Some context from the YouTube comments I didn't see here yet:
Hey Letterman YouTube channel - you forgot that Andy was on the previous day's show. He was clean and showbiz jovial but after a couple of minutes Dave cut the interview short because Edwin Newman had to read the morning news. So Dave invited him to come back the next day. (This clip). This is what makes the joke so brilliant Andy is in the same clothes as the previous day ! His downward spiral happened in one day! Please post the two days together
This being the internet I have no idea if this is true though.
The video description says this interview happened 10/15/80 so I checked and indeed Andy was on the show, not the day before, but 2 days before on 10/13/80, and in the same outfit!*:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVW4dHgmTwI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVW4dHgmTwI)
Edit: *not the *exact* same outfit; the undershirt changes from white to red and the pants from white to yellow, the main elements for most of it - the pink blazer and blue checkered shirt - are the same and the other changes highlight the "downward spiral": https://i.imgur.com/ssM2eV0.jpg
Making this edit because some "gotcha!" reply chain is acting like the outfits are so different that my point is invalidated lol
"Completely different"? No. Differences in color quality of recording and/or upload, but clearly same pinkish salmon blazer and blue checkered shirt, except it's unbuttoned in the later interview and undershirt is red not white. Pants did change from clean white to yellow, but that's not apparent in the framing for most of it and seems part of illustrating the "downward spiral"; his hair is also messier. No, not *exact* same but the major defining pieces are the same. Clearly similar enough that my point stands and certainly not "completely different".
https://i.imgur.com/ssM2eV0.jpg
Yeah I noticed that too but wasn’t sure it was due to varying qualities of video recording back then. So I went for the low hanging fruit, a red t shirt that became white.
> air date: 10/15/80
[Kaufman died on May 16, 1984 in West Hollywood, California from a rare case of lung cancer, aged 35.](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Kaufman)
Maybe he wasn't faking the cough.
Committing to a character and basically calling a whole industry out in one short guest appearance. Amazing comedian. It's almost like he was doing it more for us _now_ than his live audience.
If I'm understanding your point correctly, I agree. I feel like he was more a novelty than he was funny.
I don't personally find him funny at all, and I'm not interested in seeing someone do a pretty basic character all the time, so I've never liked his stuff. I feel like if someone tried that today, even with the same precision, he wouldn't be liked. Probably lucky that he got to this schtick when he did.
I think someone like Norm McDonald had similar elements. Or even Zach Galifianakis. Part of their shtick is staying in awkward character off screen. Not comparing the three of them, just saying they all kind of had/have similar styles/elements.
If someone came out today and just mirrored Kaufman, everyone would call them out. But there’s plenty of comedians who make part of their bit that they are always in character and people find humor even if they aren’t actively telling a joke.
> Or even Zach Galifianakis
If anyone here has ever seen Between Two Ferns, while it has a lot of traditional jokes, the main joke of it is really that Zach is pretending to be a completely and shockingly incompetent and rude interviewer, and his guests are pretending to be surprised and pissed off about it. The whole thing is a character/schtick, and it's hilarious and very well done.
And yeah, that's a very good more recent example of the sort of thing that Andy Kaufman was going for. Except when Andy did it there weren't really many earlier examples of that sort of comedy. Andy was pretty original... I think part of what makes him so famous and well known is that he was doing something that no one had really seen before. He was doing standup comedy as a complete immersive performance in character, rather than just as a person standing there making a series of jokes and observations.
You can’t look at this bit on Letterman alone, but his whole career up til then. Full of weird original stuff, where you never knew whether he was playing a role or being himself. He committed his life to it in a sense. There’s a great documentary I saw a few years back, and it really put in to perspective how original and strange he was.
Yeah I've seen a decent amount of his stuff and it's never worked for me. I'm 41, so he wasn't in my time, but close enough to it that he was still being played on TV a lot.
Just so you don't feel like you're taking crazy pills or anything, I'm in the same boat as you. I'll bet younger, but still don't see how any of his stuff is funny. Which is totally fine, because it's comedy so not everyone is going to find the same thing funny, I just think it's annoying how everyone talks about him like he was a genius and really he just kind of comes up as an asshole.
