A Boy Who Cried Wolf:
The Enigma of Andy Kaufman

The true and factual meaning of immortality is not to live forever as a physical being, it is to further your existence through a personalized and progressive mythology. It is to become an enigma through your art, work, fate, words or actions. You must cross the boundaries of time, erosion and mimicry. To truly be immortal one must hurdle over the obstacles of human nature's tendency to forget accomplishments and cannibalize celebrated ideas. It's something that, in many ways, is possibly harder than actually living forever. Remember, just because you're still around, that doesn't mean people remember you. Now, when thinking of people who deserve to be considered immortal, obviously, opinions will very. There are names, however, I think we all can agree on, such as Shakespeare, Mozart, King, Bogart, Van Gogh, Sinatra, Jesus, Hitler, Caesar, Kennedy and Elvis, just to name a few potential candidates for the hierarchy of immortality. In fact, in it's truest from, immortality is not something to be decided on or based in personal opinion. It is something that transcends such frivolities, it is the essence of a person's worldly energy imbedding itself in the minds of the masses, whether they like it or not. For example, Hitler is remembered not because we like him or necessarily choose to remember him, we cannot remove his essence from our soul. It is something that will always be there. He will forever be the face of human evil, his immortality preserved through his atrocities. Shakespeare is remembered not because we all have read his work and adore it, he is remembered because his words have laid the tracks for a higher from of literary expression. One does not need to read any of his work (although, one should) to know him or his words. He will forever be the voice of beauty and sublime expression in the written form, his immortality preserved through his words. This is the basic logic to be used when justifying someone's immortality. And the purpose behind this piece is to justify, not only the immortality of, but the wonderful existence in general, of the late, great Andy "song and dance man" Kaufman. The secondary purpose is to see how many times I can use the word "immortality" in a sentence.

Part 1: The Science of Andy: Why He Was the Way He Was

Andy came from a nice family. He was born January 17, 1949 in New York City. He spent his early life in Great Neck, New York, a suburb of Long Island. He started his creative direction at an early age, playing and dancing to records by the time he was one years old. It was as a child that Andy seemed to form his two most distinct and defining traits. It's no coincidence that people referred to Andy as a fully-grown child. He did all the growing he needed to before he was six. At age four, Andy started performing for his favorite audience, himself. This is probably the most important trait of Andy's creative development, the fact that his interest lied in entertaining himself before anyone else. That's what gave his "comedy" its power, its character, its beauty. The fact that he paid no attention to the expectations of an audience is what made Andy such a revolutionary voice in the realm of performance. In some respects, it's not what he did, it's what he didn't do, and what he didn't do was what made him laugh, not you. And that's why it worked; he catered to himself, which meant he catered to only those who liked him. He didn't rant and rave, trying everything to make you laugh. He didn't come on like a big hairy dog, begging to be loved. In other words, he was not Robin Williams. He understood what it meant to be in the public eye and he understood the fact that people tend to be sheep. He recognized the fact that people were going to laugh, even if what you were doing wasn't that funny. As long as you were supposed to be funny, you were, to some idiot somewhere. I think he resented that fact, he resented that the performer got off so easy, simply because he was catering to the audience. He didn't need the audience, or anyone, to feel whole. And he showed a hell of a lot more respect for his audience than any performer of his time (or any time) by giving them the chance to figure things out. Andy was not a comic dictator; he didn't tell you a joke and expect you to laugh. He allowed his crowds to run free though his mind. He gave them the power to question reality and to wonder what was really going on up on that stage and out in the world. And that's why so many people found him annoying, pompous, rude, childish, conceited, stupid, trite and so on. It's ironic that people saw Andy as an irritant simply because he trusted them enough to understand and enjoy what he gave them, without him telling them. Maybe if he had been an overwhelming demander of comic arbitration, then people would have loved him. People would have spent years singing the praises of the great comedian Andy Kaufman. It's strange that things work in opposites like that, that common sense is actually uncommon. But Andy never gave into the comfort zone of simplicity. He tried to expand the horizons of humor and make things more real, by making the fantasy of his stage persona more real than reality. For him, questions were answers, and vice versa. This is the second most important part of Andy Kaufman's creative (and human) development.

