Thinking Sideways: Andy Kaufmans greatest joke?

got a mystery. What yeah we do it's a pretty scary one too. Well, no it isn't. But you know what the thing is, I had so much fun last week or not last week, last time that I hosted doing a wrestling episode. I've been decided we do another one. Seems like it's been a million years and we did that episode. Really does, because in our world it's been a month. Yeah, yeah, three weeks. Okay, Well, we're not actually gonna do a wrestling story, well a little bit.

It's kind of kind of a wrestling story. We are this week for anyone who has Devin would say, didn't read the episode title, going to be talking about Mr Andy Kaufman and you might say, well, why, Well, the mystery is is Andy Kaufman really dead or not? Because he's one of those people who has had sightings of him four years. I like Andy a little more than I like Elvis at times. I'm okay with that. I'm gonna get so much hate mail for saying sorry, I'm sorry.

So let me give everybody just the quick, real brief version and then we'll get into some details. So brief introduction to Andy Kaufman. Uh. He was a comedian. He had his career was in the nineteen seven and these the late seventies, mid to late and then the early eighties, and he is known for being a character on the TV show Taxi. He died at thirty five of a very rare form of lung cancer on sixteenth of May.

But because of all of the stunts and the crazy things that he had done over the years, a lot of people really didn't believe that he had really died. They were sure that it was a prank. Well he was, I mean, he was known as the guy who would take a joke a little too far. I think a little is an understand I'm trying to be generous. I don't want to say bad things about dead people. Oh no, no,

there's nothing bad. And he took jokes way too far to the degree he like he took it to when it stopped being funny and then kept going and then eventually started being funny again. There's a really interesting radio Lab I'm sorry to digress for a second, really really interesting radio lab episode about this, in which I encountered one of my favorite comedians in the entire world for the very first time ever. Her name is Kristin shaw which you you all know her. She's got the voice.

You know who she is. She's She's Louise on Bobsberger's. Yeah. Anyways, they did this show called Christian Shawl Is a Horse where it was him and I'm sorry, it was her and a male comedian on stage, and literally he would just go, oh, Kristin Shawl is a horse. Kristin Shawl is a horse, like for fifteen minutes straight while she danced around on stage. And it's that's progression. It's a very well studied thing now where it's like it's funny for a minute and then it's not funny, and then

it's really not funny, and then it's hilarious. Again, just like this story I just told it is and thank you for sharing, Devin, welcome. I don't know how to follow that, So we're just gonna start talking some more about Andy Coffin, as I briefly mentioned, started his act in the seventies, starting comedy clubs, and he wasn't always

that well received. He, as we had briefly mentioned, he his style of comedy was different and it was not what people were used to, and it really really put people off, because I mean, we've all been to a comedy show. The typical thing is a comedian gets up there and he does his stick of jokes and for five ten minutes whatever his time is, and then he gets down and he leaves the stage. And he didn't really think of himself as a comedian, No, he didn't.

He was more of a It was performance artist, performance artists, thank you, Joe. That is exactly it. It was art. And so Andy would get up there and he would do very weird things that people didn't know how to do how to react to. Um, so let's give an example that Let's actually give a Kaufman example here, which would be the character known as foreign Man. Yeah, which if you've ever seen. Taxis basically the same character lat The character he played was Lacka, and it was based

on the foreign man character, absolutely right. So here's what happens. Uh Andy as foreign man would walk up on skate stage and he'd be rather nervous and moving his hands around and flailing and looking at the crowd wide eyed. And then when he spoke, he had this weird, clipped accent that nobody recognized, in this kind of high pitched voice, and it was funny, and he would tell everybody that he was originally from Caspar, which was an island in

the Caspian Sea. Both his accent and that place are made up, of course, and then he would go on to tell jokes and they were terrible because he intentionally told the joke wrong, like he didn't get what how a joke worked, and the audience would at first kind of h and then people would get angry and they'd start aren't too boo, And then other people in the crowd would start to say shut up and trying to

defend him, and he would keep doing stuff. He would say, well, um in his funny accent, which I'm not going to try to replicate because I can't pull it off. He would try to then say I'll do it. I'll do an impression for you in his funny little accent, and he would say, I'm going to be I don't know, let's just say Lyndon Johnson. And then he would turn around and he would turn back to the mic and in the exact same voice and accent, say hello, I

am Lyndon Johnson. And of course people would laugh at the first one. And he would do three of these or four of these at a time, and by this time the crowd it's just kind of losing it because they just don't know what's going on. Well, it's funny because it's so absurd, but it's also bad comedy and paid to get into a comedy club. You get angry because this guy looks like he's bombing. He's bombing in the worst sort of way, and he doesn't he even get it. And then he would say, wait, I'll be

Elvis Presley. I'm gonna do an impression of Elvis, and he would turn around and they would start the music that actually start the music for Elvis, and he would really quick His hair was always kind of slicked back in this weird style, and he would pop his collar up, he'd brush his hair real fast while looking away from the audience, and then just before the lyrics hit, he would turn around and he would do a dead on Elvis.

He could sing and sounded really close to Elvis, and the crowd would lose their mind because it's like, holy crap, this is amazing. And then the song would end and he would immediately flip back into the foreign man voice and accent and say thank you very much and be done and just leave. This sounds very familiar. Like there there's at least one comedian right now that I can think of that does comedy like this. Yes, that is a great example. Borat Borat is the modern equivalent of

Andy Kaufman's foreign man character. Yeah, that is a character too. I couldn't And what was a movie? Yeah, yeah, okay, named after the char See here's the thing. Guys, guys like Sasha Bary Cohen and Andy Kaufman, they committed to a character. And Kaufman did not break character. Almost never do you see him break character. He doesn't crack up. He's so wholeheartedly committed because that's his performance art. He's

making art. And I didn't think. Here's the thing about him too, is that he was so into his characters. He was actually a non drinker and a vegetarian. Yeah, but what he was if his character ate meat and drank booze, then you're talking about Tony Clifton, who we're going to talk about later. Yeah, the character, and yeah he was. He was amazing and uh, he was also really weird. I will say this right now. I think