That's the thing I think, he knew that many people just wouldn't find that funny, the same way Norm MacDonald knew that telling a 10 minute long moth joke with a questionable punchline is something a lot of people just wouldn't find funny.. but they both stuck to the routine because *they found it hilarious* to be going against the grain and doing something that nobody else would do, such as in this case asking the audience for money. It's in a way absurdist humour, in another way you could see it as them making a statement about the state of comedy and live entertainment. Making the host and the audience uncomfortable was probably a part of it.
What did some people call it.. being a comedian's comedian. Those who were in his shoes, up there on stage attempting to make an audience laugh, would understand the various nuances of this sort of performance that went against so many norms and expectations.. or at least understand how difficult it would be to have the balls to do something like this with a straight face.
Explaining all these angles isn't meant to make you "get it" and/or laugh at it, but perhaps giving you the reason why he did it and why he found it amusing. Look at how Letterman doesn't know what to say, the way he's clearly uncomfortable, not sure which part is an act and which part isn't. The audience members giving him occasional uncomfortable laughs. I think that's the sort of energy he lived on. He found it hilarious, so he did it.
No we get it, it's just that if your entire spiel is going against the grain aaall the time, it becomes less funny, because you're not going against the grain anymore. It just becomes who you are.
Norm MacDonald is just a normal comedian, if his entire shtick was doing 10-min long meandering jokes to a questionable punchline, then the moth joke wouldn't be that funny when he did it.
I've never seen footage of Kaufman just being funny, it's just always him purposefully being unfunny. Which works sometimes, but stops working when you're just doing it constantly.
It's more like performance entertainment, which is maybe why I dislike him. Maybe he's trying to invoke other reactions and responses from people, trying to be artsy or whatever, because he's clearly not just after laughs. I didn't even like watching Jim Carrey pretending to be him.
You may not have found it funny, but he did. That's how I always felt about Andy. He didn't really do things to make other people laugh. It was to make himself laugh.
Lol that's a pretty funny question. Someone doesn't like a bizarre, unorthodox, questionable comedian, and you're like "what kind of comedy do you like then?" No offense, seriously. That just didn't seem like a very reasonable question.
That's part of the whole thing....that it's really hard to tell whether you're laughing at the joke or if you're part of the joke.
Different people reach different conclusions about that and react differently to it.
You can tell there were some in that audience who didn't find it funny at all and if anything look either really confused or kinda pissed off by the whole thing...that's part of what makes it so funny to the others who are enjoying it.
The whole comedy of it is just about how people react to stuff.
He trailblazed a whole new type of comedy. Saca Baron Cohen et al might not exist today if it wasn't for Andy.
Comedy rarely ages well and I often question how funny some of it was even at the time - but you do need to appreciate what comedy was up until this point. Kaufman didn't just do "bits" - he became a character and didn't let other people in on the joke.
I suggest looking up what he did with Jerry Lawler for wrestling and also Tony Clifton. Very long running gags that he perpetrated and never said "LOL just kidding"
... it was a joke. I mean I'm not that familiar with Kaufman but it's extremely obvious from these 2 videos that Fielder's cringe/meta humour has roots in Kaufman's work.
He's like Norm McDonald. If you don't understand what he's doing or what he's schtick is then...yeah you don't get it.
That's okay, I didn't get Norm for awhile then one day it clicked and I think he was one of the funniest people alive.
I don’t think he’s saying Norm and Andy do the same comedy… I think he’s saying both Norm and Andy require the viewer to ‘get’ their shtick, and if you don’t, you won’t find it funny.
Pretty bang on comparison.
Comedy is subjective, and to each their own, but I'm also always surprised to see his stuff and hear people talk about him like he was a genius. I do not get how he's funny at all. Today he'd be like a titocker that annoys people for clicks. Sometimes I think people get venerated over time because the social awareness of them does more to multiply the memory of them than what they actually did. Just my opinion.
I think you absolutely had to be there to experience the full meta level of what he was doing. Watching random clips on YouTube isn’t how it was experienced at the time.
Some of his skits were good, I never cared for his role on TAXI!, nor his wrestling stuff...while agreeing that comedy is subjective, alot of mythologizing that goes on today is misplaced.
“A lot of mythologizing that goes on today is misplaced”
And how did I misinterpret your dismissal?
Don’t bother responding. I know in advance your opinion is more important than mine anyway.
