Special Report: Thank You Very Much (2023)

We just spoke with Andrew Buss about his book Super Bad, but he is also producing a documentary about Kaufman, so we might have competing Kaufman documentaries, which for me, that's great. I am going to be a pig and slop when it comes to Andy Kaufman stuff. If you want more Andy Kaufman why don't you go on over to sub sin That is sub cin dot WordPress dot com. There is a documentary over there called The Passion of Andy Kaufman from two thousand and four that was a lot

of fun. I know Don Alex who runs that site, very big fan of Andy Kaufman, and I really recommend that one as well. So I don't think there's such a thing as too many Andy Kaufman documentaries, is what I'm trying to say. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this interview and definitely check out Thank you very much. It is playing at theaters and available through streaming on March twenty eighth, twenty twenty five. How did you get involved in filmmaking.

confused me. It almost felt like a magic trick, and I just gravitated more towards the storytelling side, and then as a filmmaker, wanted to have these real life experiences, which kind of pushed me into the documentary side, and I started out as a documentary cameraman shooting nonfiction TV series. I worked on the First forty eight, which is about homicide investigations. For many years found my niche as someone willing to be around traumatic or dark or challenging subjects.

After First forty Eight, worked on some hospital documentary dramas. There was one called Hopkins on ABC Mass another one called Boston Med which took place in Mass General, and basically just over time realized again there are other people that are better at holding the camera. I want to be behind that person figuring out where the story goes.

That's how I got into documentary filmmaking. But always have the idea that I want to make my own project, things that that interests me my whole life, and that I wouldn't get bored of in the very I'm consuming process of making a film. Andy Kaufman is the subject that really stood out to me that I could dive into and never be bored.

of specials. They did Willie Nelson Live Tahoe, and they put together a special with Tom Waits I want to say it was in Chicago and Jolly parton a lot, oh Richard Lewis I'm in Pain was one of their

projects together. But in the process of going through a lot of comedy clubs and filming a lot of comedians and being really immersed in that world, they came across Candy Kaufman in the late seventies and when they heard that he was going to be doing a special at Carnegie Hall, they pitched that to Showtime, and Showtime went for it, and so the year before I was born, they, amongst many other filmmakers and producers and writers, including Bob Simuda,

they produced Candy Kaufman Plays Carnegie Hall. So, growing up, this was one of a number of large beta tapes on the shelf, some of which were appropriate for a kid to watch, and some of which weren't, and this one I asked about it and they were like, Oh, you're not going to believe. Not only are you going to love the show, but you're not going to believe

what happened afterwards. And they told me the story of Milk and Cookies, which as a kid, really blew my mind because this notion that a performance doesn't necessarily end when the show is over, it could keep going. That's something that really opened me up and just got me thinking about taking things at face value or looking a little deeper into them. That's how I became exposed to him and his work, and ever since then, I've just been more or less enchanted by everything he does.

to finish top the bottom, like Offfman documentary. There's Man on the Moon, which is an incredible biopic, great writers, great directors, amazing legendary performances, like the legend of how that team together is just as interesting as the film itself, which of course segues to Jim and Andy, which is like an incredible film about acting and Jim Carey's process

and everything. But again, I'm starting from the place of I haven't seen a definitive Affman documentary, and what would I want to see if I went down that path? And the first thing I thought of was like, I just feel that his performances to fully get them, they need a little bit of time on screen for you to feel the pain or the awkwardness or the question

that he's asking. And so the starting point for me was like, if I were showing someone that didn't know him at all, or didn't know his work at all, what would the very first clip I would show them be. You get to feel that time, and you get to feel the space, and you get to feel the sort of tension with the audience. But it's exciting and interesting and funny and moving. And for me, that clip is

in the film. It's that nineteen seventy seven HBO Young Comic special where basically he starts out bombing and then he starts crying, and then the crying becomes rhythmical, and then the rhythmical crying leads to the drumming, which leads to the singing. So that piece, that was the first clip that I thought of where I was like, that has to be in the movie to be upfront. And then one of the other things that I thought about was what's the best way to present all this information

to an audience, whether they're familiar with or not. I think in a lot of traditional documentaries about historical figures, you start at the beginning, whether that's their childhood or how they grew up, and then it leads to their influences and eventually you get to them developing their act

and whatever. In this one, it was very clear to me from the beginning and very important to say, let's start with his act because I think that's the way into understanding this guy and knowing what we're even talking about. It's not all of the interesting things that happened to him as a child, or as a teenager or as a twenty something. They don't have the same level of

meaning if you're just starting there. But if you know who he is and you know how he wound up, and you know where all this is going, and then you get to look back and say, like, how did this guy come to be? That was another key early decision that we made as far as like how to approach the film and how to approach talking to these people that we wanted to talk to.