Coffman's a weird dude. I also think that he was a creative genius in his own way, like the things he came up with. What you're saying, Okay, is he or is You're right? I apologize spoilers. He in his performances was a creative genius and could continue to be today if indeed he is still alive and performing and possibly performing. But you know, as we talked about he, uh you know we said this several times. There was the performance, aren't He's quoted Blants is saying, quote, I'm

not trying to be funny. I just want to play with their heads. So he really did just want to mess with the ADDI I think there there's definitely a group of people. I think I'm kind of one of these people on a lot of different levels. But you know, to me, being funny isn't so much that other people

laughing are laughing. It's as long as I think it's hilarious, right, And so if I, if I or you know, Andy are kind of pulling the wool over someone's eyes in a hilarious way, that's extra funny to me, versus you know, everybody else is laughing. But I'm kind of like, I know this joke, you know, inside it out, and it's kind of lame. Well that that kind of joke though, going up on stage and telling the same yo mama joke, you know, five nights a week, it's it's no fun.

But going up and pulling the wool over people's eyes and getting them all to react in crazy different ways, that's gotta be just so gratified, absolutely, absolutely apparently like he really did, because over the years he, as I said, he pulled so many pranks and so many hoaxes and so many gags on people, and he took them to such a degree that people no longer knew what reality was. An example, this is not a couchman example, but this is the kind of same reaction and maybe we've talked

about this before, but was it Alan fund Fund? Yes, thank you, Alan Fund. So he did Candy Camera, and people began to realize that when he was around, there was a camera going on and a gag was happening. And he gets on an airplane and this was Joe do you remember this. It was in the seventies. He gets on an airplane and this was the thing at the time. The airplane got hijacked and they said, fly us to Cuba, and the passengers on board are all kind of nervous until one person realizes that Funt is

on the plane. Fund it's candy camera. Where do you guys have the camera? He's like, no, it's not a joke. It's not a joke. It's not a joke. Called and cut it out there. They're serious, the real guns. Everybody's like, this is like the whole plane is laughing on their way to Havannah. But but yeah, it was. That's the kind of thing, like he had done this so much that nobody believed him when he told the truth, and that happened with Kaufman. Nobody believed him when he would

say things like, oh, you're making this up. You're totally making this up. He just did such crazy stuff that, having been said, were the fun really? I mean he had one he had one bit not was it, But Kaufman, he had a whole slew of him, which brings us right now we're already through the story because as I said, he died in nobody believes he died, or a bunch of people didn't believe at the time that he had

actually died. So we have two very simple theories. Is Kaufman deadman alive or you know, his Kaufman dead but at a different date possible. I roll that into the Andy Kaufman is alive because that means he faked his death. Okay, either he faked his death or he really really I

think he probably faked his death. And then he was probably planning and coming back after God spoilers, and then and then what happened is he's like he was all making his plans to to make his comeback, you know, about a year, and he get run over web bus and I think, you guys, this is probably his last thought was like, you know, oh this sucks, but god, I love the Irony's actually probably okay, So let's go into thirty one, which is that Andy Coffin really did

die in there are people who believe this. There's a lot of people who believe that because officially, and this is I pulled up his death by the way, because you can find this on the smoking gun. He died of renal failure caused by metastasized large cell lung carcinoma, also known as lung cancer, on the sixteenth of May four at Seniors Sinai Medical Center in Los Ange, Dualists.

He was diagnosed in November of nine three. He'd had a persistent cough and he finally went into the doctor and they finally figured out what was going on, and they gave him radiation therapy, but that didn't really do anything because tat size cancers spread, they're moving around. Well, that's it, the lung lung cancer like it goes like everywhere. My dad had lung cancer and he got into his liver, as bladder, his brain, right, and that's what happened to Andy.

Is the same thing. And so Andy he also believed in natural medicine. He was really big in the meditation and transit transcendentalism. Is that the no, that's not the right one. He was really into the spiritual side of things and the belief that the brain could cure a lot of things. So he did these natural medicines and these natural diets with his vibrations and yes, and his aura and all of that kind of stuff. He was trying to fix it um and the radiation and didn't

do any good. It didn't just couldn't take it out. So what does he do? He? Uh, he starts following what a lot of people would consider fringe medicine, to the point that he actually went to the Philippines in I believe it was four months after he had been been diagnosed, and he underwent psychic surgery. I think it was six weeks. He went under the psychic knife for six week periods and we stopped all of his Western

medications and he seemed to be fine. As soon as he came back home, he immediately started going downhill um

and and at that point he then passes away. Okay, Well, the reading I've done says that Kaufman had an open casket, and I believe that to be true because there are many many sources that this is terrible and Andy kind have brought this out in people, But people went to the funeral, and they went to pay their respects at the casket and they were poking the body, like, Hey, Andy, I know it's a gag, stand up your jerk, come on, Like, yeah,

I gotta say that. Usually they don't have open coffin funerals for people who died of cancer because you really do look like hell, and he did look like hell. There was there was a report of him being at a show with his girlfriend a month or several months prior, and because of the radiation, he was losing his hair, so he had his head shaved in the mohawk, which I think is awesome. But he's also wearing this kind of weird leather outfit. But he was so amaziated that

it was hanging on him. And that's when the world really kind of oh, oh, he might sort of maybe be actually be sick. He might be telling the truth. Either that or he's really committed to this. Yeah. Um so yeah. But apparently people were poking the body, so that leads me to believe that it truly was open and they thought he was just playing sick joke on. Kaufman was laid to rest in Beth David's cemetery. You can actually go on Let's find a Grave dot com.