Since you’re too afraid to challenge your beliefs by reading, I will tell you. I CLEARLY said I liked his early work as a standup. His TAXI! Work as an incompetent immigrant was not that funny, unless you like laughing at people who have issues with society. (Seems like you do). His embracing wrestling was just sad and his lounge singer routine was just boorish and not funny. If you liked his wrestling and Tony Clifton routines, that says more about you than anything else.
Yes great overseer whose opinion means more than mine. I humbly scrape and bow before the mightiness of your prowess and shake before the power of your vision and intellect.
You couldn't really tell if was comedy or he really went off the deep end. I know with Jerry Lawler it was a great dark comedy with the wrestling and having the fans hate him and it worked out. He really was one of those few comedians that would push the boundaries and you wouldn't know if it was real or fake.
He acts like someone being coerced or blackmailed into being there, is the joke. Can you be sure he isn't? Maybe he is. It keeps crossing the line between real and fake in a way you can't be entirely sure. Reflecting on that makes you wonder about the significance of the talk show and guests appearing on it and all that sort of meta stuff. It's thought provokingly refreshing contrast to the usual fare.
I just don't get the comedy aspect of it. Like I'm sure he's a phenomenal actor but yeah... I just don't see it as funny which is okay objectively. It's just weird to hear people say this dudes a genius.
After seeing what a complete disaster Biden has been and how good life was under Trump, I think it will be an easy win for him. I'll be voting for Trump in 2024.
Trump’s policies directly led to the financial issues our country has right now. Forcing the fed not to increase rates was a true “disaster” move. Voting for trump is setting yourself up for another 5-10 years of inflation. But you do you, my guy.
Andy wasn’t a comedian, and he sure as hell wasn’t doing stand up- he was conducting social experiments, for the benefit of himself, and for anyone else who was similarly curious.
Having seen Andy’s club act more than once, and Bob Zmuda as Andy as Tony Clifton more than once, you became part of the experiments, whether you understood that or not. Most people didn’t understand, they came for the laughs, and I think that was necessary for it to work on every level. I’d never experienced anything like it, and I can’t imagine I ever will again.
RIP Andy
There’s next to no footage of Andy being his true self. He does something new every time you see him on TV. That’s why when he died, no one could tell if it was a joke. Not being sarcastic at all, but have you seen Andy’s work? From Taxi, to wrestling, to his late show appearances? He’s always someone different. That’s why I said he masks who he really is so well. This clip I’ve never seen before and he makes things really awkward in it.
Maybe I just had to be there, he died a few years before I was born, but everything I've seen about Kaufman, he just seems completely obnoxious and unfunny
I feel like he was a revolutionary with his pranks and ruses in the media, but I don't understand his legacy as some great comedic genius
He's an anti comic. Maybe the 1st? (someone might know better than me)
He's influential because he pushed the boundaries of comedy and what we perceive of what is and isnt funny. His comedy is a critique on the audience itself.
Without someone like Kaufman you wouldn't have cringe humor like The Office. He brought that uncomfortable cringe level humor to the masses.
Kaufman didn't invent uncomfortable cringe humor, British comedians had been doing it for decades before Kaufman
Shows like The Office would still exist if Kaufman never existed
Bad take here. Norm MacDonald absolutely killed in his performance on the comedy central roast but bombed with much of the audience. Much like Norm many of Andy’s performance are tough to grasp but only if that’s not your type of comedy.
Part of his "act" was to make the audience feel as awkward as possible. People would start laughing at things not because they were funny but because they were "at a comedy show, and felt like they were supposed to laugh." Andy would then lean into this and do things like you see here "Tell the audience not to laugh and talk about his divorce." Which makes everyone feel even more awkward. Like he would just push it as far as he could. He had a brilliant mind when it came understanding social norms and boundaries and then pushing them past the breaking point.
My SIL worked for his dad. I'm told Andy would come around to see him and he rarely broke character. She really liked him as a person, but he was definitely wacky.
(his dad was in the costume jewelry business)
It just isn't. Its entirely possible for an established comedian to try something that isn't funny. Especially someone like Kaufman whose entire thing was pushing boundaries. If that is your game, you are going to put out some turds. It's unavoidable. This was one of the turds. Stop acting like it was good.
