In 1998, the great Milos Forman launched the production of Man on the Moon, a film on the life of American comedian Andy Kaufman, died in 1984. Jim Carrey is in line to play the lead role. He has always admired and identified with Andy Kaufman.
Milos Forman selected four actors for the role: Nicolas Cage, Jim Carrey, John Cusack and Edward Norton.
He sends each of them a video cassette containing several Andy Kaufman sketches to show them performances that they can use as inspiration for their video audition. Indeed, the director does not wish to audition the actors in person. He wants them to each record a video. It’s unusual for such well-known actors, but that’s how the director wants to judge them.
Jim Carrey is willing to do anything for the role. And one of the things he’s going to start by doing is convincing Nicolas Cage, who he knows, not to send an audition tape…
According to Robert Zmuda, producer of the film, Jim Carrey told Nicolas Cage that it was a shame to ask such well-known actors to record a video. How insulting it was. And that he personally refused to do so, preferring to audition in person in front of the director. Nicolas Cage will be convinced and will not send an audition tape. He will then be ousted from the race for the role…
Getting rid of one of his competitors, Jim Carrey will then set about seducing the film’s producer and former collaborator of Andy Kaufman, Robert Zmuda. He knows that the producer has a say in the choice of the actor who will be hired, and he wants to put it in his pocket.
To do this, one day he invites the man to meet him at his home.
Here is the scene as described by Robert Zmuda in his book Andy Kaufman: The Truth, Finally.
“I arrived at Jim Carrey’s house. He made me wait a few minutes in his personal projection room, with the costumes of his roles on display and a candy and popcorn stand, just like in a real cinema. On the big screen in the room, old clips of Andy Kaufman in Taxi or Saturday Night Live were playing. Ten minutes later, Carrey returned with a brown paper bag in his hand.
He sat down next to me and said, “And now the video tape for my audition!” He started rummaging through the bag and looked perplexed, as if he had lost something. And then he violently tore the bag and started laughing like crazy. The bag was empty. His laughter began to become more and more sinister to my ears, to the point that, sitting next to him in that empty screening room, I was frightened. “Can a movie star also be a serial killer?” I asked myself. And then, with a solemn gesture, he pointed to the projection screen on which Andy Kaufman was playing congas on SNL. And he said to me, “So, what do you think of my audition video?” At first, I didn’t understand anything he was saying. And then I realized: oh my god, that wasn’t an old clip of Andy on SNL that was playing on the screen. It was Jim Carrey! I had been watching this clip for a while thinking it was Andy and, in fact, it was Jim! »
Jim Carrey had bought at auction the congas that Andy Kaufman had used in this famous Saturday Night Live show and he had made the same outfit, so that the illusion was perfect.
Needless to say, he got the role…