Man on the Moon/Trivia

• Dyeing for Your Art: Carrey had his head shaved and lost weight to more accurately portray Kaufman dying of cancer.
• Executive Meddling: Universal was adamant the film come in under two hours, so several scenes were dropped or shortened, most of which appear on the DVD. This resulted in several missing trailer scenes.
• Fake Nationality: The Canadian Jim Carrey as the Jewish-American Andy Kaufman.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Danny DeVito, who usually plays Jerkass or Jerk with a Heart of Gold characters, as friendly-but-exasperated agent George Shapiro (see Celebrity Paradox in the main section).
  • Vincent Schiavelli, best known for creepy roles such as the Subway Ghost, as the head executive at ABC who represents the Show Business establishment.
  • Courtney Love as Andy's grounded, savvy lover Lynne Marguiles.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The choice of who would play Andy came down to Jim Carrey or Edward Norton (Nicolas Cage was also considered); Universal higher-ups got the final say when the filmmakers couldn't choose, and went for the bigger box-office draw. In the end, it didn't help the film at the box office.
  • The published screenplay was one of the earlier drafts and included many scenes/sequences that never made it to the filming stage. Most extensively, the Fridays "fight" and its aftermath would have been covered in full with Andy's two subsequent appearances on the show (and brief faux-conversion to born-again Christianity in the process). Fellow comedian (and lover, for a time) Elayne Boosler was a minor character in early drafts, but specifically asked not to be mentioned/depicted in the film.