Inside a fantasy world, a fun house of his own design, where incongruous obsessions took hold, then became staples in his professional repertory. Throughout his 35 years on earth, he defiantly lived In fact, most of his famous comic bits were born in childhood performances that he delivered at children's birthday parties around his hometown of Great Neck, N.Y. Tomorrow would have been Kaufman's 51st birthday, so the occasion seems right to celebrate properly that which has been obscured by the harsh realities of big-time show business, which he railed against throughout Top 10 within three weeks, marching Kaufman toward imminent forgetability all over again. While Jim Carrey deftly inhabits the spirit of the late comic provocateur in the film, "Man on the Moon" slipped from the box-office In the Funhouse: The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman" (Delacorte Press). The Moon." Abetting the cause are two new books, "Andy Kaufman Revealed! - Best Friend Tells All" (Little Brown), a memoir by his irrepressible friend Bob Zmuda, and my own authorized biography, "Lost (Wrestling! Hello?) His extremely large eyes obviously saw the future in a way few of us were then prepared to grasp.įifteen years after his death from lung cancer on May 16, 1984, a kind of Kaufmania-redux has seized the nation, largely because of the release last month of the $52 million Milos Forman biographical film, "Man on Indeed, many of the transgressions that were part of his nightclub and television work, acts of oddball hubris that often alienated audiences in the late 1970's and early 80's, now happily thrive as the standardįare of our collective consciousness. Besides being the pre-eminent put-on artist of his generation, he was also a pioneering practitioner of various cultural trends long before they ever became trends. Known for a job he disliked - playing the role of the dithering immigrant mechanic Latka Gravas on the sitcom "Taxi" - he has never been given his due as the astonishing cultural prognosticator that he truly Andy Kaufman, a Comedian Known for Unorthodox Skits, Dies at 35 (May 18, 1984)īy BILL ZEHME s with most visionary taste makers, the comic performer Andy Kaufman was misunderstood in life, then eventually reviled.'Man on the Moon' Film of Comic Andy Kaufman (Jan.`Man on the Moon': Exploring the Outer Limits of an Odd Comedic Universe (Dec.But in the months before his cancer diagnosis, Kaufman showed signs of going back to the rigorously rehearsed, music-oriented routines that originally made him famous, like his uncanny Elvis impersonation or his gibberish conga-drum routine.Andy Kaufman: The Bug-Eyed Comic Who Saw the Future His Broadway debut- in a play called Teaneck Tanzi: The Venus Flytrap, co-starring Debbie Harry (!)- opened and closed in one night. He was banished from "Saturday Night Live" by-way-of on-air, call-in vote. In the years leading up to his death, Kaufman's career was in a freefall after losing favor with fans by wrestling with women and generally acting like a jackass in public. While doing research for today's review of Andy and His Grandmother, a unique record made up of comedian Andy Kaufman's personal recordings between the years 19, I couldn't help but wonder: If Kaufman had not died of cancer on May 16, 1984, at the age of 35, where would his infamously unpredictable act have gone?
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