History YMMV / ManOnTheMoon

** The opening CreditsGag plays with this trope in that Andy is using it to deliberately alienate any fence-sitters in the audience. After the cut to black and a long silence, Andy slowly leans into the frame:
--->''Wow. You're still here. Oooookay! I hope you're not upset. I did that to get rid of the people who just wouldn't understand me, and don't even want to try!''

* EpilepticTrees: The website Movies Synced, which seeks out and lists movie/album combinations ala the famous "Dark Side of the Rainbow" combination of ''Film/TheWizardOfOz'' and ''Music/TheDarkSideOfTheMoon'', regards Music/{{REM}}'s 2001 album ''Music/{{Reveal}}'' (the first studio album they recorded and released after this film) as an alternate soundtrack for this movie. There ''are'' a noticeable number of songs that use show business/theatrical imagery and metaphors ("All the Way to Reno (you're gonna be a star)", "Imitation of Life", "Disappear", "Chorus and the Ring") and/or are [[IWantSong I Want (or You Want) Songs]] about longing for living out dreams or ambitions, especially those not understood by others, in effect carrying on the themes of this film's theme song "The Great Beyond". In a more specific oddity, the opening track "The Lifting" ''very'' closely approximates the length of the film's prologue (from the opening Universal Pictures logo to Andy starting the movie projector) and, if the album is played through multiple times, serves as a bookend by underscoring the final scene.

-->''Carrey nails Kaufman to the wall with something beyond mimicry and bordering on channeling, thus allowing the crazed wonder of Kaufman to speak more or less for itself. But there are more layers to the onion. Carrey has been a wide-open, read-me presence up to now, and Kaufman was utterly opaque. So when Carrey comes before us as Kaufman, suddenly emptied of the cartoonish desire, rage and paranoia we know so well, he somehow appears nakedly innocent and fiercely unknowable at the exact same time. Which makes the movie, and Carrey’s performance, profoundly Kaufmanic.''
* HilariousInHindsight: Early on in a December 23rd, 1994 ''Tonight Show'' interview with Jay Leno to promote ''Film/DumbAndDumber'', Jim Carrey joked that his next movie would show off his "sensitive side, the serious side" and be called ''Me with Cancer'', with Leno responding "If you can get laughs with that, you're the king." Almost exactly five years later, this {{Dramedy}} was released and he managed to pull it off!

* QuestionableCasting: This was the reaction in some quarters to the casting of Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman when it was announced in April 1998. Many observers, up to and including R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe, didn't think Carrey could pull it off. He had virtually nothing in common physically with Kaufman, and his reputation was that of a {{Slapstick}} LargeHam, not a ''real'' actor who could play a notorious performance artist (it didn't help that he beat out several such performers, such as Creator/SeanPenn and Creator/EdwardNorton, for the part; also, ''Film/TheTrumanShow'' hadn't yet been released so only people who closely followed his early career were aware he could handle dramatic work). But these observers ''didn't'' know what the filmmakers did: that Carrey was a huge fan of Kaufman and saw this as a dream-come-true role.

** Also averted: had Kaufman's surviving family had their way, his ''wrestling career'' would have been downplayed, as they were embarrassed by it. Alexander and Karaszewski, however, knew that it was too important -- not only because the public backlash against him was primarily due to it, but also because it meant so much to him personally -- to gloss over. Lynne Marguiles and Bob Zmuda note in the ''Andy Kaufman: I'm from Hollywood'' DVDCommentary that the family also didn't want Tony Clifton brought up, for much the same reasons as the wrestling.

* WTHCastingAgency: This was the reaction in some quarters to the casting of Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman when it was announced in April 1998. Many observers, up to and including R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe, didn't think Carrey could pull it off. He had virtually nothing in common physically with Kaufman, and his reputation was that of a {{Slapstick}} LargeHam, not a ''real'' actor who could play a notorious performance artist (it didn't help that he beat out several such performers, such as Creator/SeanPenn and Creator/EdwardNorton, for the part; also, ''Film/TheTrumanShow'' hadn't yet been released so only people who closely followed his early career were aware he could handle dramatic work). But these observers ''didn't'' know what the filmmakers did: that Carrey was a huge fan of Kaufman and saw this as a dream-come-true role.

