MAN ON THE MOON

*** 1/2 (R)
 Andy Kaufman: Jim Carrey
Lynne Margulies: Courtney Love
 Bob Zmuda: Paul Giamatti
 George Shapiro: Danny DeVito
Universal presents a film directed by Milos Forman.
Written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski.
Running time: 118 minutes. Rated R (for language and
brief sexuality/nudity).
BY ROGER EBERT
Our inner child embraces Andy Kaufman. We've been just
like that. Who cannot remember boring our friends for
hour after hour after hour with the same dumb comic
idea, endlessly insisted on? Who hasn't refused to
admit being wrong? ``I won't give up on this,'' we're
saying, ``until you give up first. Until you laugh, or
agree, or cry `uncle.' I can keep this up all night if
necessary.''
That was Andy Kaufman's approach to the world. The
difference was, he tried to make a living out of it,
as a stand-up comedian. Audiences have a way of
demanding to be entertained. Kaufman's act was
 essentially a meditation on the idea of entertainment.
He would entertain you, but you had to cave in first.
You had to laugh at something really dumb, or let him
get away with something boring or outrageous. If you
passed the test, he was like a little kid, delighted
to be allowed into the living room at last. He'd
entertain, all right. But you had to pass the entry
exam.
He was not the most successful comedian of his time.
The last years of his life, his biographer Bill Zehme
tells me, were spent in mostly unemployed show-biz
free fall. But Kaufman enjoyed that, too: He was
fascinated by the relationship between entertainer and
audience, which is never more sincere than when the
entertainer is hated. It is poetic justice that Andy
Kaufman now has his own biopic, directed by Milos
Forman and starring Jim Carrey. He wins. Uncle.
What is most wonderful about ``Man on the Moon,'' a
very good film, is that it remains true to Kaufman's
stubborn vision. Oh, it brightens things up a little
(the cookie and milk evening at Carnegie Hall wasn't
his farewell concert, because by then he was far too
unemployable for a Carnegie booking). But essentially
it stays true to his persona: A guy who would test
you, fool you, lie to you, deceive you and stage
elaborate deceptions, put-ons and hoaxes. The movie
doesn't turn him into a sweet, misunderstood guy. And
it doesn't pander for laughs. When something is not
working in Kaufman's act, it's not working in the
movie, either, and it's not funny, it's painful.
The film has a heroic performance from Jim Carrey, who
successfully disappears inside the character of Andy
Kaufman. Carrey is as big a star as Hollywood has
right now, and yet fairly early in ``Man on the
Moon,'' we forget who is playing Kaufman and get
involved in what is happening to him. Carrey is
himself a compulsive entertainer who will do anything
to get a laugh, who wants to please, whose public
image is wacky and ingratiating. That he can evoke the
complexities of Kaufman's comic agonies is a little
astonishing. That he can suppress his own desire to
please takes a kind of courage. Not only is he working
without his own net--he's playing a guy who didn't use
a net.
The film, and written by Scott Alexander and Larry
Karaszewski, begins with Kaufman as a troublesome kid
in his room, refusing to go out and play, preferring
to host his own TV variety program for the cameras he
believed were hidden in his bedroom walls. His
material was inspired by shabby nightclub and lounge
acts. He understood that a live performance is rarely
more fascinating than when it is going wrong.
I myself, for example, have seldom been more involved
than I was one night at a 36-seat theater in London
during a performance of a one-man show called ``Is It
Magic--Or Is It Manilow?'' The star was a bad magician
who did a bad imitation of Barry Manilow, alternating
the two elements of his act. There were 12 people in
the audience, and we were desperately important to
 him. The program notes said he had once been voted
most popular entertainer on a cruise ship out of Goa.
Andy Kaufman would have been in ecstasy.
The movie follows Kaufman into the L.A. standup
circuit, where a talent manager (Danny DeVito) sees
    something in his act and signs him. Kaufman is soon a
sitcom star, a regular on ``Taxi'' (we see cast
veterans like Marilu Henner, Carol Kane, Christopher
Lloyd and Judd Hirsch playing themselves--DeVito of
course is otherwise engaged). He insists on ``guest
bookings'' for his ``protege,'' an obnoxious lounge
act named Tony Clifton, who is played behind
impenetrable makeup by Kaufman and sometimes by his
accomplice Bob Zmuda. Kaufman steadfastly refuses to
admit he ``is'' Clifton, and in a way, he isn't.
The parabolas of Kaufman's career intersect as
``Taxi'' goes off the air. He has never been more
famous, or had bleaker prospects. He's crying wolf
more than the public is crying uncle. He starts
wrestling women in his nightclub act, not a popular
decision, and gets involved in a feud with Memphis
wrestling star Jerry Lawler. They fight on the
Letterman show. It looks real. The movie says it was
staged (Lawler plays himself). OK, so it was
staged--but Lawler's blow to Kaufman's head was real
enough to tumble him out of his chair. And no doubt
Kaufman made Lawler vow to hit him that hard. He
always wanted to leave you in doubt.
Courtney Love is back in her second Milos Forman movie
in a row, playing the lover of an impossible man (she
was the Hustler publisher's lover in Forman's ``The
People vs. Larry Flynt''). She comes to wrestle
Kaufman and stays to puzzle at him. She likes him,
even loves him, but never quite knows who he is. When
he tells her he's dying of cancer, her first reaction
is anger that he would toy with her feelings in yet
another performance piece. Love shows again here that
she is a real actress and can if she wants to give up
the other job.
 What was it with Kaufman? The movie leaves us with a
mystery, and it should. In traditional Hollywood
biopics, there would be Freudian shorthand to explain
everything. Nothing explains Andy Kaufman. If he had
been explicable, no one would have wanted to make a
movie about him.
The Chicago talk jock Steve Dahl told me the other day
that Kaufman once recruited him for a performance.
``He told me I would be inside a box on the stage, and
people would try to guess what was in the box,'' Dahl
recalled. ``He gave me a six-pack of Heinekens to keep
me company. What he didn't tell me was that I would be
in the box for three hours. There I was in the dark,
trying to pee back into the can.'' Dahl thought he was
in the show, but from Kaufman's point of view, he was
the ideal member of the audience.