of nineteen forty nine and nineteen maybe four. But then within that framework, following those rules, no piece of footage that we find is off the table as far as what we can use and how we can use it. So, yeah, we have interviews that were shot, some as recently as twenty twenty three, some as far back that I shot at least twenty seventeen. But then when we started going through box after box, we found interviews with people that we knew we wanted to interview for the film, Danny

being a good example. And then other boxes were filled with interviews of people who had died, whether it's recently or a while back, people who we didn get talked to. Those were treasures to find, but it was also really fun because we're dealing with the subject. The media was part of his canvas, but he's not just to go on the Tonight Show or go on Letterman. He's using those shows and programs in the news and game shows

and all these things. They're part of his act. So we just figured, like any piece of media that we find can help stitch together a sort of texture that allows the audience to experience both what he's doing specifically,

but also the waters he's playing. And yeah, to be able to juxtapose a clip of Danny DeVito on Charlie Rose probably, if I had to guess, that appearance is probably late nineties, as Man in the Moon is coming in there and he's promoting it, but then getting to see him on taxi in the late seventies and then talking to him now present day. It felt fun to have the freedom to be able to jump around like that.

There's that section when he's wrestling and there's a news broadcast talking about all the women he's wrestling around the world, and then when the broadcast concludes, the anchor continues on and tells another crazy story about a rabbi panel in Israel. And if you know the clip I'm talking about, it

has nothing to do with Kaufman. But it's just when you're making any sort of documentary, whether it's a TV series or a film or whatever, you're constantly coming across all these little bits and pieces that you wish you could share with the world, but they really have no place in the film, and this was just one of those where I'm like, you know what, it has nothing to do with the film, but it does tell you a little bit about the world that we were living

in at this period of time and what could have been on the news and how someone like Kaufman wound up on the news anyway, And so my little revenge on all the straight jobs I've had over the years. They wouldn't have allowed us to include that.

was like, let's let's check it out. He's like, no, no, no, not yet, Like he kind of he held that over me for a while until the film was finally set up and financed and ready to go. But he took great pleasure in teasing the many spoils that hide behind that door. And so when we finally went into our post production, my user and I drove a van from la back up to Lake Tahoe and just emptied that

room out. And then it took months and months to go through all the boxes, and I think a lot of the stuff that's in there was just better quality

versions of things that we had already seen. But then every third or fourth tape was like a mind blowing discovery because Bob, in his stewardship of comic relief, he's interfacing with all these different legendary comics and talking to them backstage about their experiences and memories of Kaufman, and we just found things that we didn't know existed before starting to edit. So that Gary Shanling clip of I would still like to know who the real Land is.

That's something that we found in Bob's basement, along with old eight millimeter reels of the two of them kind of horsing around, and there's so much great stuff that didn't even get to make it into the film. But a large portion of what we included in the film came from those discoveries and then some things, you know, we found her own along the way as well.

the other. But I do think some people were super eager and other people wanted to remain out of it. Does anyone stand out to you as missing?

are just like younger people. So the first screening that we had publicly was at the Venice International Film Festival, and for whatever reason, I don't know how word got out, but the crowd was just really young and their minds were blown. And I think it's just to a certain extent, like Kaufin's spirit is. It's a youthful spirit, and I think he helps us understand that not only are certain rules meant to be broken, they're just completely made up

and shouldn't really exist to begin with. And that's the very freeing idea to embrace. So that's the most surprising and most interesting and most pleasing reaction that we've got, is just like young people are really into this, and so it's exciting for me to think that maybe they'll have another generation to inspire.

look at like the audience performer relationship. And I think those people that I mentioned they're in the same legacy and that they're like demanding that we are a little bit more critical of yeah, information and how it's presented to us. So I whether you want to call it a certain name or whatever, it's I think it's people use the word cringe because it's an awkward feeling to be confronted with how we're being manipulated a lot of

the time. That's what makes all those people that you mentioned so brilliant and so fresh and so interesting for me, Like those are people whose work I never get sick of as well.

working with. But I'm truly setting aside a good amount of time right now to just promote, and a real joy to be able to do that, because even after having lived in this Kaufman world for so long, it's something I could never be sick of, and I'm excited to get as many people out there and exposed to it as possible.

We're opening in New York and Los Angeles. I think we're going to have some additional theaters in the New York area, Bronxville, Pelham, It's going to be playing in Austin, Texas, Nashville, Tennessee, and so I think just as things pick up, hopefully

it'll go wider and wider. But it's also available for rents and for purchase VOD same day, So for anyone that is not in one of those markets or wants to watch it at home, it's going to be available on Amazon and Apple in all those places where we got to rent films too.