In the early 80's, Andy appeared on the Tom Cottle show to do an interview. It was the only time Andy ever let his guard down and gave the TV world Andy as himself, without any strings attached. He talked about an event in his childhood that seemed to shape his psyche in a strange way. Cottle was looking for some insight into why Andy was the way he was, and it seems as though he got more than he bargained for with Andy's honest and sad response. Andy spoke of his Grandfather, Papu he called him. Andy's grandfather was his best friend when he was a boy. He did everything with him. He was the only 3-D person who understood him. One day, Andy asked his parents where his grandfather had gone. His parents told him he had gone on a trip. In reality, he had died and Andy's loving parents were afraid to tell Andy the truth, for fear of sending the boy into an early spiral of depression. Instead of going on with his daily routines of cartoons and chocolate, Andy would sit in front of the living room window, waiting for his grandfather to return. He never did, and Andy never returned from the fantasy, from the lie that made the truth easier to accept. No doubt his perceptions were warped and his concepts of the importance of real life were blurred by this event. Andy learned that real life didn't have to be real, it was all in your head. The phrase "life is what you make of it" certainly seems to take precedence in the life of Andy Kaufman. He made fantasy life, and life fantasy. Andy's creations, like Foreign Man, Tony Clifton and Christian Andy, all came from this embracing of fantasy life. Andy lived through his dreams and his desire to bend reality and help everyone see the honesty that existed in the imagination. His childhood preservation made his very complex purpose real. He just wanted to have fun, and escape the burden of reality.

Part 2: Wrestling the World

Andy found comfort in professional wrestling. It was a carnivalesque show that embraced all that was important to Andy. It was a distilled fluid of magic brutality, an illusion of destruction and a mirage of pain. Wrestling gave Andy characters that were larger than real life, but fit just right into the fantasy world he embraced so strongly. Legends like "Nature Boy" Buddy Rodgers, "Classy" Freddie Blassie and Gorgeous George filled Andy's static box, black and white world with color and life. He found the energy and the ability to let fantasy over take reality overflowing from the wrestling world. It hit Andy hard and furthered his introverted love of the imagination. It also fueled his need to alienate people in order to initiate more extreme results. He saw in wrestling the need to stretch the boundaries of conflict to get people to care and become involved. Wrestling gave Andy Tony Clifton and, of course, Andy's wrestling character. Wrestling formed Andy's sexual function and taught him the beauty of theatrics when treated as reality. Andy spent his whole life, wrestling the world.

One of Andy's most misunderstood and renowned routines was the Inter Gender Wrestling Champion act. Andy's concept of wrestling women was done, mainly for sexual kicks. It also gave Andy the chance to act out his pro wrestling dreams and be a wrestling bad guy, the ultimate reality subversion. The wrestling bad guy is the farthest-reaching human incarnation of all that is evil and hateful. Wrestling bad guys insult all that is sacred in the world. They toss handicap people from their wheel chairs, they spit on children, they scream hate mongering language that rips through the morals of America and they belittle and laugh at women. Andy loved the idea of turning this kind of exaggerated behavior into a stage persona. He jumped at the chance to, not only fulfill some of his sexual fantasies, but exact some of the dreams he'd harbored sense childhood. Being a wrestling bad guy meant Andy could do and say whatever he wanted, to anyone, and he would be justified. It was exactly what he was supposed to do. What wrestling bad guy didn't insult everyone and everything? If they didn't, they wouldn't be playing the part correctly. So it was only right that Andy say as many bad things about as many people as he could, he didn't want to sell the people short and give them a boring bad guy. He wanted to put his all into hating everyone, so everyone would put their all into hating him, in a fantasy sense of course.

