“It looks like Garth lifted the alter-ego idea from Andy Kaufman’s Tony Clifton.” Little did the reviewer know that he’d hit it right on the head, even though he never knew about Garth’s doing Clifton for Milos. For a while, I considered Philip Seymour Hoffman. I went to the video store and rented Boogie Nights. I was in for a real shocker when in the film, Philip Seymour Hoffman tried to kiss Mark Wahlberg. I thought to myself, “Jesus Christ. I don’t want some gay guy playing me,” and nixed Hoffman immediately. Years later, I was in the American Airlines lounge at Heathrow Airport and I spotted Philip making out with one of the hottest young chicks I’d ever seen. They were really going at it, and I thought to myself what a dummy I was. He wasn’t gay. What he was was just one hell of an actor. I was quite saddened years later when I heard that Philip had died of a heroin overdose.
Eventually, with Lynne’s help, I chose Paul Giamatti, a great guy just like myself. Besides, like they say, Brad Pitt wasn’t available.
When I hired Paul to play me, I made him promise to do one thing. “What’s that?” he asked. I said, “Play me more intelligent than I really am.” He laughed and said, “Oh … that won’t be a problem.”
I drove Paul nuts on the set, overanalyzing every little motivation and gesture. One day, Milos yelled at me in front of everybody, “ZMUDA! Leave Zmuda alone!”
Meanwhile, Lynne was spending time with Courtney Love, who played her. Lynne told me, “I felt so sorry for her about all the conspiracy theories that she had killed Kurt Cobain. Shit, I felt horrible being treated badly by the Kaufmans, and here she had people saying she had killed her husband. Horrible.”
Once Lynne and I realized that Jim was going to approach the role of Kaufman in a “method acting,” Kaufmanesque kind of way—i.e., he would become Andy or Tony Clifton for the entire shoot, never breaking character—we realized this had to be captured on tape. So Lynne, Universal Studios, Jim’s production company (Pit Bull), and I agreed that we would all partner up and shoot a documentary of Jim’s journey into “channeling Kaufman.”
Since Jim the star wanted it, Lynne as cameraman and I had free rein to shoot anywhere and at anytime, much to the discomfort of Milos and the rest of the crew. Seldom did the camera leave Lynne’s shoulder, and after a while, she became a fly on the wall and almost disappeared, offering us the opportunity to document some pretty bizarre happenings. Jim arrived at the studio every day in character, stayed in character all day, and went home in character. In fact, Milos Forman didn’t meet Jim until principal photography was over eighty days later.
Jim had researched Andy, who himself would always stay in character. In fact, when Andy would become Tony, he did so for three or four days. Bill Knoedelseder, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, who spent much time interviewing Andy and Tony, believed that “Tony Clifton was a controlled multi-personality disorder; i.e., Andy suffered from multi-personality disorder. And since he was in show business, always looking to present the absurd, it was natural that he would present Tony to his audience.” Andy kept a pink Cadillac convertible in his garage and drove it only when he was Clifton. Andy also was a strict vegetarian who didn’t drink or smoke. Tony was just the opposite, a chain smoker who was always slugging from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He’d eat steaks rare and run around town with hookers on his arm. Jim’s Clifton mirrored Kaufman’s in this regard … except for the hookers part. When you’re Jim Carrey, you don’t need to pay for it.
When we were shooting at Universal, Jim insisted that Lynne and I have lunch with him on the front porch of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho house. Jim would dress as Norman Bates’s mother, in granny dress and grey wig. Occasionally, when an unsuspecting Universal tram of tourists would drive by, Jim would jump out of his chair, pick up a real axe, and run after the tram, smashing into it, actually denting the hell out of the vehicle. The unsuspecting tourists thought it was just some minimum-wage actor Universal had hired to give them a scare. They were much more interested in the guy in the Frankenstein suit. Little did they know this was superstar Jim Carrey. Axe-wielding granny tore through those Universal tourist trams like Godzilla tore through Tokyo. I thought this was pretty rad, reminiscent of the golden days of Hollywood when stars could literally get away with murder and the powerful studios would mop it up. Carrey had balls as big as Kaufman’s. Lynne and I were really beginning to like this guy. He was a daredevil like Andy.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
