Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways. It is not brought to you by Crawfish Boxing.
Speaker 1: Instead is supported by the generous contributions of people like you,
Speaker 1: our listeners on Patreon. Visit patreon dot com slash Thinking
Speaker 1: Sideways to learn more Thinking Sideways. I don't think you
Speaker 1: never know the stories of things. We simply don't know
Speaker 1: the answer too. Well. Hey there, and welcome again to
Speaker 1: another episode of Thinking Sideways. As always, I'm Steve, joined
Speaker 1: of course by Devin and Joe, and once again we've
Speaker 1: got a mystery. What yeah we do it's a pretty
Speaker 1: scary one too. Well, no it isn't. But you know
Speaker 1: what the thing is, I had so much fun last
Speaker 1: week or not last week, last time that I hosted
Speaker 1: doing a wrestling episode. I've been decided we do another one.
Speaker 1: Seems like it's been a million years and we did
Speaker 1: that episode. Really does, because in our world it's been
Speaker 1: a month. Yeah, yeah, three weeks. Okay, Well, we're not
Speaker 1: actually gonna do a wrestling story, well a little bit.
Speaker 1: It's kind of kind of a wrestling story. We are
Speaker 1: this week for anyone who has Devin would say, didn't
Speaker 1: read the episode title, going to be talking about Mr
Speaker 1: Andy Kaufman and you might say, well, why, Well, the
Speaker 1: mystery is is Andy Kaufman really dead or not? Because
Speaker 1: he's one of those people who has had sightings of
Speaker 1: him four years. I like Andy a little more than
Speaker 1: I like Elvis at times. I'm okay with that. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get so much hate mail for saying sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: So let me give everybody just the quick, real brief
Speaker 1: version and then we'll get into some details. So brief
Speaker 1: introduction to Andy Kaufman. Uh. He was a comedian. He
Speaker 1: had his career was in the nineteen seven and these
Speaker 1: the late seventies, mid to late and then the early eighties,
Speaker 1: and he is known for being a character on the
Speaker 1: TV show Taxi. He died at thirty five of a
Speaker 1: very rare form of lung cancer on sixteenth of May.
Speaker 1: But because of all of the stunts and the crazy
Speaker 1: things that he had done over the years, a lot
Speaker 1: of people really didn't believe that he had really died.
Speaker 1: They were sure that it was a prank. Well he was,
Speaker 1: I mean, he was known as the guy who would
Speaker 1: take a joke a little too far. I think a
Speaker 1: little is an understand I'm trying to be generous. I
Speaker 1: don't want to say bad things about dead people. Oh no, no,
Speaker 1: there's nothing bad. And he took jokes way too far
Speaker 1: to the degree he like he took it to when
Speaker 1: it stopped being funny and then kept going and then
Speaker 1: eventually started being funny again. There's a really interesting radio
Speaker 1: Lab I'm sorry to digress for a second, really really
Speaker 1: interesting radio lab episode about this, in which I encountered
Speaker 1: one of my favorite comedians in the entire world for
Speaker 1: the very first time ever. Her name is Kristin shaw
Speaker 1: which you you all know her. She's got the voice.
Speaker 1: You know who she is. She's She's Louise on Bobsberger's. Yeah. Anyways,
Speaker 1: they did this show called Christian Shawl Is a Horse
Speaker 1: where it was him and I'm sorry, it was her
Speaker 1: and a male comedian on stage, and literally he would
Speaker 1: just go, oh, Kristin Shawl is a horse. Kristin Shawl
Speaker 1: is a horse, like for fifteen minutes straight while she
Speaker 1: danced around on stage. And it's that's progression. It's a
Speaker 1: very well studied thing now where it's like it's funny
Speaker 1: for a minute and then it's not funny, and then
Speaker 1: it's really not funny, and then it's hilarious. Again, just
Speaker 1: like this story I just told it is and thank
Speaker 1: you for sharing, Devin, welcome. I don't know how to
Speaker 1: follow that, So we're just gonna start talking some more
Speaker 1: about Andy Coffin, as I briefly mentioned, started his act
Speaker 1: in the seventies, starting comedy clubs, and he wasn't always
Speaker 1: that well received. He, as we had briefly mentioned, he
Speaker 1: his style of comedy was different and it was not
Speaker 1: what people were used to, and it really really put
Speaker 1: people off, because I mean, we've all been to a
Speaker 1: comedy show. The typical thing is a comedian gets up
Speaker 1: there and he does his stick of jokes and for
Speaker 1: five ten minutes whatever his time is, and then he
Speaker 1: gets down and he leaves the stage. And he didn't
Speaker 1: really think of himself as a comedian, No, he didn't.