Andy started wrestling women, as an act, in 1977 and continued to do it regularly until 1983. It was a concept that was met with expected confusion. Andy submerged his unknowing audience in the wrestling world, and proved that supposedly sophisticated audiences were dumber then they thought. The science of the wrestling world is far more complex and involving than non-wrestling sympathizers know, and Andy knew that. He knew that people would fall directly into his conceptual trap and give him just what he wanted, venomous hate. Anyone who took the time to apply common sense to the situation would realize that no performer could behave the way Andy did and continue to work. No TV star can come on TV and talk about how women are the mental inferiors to men and yell at the audience to shut up, and mean it. Andy strutted around his blue floor mat, wearing long underwear and black soccer shorts, pointing at his head saying, "I've got the brains, not you!" And whenever anyone in the crowd bought into Andy's wrestling bad guy antics, he was right, he did have the brains, and not them. He turned crowds of ice-cold suit and tie, comedy club veterans into raging mad children, screaming for the bad guy to go down. People were so transfixed on Andy's routine that many of them failed to find the humor. Many of them failed to realize that they were simply being entertained. Many of them began to actually take their fantasy hatred for the bad guy wrestler Kaufman into the real world, and continue to hate him, as if he were really a woman hating, idiotic slob. It's amazing that one of Andy's best and most important acts, his love for the art of wrestling and his just plain drive to give an audience more than a fucking punch line, would cause him so much trouble in the real world. But for Andy, the fact that people walked away totally convinced that he really was the bad guy, had to be the greatest adulation he could ever receive. He had done his job, he had made fantasy reality and reality fantasy. And his spin on "all the worlds a stage" came true. For Andy, all the world was a wrestling ring.

Part 3: Toybox of the Mind

By the time Andy was 30 years old, he lived out all of his childhood dreams. When he played Carnegie Hall on April 26, 1979, he reached the highest point in his creative life. He had emptied his toybox, and scattered his toys all over his room. The roots of his routine were his childhood. What made his act so astounding, and so wonderful was that he had spent his whole life perfecting his acts. The brilliance of his "Mighty Mouse" and "Pop Goes the Weasel" karaoke acts was the childlike simplicity of them, the awestruck joy that he exuded while lip-synching. He wasn't acting like a child trying to have fun, trying to play along with the friendly and comforting grooves of the records. When he did those acts, he was a child having fun and playing along. He'd been playing those records and interacting with the friends on them for years and years, only now people all over were watching. His "Old McDonald" routine was the next logical step after "Mighty Mouse" and "Pop Goes the Weasel" -- it was the child learning to share and letting other "kids" into the fun. When you watched Andy perform, you were watching a lot more than a man doing an act to amuse an audience. You were watching a man opening up his dreams and his childhood friends, and remember, mommy once told him he couldn't perform by himself any more, he had to have an audience. So he got one. It started with his little baby sister who he bribed with bubble gum; then a basement full of kids who had great fun with Andy; then various birthday party crowds who always loved his games and songs; then the crowded comedy club, filled with the jaded and the confused, who never quite got the point. Then it was national TV where the world watched Andy's toys & games, and never knew whether to laugh, get angry or just smile along. He played with his childhood hero Elvis all the time and ate ice cream just because he liked it. He sang songs about animal noises and asked his "friends" to sing along. Some "friends" did, reaching into Andy's open toybox. Some "friends" didn't, they just sat there, trapped in their smug, adult protection suit. It wasn't his fault some people didn't want to play. They could just go home then, couldn't they?

At the end of the 70's, Andy Kaufman needed new toys. He was at a point in which he needed to let go before the audience took them all away. People were catching on. He conceived his dreams and toys at a time when his innocence was pure, during childhood. Suddenly he was in a new world, struggling to keep his innocence and find new toys that were fun to play with. He started filling his toy box with things made up of his new found world. He played with the celebrity image and the pompous nature that so many around him had, and expected him to have. He played with reality more than ever now, making things happen that didn't. He still played with his old toys, but in a new way. He brought in the new toys and started a war with the old ones. It was a war between his natural innocence that helped make his old toys live and the cannibalization of that innocence that his new toys needed to be real. He figured out what was happening and how easy it was to loose touch with the real life he had , no matter how fake it was, and he saw that there was no coming back. So he decided to confront the realities and the audience that had taken away his toys.

Part 4: Tank You Vedy Much: The Necessity of Character

Andy never felt at home on a stage just being himself. He was himself all day long, and you have to remember, his first reason for being on stage was to entertain himself. And for Andy to entertain himself, he couldn't be himself. What's fun about that? The stage gave him the chance to explore his subconscious and take an unknowing group of people along for the ride. For Andy, characters became a lot more than just characters. They became friends that he found comfort in. He could escape the harshness of the world through Foreign Man and he could embrace it and give it a run for its money through Tony Clifton. Both characters represented Andy's continual love of reality subversion.