I think is the website that that's the famous one. Yeah, where you can find all the famous people and you can see his headstone. It's there, so it's not like he's mysteriously disappeared. Yeah, but if I were going to pull it, you know I'm dead. I'm not gonna. I understand that that did people fans go by there and leave graffiti, like to do with Jim Morrison's grave. I have no idea, to be honest with you, I have

no idea. If they just stand there and do their their mon monologues, I have no Most fans probably just think he isn't actually there anyway. So um so let's let's go ahead in this theory. We're gonna go ahead and move towards statements and things that were said people who knew Andy closest. The first one is going to be his brother. Is this to support the fact that he actually died? Yes, this isn't We're in the theory that Andy Kaufman actually did die. So this is I'm

submitting my evidence, prosecutor barrister. I don't know Michael did it. Kind of both ways. Okay, let let me let me run this through joke, because I know where you're heading with that. Some things I think caught Michael off guard and he got caught up in them. But he has always said for many, many years that he believed that his brother had died and was positive he knew his

brother has died. Now believed he knew his brother had died, except that several years back, I actually think it was in he said a man approached him with a note and gave him a note, and the note was supposedly from Andy, and supposedly looked like it was Andy's hand writing, saying meet me at this diner at a certain date and time, because that's before I'm going to come back and reveal that the whole thing was a prank to the world where he went and and he never showed.

And then a few years later, some woman came forward to him and she started saying that she was Andy's daughter now, and he did have a daughter. He had

a daughter. I think she was born in nineteen sixty nine, But this girl was saying that she was twenty four years old after he died, which would have made it meant that she was conceived and born after Andy died, absolutely right, and that he had left Hollywood, and one of his reasons to do that was to raise her, except that it was very quickly found out that the logic of the math doesn't work, um and be um. She was an actress, her parent lineage was very well known.

People very quickly figured out who her father was. Actually have a real father, yea. So that whole thing went sideways. And I thought I had heard somewhere that Michael, Andy's brother, Michael, had actually recruited her to do to play this role. I read that too, I have to Michael has always asserted that he didn't do it. The story I think you're talking about is that, according to her, she met him in an art gallery and he said, oh, you kind of look like you could be part of my family.

Well let's do this thing. YadA, YadA, YadA. He has always attested that that is not really what happened, and that she came to him saying who she was, and then he fell for it. He has since always since gone back to the Andy Kaffin died and I know my brother's dead own not I mean not to speak ill of anyone, but I bet he got some money from the like media. No, no, this that this thing went south and her really fact, maybe he was trying

to get some money from the media. I don't know. Well, it's a good point because there is the Andy Kaufman Award, or it's not the Andy Kaufman Award. What is there's a comedy award thing that they do that is in his name, and that's when she that's when she showed up with her allegations. Correct, she showed up on stage at that and so it is possible that it was a way to generate publicity for the event or for

her or for her I don't know. The The interesting thing is as a lot of people think this is gonna make my career, and that tends to tank their career. She is I've not found anything about her since, so she just kind of disappeared. She got blacklisted. Yeah, I can see why. Yeah. Let's move to the next character in this theory, which would be Bob Zamuda. Would you real real human being? Real human being? He uh. He was actually Andy's right hand man. They worked together, they

were co creators together. They made a lot of the skits and the gags and and masterminded a lot of it, and it took over one of one of Andy's characters at some point, right, right, So they worked together for years. And the problem with Simuna is that he's not a trustworthy character because he was in on all the gags and he goes back and forth. He changes the story a lot. He said no and he really died. No,

and he's really alive and he's hiding somewhere in Arizona. No, and he really died No, and he's really alive and he's hiding somewhere in Mexico. I. Yeah, there, That is one of the most recent sightings that came up. But so he um, he is really a hard one, just because he switches his story up and changes camps all the time. Yeah. Yeah, at one point switched over and made that wrote a book about how Andy's coming back. Right.

He's written more than one book, Joe, I only heard about the one he's Yeah, we'll talk about his most recent book here in just a minute. But he's written some uh. To be honest, that the Kaufman family doesn't really like him that much. They Andy Kaufman's dad, for many, many years, tried to broke her peace with everybody who was involved with Andy, and you did you, either of you guys watched the Jim Carrey movie Man on the Moon. Okay, it's it's based it's a movie about Andy Kaufman. It's

actually a fun, entertaining movie. I laughed out loud, and it's one of the few times that I didn't mind watching Courtney Love on screen. Well and you know, speaking of actually crazy people. Yeah, so yeah, it's not a bad movie. Well, what Andy's dad did is he he tried to bring Bob in to kind of fill in some gaps and get some of the story. And Bob then began to exert his influence in his opinions on thing to the point that it really it pushed the

family out. And the family has said that the movie is the portrayal of Andy Kaufman. In that movie is a Bob's Amuda creation. It's not actually Andy. It's what Bob made in his tellings of it. But Andy close to his family when he was alive. Um, I mean, because that's right. That's one of the things you get

a little confused about or that are easy. You know, it's it's easy to get a little confused there because you know, the family has one picture of him, and Bob had another picture of him, and depending on who Andy spent most time with, and it sounds likeable. So they were pretty they were very tired. And so the thing is is, yeah, I see how Bob would have a clear picture of and or different picture. But Bob has also Bob is a spin doctor. I think if

I were in doc. And that's the problem is that he spun the thing so many ways that it's hard to know how honest he is being to the actual story of Andy. Probably not. Yeah, let's go to character number three in our story, which is going to be George Shapiro. George Shapiro pronounced that name correctly. George was Andy's manager, and he is a very well known name in Hollywood, and he's pretty credible guy. He's pretty credible.

Would you call him witness? Uh? Participants, character witness? Maybe character witness, I'll go with that. I don't believe that he was actually in the hospital when Andy passed away, but Bob was in or I'm sorry, not Bob. George Shapiro was in on almost everything that Andy was up. He was his manager. Yeah, you would need your manager to be in yeah, you need your manage her to back you up and help you out fake death certificate or whatever. Yeah. So Shapiro has always said, no, no,

he actually passed away, and I would know. I would have been running this whole thing. So no, I'm sorry, but it's it's he's really gone. We got one last person in this theory, which is going to be Andy's girlfriend, Lynn Margolis. Lynn and Andy had been together for about a year before he passed away, and she has always maintained that it's not a stunt, it's not a gag. And this is something that we were just about to touch on earlier, which is Bob's Moods, latest book. She

co authored it. Although I'll be honest, I didn't read the book. I read a lot of reviews and a lot of synopside of it. And it's very strange because whereas Bob goes back and forth about the fact that Andy might or might not have died and then kind of semi settles on he did, she spends this weirdo story about how, oh, yeah, no, Andy actually died, but by the way, and he was bisexual, and he didn't

die of cancer, he died of AIDS. I don't. I guess I don't understand why you think that's a bizarro story. And I know that my sarcasm is sometimes so sophisticated that you don't understand what I'm making a joke. But I'm not making a joke. Okay, there's a very huge difference between cancer, But think about the symptoms that anybody had reported of him, coughing AIDS, severe weight loss. AIDS actually leaves you. That's actually leaves you open to certain

things like cancer too. I get that. But she she pulled it out of nowhere. It was very new and nobody else. I mean, she was saying that Andrew was was patrolling the Castro district looking for men, which has never come out, and those kind of stories always come out. Yeah, so it's kind of hard to imagine cruising around the Castro District and not being recognized by a lot of people.

