Hot, Dada, and Still Dead
(Note: "Life and Art" is an occasional column that compares fiction, in
various media, with the real-life facts on which it is ostensibly
based.)
Andy Kaufman, the comedian
who died of cancer in 1984 at the age of 35, enjoyed making people wonder
whether his acts were real or not. He would sometimes deliberately "bomb" in
clubs, telling bad jokes and letting crowds grow more and more uncomfortable.
He loved planting fake stories about himself in the National Enquirer .
And then there were his repeated turns as "Tony Clifton," a noxious, heavily
made up and toupeed Las Vegas singer who did things like abuse Dinah Shore on
her own show by cracking a dozen eggs and handing her the shells. Kaufman would
swear that Tony and Andy were not the same person. Even after the Clifton gag
had worn thin, Kaufman would continue to perform it, as comfortable causing
anger as he was getting laughs.
Given this pattern, it
seems appropriate that Man on the Moon , Milos Forman's new biopic about
Kaufman, starring Jim Carrey, would take liberties with its subject's life. But
despite some inevitable streamlining, the film hits the major points--both high
and low--in Kaufman's career. The most obvious factual change seems designed to
uplift the audience rather than unsettle it.
Kaufman, who preferred to call himself a "song and dance
man," was first spotted in New York clubs, where he did a faltering "foreign
man" comic who could also imitate Elvis brilliantly. Kaufman's Elvis imitation
came before the King died and well before Elvis imitators were legion. (Elvis
reportedly liked Kaufman's imitation the best.) Appearing on the first episode
of Saturday Night Live in 1975, Kaufman stood awkwardly next to a
turntable as the Mighty Mouse theme played, opening his mouth only to lip-sync
the lyrics "Here I come to save the day." He parlayed his foreign-man schtick
into a job as Latka, the lovable foreign mechanic on the soon-to-be-hit series
Taxi , which debuted in 1978. (Kaufman's contract stipulated occasional
appearances--on episodes that Latka didn't appear in--by Tony Clifton, who
proved so rude to other cast members that he was thrown off the set
permanently.)
Kaufman's professional life took an unorthodox turn
when he started wrestling women in arenas and on television--this, too, before
wrestling took off. Kaufman the wrestler would provoke audience members into
fighting him by making sexist remarks. Eventually pro Jerry Lawler challenged
him to a wrestling match and Kaufman ended up in the hospital (the
Kaufman-Lawler feud was orchestrated by the two men from the beginning, though
many would be fooled). Kaufman began to lose fans in part because of the
obsessive wrestling. He got into a believable-looking fight with fellow actors
on a Saturday Night Live knockoff show on ABC called Fridays ,
giving the impression that he had lost control on air. Taxi was
canceled. And he was banished as a performer from Saturday Night Live
itself in 1982 (after viewers voted in a call-in poll to kick him off the
show).
The film skips over Kaufman's adolescence and
college years, in which he developed much of his comic material. (During
college he also got his then-girlfriend pregnant; the baby was later given away
for adoption. Though Kaufman never met his daughter, she has since become
friendly with his family.)
Man on the Moon
includes only one of Andy's girlfriends, Lynne Margulies (played by Courtney
Love). But the Margulies character is a "composite of at least six women [that
Andy dated]," says journalist Bill Zehme, author of Lost in the Funhouse:
The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman . In the film, the two meet when he
wrestles her on Merv Griffin --they actually met during a film shoot.
Kaufman did, it should be noted, date a lot of his opponents.
The film does a good job of capturing the contradictions in
Kaufman's personality. A devotee of transcendental meditation, he was also
prone to temper tantrums, and his stage personae--particularly the sexist
wrestler--upset some fellow travelers (in life, as in the movie, the TM
movement threw him out at one point). Even though he was earning good money at
Taxi , Kaufman took a night job as a busboy. Always trying to purify
himself through meditation and a strict vegetarian diet, he was at the same
time addicted to chocolate and sex, and he often visited prostitutes.