Speaker 1: He was more of a It was performance artist, performance artists,
Speaker 1: thank you, Joe. That is exactly it. It was art.
Speaker 1: And so Andy would get up there and he would
Speaker 1: do very weird things that people didn't know how to
Speaker 1: do how to react to. Um, so let's give an
Speaker 1: example that Let's actually give a Kaufman example here, which
Speaker 1: would be the character known as foreign Man. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen. Taxis basically the same character lat
Speaker 1: The character he played was Lacka, and it was based
Speaker 1: on the foreign man character, absolutely right. So here's what happens.
Speaker 1: Uh Andy as foreign man would walk up on skate
Speaker 1: stage and he'd be rather nervous and moving his hands
Speaker 1: around and flailing and looking at the crowd wide eyed.
Speaker 1: And then when he spoke, he had this weird, clipped
Speaker 1: accent that nobody recognized, in this kind of high pitched voice,
Speaker 1: and it was funny, and he would tell everybody that
Speaker 1: he was originally from Caspar, which was an island in
Speaker 1: the Caspian Sea. Both his accent and that place are
Speaker 1: made up, of course, and then he would go on
Speaker 1: to tell jokes and they were terrible because he intentionally
Speaker 1: told the joke wrong, like he didn't get what how
Speaker 1: a joke worked, and the audience would at first kind
Speaker 1: of h and then people would get angry and they'd
Speaker 1: start aren't too boo, And then other people in the
Speaker 1: crowd would start to say shut up and trying to
Speaker 1: defend him, and he would keep doing stuff. He would say, well,
Speaker 1: um in his funny accent, which I'm not going to
Speaker 1: try to replicate because I can't pull it off. He
Speaker 1: would try to then say I'll do it. I'll do
Speaker 1: an impression for you in his funny little accent, and
Speaker 1: he would say, I'm going to be I don't know,
Speaker 1: let's just say Lyndon Johnson. And then he would turn
Speaker 1: around and he would turn back to the mic and
Speaker 1: in the exact same voice and accent, say hello, I
Speaker 1: am Lyndon Johnson. And of course people would laugh at
Speaker 1: the first one. And he would do three of these
Speaker 1: or four of these at a time, and by this
Speaker 1: time the crowd it's just kind of losing it because
Speaker 1: they just don't know what's going on. Well, it's funny
Speaker 1: because it's so absurd, but it's also bad comedy and
Speaker 1: paid to get into a comedy club. You get angry
Speaker 1: because this guy looks like he's bombing. He's bombing in
Speaker 1: the worst sort of way, and he doesn't he even
Speaker 1: get it. And then he would say, wait, I'll be
Speaker 1: Elvis Presley. I'm gonna do an impression of Elvis, and
Speaker 1: he would turn around and they would start the music
Speaker 1: that actually start the music for Elvis, and he would
Speaker 1: really quick His hair was always kind of slicked back
Speaker 1: in this weird style, and he would pop his collar up,
Speaker 1: he'd brush his hair real fast while looking away from
Speaker 1: the audience, and then just before the lyrics hit, he
Speaker 1: would turn around and he would do a dead on Elvis.
Speaker 1: He could sing and sounded really close to Elvis, and
Speaker 1: the crowd would lose their mind because it's like, holy crap,
Speaker 1: this is amazing. And then the song would end and
Speaker 1: he would immediately flip back into the foreign man voice
Speaker 1: and accent and say thank you very much and be
Speaker 1: done and just leave. This sounds very familiar. Like there
Speaker 1: there's at least one comedian right now that I can
Speaker 1: think of that does comedy like this. Yes, that is
Speaker 1: a great example. Borat Borat is the modern equivalent of
Speaker 1: Andy Kaufman's foreign man character. Yeah, that is a character too.
Speaker 1: I couldn't And what was a movie? Yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: named after the char See here's the thing. Guys, guys
Speaker 1: like Sasha Bary Cohen and Andy Kaufman, they committed to
Speaker 1: a character. And Kaufman did not break character. Almost never
Speaker 1: do you see him break character. He doesn't crack up.
Speaker 1: He's so wholeheartedly committed because that's his performance art. He's
Speaker 1: making art. And I didn't think. Here's the thing about
Speaker 1: him too, is that he was so into his characters.
