SCOTT ALEXANDER & LARRY KARASZEWSKI'S
NOTES ON THE SCREENPLAY

Well, we’ve gotten away with murder again.   "Man On The Moon" is our third anti-biopic -- a movie about somebody who doesn’t deserve one -- a subversive, upside-down tale of an iconoclast fighting the establishment.  However, it was almost our second.  After we wrote "Ed Wood" in 1992, our lives and career changed.  Suddenly, we were in demand.  Studios wanted another strange script about a weirdo, and they would trust us with more creative control than we had previously been used to.   So we frantically started scrounging around, examining oddballs we admired or found interesting: Billy Carter, Andy Kaufman, Larry Flynt, Jack Kevorkian... they all merited a trip to the library. 

For Andy, we watched a terrific documentary, Lynne Margulies’ "I’m From Hollywood," a tribute to Andy’s wrestling days.   We were tempted, because Andy was absolutely fascinating.   We loved the way he bent reality, confusing put-on with fact, and his good and bad sides made for a rich character... BUT -- we didn’t see a narrative.  We couldn’t find a shape or structure.   So many of the moments in his life were bogus -- breaking his neck, getting married, nervous breakdowns -- that we were bewildered as to their significance.  Do fake events count as story?  So we abandoned the idea, and a few months later, we sold a Larry Flynt pitch to Columbia Pictures.   We spent a year writing the first draft, Milos Forman came aboard and directed a terrific movie,  and now it was official: We were the crazy biopic guys. 

Not a week went by that we weren’t treated to a wacky submission: Preacher Gene Scott, Bob Marley, the Village People, Billy Martin, Linda Lovelace, Buffalo Bob Smith, Charles Manson, Betty Page, George "Superman" Reeves... even a guy who wrestled grizzly bears in a robot suit.  All these screwball underdogs made for entertaining reading, but nothing quite connected.   So we kept ourselves busy writing regular Hollywood scripts, waiting for the inspiration to tackle another biopic.  We had to be choosy, because bios are huge undertakings -- months of research and interviews, double or triple the usual time commitment. 

And then -- one day a phone call came out of the blue from Danny DeVito.  He and Milos Forman had a "secret project" they wanted to discuss.  We were ushered into a room with Danny, small-talk was dispensed with, drinks were served, and then Danny pitched us his idea: "An Andy Kaufman movie!"  We looked at each other in disbelief.               

 Danny knew Andy from his years on "Taxi."  Danny knew Milos from "One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest."   One night, Danny had regaled Milos with hilarious, bizarre, touching Andy Kaufman stories.  Milos was intrigued, and they decided to approach us about writing it.  We went back to our office, unsure what to do.  We had discarded the idea years earlier... and yet -- who were we to contradict Danny DeVito and Milos Forman, who believed this would make a good movie?  So we signed on.  "Great!" they responded.  "We’ll sell it to Universal.  Let us know when there’s a first draft!"                   

Oops.  For the first time in our career, we had taken a job without figuring out the story beforehand.  In the past, we always had a three-act structure, a preliminary roadmap.   But this time, we blithely assumed it would just show up.