who is tony....
...when theyre in the taxi studio and jim careys on the phone and paul giamatti is also in the scene!!??
shareObviously it was Jim Carrey. Tony disappeared from the set before Andy was called and he was still wearing his costume.
shareThis has bugged me ever since the first time I saw this movie (don't really like the movie or Kaufman; thought Carrey gave an absolutely amazing performance).
It matters not which actor played "Tony Clifton" in the last scene. What matters is, if this is a re-creation of real life, if Tony Clifton did appear a year after Andy Kaufman's death and was not played by Bob Zmuda, then who the h*ll DID play him? If not, why even have that scene in the film???
In real life, Andy's brother occasionally played Tony Clifton as well, so it could have been him. I don't think it really matters, though. In my opinion they put the scene in the film deliberately to leave the ending ambiguous, which is completely in the spirit of Andy's work. I think asking why they did it is like asking why Andy screwed with the picture in his special - it was to mess with the audience.
x-caitlin-x
According to Bob Zumda's book and Lynne Margulies' writing, Bob Zumda played Tony Clifton at the Improvisation on the one year anniversary of Kaufman's death.
The movie, which is highly fictionalized, decided to feed the "Andy is alive" legend by leaving Clifton’s identity a mystery at the end. In real life there is no mystery.