Speaker 1: He was actually a non drinker and a vegetarian. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but what he was if his character ate meat and
Speaker 1: drank booze, then you're talking about Tony Clifton, who we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about later. Yeah, the character, and yeah
Speaker 1: he was. He was amazing and uh, he was also
Speaker 1: really weird. I will say this right now. I think
Speaker 1: Coffman's a weird dude. I also think that he was
Speaker 1: a creative genius in his own way, like the things
Speaker 1: he came up with. What you're saying, Okay, is he
Speaker 1: or is You're right? I apologize spoilers. He in his
Speaker 1: performances was a creative genius and could continue to be
Speaker 1: today if indeed he is still alive and performing and
Speaker 1: possibly performing. But you know, as we talked about he,
Speaker 1: uh you know we said this several times. There was
Speaker 1: the performance, aren't He's quoted Blants is saying, quote, I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to be funny. I just want to play
Speaker 1: with their heads. So he really did just want to
Speaker 1: mess with the ADDI I think there there's definitely a
Speaker 1: group of people. I think I'm kind of one of
Speaker 1: these people on a lot of different levels. But you know,
Speaker 1: to me, being funny isn't so much that other people
Speaker 1: laughing are laughing. It's as long as I think it's hilarious, right,
Speaker 1: And so if I, if I or you know, Andy
Speaker 1: are kind of pulling the wool over someone's eyes in
Speaker 1: a hilarious way, that's extra funny to me, versus you know,
Speaker 1: everybody else is laughing. But I'm kind of like, I
Speaker 1: know this joke, you know, inside it out, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of lame. Well that that kind of joke though,
Speaker 1: going up on stage and telling the same yo mama joke,
Speaker 1: you know, five nights a week, it's it's no fun.
Speaker 1: But going up and pulling the wool over people's eyes
Speaker 1: and getting them all to react in crazy different ways,
Speaker 1: that's gotta be just so gratified, absolutely, absolutely apparently like
Speaker 1: he really did, because over the years he, as I said,
Speaker 1: he pulled so many pranks and so many hoaxes and
Speaker 1: so many gags on people, and he took them to
Speaker 1: such a degree that people no longer knew what reality was.
Speaker 1: An example, this is not a couchman example, but this
Speaker 1: is the kind of same reaction and maybe we've talked
Speaker 1: about this before, but was it Alan fund Fund? Yes,
Speaker 1: thank you, Alan Fund. So he did Candy Camera, and
Speaker 1: people began to realize that when he was around, there
Speaker 1: was a camera going on and a gag was happening.
Speaker 1: And he gets on an airplane and this was Joe
Speaker 1: do you remember this. It was in the seventies. He
Speaker 1: gets on an airplane and this was the thing at
Speaker 1: the time. The airplane got hijacked and they said, fly
Speaker 1: us to Cuba, and the passengers on board are all
Speaker 1: kind of nervous until one person realizes that Funt is
Speaker 1: on the plane. Fund it's candy camera. Where do you
Speaker 1: guys have the camera? He's like, no, it's not a joke.
Speaker 1: It's not a joke. It's not a joke. Called and
Speaker 1: cut it out there. They're serious, the real guns. Everybody's like,
Speaker 1: this is like the whole plane is laughing on their
Speaker 1: way to Havannah. But but yeah, it was. That's the
Speaker 1: kind of thing, like he had done this so much
Speaker 1: that nobody believed him when he told the truth, and
Speaker 1: that happened with Kaufman. Nobody believed him when he would
Speaker 1: say things like, oh, you're making this up. You're totally
Speaker 1: making this up. He just did such crazy stuff that,
Speaker 1: having been said, were the fun really? I mean he
Speaker 1: had one he had one bit not was it, But Kaufman,
Speaker 1: he had a whole slew of him, which brings us
Speaker 1: right now we're already through the story because as I said,
Speaker 1: he died in nobody believes he died, or a bunch
Speaker 1: of people didn't believe at the time that he had
Speaker 1: actually died. So we have two very simple theories. Is
Speaker 1: Kaufman deadman alive or you know, his Kaufman dead but
Speaker 1: at a different date possible. I roll that into the
Speaker 1: Andy Kaufman is alive because that means he faked his death. Okay,
Speaker 1: either he faked his death or he really really I
Speaker 1: think he probably faked his death. And then he was
Speaker 1: probably planning and coming back after God spoilers, and then
Speaker 1: and then what happened is he's like he was all
Speaker 1: making his plans to to make his comeback, you know,
Speaker 1: about a year, and he get run over web bus
Speaker 1: and I think, you guys, this is probably his last
Speaker 1: thought was like, you know, oh this sucks, but god,
Speaker 1: I love the Irony's actually probably okay, So let's go
Speaker 1: into thirty one, which is that Andy Coffin really did
Speaker 1: die in there are people who believe this. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of people who believe that because officially, and this
Speaker 1: is I pulled up his death by the way, because
Speaker 1: you can find this on the smoking gun. He died
Speaker 1: of renal failure caused by metastasized large cell lung carcinoma,
Speaker 1: also known as lung cancer, on the sixteenth of May
Speaker 1: four at Seniors Sinai Medical Center in Los Ange, Dualists.
