Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond

Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond (2017) is a Chris Smith documentary you can watch online on iFILM. It's built around locked-away on-set footage from Man on the Moon that sat unseen for nearly two decades.

To portray the late comedian Andy Kaufman, Jim Carrey didn't just act the part; he more or less stopped being himself for the whole shoot. On set he answered only as Andy or as the abrasive lounge act Tony Clifton, needling director Miloš Forman, rattling his castmates and unsettling the crew. Cameras captured all of it, but Universal buried the tapes, worried the behavior would make Carrey look impossible to work with. Smith cuts the archive against a candid present-day interview in which Carrey reflects, calmly and sometimes uneasily, on fame, losing himself, and who exactly is speaking when any of us says "I."

The result is a rare film about the nature of acting and the cost of total transformation. Danny DeVito, Paul Giamatti and Forman himself turn up in the footage. It's for anyone drawn to Kaufman, the Method, or the line between performance and obsession. Stream Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond online on iFILM.