Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond

The material in this documentary was locked away for twenty years. During the shooting of Man on the Moon in 1999, a hundred hours of footage was recorded of Jim Carrey behaving as Andy Kaufman on set, most of it shot by Kaufman's former girlfriend Lynne Margulies and his writing partner Bob Zmuda. Universal did not release it. According to Carrey the reason was simple: so that people would not think he was an asshole. What is on the tapes is this: Carrey was not playing the part, he was behaving as Kaufman at every moment on set. He spoke to the crew as Kaufman, went into character as Kaufman's alter ego Tony Clifton and fought with director Miloš Forman, and emotionally shook the living relatives of the real people in the film. Chris Smith cuts this footage against present-day interviews with Carrey, which opens a second subject: what the man went through then and how he narrates it now. It premiered at Venice on 5 September 2017 and went to Netflix on 17 November. Who it is for: viewers interested in acting, identity and the limits of method. Who it is not for: anyone who wants to like Carrey. His behaviour is indefensible through much of the footage, and his present-day account mystifies it rather than explaining it.