And while Kaufman was
desperate for fame, he deeply resented the vehicles that were best equipped to
deliver him fame. As Man on the Moon correctly shows, Kaufman hated
sitcoms and wasn't crazy about the Taxi job: He eventually felt trapped
by the "foreign" character that viewers adored. He was far more excited about
the money ABC gave him to film his own special in 1977. In the film, Kaufman is
given the special as an incentive for starring on Taxi , whereas in life,
it was made a year before Taxi went into production. The 90-minute
program included segments such as Kaufman chatting with his idol, Howdy Doody,
and renditions of songs such as "It's a Small World." As Kaufman's co-writer
Bob Zmuda reports in his book Andy Kaufman Revealed! , it also contained
a few seconds in which the screen was made to deliberately roll. In life, as in
Man on the Moon, apoplectic ABC execs declined to air the special. (It
would finally be broadcast on the network two years after it was made--and draw
better ratings than NBC's Tonight Show , a fact that isn't in the
movie.)
M an on the Moon is right to portray Kaufman as a
frustrated artist pitted against people who just didn't get it. But in setting
up a world-vs.-Andy theme, the film exaggerates some of the lengths to which
Kaufman would go to maintain his artistic integrity. When a college audience
annoys him by clamoring for Latka and Mighty Mouse, Carrey as Kaufman proceeds
to read all of The Great Gatsby on stage. Kaufman did read from
Gatsby in his act, according to Zehme's book, but rarely did he finish
the "first chapter anywhere, much less two pages." And the movie occasionally
downplays Kaufman's part in bringing about his own professional decline. Man
on the Moon does not indicate, for example, that Kaufman came up with the
idea for the Saturday Night Live call-in vote, nor that he had numerous
chances to nix the whole thing.
In its most marked
deviation from real life, Man on the Moon provides Kaufman with a kind
of feel-good comeback. Earlier in the film, Andy's manager George Shapiro
(Danny DeVito), frustrated with his client's self-indulgent performances, tells
him that he has to decide whether he's out to entertain the audience or
himself. (In life, Shapiro was similarly frustrated.) After being diagnosed
with cancer, Carrey's Kaufman decides to do a show at Carnegie Hall. The event
is the definition of a crowd pleaser, replete with appearances by the
Rockettes, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and Santa Claus (the act isn't entirely
without bite; there's also a very funny moment involving a heart attack). And
at the end of the evening Kaufman takes the entire audience out for milk and
cookies. This all happened in real life--although the Rockettes weren't the
real Rockettes and neither was the choir. But the performance took place in
1979, well before Kaufman got sick.
By time-shifting this feel-good scene forward, Man on
the Moon relieves the true story of Kaufman's depressing decline. In the
film, for example, his wrestling days come to an abrupt end after he and Lawler
erupt into a brawl while appearing on Late Night With David Letterman .
But in life, the rematches would continue. As Lost in the Funhouse
notes, Kaufman actually joined Lawler on the professional circuit and traveled
across the country in a kind of "touring carnival." Zehme writes, "Nobody paid
much attention." The man who had once come up with a "has-been corner" skit, in
which, as Zmuda recalls, forgotten performers "would be sent out to flounder in
front of an audience ... in an attempt to regain some of their vanished fame,"
was on his way to becoming a has-been himself. Tellingly, the "has-been corner"
routine is not in the movie.
As for Andy's illness,
the film is true to the record when it suggests that people didn't believe that
he was really sick with lung cancer. After Carrey's Kaufman tells Zmuda the
news, he responds that they can really make something out of this gag. Kaufman
was a nonsmoker, which naturally made people doubt him. (In the film, as in
life, Kaufman goes to the Philippines to visit a healer who pretends to remove
diseased-looking entrails--actually, concealed animal parts--from Kaufman's
body. Carrey's Kaufman immediately understands the put-on and laughs. But as
Lynne Margulies told Zehme, "[Andy] actually seemed to be getting better at
first. He believed it was magic.")
What the movie neglects to mention is that Kaufman had
often talked about how he would like to pull off his own death. And there are
still those who believe that Kaufman, like his hero, Elvis, is out there
somewhere. In the epilogue to Andy Kaufman Revealed! Zmuda
writes--perhaps in an effort to ratchet up the mystery factor--"I've often been
asked, 'Had Andy lived, what would he be doing?' The answer is obvious: I truly
believe he would have faked his death."
The film's own mild flirtation with mystery comes
in the final scene: A year after Kaufman's funeral, Tony Clifton performs in a
club, doing a rather spirited rendition of--what else--"I Will Survive." We're
expecting a trick, but we're also pretty sure that the singer is Zmuda, who
sometimes played Clifton when Andy was alive. However, the camera scans the
crowd until it lands on Zmuda, who's watching the spectacle along with everyone
else. This "Tony Clifton Live" performance did actually take place except Zmuda
was, of course, Clifton. And the occasion? A cancer benefit.