With Foreign Man, he put people on edge, and as always, he kept them wondering if it was for real or not. He used Foreign Man to expose the nature in people to laugh at the innocent and groan at the uninitiated. And he threw it back at them with the transformation into Elvis, which was a total turn around from the innocent, unsure Foreign Man. It showed Andy in total control of his audience. The transformation not only changed Andy on stage, it changed the audience as well. People went from squirming, embarrassed, cruel and inattentive slugs to shocked, enlightened, welcoming and joyous worshipers. Their attention immediately turned and their eyes became glued to Andy. And when Andy ended the Elvis act, he didn't let them off the reality ride there. Elvis vanished, replaced by Foreign Man, once again. Andy gave the crowd an answer only to put the final decision in their hands by falling back into the Foreign Man guise at the end of the act. People wondered, is this guy for real? Is he really foreign? Foreign Man may have been Andy's greatest achievement in the realm of audience manipulation. Of course, all of that changed, as Andy became better known. Foreign Man became Andy's calling card and people began to figure things out. By the time Andy got the job on Taxi, Foreign Man had been completely cannibalized by pop culture and stolen away from Andy. Latka was not Foreign Man, and Andy hated what Taxi did to Foreign Man, but for Andy, it was a sacrifice he had to make. Throwing Foreign Man to the media lions helped Andy grow as a marketable star. It gave him room to breath and more chances to bend reality, and in new directions. It was no doubt a big loss to Andy, but a necessary one.

Tony Clifton came about because of Foreign Man's disintegration. Andy needed a new place to hide and Tony gave him that place. Andy had been toying around with the Tony Clifton character for some time, sense around 1969, the year he claimed to have seen the real Tony Clifton perform at a club in Las Vegas. Tony represented a lot of things in Andy. He gave Andy the sociological release that life didn't. While Andy used Transcendental Meditation to further his personal enlightenment and find comfort in himself and his thoughts, Tony Clifton gave him the ability to put his foot in the ass of authority. With Tony, Andy evaporated, left town and didn't come back until Tony had caused as much damage as humanly possible. Andy owned a pink convertible Cadillac that only Tony could drive. Andy never drank, swore, smoked or ate meat. Tony drank, swore, smoked and ate meat. Andy maintained a humble and quiet existence while Tony spent lavishly and made as much noise as he could, everywhere he went. Andy was not Tony, and Tony was not Andy. They were just two guys who happened to live in the same neighborhood.

Tony Clifton has always been the biggest defense people have when referring to Andy as a schizophrenic. I've heard people make the claim that Andy was a schizophrenic and an insane megalomaniac. I've heard people say that Andy was an asshole and a hypocrite. I've heard people say that Andy was a disgrace and a weakling. I've heard people say lots of terrible things about Andy Kaufman, all because of Tony Clifton. Well, I think that all of these statements were made by people who fell for Andy's manipulations. Andy put himself through a lot to maintain his stance in the world, as Andy Kaufman, and when he returned from Cliftonville, he put himself through a lot more. He would eat cheesecloth to purge his system of the toxins Tony had invaded his body with. He would spend weeks fixing the havoc Tony had caused. He did all of this to get in the heads of the people he resented the most, the people who walked through life trapped in the concrete of reality. He knew that Tony would absolutely throw perceptions of Andy out the window. Tony would make people mad as hell because of what he did, he would make them absolutely enraged because they knew it was Kaufman, and Tony refused to play along. For Andy to give in and mix minds with Tony, would have meant that Andy would have, not only ruined the whole point of Tony's existence, he would have ruined the whole point of Andy's existence. Tony kept Andy's creative spark alive, as long as Andy kept Tony alive.

When Tony Clifton began to only be associated with Andy Kaufman, it made it harder and harder for Andy to "leave town". Andy became distraught and felt that Tony was quickly going the way of Foreign Man. The only difference was that Tony was not nearly as marketable as Foreign Man and all Andy stood to gain by outing Tony Clifton was the total loss of his old friend and creative catalyst. At least Foreign Man still helped Andy pay the bills, but for Andy to lift the Tony Clifton curtain, he really would have been crazy. So Andy turned Tony over, in a way, to his friend Bob Zmuda.