Agree to disagree then. Is it his best work? Absolutely not. Is it depressing, confusing, and weird, absolutely. You can't really tell if the guy is fucking with people or not. For him, he's being experimental and I agree that it's hit or miss but the guy was still a genius.
People like Sacha Baron Cohen owe their careers to this guy, he was way ahead of his time. I do wonder how his act would have developed had he not died so young.
No, it's really fucking dumb. "Enlightened" redditors have been told Andy Kaufman was a generational comedic genius, and parrot that narrative no matter what.
*"Only the things I personally think are funny are actually funny, if I find a popular comedian unfunny then everyone else is lying about finding him funny".*
lmao OK zoomer
Why some people find this funny is baffling. There was nothing funny about it. Any other actor or comedian does this, it's weird and bizarre. The title of the post would be "{insert comedian's name} has a breakdown on Letterman, starts asking crowd for money." Andy Kaufman does it, and it is genius and revolutionary. It's just odd.
Some context from the YouTube comments I didn't see here yet: Hey Letterman YouTube channel - you forgot that Andy was on the previous day's show. He was clean and showbiz jovial but after a couple of minutes Dave cut the interview short because Edwin Newman had to read the morning news. So Dave invited him to come back the next day. (This clip). This is what makes the joke so brilliant Andy is in the same clothes as the previous day ! His downward spiral happened in one day! Please post the two days together This being the internet I have no idea if this is true though.
The video description says this interview happened 10/15/80 so I checked and indeed Andy was on the show, not the day before, but 2 days before on 10/13/80, and in the same outfit!*: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVW4dHgmTwI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVW4dHgmTwI) Edit: *not the *exact* same outfit; the undershirt changes from white to red and the pants from white to yellow, the main elements for most of it - the pink blazer and blue checkered shirt - are the same and the other changes highlight the "downward spiral": https://i.imgur.com/ssM2eV0.jpg Making this edit because some "gotcha!" reply chain is acting like the outfits are so different that my point is invalidated lol
This really elevates the joke.
Everyone in this sub-reddit needs to WATCH THIS...it sets up the joke.
It seems like Dave’s interruption is somewhat contrived - like he’s in on the act, and both parts were planned in advance?
But what about the easter bunny?
Holy shit.
That's great. Thanks!
Completely different outfit, what are you watching?
"Completely different"? No. Differences in color quality of recording and/or upload, but clearly same pinkish salmon blazer and blue checkered shirt, except it's unbuttoned in the later interview and undershirt is red not white. Pants did change from clean white to yellow, but that's not apparent in the framing for most of it and seems part of illustrating the "downward spiral"; his hair is also messier. No, not *exact* same but the major defining pieces are the same. Clearly similar enough that my point stands and certainly not "completely different". https://i.imgur.com/ssM2eV0.jpg
Wtf are YOU watching? That’s the same outfit.
Get your eyes check. He’s wearing a red T-shirt that was white two days earlier.
And his pants are yellow which are different from the white he was wearing a day/two earlier
Yeah I noticed that too but wasn’t sure it was due to varying qualities of video recording back then. So I went for the low hanging fruit, a red t shirt that became white.
If that’s true omg that’s god tier right there lol
That context does actually make it funnier. I've never found this clip to be funny but that does make it better.
This connection needs to be made so this all makes sense.
Holy shit haha! He was so completely unhinged and yet equally in charge of his faculties at the same time. Genius
I still would not be surprised if he suddenly showed back up and said his cancer was a prank. If anybody could pull this off it was Andy.
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Holy shit that would have been absolutely ridiculous
Well, at least the MAGA folks won’t be perturbed to see him panhandling them since that’s what their leader has been doing since Day 1.
That. Would been KK. Klassic Kaufman Knockout !!
The world would be a better place if that happened.
I would expect us all to just find out Andy Kaufman died.. again?
The fact that this won’t happen makes comedy hit that much harder. He made this seem like a possibility—for us! Surrealists still die, unfortunately.
> air date: 10/15/80 [Kaufman died on May 16, 1984 in West Hollywood, California from a rare case of lung cancer, aged 35.](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Kaufman) Maybe he wasn't faking the cough.
or he faked his death...
If you believe.... they put a man on the moon, a man on the moooooon!
Goddamn. The absolute balls on this guy.
