I just finished watching the documentary on Netflix and I found it equal parts interesting and frustrating. Andy Kaufman was before my time but when I discovered his work as a teenager, I fell in love with his sense of humor and his dedication to a joke even when the line between the punchline and his own life became obfuscated. When I was younger I read some books about him but I’m by no means an expert so I don’t want to assume to know too much about him as a person.
On the other hand, we have Jim Carrey who I think is an incredible comic actor and I’ve always thought Man on the Moon really captured a different side of his awesome talent, but the Jim Carrey that makes himself known to the world through twitter and sound bites I’ve always found off-putting. I don’t appreciate his anti-vax stance, his philosophy-101 musings, and I find the allegations from his ex-girlfriend’s suicide note disturbing. I only bring this up, not to slander him, but to say that I don’t really trust him, so I’m immediately skeptical of a documentary that he seems to have been involved in producing: he seems to have hired the camera crew during filming, has been in possession of tapes between the filming and now, and has made himself the star of the doc by lacing the old footage with his own reflections and “deep thoughts.”
I tried to look up if Jim Carrey had any other instances of method acting for his films and I couldn’t find anything. So I found the overlap between his this bizarre incident and the inclusion of hired cameras kind of funny, although I’m always skeptical of documentaries and try to consider how they might be utilizing certain cuts and what the editing might be hiding or misrepresenting. While googling stuff, I found this New Yorker article that in addition to offering a pretty insightful critique of the documentary mentions that the cameras were spurred by Andy’s ex girlfriend and his old joke-partner Bob Zmuda (who, at times, has donned the Tony Clifton guise to keep people on their toes about whether Any was truly the infamous lounge singer).This led me to my theory regarding this odd instance.
I don’t think Jim Carrey, especially at this point in his career, would’ve been inclined to prepare for this long-con of a joke. However, I think this would’ve been right up Bob Zmuda’s alley. I think he brought up the idea, Jim Carrey loved it and agreed (I think most, if not all of the cast was in on it too--but that’s just a guess, it probably could’ve gone either way). Maybe it even resulted in a better performance from Jim Carrey because it kept him so entrenched in the psyche of Andy Kaufman.
Ultimately, I don’t think the final product was that great. Like the New Yorker article discusses, present-day Jim Carrey kind of sucks the magic out of what should be an eerie reincarnation of the great Andy Kaufman. He’s playing the Andy Kaufman from in-front of the camera as if that were the Andy Kaufman that existed behind the camera (which doesn’t seem to be the case--but like I said, I’m not an expert and I’ll argue myself here and say that Kaufman on Taxi sounded difficult, but that seemed to be less performance and more him coping poorly with a career choice he regretted). I think Carrey probably knew this but playing a relatively normal guy behind the scenes wouldn’t have been nearly as noteworthy for what was clearly more about being sensational than about method acting.
Whether I’m right or wrong about the origin of the footage, it instead became a platform for Jim Carrey to reflect on how much he persevered, how successful he has been, and to wax philosophical with questions that feels very pre-prepared (“Have you ever played a real person before?” “What a funny question to ask…”).
What do you think? Are there any other instances of Jim Carrey method acting that I’m not aware of (like only telling the truth during Liar Liar or living with penguins during Mr. Popper’s Penguins)? I’m not trying to suck the fun out of the documentary by overthinking it, I just found the different possibilities and odd details of the project interesting.
Submitted November 22, 2017 at 08:25PM by nomefish http://ift.tt/2A0Ouhk
