You think I’m making that up? Kaufman did that as his entire act on a televised special, and was hailed for it with comments like, “Only Andy Kaufman would have the guts to try something so daring!”. When they were all done, he said thank you and left the stage. What is entertaining about a guy getting onstage, announcing that he has a growth on the back of his neck, and then letting the audience come up and touch it? The audience, who would have licked his boots if he had asked them, came up one by one and played along. But because he somehow had been knighted as Comedy’s Golden Boy, it was different? You can see dozens of people doing that regularly at open mike nights across the country. Kaufman is considered “ground-breaking” because he thought it was more entertaining to go onstage at a comedy club and not be funny. But now, with myopic hindsight, there’s nothing but praise for them. These were at the time universally considered to be the lamest episodes the show ever produced. In the later seasons, they indulged him even more by allowing Latka to develop a schizoid personality that turned him into other people. What other performer would be allowed to continue that kind of nonsense?
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The producers even agreed to a contract clause which guaranteed that Kaufman’s obnoxious alter-ego, lounge singer Tony Clifton, be featured in a couple of “Taxi” episodes - a professional arrangement that ended in an on-stage fight culminating with his physical removal from the studio.
Naturally, Conaway was perceived to be the bad guy, because Andy could do no wrong. At one point, Jeff Conaway became so upset with the way he abused his privileges and was never punished, that he got fed up and went after Kaufman with his fists. Kaufman was treated like the star of the show, even though it really revolved around Hirsch’s character. What Danny DeVito, Tony Danza, Marilu Henner, and Judd Hirsch aren’t saying now is that, when they were doing “Taxi,” he drove them crazy by showing up late to the set or not showing up at all and getting special treatment from the producers. What the producer seems to have forgotten is that in the first dozen shows or so, Latka spoke in his own gibberish language that Kaufman had made up! He could have said anything and it would have fit, and no one would have known if he flubbed a line. One of the producers marvels at how, in the show’s first season and with no previous sitcom experience, Andy never forgot his lines.
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Yet they all appear in the movie and have recently been quoted saying wondrous things about him. The cast of “Taxi,” on which he played Latka Gravas, unanimously hated him. He wasn’t that, but he was certainly among the most coddled and spoiled. But if you listen to the praise being heaped on Kaufman now, you’d think that he was the most fantastic entertainer to ever live. They were not hysterical nor the most ground-breaking comedy I’ve ever seen. I smirked at the Foreign-Man-Becomes-Elvis impersonation. I thought some of what he did was amusing. It is precisely that over-indulgence which I find most amazing.ĭon’t get me wrong.
Rarely does anyone refer to Andy Kaufman as what he truly was: a nutcase who was over-indulged by Hollywood and the rest of show business. They include phrases like “changed the face of comedy forever,” “splendidly surreal,” and the used-so-often-it’s-now-completely-deflated “comedy genius.” Yet even by its own ridiculous standards, the plaudits for Andy Kaufman are beyond all reason. Show business is well-known for its lack of perspective, particularly on stardom. They’re all caught up in the hype of “Man On The Moon,” the movie starring Jim Carrey as Kaufman which opens this week, and the two bios of him which have been published within the last month. In case you haven’t noticed, the media has pronounced this Andy Kaufman Month.
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