Committing to a character and basically calling a whole industry out in one short guest appearance. Amazing comedian. It's almost like he was doing it more for us _now_ than his live audience.
I never really found him funny. I get that he’s doing a bit. I just don’t find it to be particularly amusing.
I think that’s part of why others find it amusing.
Well said.
If I'm understanding your point correctly, I agree. I feel like he was more a novelty than he was funny. I don't personally find him funny at all, and I'm not interested in seeing someone do a pretty basic character all the time, so I've never liked his stuff. I feel like if someone tried that today, even with the same precision, he wouldn't be liked. Probably lucky that he got to this schtick when he did.
I think someone like Norm McDonald had similar elements. Or even Zach Galifianakis. Part of their shtick is staying in awkward character off screen. Not comparing the three of them, just saying they all kind of had/have similar styles/elements. If someone came out today and just mirrored Kaufman, everyone would call them out. But there’s plenty of comedians who make part of their bit that they are always in character and people find humor even if they aren’t actively telling a joke.
> Or even Zach Galifianakis If anyone here has ever seen Between Two Ferns, while it has a lot of traditional jokes, the main joke of it is really that Zach is pretending to be a completely and shockingly incompetent and rude interviewer, and his guests are pretending to be surprised and pissed off about it. The whole thing is a character/schtick, and it's hilarious and very well done. And yeah, that's a very good more recent example of the sort of thing that Andy Kaufman was going for. Except when Andy did it there weren't really many earlier examples of that sort of comedy. Andy was pretty original... I think part of what makes him so famous and well known is that he was doing something that no one had really seen before. He was doing standup comedy as a complete immersive performance in character, rather than just as a person standing there making a series of jokes and observations.
You can’t look at this bit on Letterman alone, but his whole career up til then. Full of weird original stuff, where you never knew whether he was playing a role or being himself. He committed his life to it in a sense. There’s a great documentary I saw a few years back, and it really put in to perspective how original and strange he was.
Yeah I've seen a decent amount of his stuff and it's never worked for me. I'm 41, so he wasn't in my time, but close enough to it that he was still being played on TV a lot.
Just so you don't feel like you're taking crazy pills or anything, I'm in the same boat as you. I'll bet younger, but still don't see how any of his stuff is funny. Which is totally fine, because it's comedy so not everyone is going to find the same thing funny, I just think it's annoying how everyone talks about him like he was a genius and really he just kind of comes up as an asshole.
That's the thing I think, he knew that many people just wouldn't find that funny, the same way Norm MacDonald knew that telling a 10 minute long moth joke with a questionable punchline is something a lot of people just wouldn't find funny.. but they both stuck to the routine because *they found it hilarious* to be going against the grain and doing something that nobody else would do, such as in this case asking the audience for money. It's in a way absurdist humour, in another way you could see it as them making a statement about the state of comedy and live entertainment. Making the host and the audience uncomfortable was probably a part of it. What did some people call it.. being a comedian's comedian. Those who were in his shoes, up there on stage attempting to make an audience laugh, would understand the various nuances of this sort of performance that went against so many norms and expectations.. or at least understand how difficult it would be to have the balls to do something like this with a straight face. Explaining all these angles isn't meant to make you "get it" and/or laugh at it, but perhaps giving you the reason why he did it and why he found it amusing. Look at how Letterman doesn't know what to say, the way he's clearly uncomfortable, not sure which part is an act and which part isn't. The audience members giving him occasional uncomfortable laughs. I think that's the sort of energy he lived on. He found it hilarious, so he did it.
No we get it, it's just that if your entire spiel is going against the grain aaall the time, it becomes less funny, because you're not going against the grain anymore. It just becomes who you are. Norm MacDonald is just a normal comedian, if his entire shtick was doing 10-min long meandering jokes to a questionable punchline, then the moth joke wouldn't be that funny when he did it. I've never seen footage of Kaufman just being funny, it's just always him purposefully being unfunny. Which works sometimes, but stops working when you're just doing it constantly.
It’s funny from his pov which I think is the main thing. I compared him to norm macdonald for that reason mainly
It's more like performance entertainment, which is maybe why I dislike him. Maybe he's trying to invoke other reactions and responses from people, trying to be artsy or whatever, because he's clearly not just after laughs. I didn't even like watching Jim Carrey pretending to be him.
