Man on the Moon (1999)
Back when I was subscribing to Entertainment Weekly (I know, shut up), the magazine would periodically mail out videotapes containing a few trailers for upcoming movies. So I received the Christmas 1999 videotape, and my friend Kev and I sat down to watch it. We goofed on a few (“Snow Falling on My Ass,” we said simultaneously after one of them was finished, and then we both shat laughing), but then we got to the Man on the Moon trailer. I’d seen it before — I think in front of a sneak preview of For Love of the Game — and I said to Kev, “Dude, you gotta see this one.” When it was over, Kev said “Jim Carrey should win an Oscar just for the trailer.”
Well, as we know, Carrey wasn’t even nominated for his cracked-mystic performance as Andy Kaufman, an achievement that went beyond impersonation into channeling. (Not that Carrey would’ve had much of a chance against Spacey for American Beauty that year, but it would’ve been nice to acknowledge his work with a nomination, at least.)
Anyway, nobody has uploaded the superb Man on the Moon trailer to YouTube (yet), so you get a nice fan-made music video for REM’s “The Great Beyond.” Watch it or not.
The link to the actual trailer is here, and yes, that is the official website. Still live after almost eight years. I love that. Someone at Universal must like the movie even though it cost $52 million and only made $34 million domestic.
It starts off with music that puts us pleasantly off-balance. We see people — Courtney Love (and how ballsy is it that she’s the first face we see in a trailer for a major motion picture?), Danny DeVito, Paul Giamatti — gathered at what we soon discover is Andy Kaufman’s funeral. Then the screen divvies itself up into various snippets of dialogue expressing Andy’s uniqueness (“Some found him funny…Some didn’t”). A bongo-drum riff from a defiantly triumphant Kaufman takes us into the second half of the trailer, which beautifully utilizes REM’s eponymous song. And maybe you have to have special feelings about that song — Michael Stipe sounds alternately lost and hopeful — and about Kaufman to share my love for the rest of the trailer. Whoever cut this together had a goldmine of bizarre footage to pick from. Andy wrestling! Andy as Tony Clifton! Andy going to a faith healer!
I even like the “From the director of” bit, which usually annoys me — “From Milos Forman, the Academy Award-winning director of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (shot of Tony Clifton being manhandled out into the NBC parking lot) “and Amadeus” (shot of Andy conducting the orchestra at his famous Carnegie Hall “milk and cookies” concert). The movie is actually closer in tone to Forman’s previous biopic also penned by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, The People Vs. Larry Flynt, but never mind.
And then the money shot — which doesn’t even appear in the movie — “This Christmas, Jim Carrey brings the legend to life,” and there’s Carrey pop-eyed and grinning and holy shit I get goosebumps even now watching that — that’s not Carrey any more, man, that’s Andy right there.
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