That's that's my problem is that when any of these very famous people who were doing things trying to keep him on the down low, suddenly the revelations come out thirty forty years later, Well that's weird. Well, he was a very talented character actor, so it's possible he was just putting on a character when he was trolling for men. But no, I mean, I think, I mean, frankly, the idea that he had AIDS isn't so far affetched to me.

And also the fact that in the you know, eighties, that there would be a spin to say, I know, he died of cancer to hide the fact that he died of AIDS in the eighties, that is also not shocking. So I'll give you that. I won't I won't say that. There's no way that's possible because so much stuff around Kaufman was a spin jobs. It's genuinely I think, I'm fairly sure. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, But in the eighties that was still a thing that people

were saying. Even in the nineties, Oh yeah, I know he was. He was hidden because it was quote unquote gay disease, and so, you know, to not solely his I'm rolling my eyes right now what I'm saying, it's not his legacy. Yeah, I guess, let's you know, let's say that, you know, none of us think the less of Andy for being gay, indeed that was the case, or bisexual, whatever. Yeah, but his family, especially his parents probably would have wanted to keep it hushed up. Even

a Fandy himself wasn't that secretive about it. You know. It's I'm sure his parents would have wanted to keep it hushed up. Now, and I will say that if if it was that it did come about and he was notorious for liking prostitutes, yeah, well he couldn't. I mean, and frankly, he wouldn't have had to be bisexual to get AIDS. That's why I'm bringing this up is I don't want to I don't want to pigeonhole it one way, and I don't want to say anything negative to either side.

But he had a predi action to putting himself in a very risky scenario. I mean, he totally could have so this that That's what I've got here on on this No more, There's there's one There's one funny thing that I want to point out. And I'm not tories for doing this, and people probably hate me because they think it's my nut ship and who cares. But I find the relationship between Andy and Lynn over time very funny.

People lament that they were soul mates and it was this perfect relationship and YadA, YadA, YadA, and all this stuff, and it turns out that's not the case, according to Michael the and some other other reports that I've read that yeah, actually they had for the last six months both of them been complaining about the other and had to leave. But Andy got sick and so they didn't They didn't do anything. Yeah, I find I find it funny though when it it gets elevated to this this level.

If you if you watch Man of the Moon, that's one of those places where I see that happen. Well, I mean again, it's like, okay, was it. They were together for a year and for literally half they're saying, Wow, we probably don't need to be doing this anymore. It really means that, you know, a couple of months in they probably were thinking, well, we don't need to do this. But he got sick and she was like, well, I'm going to be the jerk who weaves a dude with

cancer or aid, which is you can't do that. That looks pretty bad. That looks pretty bad, even if it's only been a couple of months. You know. Yeah, that's that's kind of admirable that she you know, to me, a lot of people would be understandably that's a tough thing to handle. We're gonna move on to theory number two, which is that or Andy did not die at that time and he faked his death. I think or not.

It's that he did not die at that time. If he were still alive today, he wouldn't be that old, really, so he'd be he was thirty five and eighty four, he be in his sixties, the sixty seven or something like that. Yeah, that's not that's not old. That's not crazy old listening, it's not listen a little girl, you sure how this? Like goes in the little you know, Joe says, that's not ald at all, and Steve goes, yeah, that's not that old, crazy old. You're right, it's not.

It's old, but it's not elderly. Listen. Take your piece of taffy and stuff. Okay, okay, warm out of your pocket. The best time. Let's let's go into this. So Eddie had been pretty excited or pretty interested in the concept of faking his own death. Think obsessed as the term people used, Well, it is, but I don't know that obsessed is. But it came up quite a few times.

And um, to get into this, you have to get in the mindset of to a little bit, we've got to leave the land of logic behind and just fall into the character or the characters of Andy Kaufman to kind of think in his realm, that's your favorite thing. He had a different way of going about stuff. It was. It was a strange, twisted character. I don't mean twisted in a really ugly way, no, No, he just there was something a little warped about Andy. I think it

was great though, absolutely so. Let's things that he did though. I was around when Andy was around, you know, and I remember, I remember all of this stuff. I can't believe how damn long ago it was. That was a long time ago. It just doesn't seem like it's been that long. But I mean, we were watching the so we're going to talk about this later. But there's a bit where he's on Letterman, and we were watching that

Letterman bit and it's Letterman's episode for eighty two. Yeah, he led Herman looks so young in that, and he had so much hair, early eighties hair. I had more hair back then too. I did too. You guys are looking at me like I was alive. I haven't had no hair, No, I had no hair. Okay, I didn't did any sense of the word we talked about in the beginning Andy's This is gonna play into some of

the stuff we're talking about in a moment. But we had talked about Andy's um foreign man character, and I want to tell you some of the things that he would do with that character, because that's going to help us flow through this. So when um Andy got big enough, of course, in I think it was nineteen seventy nine, because Taxi ran for five years, so seventy eight or seventy nine Taxi started vent or seventy nine, and he got brought on as the character Latka. I think he

was originally on the show. I think he was. I thought he came out a couple of years after the show started. No, he was. I believe he was on it from almost the very beginning. He might have come in a year late. I gotta be honest. I don't have the IMDb up in front of me, and I can't remember off the top of my head. I didn't

watch that. I didn't exactly watch that show religiously myself. Yeah, But but the point is he came in and it uh, it launched him into the Spotlight, and of course he was then able to go around and do tours and have comedy shows. And again we're talking about what do people expect. They expect you to go up on stage and tell your jokes and do all your stuff. Yeah, exactly,

and he wouldn't do that. I mean he uh so one of the things that he would do with the foreign man character, and this is actually what he did when he showed up on Saturday Night Live in ve Is. He gets up there. At all he does is he walks up and he's got a record player because records were the thing then, and he starts playing the theme

to Mighty Mouse and just standing there. I remember seeing him do that the whole time, as except for when the chorus comes, and then he gives this super emphatic lip sync performance of I think it's the here I come to Save the Day line, and he just gets into it and he just drops back into completely I don't know what the hell is going on, just great, he's standing there to to the riot of of the record player, and then he's just standing there and then all of a sudden it goes home to save the

