It's natural to wonder, "What the heck is going on here?" After all, Andy Kaufman is involved, and any time the oddball comedian/performer/rabble-rouser is involved, you have to wonder.
The latest stunt is a kind of resurrection. It's just the sort of prank you'd figure Kaufman would pull when all seemed lost, buried and largely forgotten.Kaufman -- of "Saturday Night Live" and "Taxi" fame -- soared into the American entertainment heavens, flamed out rather quickly and died young, leaving behind a core of devotees including some big names in comedy. He died at 35 in 1984 of a rare form of lung cancer, and it's fair to say his career had been sputtering years before that.
And yet, here he comes again.
His buddy Bob Zmuda published a memoir in September titled "Andy Kaufman Revealed! Best Friend Tells All," and journalist Bill Zehme published a biography this month titled "Lost in the Funhouse: The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman." Now, Universal has released its biographical movie "Man on the Moon," directed by Milos Forman and starring Jim Carrey.
Kaufman, the child-man with eyes so blue and round they looked like delftware saucers, cracked a wall between performance art and mainstream comedy. The work he cared most about was everything other than the work he became most known for: portraying Latka Gravas, the good-natured mechanic with the funny accent on "Taxi." Kaufman considered the sitcom too restrictive and beside the point, but the money was good and it made him a star. National audiences saw the "real" Kaufman in such venues as "Saturday Night Live," "The Tonight Show," "Late Night with David Letterman" and on TV specials.
Kaufman wasn't telling jokes, except when he was doing some other guy telling jokes badly. He did imitations, but only when he was doing his trademark Foreign Man doing a dead-on Elvis, or utterly terrible non-impressions of Ed Sullivan, Archie Bunker or Richard Nixon. He was doing show biz, but calling into question the very idea.
By all accounts, Kaufman was sure even as a boy that he would become a big star. Before he had graduated from junior college in Boston, he had in his repertoire the Elvis impression, the Foreign Man, the "Mighty Mouse" bit and his conga drumming -- all the stuff that would make him a national hit.
Through an old family friend he considered an uncle, veteran comedy writer Sam Denoff, Kaufman got some stage time at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles.
"They were stunned," said Denoff, who was there. "Some giggled. Some were like, 'What is this?' "
There were auditions at the Improv and Catch a Rising Star in New York. Kaufman's name was getting around. Nobody had ever seen anything like it, but they wanted to see more. About a year after his performance at the Comedy Store, Kaufman met writer-producer Carl Reiner, who in turn introduced Kaufman to his nephew, talent manager George Shapiro. Crazy Andy was headed for big things.
At best, Kaufman's stuff was considered brilliant. At worst, it seemed calculated to get attention by any means necessary. Even if it meant ignoring his manager's advice by indulging a boyhood obsession with wrestling. Even if it meant fouling up fellow performers on a live broadcast or embarrassing Dinah Shore on her talk show as Tony Clifton, his hostile-Vegas-lounge-performer persona.
One might say Kaufman always stayed in close touch with his inner child, but that would suggest he had cultivated an outer adult. Zehme writes about a descent that took Kaufman from the heights of fame to the point where he had difficulty getting work. Between the wrestling, the increasing prevalence of the obnoxious Clifton persona and embarrassing moments on live television, Kaufman had alienated audiences, club owners and TV executives.
"He became a pariah," Zehme said.
As Zmuda writes it, the plummet was the fulfillment of a particularly Kaufmanesque ambition: "His desire to succeed at failure had come full circle."