Andy crafted one of his most brilliant tricks when he got Zmuda to take on the Clifton guise. Since Andy had already been accused of being Clifton by every Hollywood hipster and industry know it all, Andy thought it might be funny to make them all look like fools, sense they felt the need to try and ruin Andy's fun. Zmuda went on The Merv Griffin Show and The David Letterman show as Clifton. He even played an exclusive week-long engagement at Harrah's Casino in Vegas as Clifton. Everyone of course assumed that Tony was Andy, that's the only reason anyone would have Tony Clifton on their show or book him for stage time anyway. It was a way to get a major star on your show (just ask Dina Shore). But Andy was at home, watching, while Tony made the country look stupid. Zmuda has said that during the commercial break when he was on the Letterman show, David leaned over and told him "Andy, if I didn't know it was you, I'd swear it was somebody else." Victory at last.

Tony Clifton continued to make appearances, sometimes he was Andy, sometimes he was Bob, sometimes he was Andy's brother Michael and sometimes he was, well who knows, sometimes he was Tony. Tony even made some scarce appearances after Andy's death, figuring, now is his chance to distance himself from Kaufman. Of course, it didn't work.

Part 5: Understanding Your Existence: How Andy Solidified his Life, by Dying

In body and mind, Andy Kaufman is dead. He died of a rare form of lung cancer, large cell carcinoma, on May 16, 1984 at the age of 35. He left behind a family that loved him, a daughter that never got to meet him and a world that never understood him. What's important is that he understood this, he knew that the world that watched him jump from one thing to the next wouldn't get it all of the time, if any of the time. The world watched him go from Taxi to wrestling, from being the darling of Saturday Night Live to working as a bus boy at the Posh Bagel, from playing bongos and speaking in gibberish to reading the Great Gatsby in a mock British accent, from wreaking havoc on a live show to singing gospel songs with his new, Christian fiancée. And he never once gave in and let the illusion fall. He spent his whole life trying to turn the world into an enigma. And with his death, he just about did it.

My theory on Andy's death is this: I think that Andy found out he had cancer long before he told anyone. Just watch his TV appearances starting around 1982 up until his death, and you'll notice a steady stream of coughing followed by a quiet internal fear in his eyes (maybe it's just me). From his Letterman moments to his Tom Cottle interview, from his 'Soundstage' show to his televised feud with Jerry Lawler, the cough and the strange gleam in his eyes are always there. He understood how important he was to the people he was close to (his best friend Bob Zmuda, his long time girlfriend Lynne Margulies, his parents and so on) and he knew how hard it was going to be to tell them the sad truth and watch them react. He remembered his grandfather and how he never really got to feel the pain of his death, the fact that the reality of the pain was altered by turning the fantasy into reality in a child's mind, and I think he really valued that fact. He decided to make his death as much of an illusion as possible. He began to drop hints about his sickness and about his inevitable death by making mention of the fact that he was going to fake his death. He told Zmuda he was going to fake his death, he told Lynne he was too. He told friends John Moffit and Bill Lee (the producers of Fridays) that he was going to fake his death and that he would do it by faking cancer. He told numerous people that were close to him that he was going to do this, and that he would keep the charade going for a long, long time. He even began to alter his public image by going on TV shows a more humble and sweet natured man. He let down all of his guards and gave people the real Andy, all the while he was trying to fool people into thinking he was lying, when for the first time, he wasn't. He brought his parents on the Letterman show and hugged them and told them he loved them, he also told David Letterman that he loved him and thanked him for supporting him when no one else would. He held onto this idea, and continued to try to drive the lie home as long as could, until he really started to get sick and show it. He kept up the act until he couldn't, until he needed the help of the people that loved him. Around Christmas time of 1983, Andy let the truth be known. He came back from the doctor with grave and horrible news for all of his friends and family. He was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and he'd be lucky if he lived three more months. Here is a man who never smoked, except when he was Tony Clifton, which wouldn't amount to much smoking, who was going to die of lung cancer in three months at the age of 35! Naturally, people didn't buy it. People thought it was another Kaufman put on, another joke. Even his friends had their doubts. And that was just fine with Andy, his plan was working. Soon after his announcement, Andy's health began to decline. He lost a tremendous amount of weight and his hair began to fall out, due to chemo treatment. Even then, with his physical appearance so evident, people still weren't sure if he was really sick. Andy fought the cancer as hard as he could, trying all that he could to get a hold of its power. Towards the very end, in late March, he went to the Philippines to undergo psychic surgery. Andy had grown tired of the doctors telling him he was going to die. For Andy, the illusion was everything. The reality that the doctors in America were forcing him to deal with was too much for Andy, and it made it impossible for him to find a better place inside. He absolutely couldn't get better as long as the fantasy of him getting better remained snuffed out. The Philippines gave Andy that place. He knew damn well that psychic surgery was a lie. He knew it was a scam and a cheat. He also knew that it was an illusion. Once Andy reached Jun Labo's psychic surgery clinic in Bagiuo, he was just about ready to die. But the overwhelming mirage of hope that radiated from the place gave Andy the chance to fake his recovery. He could finally delve back into the reality of fantasy. Over the six weeks Andy spent recovering in the Philippines, he got better. His hair started to grow back and his weight began to stabilize again. He felt better and looked better. Of course, the cancer was still there, eating away at his life, but his imaginary world had given him a second chance.