Day and he he left sinks and then he swings his left arm outward and upward, and he gaze us up into the air. That's it. I just want to say, we can't do this for every single one. This episode can't turn down to us. No, no, no no. But this is fine. So the reason I bring this this particular bit up is this is now, like I said, and he's able to travel around and he starts going

to tours and he wants to screw with people. So he would go to a comedy show and he would walk out on stage and everybody would applaud and they

would be excited. And he comes out on stage. He's wearing a jacket, and he would look at the crowd and in a English accent, obviously faked English accent, he would pull out a book and it would be The Great Gatsbeat, Governor, and he would begin to read from the Great Gatsbeat, and at first, kind of like we've talked about, people would laugh, and then they get angry and and he would he would respond to the crowd in character, stop it, you know, and if you don't

quiet down, I will I shall put on the record, at which point they would go bananas, because yes, it's gonna be mighty mouth, and he would finally give in and he would play the record, which was him reading the great Yeah, oh God, which man is my soulmate? Is hilarious and is great. But if that was all that he had done, and this entire legend was based upon that, that would be a weak foundation. But it's

not because there's other things. There's there's a guy who in nineteen seventy nine, the guy's name is alan Abel Able fake to his own death. Hey, he was at a ski resort and he faked a heart attack and like the paramedics showed up and they hauled him away and all this stuff, and these were all people that he had set up to come in. By the way, alan Abel was that he was the guy that found a decided to clothe naked animals. Yes, no, he he He was a giant hoaxer. He was known for hoaxes.

But he pulls. He does this, and he does such a good job that the New York Times runs an obituary for you. Oh good. The next day he comes out and tells everybody that he's fine and that the tales of his death have been grandly overstated and something something something. Calvin watches all of this and loves it, and Pester's able about how did he pull it off?

What details that He just trying to get every detail, to the point that Abel didn't like him because he was a past He kept bugging him for details on how he did it and annoyed the crap out of him by the way. That it will ever render an opinion on whether Andy was dead or not. Nothing I know of. I read a few things from him, but nothing was ever related to the Kaufman alive versus dead uh conspiracy. He never actually seems to have spoken to it.

Let's talk about there's an album that came out came out relatively recently. It's called Andy and his Grandma. Who God, who is it that helped narrate the Bill Hayter, Bill Hayter, Okay, she's my favorite. This is This is a series of conversations that Kaufman had recorded on the phone unbeknownst to people. So he's talking to his h his friends, his business car partners. Bob Samuda is one of the people that's

on specifically on the track we're talking about. He's also talking to some ladies of the night that he knows, which is in the beginning of that track, which is awkward. Yes, exactly. In the in the I Want Those Tapes track, he and Bob talk for guys like two and a half, three minutes maybe four, about well, what if we what if I faked my death? And how would they go

about it? How long could they pull it off? For these things like like he talked about it there, so he not only had been talking about it with trying to get the information from Able, now he's talking to Bob and they're kind of flushing it out at least in this one recording that we know of, if not other conversations. We're now going to move to from that. So we got those two bits there, We're now going to go to the over the top character for Andy Coffin.

We we briefly mentioned him before when Joe and I were talking, which is Tony Clifton. Yeah, I love, I love the description that I have worked up of Tony Clifton. Tony Clifton is Andy Kaufman's foul mouth, big geled booge, drinking giant sunglass and black tupee wearing terrible singing lounge singer. Yeah, he was kind of like a really bad Elvis. He was a terrible Elvis. He was. He drank, he smoked, he ate red meat, He badgered audiences. He was crude

and foul to everybody. The Clifton character was the exact opposite of Andy Kaufman ors. Andy Kaufman's like his forger Man was meek and mild and very polite. Clifton was the opposite he was. Andy Kaufman was really a very good actor. Yeah, yeah, I mean, particularly when you look at the pictures just physically, I mean, he he seemed to have made himself into a different person. He did.

He had a big guy, the Clifton. The Clifton character would wear a suit with the ruffle front shirt and he had giant Elvis glasses and Andy didn't really have those gals. No, those were definitely definitely, um what is it you know this? No, he had the mutton shots, but then he had the the prosthetics there, the fake the fake chin and everything make a look fast. I was trying to figure out if you were looking for the specific like latex prosthetics or just latex that was

that was the word I was looking for. Though he did this stuff and one of the this is this is one of those things. So the Clifton character had been around for a long time, and when Kaufman got picked up on Taxi, he worked into his contract that Tony Clifton could be could be on the show four times as Tony Clifton in random episodes which would also not have the Latka character on them, and it's in other words, Andy Coffin's known character on now and the

studio agreed to this request. It sounds like they didn't know who Clifton was. They he was evidently made out to be some great, great lounge ack and it's gonna be great except that it except Yeah, he showed up and he was such a monumental asked to everybody, to the point that the security showed up and they escorted him off of the studio a lot and told him he was you could never come back again, And then all of the other appearances were that bit of the

contract was cut and scrubbed. Yeah, it was like, Tony Clifton can't come back. Lock they can, right, because because I think that at least in the beginning, they didn't realize that Clifton was Kaufman. They didn't get it. They didn't know it sounds like Shapiro probably knew, but the studio didn't understand it. Um So eventually though, people do figure out, like, wait a second, funny, and he's never around when when Tony's around? So what do you did?