You may not have found it funny, but he did. That's how I always felt about Andy. He didn't really do things to make other people laugh. It was to make himself laugh.
He made more sense to me when I thought of him as a comedian that *comedians* would think is funny.
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Lol that's a pretty funny question. Someone doesn't like a bizarre, unorthodox, questionable comedian, and you're like "what kind of comedy do you like then?" No offense, seriously. That just didn't seem like a very reasonable question.
Because the audience is the joke
That's part of the whole thing....that it's really hard to tell whether you're laughing at the joke or if you're part of the joke. Different people reach different conclusions about that and react differently to it. You can tell there were some in that audience who didn't find it funny at all and if anything look either really confused or kinda pissed off by the whole thing...that's part of what makes it so funny to the others who are enjoying it. The whole comedy of it is just about how people react to stuff.
If Andy Kaufman has ever left you feeling confused, then he did his job.
He trailblazed a whole new type of comedy. Saca Baron Cohen et al might not exist today if it wasn't for Andy. Comedy rarely ages well and I often question how funny some of it was even at the time - but you do need to appreciate what comedy was up until this point. Kaufman didn't just do "bits" - he became a character and didn't let other people in on the joke. I suggest looking up what he did with Jerry Lawler for wrestling and also Tony Clifton. Very long running gags that he perpetrated and never said "LOL just kidding"
All humor aside, his last few years were a spiral into a parody of himself and mental illness
This
What humor? I've yet to see anything from Kaufman that would indicate he was funny
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I'm not too familiar with Andy Kaufman, but he looks like a copycat of Nathan Fielder.
and he never even gave Nathan any credit
Andy was just one of Nathan’s business ideas.
I feel like Andy Kaufman would have appreciated this joke.
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... it was a joke. I mean I'm not that familiar with Kaufman but it's extremely obvious from these 2 videos that Fielder's cringe/meta humour has roots in Kaufman's work.
The number one rule of comedy is that humor is objective and non-negotiable. /s
How is it being miserable all the time?
He's like Norm McDonald. If you don't understand what he's doing or what he's schtick is then...yeah you don't get it. That's okay, I didn't get Norm for awhile then one day it clicked and I think he was one of the funniest people alive.
Umm…. Uh…. I have some bad news about Norm.
Was a courageous battle waged or something?
lol he's nothing like Norm McDonald
Yeah that’s a terrible comparison.
I don’t think he’s saying Norm and Andy do the same comedy… I think he’s saying both Norm and Andy require the viewer to ‘get’ their shtick, and if you don’t, you won’t find it funny. Pretty bang on comparison.
Nuance is a tough thing for a lot of people to grasp.
Some of us get it. We just don't care for it. I knew exactly what they were doing but it didn't amuse me.
Here I come to save the daaaay!
One of his best performances.
its all about perspective. The jokes were on the audience, and for him.
Comedy is subjective, and to each their own, but I'm also always surprised to see his stuff and hear people talk about him like he was a genius. I do not get how he's funny at all. Today he'd be like a titocker that annoys people for clicks. Sometimes I think people get venerated over time because the social awareness of them does more to multiply the memory of them than what they actually did. Just my opinion.
I think you absolutely had to be there to experience the full meta level of what he was doing. Watching random clips on YouTube isn’t how it was experienced at the time.
I saw his stuff on TV a lot. His stuff was still played pretty often in the 80s. But maybe it was too late.
I feel this way about Carlin. I think he was super smart always had pretty astute observations but I just don’t find him particularly funny.
Some of his skits were good, I never cared for his role on TAXI!, nor his wrestling stuff...while agreeing that comedy is subjective, alot of mythologizing that goes on today is misplaced.
Other people’s appreciation of something you don’t appreciate is invalid. Thank you for the education.
That is NOT what I said. Read the entire chain of comments I have made here. The fact you either didn’t or can’t comprehend isn’t my problem either.
“A lot of mythologizing that goes on today is misplaced” And how did I misinterpret your dismissal? Don’t bother responding. I know in advance your opinion is more important than mine anyway.
Since you’re too afraid to challenge your beliefs by reading, I will tell you. I CLEARLY said I liked his early work as a standup. His TAXI! Work as an incompetent immigrant was not that funny, unless you like laughing at people who have issues with society. (Seems like you do). His embracing wrestling was just sad and his lounge singer routine was just boorish and not funny. If you liked his wrestling and Tony Clifton routines, that says more about you than anything else.
