Perhaps one of the single greatest aspects of watching a film is being afforded the opportunity to witness great actors transform themselves into the characters they portray. Over the years, we've seen some pretty remarkable people like Daniel Day-Lewis, Christian Bale, Charlize Theron and others fully commit to their roles, even changing who they are as people off-camera for the sake of a rock-solid performance. As was the case with actor Jim Carrey, who became so much like the late comedian Andy Kaufman during the filming of the 1999 biography MAN ON THE MOON, that it was almost impossible to seperate the actor from the outrageous personality he'd committed himself to.
Now, director Chris Smith is here to present us with a fascinating deep dive into Carrey's time spent portraying famed and complicated comedian Andy Kaufman. Using approximately 100 hours of footage shot on the set of MAN ON THE MOON documenting Carrey’s transformation into Kaufman for four months, we have JIM & ANDY: THE GREAT BEYOND, which aims to show audiences just how far Carrey was willing to go in his effort to channel Kaufman for the film.
Jim Carrey earned critical acclaim and a Golden Globe for the performance, but many of the production’s most Kaufmanesque moments played out behind the scenes, thankfully captured on video by Andy’s former girlfriend, Lynne Margulies and former writing partner, Bob Zmuda. In JIM & ANDY: THE GREAT BEYOND, Carrey looks back at the resulting footage 18 years later, reflecting on how he and Andy came up in oddly parallel universes, his experience channeling Andy and Tony and more broadly the spiritual journey of his career.
The new documentary film will be available to watch on Netflix beginning on November 17th.