Berlin International Film Festival 2000

Last time Milos Forman was at the Berlinale, he won a Golden Bear. This year, Oscar nominations (or the lack of them) were preying on the veteran Czech director's mind. He professed "shock" that Jim Carrey's performance as comedian Andy Kaufman in Man On The Moon had been overlooked by the Academy.

"He's paying the price for being too good," growled Forman. "He's so good that you don't see acting you see Andy Kaufman."

Forman (whose birthday it was yesterday) added that he took the Oscars seriously for one simple reason. "It gives you more power, and more power gives you freedom."

He saw the real-life Kaufman only once at a comedy club in the early 1970s. The comedian came up on stage, described a short story in exhaustive detail and then read it. "Before he'd finished reading, we were all on the floor laughing and I didn't know why."

Kaufman's grand-daughter appears briefly in Man On The Moon something which would have surprised the comedian, who didn't even realise he'd fathered a daughter (the mother gave up the child for adoption).

Forman had a neat formula for the difference between European films and Hollywood. "In American cinema," he reflected, "you feel that entertainment comes first and the soul-searching comes second if at all. In European cinema, it's the reverse. Soul-searching comes first and entertainment second if at all!"

Geoffrey Macnab