These days there's no need to fear when the selection of films on release at the movies offers nothing much to write home about. Thanks to streaming we're presented with plenty of alternative options for our viewing pleasure and the stimulation of the old grey matter.
The Netflix documentary Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond - Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton is a fascinating, smart and intriguing rumination on the blurring of lines between personalities and personae.
It provides much insight into the thinking and personality of two comic geniuses of the 20th century - Andy Kaufman, the provocatively disruptive comedian who died of lung cancer in 1984, and Jim Carrey, the equally unhinged comedic madman who played Kaufman in the late, great director Milos Forman's 1999 biopic Man on the Moon.
WATCH | The trailer for Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond
Director Chris Smith (American Movie, The Yes Men) combines over 100 hours of footage shot on the set of Forman's film by Kaufman's ex-girlfriend Lynn Marguiles and comic collaborator Bob Zmuda - which was, according to Carrey, shelved by Universal Pictures at the time because of their fear that it might show the star to be too much "of an asshole" for his fans to handle - with an extended present-day interview with Carrey on his process during the shoot.
What emerges is a portrait of Carrey in his most immersive, method-actor mode - refusing to interact with anyone including Forman or fellow actors outside of character either as Kaufman or his alter ego Tony Clifton and behaving so outrageously as to test the limits of the patience of his director and the crew.
Produced by Spike Jonze (director of Her and frequent collaborator of modern American cinema's master of post-modern anxiety Charlie Kaufman), the film is a belated but satisfying exploration of the line that performers walk on what poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti famously described as the tightrope above the heads of an audience where the threat of death and the constant risk of absurdity are ever present.
MEMORABLE MATCH
At the time that he took the role, Carrey was one of the biggest movie stars in the world, having starred in the blockbuster comedies The Mask and Dumb and Dumber and earned critical praise for his dramatic turn in The Truman Show.
While retrospectively, almost two decades later, the current easy-going, floating hippy incarnation of Carrey may see the hand of destiny and mysterious forces from the great beyond pushing him into the role of Kaufman, it's certainly hard to argue that the match was not perfectly made and resulted in one of his most memorable and complete performances.
Looking at Carrey's recent lack of noticeable output it's also hard not to agree with the actor that his sometimes cringeworthy dedicated experience during the shoot had a butterfly effect on his future and remains a touchstone of his career.
WATCH | The trailer for Man On The Moon
Thanks to Smith's inclusion of revealing archive footage of Kaufman's singular and still unrivalled comic performances, the lines between the comic and Carrey are deliciously blurred to provide a compelling study of the two men which has more than just Forman's film in common.
It's not just a smart and often hilarious look at the relationship between actors and their roles but also a deeply human tale of the intersections between the relationships of men with their fathers and the effects of those on the journeys taken in both the public and the private realms.
Whether or not you believe as R.E.M famously sang in their Kaufman-dedicated anthem, that "they put a man on the moon", Jim & Andy will make you believe Carrey was the only man who could have done what he so memorably did in Man on the Moon.
WHO WAS ANDY KAUFMAN?
For many people outside of America, R.E.M's 1992 song, Man On The Moon, may have been the first time they'd heard of Andy Kaufman.
By the time "Athens's finest", asked if Kaufman was having fun and goofing on Elvis, he'd been dead for eight years, taken by lung cancer at the age of 35.
For comedians, however, Kaufman was a cult figure, admired for the way in which he blurred the lines between his own personality and that of the many characters he created during his brief but memorable career.
He'd first come to attention with his Foreign Man character on Saturday Night Live in the 1970s before becoming a household name thanks to his role as the immigrant taxi driver Latka Gravas on the sitcom Taxi from 1978-83, a show which also made the names of Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd.
Kaufman never referred to himself as a comedian, preferring if pushed to say that he was "a song and dance man" and he never became comfortable with the recognition that playing Latka gave him, choosing instead to work wholeheartedly against the expectations of audiences and talk-show hosts through creations such as the foul, loud-mouthed, lounge singer Tony Clifton - a persona he sometimes shared with fellow comic and writer Bob Zmuda.
He was also a fan of professional wrestling and used the format to his advantage when he pretended to be a misogynist anti-feminist who challenged women to match-ups and created a hilarious fake feud with pro-wrestler Jerry The King Lawler.
By the time he died, Kaufman had firmly staked his reputation as one of comedy's most edgy, unpredictable and thought-provoking performers.
When he died he'd spent so much time making people guess and scratch their heads that for many years it was rumoured that he'd faked his own death just to disappear from the limelight - a plausible final sick joke played on fans by a man of whom fellow comedian Carl Reiner once said: "Nobody can see past the edges, where the character begins and ends."
WATCH | The music video for Man On The Moon by R.E.M.