Is he got Bob's Muda to get good enough at the character that suddenly the two could show up at the same time, and they'd show up on stage together and you can say, hey, it's not me that this guy's I think he's great, but it's not me. Again, one of those things that he just took it so far and he worked so hard. But here's the thing about the Clifton angle. There's a movie script I think it was written in and bohabs A Muda and Andy Kaufman write it, and it's called the Tony Clifton Story.

Now this thing is hard to read. Did either of you I didn't actually find a copy of the script. Okay, I found a copy of it, and it's effing weird. I've read scripts before it, and a lot of them, but I've read scripts. This thing was so far into

left field. Is somebody had converted it to Microsoft Word and it was a hundred and twenty four pages of absurdity where Clifton is the star character and Kaufman discovers him and all of this weird stuff happens, and and evidently Andy Coffin was pretty excited about the idea of breaking the fourth wall. Either you guys heard of the fourth wall? Yes, okay, okay, I'm just I'm just asking because I have to ask these things. But that's when it's when you look at the TV screen to your

audience and and then you speak to him. Yes, So it's not I'm just frankly. You know, it's a theater, so it's before TV. So the thing was what Coffin like to do is he liked to try to break the fourth wall and then twist things to bring the viewer even farther in and re established the fourth wall like he did these weird twists and turns. That's not weird. The the big thing about the script, the script is weird. What happens, though very suspiciously in this script is Tony

Clifton dies of cancer? Where did he diet? In Cedar Sinai, exactly the place that Andy Kaufman dies four years later of cancer. But here's my question about lung cancer. Actually, doesn't show up in the script. Oh, it's just it's unspecified cancer. But my question about the script is is that do we actually know for certainty that the script was written by Andy before Andy died? Absolutely not. Yeah, I can't. I cannot. I cannot validate that because the

copies that I found, we're all converted copies. So it could be that at one point somebody made it up, or it could be that that Tony and Bob actually did write a script, but somebody else did a little additing to it. Indian Bob, you mean, what did I say, Tony Clinton person percent positive to Clifton Tony and Bob got together to a movie about Andy Kaufman. Actually, Andy Kaufman is the character, Tony is the real guy. Yeah, you know. I I thank you for bringing it up,

because I was going to bring that up. I have no way to know that that's true, no way to know that. Yeah, but that is another a little bit of evidence that he might have faked it. Okay, we have one more big thing that we have to talk about, which is the big one. Would you call it to the Kuda Graw that that's not the right one. It's not that's okay, not, but it was this is this

is one of his greatest gags. That's that's I was trying to think of his his best thing ever, and this is one of his his his great characters he played. You know, he's playing himself but but a little different. But yeah, jerk right, So here's what happened. He's the green bastard. In UH nineteen seventy nine, Kaufman comes up with, as we said, maybe his greatest prank ever, which is wrestling. He shows up on Saturday Night Live. It's his ninth appearance.

By the way, remember guys, N seventy nine SNL is tiny, it's a tiny studio. It's he bits he thing, and he shows up in thermal underwear with black trunks on over the top, saying that he is the world intergender Wrestling Champion and that he will pay five hundred dollars to any woman who can beat him at wrestling in three minutes or less, and at that point proceeds to just make fun of women's lib and just generally be a chauvin his jerk. That was great. It's been pretty funny.

It's funny because in retrospect we know it's a gay and it's really funny, but it really pissing people off. And mobi holds some lady gets into the ring with him, by the way, she's a plant, and he beats her in under three minutes. Yeah, it's it's it's great to watch this interview of him. What he's bragging about. Hell, you know, like I totally I just totally kick their asses every time. I like when he you know, he does the whole uh well, you know, I don't think

women are dumb. I think women are really great at you know, cooking and ironing, and I think they're really good at all of that stuff. He's hitting hot buttons because this is women's move Yeah, and this is early eighties and he is just he's just poking fun and hitting all the right spots. And over the course, that wasn't his first time to wrestle a woman in the ring in this character, and he does this character as himself,

as Andy Coffin. Over the course of four years, he wrestles over four hundred women across the country, and in the beginning it's pretty clear that most of those women were plants, but later on he took it far enough. He started just grab he would pull five women out of the crowd. He would have the crowd vote on which one they wanted him to wrestle, which means they wanted to pick the biggest, baddest lady in the bunch,

and then he would wrestler and he would win. He would wrestle them, and it just it was so absurd, And he kept taking this inter gender wrestling champion thing farther and farther, and over four years he this staff almost every woman in the country because a lot of people thought he was being serious, because again, as we talked about, he never broke character. Man he was he was willing to take it, just go on and on

and on with these gags. Yeah, and and so he starts moving this gag in to Memphis, Tennessee, and he starts mocking women as he had been, but then he starts also mocking the people of Memphis, and a local wrestler by the name of Jerry the King. Lawler takes notice, gets a little gets upset, and starts exchanging words with Kaufman, at which point Kaufman starts ripping on Lawler and Memphis. He's sending videotapes. This is the age of video tapes.

He's sending videotapes telling the people of Memphis, how do you soap? Calling it the redneck capital of the world. I'm not gonna imitate him, but he just he does so many outlandish, over the top things, and he he's he's of coursing. Well, you know whatever, Jerry Lawler, I don't wrestle women, wrestle men. I wrestle women because I'm

the intergender champion. Except that there's a top time where suddenly Lawlers shows up and they get into it, and he agrees to wrestle him, and he gets him into the ring, And of course this whole thing was a set up from the very beginning. Yeah, Lawlers in Yeah, so we're gonna spoil it, Lawlers, I guess it's not really spoiler. Most people know this. Lawlers in on it from the beginning, and he and Kaufman would sit around and work out the lines and how the gag was

gonna go. So what happens Howler and he finally agreed to wrestle. They get in the ring, and Kaufman runs around the ring and circles away from Lawler until Lawler eventually catches him and appears to knock the snot out of him, and then deliver two pile drivers in a row. And Kaufman is laying on the grounds. Those of us who don't may not know what a pile driver is. That's where you pick somebody up so their feet are straight up in the air, their head is pointed at

the ground. You jump. The wrestler who was holding the upside down person lands on their butt, and the person who is upside down lands on their head. It's a pile you're piling driving their head into the ground, and it does two in a row. It looks it looks painful. I'm sure Lawler was a professional size I'm sure he knew how to do it without actually hurting. Sure they

had practiced it, I'm sure. But anyway, so Kaufman injrews his neckan Yeah, he's all on the ground, he's failing, He's flipping around the and the paramedics show up and they haul Andy out of the ring on a stretcher.