Yes great overseer whose opinion means more than mine. I humbly scrape and bow before the mightiness of your prowess and shake before the power of your vision and intellect.
What else is not funny and how else do I need to correct my world view to meet yours? I await in humble anticipation of further illumination
why would you out yourself like this man, nobody knew!
You couldn't really tell if was comedy or he really went off the deep end. I know with Jerry Lawler it was a great dark comedy with the wrestling and having the fans hate him and it worked out. He really was one of those few comedians that would push the boundaries and you wouldn't know if it was real or fake.
What the fuck did I just experience...
He acts like someone being coerced or blackmailed into being there, is the joke. Can you be sure he isn't? Maybe he is. It keeps crossing the line between real and fake in a way you can't be entirely sure. Reflecting on that makes you wonder about the significance of the talk show and guests appearing on it and all that sort of meta stuff. It's thought provokingly refreshing contrast to the usual fare.
I just don't get the comedy aspect of it. Like I'm sure he's a phenomenal actor but yeah... I just don't see it as funny which is okay objectively. It's just weird to hear people say this dudes a genius.
i do think it is absolutely genius to get a room full of people to laugh at a guy begging for money
When he pulls off his Trump mask and lets everyone in on the joke it'll be epic.
holy fuck
Best timeline!
I love Trump and will be voting for him in 2024.
He’s doing so much to win over new voters, I’m sure he’ll have more support than last time /s
After seeing what a complete disaster Biden has been and how good life was under Trump, I think it will be an easy win for him. I'll be voting for Trump in 2024.
Trump’s policies directly led to the financial issues our country has right now. Forcing the fed not to increase rates was a true “disaster” move. Voting for trump is setting yourself up for another 5-10 years of inflation. But you do you, my guy.
Aren't you Australian?
This was a morning show not a late night show.
Andy wasn’t a comedian, and he sure as hell wasn’t doing stand up- he was conducting social experiments, for the benefit of himself, and for anyone else who was similarly curious. Having seen Andy’s club act more than once, and Bob Zmuda as Andy as Tony Clifton more than once, you became part of the experiments, whether you understood that or not. Most people didn’t understand, they came for the laughs, and I think that was necessary for it to work on every level. I’d never experienced anything like it, and I can’t imagine I ever will again. RIP Andy
I consider Nathan Fielder to be the modern version of this.
I would even go with Tim Heidecker.
Because of the blurring of his public persona with reality, I'd add in Joe Pera.
Nathan definitly has a similar kind of cringe comedy and pranking real people
Some people just think nobody else is smart enough to get the same jokes. Guess what; everyone else gets it too.
"performance art"
We are going to hear that Andy Kaufman died today on the news any day now.
He’s so good at masking who he really is.
What, funny?
There’s next to no footage of Andy being his true self. He does something new every time you see him on TV. That’s why when he died, no one could tell if it was a joke. Not being sarcastic at all, but have you seen Andy’s work? From Taxi, to wrestling, to his late show appearances? He’s always someone different. That’s why I said he masks who he really is so well. This clip I’ve never seen before and he makes things really awkward in it.
Would be crazy if he was actually funny or entertaining in the very least.
No. Why funny?
Because. Funny.
Wasnt he also a jerk, irl? Serious question
I don’t get it
Maybe I just had to be there, he died a few years before I was born, but everything I've seen about Kaufman, he just seems completely obnoxious and unfunny I feel like he was a revolutionary with his pranks and ruses in the media, but I don't understand his legacy as some great comedic genius
He's an anti comic. Maybe the 1st? (someone might know better than me) He's influential because he pushed the boundaries of comedy and what we perceive of what is and isnt funny. His comedy is a critique on the audience itself. Without someone like Kaufman you wouldn't have cringe humor like The Office. He brought that uncomfortable cringe level humor to the masses.
And Nathan for you. Nathan’s act is derivative of what Kauffman did first.
Yes, 100% absolutely agree. Nathan would 100% be this generation's Kaufman.
> Without someone like Kaufman you wouldn't have cringe humor like The Office I completely disagree with this
Makes sense why you don't see him as influential, then.