Speaker 1: He was diagnosed in November of nine three. He'd had
Speaker 1: a persistent cough and he finally went into the doctor
Speaker 1: and they finally figured out what was going on, and
Speaker 1: they gave him radiation therapy, but that didn't really do
Speaker 1: anything because tat size cancers spread, they're moving around. Well,
Speaker 1: that's it, the lung lung cancer like it goes like everywhere.
Speaker 1: My dad had lung cancer and he got into his liver,
Speaker 1: as bladder, his brain, right, and that's what happened to Andy.
Speaker 1: Is the same thing. And so Andy he also believed
Speaker 1: in natural medicine. He was really big in the meditation
Speaker 1: and transit transcendentalism. Is that the no, that's not the
Speaker 1: right one. He was really into the spiritual side of
Speaker 1: things and the belief that the brain could cure a
Speaker 1: lot of things. So he did these natural medicines and
Speaker 1: these natural diets with his vibrations and yes, and his
Speaker 1: aura and all of that kind of stuff. He was
Speaker 1: trying to fix it um and the radiation and didn't
Speaker 1: do any good. It didn't just couldn't take it out.
Speaker 1: So what does he do? He? Uh, he starts following
Speaker 1: what a lot of people would consider fringe medicine, to
Speaker 1: the point that he actually went to the Philippines in
Speaker 1: I believe it was four months after he had been
Speaker 1: been diagnosed, and he underwent psychic surgery. I think it
Speaker 1: was six weeks. He went under the psychic knife for
Speaker 1: six week periods and we stopped all of his Western
Speaker 1: medications and he seemed to be fine. As soon as
Speaker 1: he came back home, he immediately started going downhill um
Speaker 1: and and at that point he then passes away. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: the reading I've done says that Kaufman had an open casket,
Speaker 1: and I believe that to be true because there are
Speaker 1: many many sources that this is terrible and Andy kind
Speaker 1: have brought this out in people, But people went to
Speaker 1: the funeral, and they went to pay their respects at
Speaker 1: the casket and they were poking the body, like, Hey, Andy,
Speaker 1: I know it's a gag, stand up your jerk, come on, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I gotta say that. Usually they don't have open coffin
Speaker 1: funerals for people who died of cancer because you really
Speaker 1: do look like hell, and he did look like hell.
Speaker 1: There was there was a report of him being at
Speaker 1: a show with his girlfriend a month or several months prior,
Speaker 1: and because of the radiation, he was losing his hair,
Speaker 1: so he had his head shaved in the mohawk, which
Speaker 1: I think is awesome. But he's also wearing this kind
Speaker 1: of weird leather outfit. But he was so amaziated that
Speaker 1: it was hanging on him. And that's when the world
Speaker 1: really kind of oh, oh, he might sort of maybe
Speaker 1: be actually be sick. He might be telling the truth.
Speaker 1: Either that or he's really committed to this. Yeah. Um
Speaker 1: so yeah. But apparently people were poking the body, so
Speaker 1: that leads me to believe that it truly was open
Speaker 1: and they thought he was just playing sick joke on.
Speaker 1: Kaufman was laid to rest in Beth David's cemetery. You
Speaker 1: can actually go on Let's find a Grave dot com.