* AwardSnub: Creator/JimCarrey won a second straight UsefulNotes/GoldenGlobe Best Actor award (albeit in a different genre category) and still didn't receive an UsefulNotes/AcademyAward nomination, the same treatment he got for ''Film/TheTrumanShow''. Reportedly the Oscar show's writers had to discard reams of material that would have tied into his being nominated. The film was ''completely'' shut out of Oscar nominations, in fact, even though "The Great Beyond" seemed highly likely for the Best Original Song final five; in the end it was only nominated for a Grammy for "Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media." (Lost to "When She Loved Me" from ''[[WesternAnimation/ToyStory2]]''). 1999 was an unusually competitive year for American film.

* AwardSnub: Creator/JimCarrey won a second straight UsefulNotes/GoldenGlobe Best Actor award (albeit in a different genre category) and still didn't receive an UsefulNotes/AcademyAward nomination, the same treatment he got for ''Film/TheTrumanShow''. Reportedly the Oscar show's writers had to discard reams of material that would have tied into his being nominated. The film was ''completely'' shut out of Oscar nominations, in fact, even though "The Great Beyond" seemed highly likely for the Best Original Song final five; in the end it was only nominated for a Grammy for "Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media." (Lost to [[WesternAnimation/ToyStory2 When She Loved Me]]). 1999 was an unusually competitive year for American film.

* BetterThanCanon: Critics from both ''Movieline'' magazine and ''Cineaste'' film journal argued that Creator/JimCarrey's Tony Clifton was better than Andy Kaufman's original take by going even bigger and more repulsive in his mannerisms, and also spoke to Carrey's performance being more than an imitation of Kaufman's work but rather a true ''interpretation'' of it. (The actual Lynne Marguiles and Bob Zmuda, discussing the performance in the DVDCommentary for the documentary ''Andy Kaufman: I'm from Hollywood'', noticed that Carrey applied AdaptationalIntelligence to the character -- presumably referencing that this Clifton is wittier than the standard takes.)

* AwardCategoryFraud: Jim Carrey straight-up said in his Golden Globe acceptance speech and backstage interview that he regarded this film as a drama rather than a comedy when he won Best Actor in the Musical/Comedy category. On the other hand, the film is a {{Dramedy}} and even verges on a diegetic musical.

* EpilepticTrees: The website Movies Synced, which seeks out and lists movie/album combinations ala the famous "Dark Side of the Rainbow" combination of ''Film/TheWizardOfOz1939'' and ''Music/TheDarkSideOfTheMoon'', regards Music/{{REM}}'s 2001 album ''Music/{{Reveal}}'' as an alternate soundtrack for this movie.

* AwardSnub: Creator/JimCarrey won a second straight UsefulNotes/GoldenGlobe Best Actor award (albeit in a different genre category) and still didn't receive an UsefulNotes/AcademyAward nomination, the same treatment he got for ''Film/TheTrumanShow''. Reportedly the Oscar show's writers had to discard reams of material that would have tied into his being nominated. The film was ''completely'' shut out of Oscar nominations, in fact, even though "The Great Beyond" seemed highly likely for the Best Original Song final five. 1999 was an unusually competitive year for American film.

-->''Wow. You're still here. Oooookay! I hope you're not upset. I did that to get rid of the people who just wouldn't understand me, and don't even want to try!''

** Averted in one key factor: had Kaufman's surviving family had their way, his ''wrestling career'' would have been downplayed, as they were embarrassed by it. Alexander and Karaszewski, however, knew that it was too important -- not only because the public backlash against him was primarily due to it, but also because it meant so much to him personally -- to gloss over.

* BetterThanCanon: Critics from both ''Movieline'' magazine and ''Cineaste'' film journal argued that Creator/JimCarrey's Tony Clifton was better than Andy Kaufman's original take by going even bigger and more repulsive in his mannerisms, and also spoke to Carrey's performance being more than an imitation of Kaufman's work but rather a true ''interpretation'' of it. (The actual Lynne Marguiles and Bob Zmuda, discussing the performance in the DVDCommentary for the documentary ''Andy Kaufman: I'm from Hollywood'', noticed that Carrey applied AdaptationalIntelligence to the character.)