Tony is fired from the show, congratulating him for his "performance".
    • The Fridays "fight" and its aftermath were covered in full with Andy's two subsequent appearances on the show — and brief faux-conversion to born-again Christianity in the process — but scaled back as it risked becoming a Plot Tumor. Similarly, the Great Gatsby sequence was originally going to be roughly eight minutes long, but Forman felt this was too much.
    • The Carnegie Hall show's epilogue — in which Kaufman hosted a party on the Staten Island Ferry the following afternoon for anyone interested — was dramatized.
    • The funeral sequence was originally longer, including a bit where some of the Taxi cast members poke Andy's body to see if it's real. In the shooting script version, this was changed to Carol Kane expecting Andy to come out from behind the movie screen and Tony Danza arguing the corpse was wax after the ceremony ends. ("The closed curtain wafts...then settles motionless.")
    • Fellow comedian (and lover, for a time) Elayne Boosler was a minor character in early drafts, with a scene of her and Kaufman at Coney Island, but she specifically asked not to be mentioned/depicted in the film.
    • A Running Gag involving a group of L.A. skateboarders commenting on Kaufman's career progress, culminating in their rushing to the Comedy Store to see Tony Clifton's comeback performance, got as far as actors being cast (at least for that epilogue) before it was dropped.
  • While some of the hours upon hours worth of behind-the-scenes footage of Carrey-as-Kaufman appeared in the electronic press kit, plans to release a longer documentary built from it as soon as possible were quashed by higher-ups at Universal Pictures because they feared what the public response would be to finding out how far Carrey's Method Acting (particularly as Tony Clifton and in interactions with Jerry Lawler) was allowed to go — even as much of it was public knowledge or at least rumored anyway, and Carrey and his colleagues were happy to discuss it at the time; the writers' introduction to the published screenplay includes several of the wilder stories. The project was finally realized in a retrospective manner as Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond in 2017.

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