Speaker 1: I think is the website that that's the famous one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where you can find all the famous people and you
Speaker 1: can see his headstone. It's there, so it's not like
Speaker 1: he's mysteriously disappeared. Yeah, but if I were going to
Speaker 1: pull it, you know I'm dead. I'm not gonna. I
Speaker 1: understand that that did people fans go by there and
Speaker 1: leave graffiti, like to do with Jim Morrison's grave. I
Speaker 1: have no idea, to be honest with you, I have
Speaker 1: no idea. If they just stand there and do their
Speaker 1: their mon monologues, I have no Most fans probably just
Speaker 1: think he isn't actually there anyway. So um so let's
Speaker 1: let's go ahead in this theory. We're gonna go ahead
Speaker 1: and move towards statements and things that were said people
Speaker 1: who knew Andy closest. The first one is going to
Speaker 1: be his brother. Is this to support the fact that
Speaker 1: he actually died? Yes, this isn't We're in the theory
Speaker 1: that Andy Kaufman actually did die. So this is I'm
Speaker 1: submitting my evidence, prosecutor barrister. I don't know Michael did it.
Speaker 1: Kind of both ways. Okay, let let me let me
Speaker 1: run this through joke, because I know where you're heading
Speaker 1: with that. Some things I think caught Michael off guard
Speaker 1: and he got caught up in them. But he has
Speaker 1: always said for many, many years that he believed that
Speaker 1: his brother had died and was positive he knew his
Speaker 1: brother has died. Now believed he knew his brother had died,
Speaker 1: except that several years back, I actually think it was
Speaker 1: in he said a man approached him with a note
Speaker 1: and gave him a note, and the note was supposedly
Speaker 1: from Andy, and supposedly looked like it was Andy's hand writing,
Speaker 1: saying meet me at this diner at a certain date
Speaker 1: and time, because that's before I'm going to come back
Speaker 1: and reveal that the whole thing was a prank to
Speaker 1: the world where he went and and he never showed.
Speaker 1: And then a few years later, some woman came forward
Speaker 1: to him and she started saying that she was Andy's
Speaker 1: daughter now, and he did have a daughter. He had
Speaker 1: a daughter. I think she was born in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: But this girl was saying that she was twenty four
Speaker 1: years old after he died, which would have made it
Speaker 1: meant that she was conceived and born after Andy died,
Speaker 1: absolutely right, and that he had left Hollywood, and one
Speaker 1: of his reasons to do that was to raise her,
Speaker 1: except that it was very quickly found out that the
Speaker 1: logic of the math doesn't work, um and be um.
Speaker 1: She was an actress, her parent lineage was very well known.
Speaker 1: People very quickly figured out who her father was. Actually
Speaker 1: have a real father, yea. So that whole thing went sideways.
Speaker 1: And I thought I had heard somewhere that Michael, Andy's brother, Michael,
Speaker 1: had actually recruited her to do to play this role.
Speaker 1: I read that too, I have to Michael has always
Speaker 1: asserted that he didn't do it. The story I think
Speaker 1: you're talking about is that, according to her, she met
Speaker 1: him in an art gallery and he said, oh, you
Speaker 1: kind of look like you could be part of my family.
Speaker 1: Well let's do this thing. YadA, YadA, YadA. He has
Speaker 1: always attested that that is not really what happened, and
Speaker 1: that she came to him saying who she was, and
Speaker 1: then he fell for it. He has since always since
Speaker 1: gone back to the Andy Kaffin died and I know
Speaker 1: my brother's dead own not I mean not to speak
Speaker 1: ill of anyone, but I bet he got some money
Speaker 1: from the like media. No, no, this that this thing
Speaker 1: went south and her really fact, maybe he was trying
Speaker 1: to get some money from the media. I don't know. Well,
Speaker 1: it's a good point because there is the Andy Kaufman Award,
Speaker 1: or it's not the Andy Kaufman Award. What is there's
Speaker 1: a comedy award thing that they do that is in
Speaker 1: his name, and that's when she that's when she showed
Speaker 1: up with her allegations. Correct, she showed up on stage
Speaker 1: at that and so it is possible that it was
Speaker 1: a way to generate publicity for the event or for
Speaker 1: her or for her I don't know. The The interesting
Speaker 1: thing is as a lot of people think this is
Speaker 1: gonna make my career, and that tends to tank their career.
Speaker 1: She is I've not found anything about her since, so
Speaker 1: she just kind of disappeared. She got blacklisted. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can see why. Yeah. Let's move to the next character
Speaker 1: in this theory, which would be Bob Zamuda. Would you
Speaker 1: real real human being? Real human being? He uh. He
Speaker 1: was actually Andy's right hand man. They worked together, they
Speaker 1: were co creators together. They made a lot of the
Speaker 1: skits and the gags and and masterminded a lot of it,
Speaker 1: and it took over one of one of Andy's characters
Speaker 1: at some point, right, right, So they worked together for years.