I was telling you two earlier that I had read stuff from Lawler that talked about or somebody was talking about Lawler was prancing around the ring all excited because he was playing a part of winning, and Kaufman is laying on the ground trying not to move his mouth so that nobody gets it, going clawing ambulance and was going, no, right, that's going to cost two fifty bucks all period, called the ambulance. It'll be great for the gag, which it

was because then people really believed it. Kaufman is then seen running around screaming about Lawlor in a neck brace for months and months, and six months later they go on TV they fight or six months later. Yeah, they're they're trading insults via videotape back and forth, and this is the day when the kind of WrestleMania, the wrestler will stand there and talk to the announcer and talk trash and then go wrestling. Well, in fact, then it's when it was new they first figured it out. Okay,

that's why that's not true. But um so that they're sending these tastes back and forth, and finally there's a I don't know if it was if it was proffered as a way to broker peace between the two, but they go on the Letterman Show and there we watched this and they're they're kind of being civil and then it slowly starts escalating until Kaufman says something. Lawler stands up and smacks Kaufman in the face and knocks him out of his chair, at which point Kaufman stands up.

And the version we watched together today was edited for foul language. Well, and we should also mention that at this point Andy Kaufman is still wearing his neck brace and character. Five months later and still in character. And by the way, I don't think Letterman's live, isn't it. I don't think so. I thought they taped in like in the afternoon. Maybe it's not. You know what, you're probably I don't know if it was at that time.

That's my problem. I didn't know. What I didn't know is I actually had never thought to look to see if Letterman was live. But you're probably right, probably is not was not live. But he readets out and he starts. Kaufman freaks out and wisely and this is the great this is the part of the love the best. He gets on the other side of Letterman's desk and puts Letterman between him and Lawler and starts swearing at Lawler and saying angry. Oh, he was a good actor. He

was spinning mad foul, like's like the beeps. You know, sometimes you hear somebody be just like beep word word, beep word. No, this is just people sounds like Morris Code. They're beeping him so much, and they're actually black blacking out his face and his mouth. Apparently Letterman was not in on it, because he's like he's cowering. Where is cowering between the pair of them if you watch their certain angles, and you can just see him just he's

just like, oh God, what's going to happen. And at the end he grabs aged coffee and that Andy grabs age coffee and throws it Lawler's face and then runs away. Apparent you know to watch this if you haven't already. Are are retellings are long and not quite as good but still fun but still fun. Yeah, yeah, but you you should watch it. But this thing is actually I would recommend if you're going to watch this whole thing

that happened with Lawler. We may post this up, but there is of YouTube playlist that is almost two hours long of all of the crap that happens back and forth between these guys, and it it is so absurd. It is again. It's just taking the joke and never letting it go, and it just gets funnier. And I watched it and after a half hours, like god, I remember to watch more. And then twenty minutes later, I I I'm about to pee myself. I'm laughing so hard.

And I'm sure that after the lean thing, I'm sure Lawler and and Andy Kaufman probably got met at the bar around the corner and had a beer together. Oh yeah, absolutely,

But they they took it so far. At one point, U Kaufman is offering money to other wrestlers to quote unquote take out Lawler, and then eventually he tagged teams with another wrestler and I can't remember who it is is, but they they beat him, and then Kaufman's running around in the crown saying he's the King of wrestling, at which point Lawler runs out of a crowd and throws a fireball of some kind in Kaufman's face, and they show Kaufman in the back room all burnt up. I mean,

like they just they'd never let this. This whole thing went on for over a year on national television. That never broke, I know, I say, I remember when this happened too. It makes me feel kind of old that because I remember talking about what we were talking to my friends about at the time. We're going, is this is this for real? And most of us were like, they cannot yeah, you know, I mean yeah, but it just it kept going on and on. And of course

there's the whole thing. When Andy died, they some wrestling announcer asked Lawler about him, and he said very few words but made it sound like he didn't like him at all. Again, he kept it up. He he had, I'm guessing, must have told Andy, I'll keith the character going and would not give in. So this this is this is one of those things where this is an example of Kaufman ran a gag that was so above and beyond, and he planned it out so far in advance,

and he let it run for so long. And of course Andy is alive, right right, And and of course Bob is involved in this thing thet the whole time, so he's the man behind the scenes that nobody sees that's setting things up. So Bob's working tirelessly for him. The only the only thing in this entire theory that doesn't work is who the hell was in the casket, which I've seen various various tellings of. Uh, there's two

different ways that this guy. One is that and he never was sick, and he actually met a cancer patient who agreed or an aids. He met a sick patient who was willing to stand in for him and be in his casket and let Andy run this gag or and he did actually have cancer, but the treatments actually did cure him, at which point he found this person who was willing to be his body double and sit in the cat or lay in the casket. Is the case maybe for him, And that's where the body came from.

I gotta say everything else about Andy Kaufman and how he masterminded this crap. I like, I want to believe the body double is the only thing that I have

a hard time getting behind. That's part. But you know the thing about it is is that if he really had lost a lot of weight and everything and he was looking like a die of cancer, possibly, uh, you know, you could have just he could have just had himself drugged and been laying in the cat in the coffin, you know, So that way when people poked him, he

didn't react because he was out cold. It's possible. Yeah, and then later on he gets out of the coffin and it's uh, it's of course taken off and buried. So possible. He looked at the pictures of Andy Kaufman like when he was sick, Like when he's amazingated and sick, he looks terrible. It doesn't really look like him. Okay, are you looking at the ones that are the photograph reproductions and newspapers or okay, yeah, they some of those. The problem is is that black and white photography was

crap and most of it was done. It's black and white, and he looks like hell. But it also I've known some people who got pretty sick and they didn't look like they had several years so prior for sure. Yeah, but I mean just too because I I like, you want to believe that Andy totally faked the whole thing for this, I mean, quote unquote hilarious gag. Uh you know, so I kind of you know, I'm looking for that stuff, right, I'm looking to say, well, it doesn't totally look like him,

so it could totally be someone else. He did go away for a while for six weeks and came back looking totally different. So what's to say that, you know, he that he didn't. He didn't look totally different, but he went down the hill immediately upon his return, he looked totally different when he returned. I think it was black and he answered to the name Bob Zamuda. It was weird. It was very strange. I M the only, the only, the last thing that I have here. So

