Jim and Andy: Spike Jonze and Chris Smith on documentary charting Jim Carrey's controversial transformation into comedian Andy Kaufman

Documentary Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond shows a side to Hollywood star Jim Carrey you've never seen before.

The film charts the actor's evolution into cult comedian Andy Kaufman for 1999 film Man on the Moon, a performance which saw Carrey maintain the oddball's identity for the duration of the shoot much to the chagrin of his director (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest's Milos Forman), entertainment of his co-stars (Danny DeVito, Courtney Love) and wonder of the world.

His controversial transformation was caught on camera, the buried footage of which has endured as something close to Hollywood legend. After Spike Jonze - director of films Being John Malkovich and Her - convinced Carrey to show him the footage, however, the idea for Jim & Andy was born.

“I only watched it a couple of years ago," Jonze recalls. “I'd talked to Jim about it for years [and] over time I was like, 'We should do something with that' and he'd go 'Yeah, we should' and then we’d never do anything. A couple of years ago, I asked him if I could see some of it - he sent me 30-40 minutes worth [NB: there is over 100 hours worth of footage] and in that alone, you could see what [the documentary] was going to become.”

Carrey crucially agreed to provide candid context to his personal experience for the first time, something Jonze tasked British director Chris Smith with capturing over a vital two-day period.

“It was efficient,” Smith states. “[Jim is a] very articulate speaker and able to convey his thoughts in a way that a lot of people don’t. I think it's because he's put so much thought into his career and existence and everything else that's going on in his head. I didn't know him personally going into the project but Spike did so he had a much better sense of the scope this could have. I trusted him that there could be something more than just an analysis of a making of.”

The result is an enthralling exploration into a beguiling method performance which won comedy star Carrey - whose credits at the time included The Mask, Ace Ventura (both 1994) and The Truman Show (1998) - a Golden Globe. Regardless of whether you're a longtime Kaufman fan or a complete newcomer to Carrey's Man on the Moon performance, the resulting doc is a must-watch breaking down the footage that Universal prevented the world from seeing in the belief it would harm the original film's box office.

Did Smith and Jonze ever struggle with the balancing act?

“I think the goal of any documentary is to try to be true to the experience. We were juggling not only the making of Man on the Moon and that crazy experience that had been documented but also doing a biography of both Andy and Jim and how this experience affected Jim going forward. That was the real struggle but it wasn't something that was worrisome - it was a challenge we entered into. It was fun to live in that world for a year.”

Smith continues: “It gave me a new appreciation for Jim's career and how progressive he was. I think it's easy to dismiss some of his work as fun and entertaining but [if you] look at it through the perspective of the way he's talking about it, you understand there's always something about every decision he made in terms of the work that he was doing.”

Considering Carrey's film star status, Smith ascertains that the actor was “not prescriptive in any way.”

“He was very hands-off in terms of letting us dive into this material. I don't think he had a great grasp of what we'd covered in the interview. It was a very loose conversation - he didn't go into it with any expectation.”

Spike - a friend of the actor's - added: “Jim talks about it in the documentary, about surrendering or trying to fight or control stuff from the point of view of his ego. He wasn't a producer on this, he had no control over it - he just trusted us and was like, 'Here you go, this is who I am in this moment in time as I try to figure out my shit; do with it what you want' and I think that's part of what's so special about.”

The hard work has paid off, something that hit Smith during a recent post-screening Q&A in New York.

“There was a man who asked a question that was so deep and specific that it stood out in the sense that it was about timeline and chronology - it was so specific to Andy's life, I was kind of confused and thought it was an aficionado who knew these things. After the screening, he came up and went, 'I'm Andy's brother.' With anything that's close to you, you're protective - you worry about how things will come be portrayed.

“He ended up coming again the next night because he loved the film. He said it was the closest he’s seen to capturing Andy's life and legacy. We tried to do something that would do justice to that which is really hard when you look at Andy's body of work so getting that confirmation from the people who were closest to him was really important to us.”

Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond is on Netflix now