Andy Kaufman. Bob Zmuda

three messages on my machine from irritated executives who lambasted me for telling Jim he had the role. He had obviously called them. Ten minutes later (after they too had viewed the tape), they all called back and apologized: “Of course he has the role.” He was Andy Kaufman. Fuck Nic Cage. I never called him back. I was as bad as DeVito was about returning phone calls.

      Now here’s the punch of all punches: A year later, when the film was shot, edited, and presented, I was at the opening-night premiere. There was a grand party afterwards, and as I was consuming my alcoholic beverage of choice at the bar, I felt a tap on my shoulder. Lo and behold, it was Nicolas Cage. Before I had a chance to tense up—after all, I’d stopped returning his calls—he immediately put me at ease and said, “Bob, it’s OK. I couldn’t have done what Jim did. He was fucking great.” We shared more than a few cocktails, and as it turned out he and Jim had been close friends for years. Then I asked him, “Nic, why didn’t you make that audition tape?” “Oh yes, the audition tape. Well, the reason I didn’t make the audition tape was because my good buddy, Jim Carrey, told me, ‘Guys in our position shouldn’t make audition tapes.’” Then he broke into uproarious laughter. I just shook my head and smiled: Jim Carrey. I rest my case.

      Now that Jim was cast, Universal left it to me to choose who should play me, although I did consider their suggestions. On the top of the list were Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti.

      One Saturday night, I received this bizarre phone call from Milos at 3:00 a.m., telling me he had found the perfect person to play me: GARTH BROOKS! I was in shock. “Garth Brooks, the country western singer? Milos, he isn’t even an actor.” Milos informed me that Garth had hosted SNL that evening. Milos watched it and said the guy was terrific. Come Monday, I got a tape of the show and sure enough, Garth held his own with the Not Ready For Prime Time Players. And “Bob Zmuda played by Garth Brooks” sounded crazy enough to work. If not, at least I might get laid in Oklahoma.

      Messages were sent back and forth between Garth’s people and Milos. Did Garth understand that besides playing me, he also had to play Tony Clifton, Andy Kaufman’s alter ego, just as I had done for Andy over the years? Brooks understood. In fact, he wanted the role so badly, I was told he canceled one of his sold-out concerts on a Saturday to fly to LA and have dinner with Milos. Much to Milos’s surprise, he walked into the restaurant dressed like and doing a spot-on impression of Tony Clifton. Milos loved it and wanted to give him the role, but at the last minute, Brooks’s agency had a change of heart and decided against it. Brooks, not to let the experience of playing Tony fall by the wayside without some payday, a year later summoned up his own alter ego by the name of “Chris Gaines” and released an album in that name, giving himself a goatee and a whole other look. The album didn’t do so well, but I did get a kick when a reviewer from Rolling Stone said, “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.