Kaufman got a weird kind of cult following. I mean, not too long after he is supposed death, people are still writing about did Andy fake his death? There's obviously three dummies with the right Yeah. I read an article that was just published like last year. Yeah, people are still talking about it, and he's still being excited. I mean, we were talking about the one that was Albuquerque they had and by the way, that that that was the

worst video ever. I mean, I'll see it actually made the news in Albuquerque and they played some of that security camera bit and I don't see. I mean, it could be any Kaufman, it could be a million anybody. It could be anybody. And that was the problem. But there's all these cult followings, all these cults sightings. One of the things it's I find it entertaining every five year anniversary of his death. Suddenly there's reports that Coffin said he was gonna take it for fifteen years, so

he's gonna come back this year. Coffin said he's gonna take it for twenty years. He's gonna come back this year. Thirty thirty five, Like like thirty five is the next

number that we've got. I really, in my heart of hearts, want to believe Eve that Andy Kaufman is sitting in a retirement home right now, getting his giggle over the fact that the entire world thinks he died in mostly Actually, I think he's probably in a nursing home somewhere, saying to some nurse, you know I was Andy Kaufman, and the nurses like, I don't know who that is in a nursing home yet, did you know? You know what?

You know? What I want? I mean, this is this is I want this to be true, just like what I saw in Bubba ho Tap for Elvis to be true, because that was a hilarious story as well, and I want that to be truly what had happened to Elvis? Yes, because well I just have a weird thing about famous people like that. Yeah, No, I mean I think that, Uh, in my perfect world, Andy Kaufman faked his death, and I mean sure, he faked his death when he was thirty five, so it makes sense he would come back

thirty five years later. Could there's a little serendipity in that. Yeah, I'm sure that you can. You could find you could pick and choose a number from his thirty five years. You could very easily do it. One year increments you could do. I'm sure that you could. You know, you could say, well, you know, twenty was a really sacred number to to to Andy. So he's so he's going to come back twenty. You know. You guys ready to know the truth? Yeah? Andy? Yeah, No, I don't want

the true and you have too much hair to be Andy. Yeah. But you know what happened is he did fake his own death. He moved to Mexico, and he became a pro. Yeah. Actually did die. Yeah. Actually, I think that if if he had faked his own death, he wouldn't have I don't think he would have stayed away more than a year. I'd agree. I don't think he would have. He would have done enable. It would have been like two days later, well, no,

I think Joe's the most joke before people consider it offensive. Yeah, but you don't know. What I really think is that I don't know if I do, but okay, yeah, now I think that it's it's entirely possible. What I think really probably happened is that he actually faked faking his own death. I think that probably when he found out he was terminally ill. And this is this really kind

of fits in with his personality. He probably got together with Samoda and with his manager Shapiro and said, guys, we've got to pull off this one last big joke. We've got to convince the world, or at least half the world, that I faked my death. And I since I said, I'm not saying that's proof, that's proven that. I just know that I get where you're coming from. But I get where you're coming from. Is the last gag is death? Yeah? Yeah, except I don't know that

that would be. It doesn't fit in his character, like his character was always pulling the wool over their eyes for what wasn't happening instead of what was really happening, which is the I'm alive is what wasn't happening so that's why I'm in the camp of I want him to have faked all of it, all of it too, But I don't think he did. I don't sadly don't think so either, But I agree with that. I want

him too, but I don't think. Yeah, I think that's you know, as far as faking on death and not letting anybody in on it other than a couple of close associates, it's kind of a dick move. You know, you come back a year, a year or two later. You know, not everybody's gonna be thrilled about it. They're gonna be happy that you're alive, but they're gonna be really and they're never There's gonna be a lot of people that don't talk to you ever. Again, he's a

huge emotional trauma. Yeah it is. He did one out of his relationship. But yeah, that that is. That is the ultimate way to get relationship. You know that A few times I have to move away. But anyway, that's that's what I'm taking a half. I think that's what happened. I think he probably toyed with the idea what it was before he became tremorally ill. He toyed with it.

And then uh, and then when I finally came around, he talked to you, talked to you, talked to Bob and greg or George George and said, dudes, dudes, you know, just keep this alive, okay, you know. And when you think about it too, because he was he was a celebrity and you know, famous guy and everything, he probably didn't want to fade away. And this is a way to keep his It is a way to keep the legend going out. Yeah. Absolutely, So that's kind of what

I suspect. Well, that's all we got on this particular one. We will of course have some links that will be discussions or articles about Andy. We might put a link to a YouTube playlist on the website. I don't know what it'll be at this point, but if you want to see that stuff, you're more than welcome to do so that website, of course, as always his Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. On the website, we do have several

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about every streaming site that's out there. So I'm not going to name all because I don't have that kind of time. But if you use one of those awesome. Find us on it. Are on the Facebook. We are on the Facebook. We are on the Facebook, and we have a Facebook page and a Facebook group, both of which are very busy and very fun. So do take the time to like the page and or on the group. We have a subreddit, which Devin knows about, and I still haven't gone to Thank god, I have gone to it,

I just don't. I'm just not in the habit of going up there forget um. And we also have a Twitter account, so we are on Twitter at thinking Sideways without the G in the middle. You can see pictures of my weird bruises I didn't really have. That was weird, really weird. People liked it, and I get to prove that I'm falling apart at yeah, weird robotic device you. Um, okay, Well that's all I've got on this particular episode. You

guys got anything else? Not? Just if you're Andy, like you know, find us on Facebook and join the group and tell us what you've been up to. You can just email us and you don't have to at yourself publicly. Yeah that's a good point. I'm just gonna go ask my uncle Andy. All right, good idea, Andy,