Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond - Featuring a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton

A great document of a man who is suffering. What happens if you aren't content after achieving all your dreams?

The film covers Jim a lot more than Andy. It certainly makes an impact. They are both very complicated people and it becomes clear that if anyone was going to play Andy Kaufman it had to be Jim Carrey. He got about as close as anyone ever could.

In the interview sections Jim comes across charming and occasionally says some very profound and insightful things. The on set footage shows a very different person. He chose to approach the role as a hardcore method actor. Insisting on being called his characters names and never breaking character, even around Andy's family. Some of it is brutal and hard to watch. He is nothing short of an obnoxious, unhinged, tempormental nightmare. Especially when he plays Tony. There are many times when I feel sorry for the crew and his costars. Outside of the craft of acting there is a serious case to be made for Carrey being committed. He seems legitimately insane. That being said so did Andy and maybe Jim had to do that in order to temporarily become him.

The only fault I can identify with Jim's performance is that there was a sweetness about Andy and his funny antics. There is a dark anger in Jim which occasionally leaks out. Still I think Jim got as close as anyone could to capturing Andy.

My overall impression is that Andy Kaufman was a strange and beautiful performance artist. Jim Carrey is brilliant and troubled actor. I love watching his movies, but, I probably would not want to work with him.

Few things get me more emotional than Andy Kaufman. Even hearing a few words of R.E.M.'s "Man on the Moon" makes my eyes well up. I remember watching his early appearances live on Saturday Night Live and the night he got into a fist fight on Fridays. And while I was alive for his descent into pro wrestling mania and his battle with cancer, I don't remember much of the end. Maybe I didn't want to process it. Maybe that's why I believed — to this day — that Andy is just waiting to pull the curtain back on all of us and come back. And maybe not coming back? Perhaps that's his best trick of all.

Conversely, I've never liked Jim Carrey. Unlike Andy, who undermined his own popularity and resisted the mainstream while simultaneously making a living from it, he seemed too eager to please. Too happy to take and take from the blockbuster machine, to be in works that didn't challenge him. That's why The Cable Guy surprised me. Here as the buffoon who mugged his way through Dumb and Dumber forcing viewers to contemplate the pain behind the character. He followed that movie with later challenging films like The Truman Show and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

The Jim Carrey that appears here is not the rubber-faced maniac who seemed to cry out, "Watch me! Love me!" This is a graying, faded, bearded, rougher man who has been through no small degree of personal loss and pain. And this is also a man who willingly gave his identity over to not just Andy Kaufman, but to Andy's more frightening side, the villainous Tony Clifton.

In a recent Newsweek article, Kaufman's sister gives some insight: "I think that Jim Carrey was a vessel," she said. " I do believe he allowed Andy to come through him. I also chose to believe that Andy was coming through him. When he looked at me, I'm not kidding. It was like speaking to Andy from the great beyond. I felt like he was coming through as the evolved, astral Andy."

I've watched Milos Forman's Man on the Moon numerous times. And I've read plenty of books, digested plenty of articles and watched every appearance Andy did on TV. I look to him in the way that I extend to few performers: he's more of a truth-speaking prophet than just a person. Do I give him too much credit? Do I see things in him, do I project magic that he wasn't able to perform? I think — I fervently believe — that he was something more. A force. Someone who was able to push buttons, upset people and be a real-life wrestling heel while at the same time delivering childlike moments of whimsy and wonder. Just the footage of him inviting everyone to join him for milk and cookies after his Carnegie Hall performance makes me weep openly. It feels too real, too loving, too honest and much too true.

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First of all, when I saw Chris Smith was directing this documentary, I knew it would be good. American Movie is one of the best documentaries of all time in my opinion. My hats off to Chris Smith. That being said, this is a must see documentary, it's transcendental on all levels or perhaps it's just normal and the way it should be and is on the human level, but we're all living in such a backwards world that we see transcending as related to a spiritual or a non physical realm, but perhaps transcendental is just normal, the way it should be.

In this documentary one gets to see the process Jim Carrey went through to be Andy Kaufman/Tony Clifton and one also gets to see where Jim Carrey is now, which is a perfect term as he is very much in the now. Jim Carrey is almost an Eckhart Tolle at this point in his life. He just is. One could say that's easy for Carrey as he's got all the money in the world, but the truth is he's seen both sides of the coin i.e. having all the money in the world and being homeless, so he's a good judge of what it is to be happy and at peace in my opinion. Carrey has found his true self and happiness in just being.

This documentary gives the viewer the perspective of what a remarkable actor Jim Carrey is and also what a thought provoking human being and poet he is too. Jim Carrey says in this documentary 'free of concern.' What a wild and lovely concept. Free of concern. Obviously we all have doubts, concerns and worries i.e. about our loved ones i.e. family, friends, sister, brother, kids, dogs, etc. But past that to be truly free of fear, what a wonderful concept and I believe Carrey is truly free of all of it. How liberating.

A documentary well worth the watch to see how deep an actor will and can go, and also to see how beautiful a human being Carrey is within all his flaws and imperfections. Please watch this documentary, you will fall in love with your life, with life, with Carrey and the creation of being all over again. A truly moving piece of art. It will make you laugh, it will make you cry, it will make you think.

Andy Kaufman offered a hilarious - and sometimes disturbing - reflection on comedy, celebrity, and being human. Then Jim Carrey became Andy Kaufman...and everything started all over again. This film is so much more than interviews and lost footage. It is a meditation on fame. Even more, it is a meditation on the thin line between make believe and reality. There's something to learn in the space between.