When Andy got home to Los Angeles, he was better. But soon after his return, he died. His imagination had given in to the reality of the cancer, and he had to let go of the fantasy of real life. Andy's funeral was a strange event. Just imagine a room full of people, all mourning the loss of a great and loved man, all the while not sure whether or not he was really dead. People poked his lifeless body, lying motionless in the coffin, trying to assure themselves that Andy was really gone. It's a lot like Peter Lorre's reaction at Bela Lugosi's funeral when he approached the open casket and asked in a hushed whisper, "Bela, are you really dead?" And, of course, after it was all said and done, Andy was gone. But the beauty that comes from this fact is that Andy knew exactly how things would play out. He understood the importance of immortality as it relates to the true understanding of ones art. He knew that he was ahead of his time and that people wouldn't get him, completely, for some time. And he knew that if he could pull off his ultimate subversion, and plant the seeds of doubt in people's minds that he was really dead he might stand a chance of living far beyond his years. And guess what, it worked!

As it stands, the last days of Andy Kaufman were not pretty. He was a failure. His career had taken a total nosedive, with the cancellation of Taxi, his banishment from Saturday Night Live (due to a heartless manipulation from producer Dick Emersol) and his name being equated with just plain bad. His personal life was a spiral of despair, with the Transcendental Mediation movement that had meant so much to him (simply another need for illusion or a determined and absolute dedication to something real?), turning their backs on him due to his excessive behavior giving them a bad name. His health was rapidly declining, and for a while he couldn't even tell anyone, he had to keep up the act, in order to make things work. It's safe to say that Andy went through a lot the last six months of his life. And he did it all it save his art and preserve his existence.

Now Andy Kaufman is a pop icon, a born again comic Christ saving the masses from mediocrity and prediction. He is now known as a world-renowned "comic genius" that has been heralded as our first true performance artist. His essence has become a hot commodity these days. He has a major motion picture about his life coming out, with a 70 million-dollar budget, a major Hollywood star and a major, internationally acclaimed director behind it. He has a massively researched biography hitting the shelves soon. His three unpublished novels, The Hollering Mangoo, God and The Huey Williams Story are all being released. The Museum of Radio and TV in Los Angeles and New York are running an exhibit dedicated to his television work. And he's got at least four documentaries on his life saturating the TVs and VCRs of the nation. He's still hated by people, who still believe that he hated women. He's still loved by people who got the joke, and continue to get the joke (it's not that easy sometimes). He's still confusing people who fail to see his genius (give them time). He's still studied by people, struggling to figure him out. His enigmatic presence breathes new life into the self-imposed Kaufman myth, more and more with each coming year. And he's still being accused of being out there, somewhere, waiting for the right time to come back and fool us all, again, which he seems to be doing right about now.
-Sam McAbee
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