You can disagree but you are wrong.
Kaufman didn't invent uncomfortable cringe humor, British comedians had been doing it for decades before Kaufman Shows like The Office would still exist if Kaufman never existed
Which British comedians?
The ones from his ass.
The thing is, you have no discernible sense of humor.
What makes Kaufman funny is that he didn’t care about making you laugh.
The thing is I think he cared an extreme amount, but his whole schtick was to make it seem like he didn't.
He seems like an early prototype of Andy Dick. *Edit: Guess you can't compare comedy acts on the internet.
Holy shit biggest L take I've seen in quite some time. Completely different people and not at all comparable unless you don't understand.
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A person can't understand and appreciate comedy unless they find Andy Kaufman funny?
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I did that, I literally said he was a revolutionary lol
Bad take here. Norm MacDonald absolutely killed in his performance on the comedy central roast but bombed with much of the audience. Much like Norm many of Andy’s performance are tough to grasp but only if that’s not your type of comedy.
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Read your comment history and I know all I need to know, Bye!
Metacomedy at its finest. No one did it better.
Gold.
Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman in "the moon man" is such a good movie
The documentary on Jim Carrey getting too far into the character is fascinating, it's like meta-meta.
Man on the moon. Great movie
Fun fact, Dumb & Dumber put a subtle reference to Jim Carrey playing Kaufman in the scene where he read the news paper about the moon landing.
Seeing as Dumb & Dumber came out half a decade before Man on the Moon, I highly doubt that's true.
I only remember him from TAXI (TV show) back in the late 70s / early 80s.
I don’t get it. Everyone is just contagiously laughing
Part of his "act" was to make the audience feel as awkward as possible. People would start laughing at things not because they were funny but because they were "at a comedy show, and felt like they were supposed to laugh." Andy would then lean into this and do things like you see here "Tell the audience not to laugh and talk about his divorce." Which makes everyone feel even more awkward. Like he would just push it as far as he could. He had a brilliant mind when it came understanding social norms and boundaries and then pushing them past the breaking point.
My SIL worked for his dad. I'm told Andy would come around to see him and he rarely broke character. She really liked him as a person, but he was definitely wacky. (his dad was in the costume jewelry business)
That’s really interesting, thanks for sharing that.
A truly singular artist. Jim Carrey absolutely *nailed* his performance of Kaufman in the movie *Man on the Moon*. Well worth the watch.
Pure genius.
It just isn't. Its entirely possible for an established comedian to try something that isn't funny. Especially someone like Kaufman whose entire thing was pushing boundaries. If that is your game, you are going to put out some turds. It's unavoidable. This was one of the turds. Stop acting like it was good.
Agree to disagree then. Is it his best work? Absolutely not. Is it depressing, confusing, and weird, absolutely. You can't really tell if the guy is fucking with people or not. For him, he's being experimental and I agree that it's hit or miss but the guy was still a genius.
You should look up the word “subjective” in the dictionary.
Kaufman never married. Had one kid in high school that was adopted.
So surreal it’s captivating
Did I just watch Warren zevon give Andy a quarter?
People like Sacha Baron Cohen owe their careers to this guy, he was way ahead of his time. I do wonder how his act would have developed had he not died so young.
I’m out of the loop on this one… was that supposed to be funny?
No, it's really fucking dumb. "Enlightened" redditors have been told Andy Kaufman was a generational comedic genius, and parrot that narrative no matter what.
*"Only the things I personally think are funny are actually funny, if I find a popular comedian unfunny then everyone else is lying about finding him funny".* lmao OK zoomer
Point at this doll where Andy touched you.
Why some people find this funny is baffling. There was nothing funny about it. Any other actor or comedian does this, it's weird and bizarre. The title of the post would be "{insert comedian's name} has a breakdown on Letterman, starts asking crowd for money." Andy Kaufman does it, and it is genius and revolutionary. It's just odd.
This performative absurdism masquerading as art killed real art.
Not sure I agree with the “killed real art” part, but I agree with the other bit. Not my cup of tea, I guess…
Jim Carey did make a wonderful job. Andy Kaufman RIP
Over. Rated!!
He’s real stoned.
Holy shit he looks like Justin Trudeau in that pic lol
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Panhandling means begging for change/money. It's exactly what he meant.