Speaker 1: And the problem with Simuna is that he's not a
Speaker 1: trustworthy character because he was in on all the gags
Speaker 1: and he goes back and forth. He changes the story
Speaker 1: a lot. He said no and he really died. No,
Speaker 1: and he's really alive and he's hiding somewhere in Arizona. No,
Speaker 1: and he really died No, and he's really alive and
Speaker 1: he's hiding somewhere in Mexico. I. Yeah, there, That is
Speaker 1: one of the most recent sightings that came up. But
Speaker 1: so he um, he is really a hard one, just
Speaker 1: because he switches his story up and changes camps all
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah. Yeah, at one point switched over and
Speaker 1: made that wrote a book about how Andy's coming back. Right.
Speaker 1: He's written more than one book, Joe, I only heard
Speaker 1: about the one he's Yeah, we'll talk about his most
Speaker 1: recent book here in just a minute. But he's written
Speaker 1: some uh. To be honest, that the Kaufman family doesn't
Speaker 1: really like him that much. They Andy Kaufman's dad, for many,
Speaker 1: many years, tried to broke her peace with everybody who
Speaker 1: was involved with Andy, and you did you, either of
Speaker 1: you guys watched the Jim Carrey movie Man on the Moon. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's it's based it's a movie about Andy Kaufman. It's
Speaker 1: actually a fun, entertaining movie. I laughed out loud, and
Speaker 1: it's one of the few times that I didn't mind
Speaker 1: watching Courtney Love on screen. Well and you know, speaking
Speaker 1: of actually crazy people. Yeah, so yeah, it's not a
Speaker 1: bad movie. Well, what Andy's dad did is he he
Speaker 1: tried to bring Bob in to kind of fill in
Speaker 1: some gaps and get some of the story. And Bob
Speaker 1: then began to exert his influence in his opinions on
Speaker 1: thing to the point that it really it pushed the
Speaker 1: family out. And the family has said that the movie
Speaker 1: is the portrayal of Andy Kaufman. In that movie is
Speaker 1: a Bob's Amuda creation. It's not actually Andy. It's what
Speaker 1: Bob made in his tellings of it. But Andy close
Speaker 1: to his family when he was alive. Um, I mean,
Speaker 1: because that's right. That's one of the things you get
Speaker 1: a little confused about or that are easy. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's easy to get a little confused there because
Speaker 1: you know, the family has one picture of him, and
Speaker 1: Bob had another picture of him, and depending on who
Speaker 1: Andy spent most time with, and it sounds likeable. So
Speaker 1: they were pretty they were very tired. And so the
Speaker 1: thing is is, yeah, I see how Bob would have
Speaker 1: a clear picture of and or different picture. But Bob
Speaker 1: has also Bob is a spin doctor. I think if
Speaker 1: I were in doc. And that's the problem is that
Speaker 1: he spun the thing so many ways that it's hard
Speaker 1: to know how honest he is being to the actual
Speaker 1: story of Andy. Probably not. Yeah, let's go to character
Speaker 1: number three in our story, which is going to be
Speaker 1: George Shapiro. George Shapiro pronounced that name correctly. George was
Speaker 1: Andy's manager, and he is a very well known name
Speaker 1: in Hollywood, and he's pretty credible guy. He's pretty credible.
Speaker 1: Would you call him witness? Uh? Participants, character witness? Maybe
Speaker 1: character witness, I'll go with that. I don't believe that
Speaker 1: he was actually in the hospital when Andy passed away,
Speaker 1: but Bob was in or I'm sorry, not Bob. George
Speaker 1: Shapiro was in on almost everything that Andy was up.
Speaker 1: He was his manager. Yeah, you would need your manager
Speaker 1: to be in yeah, you need your manage her to
Speaker 1: back you up and help you out fake death certificate
Speaker 1: or whatever. Yeah. So Shapiro has always said, no, no,
Speaker 1: he actually passed away, and I would know. I would
Speaker 1: have been running this whole thing. So no, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: but it's it's he's really gone. We got one last
Speaker 1: person in this theory, which is going to be Andy's girlfriend,
Speaker 1: Lynn Margolis. Lynn and Andy had been together for about
Speaker 1: a year before he passed away, and she has always
Speaker 1: maintained that it's not a stunt, it's not a gag.
Speaker 1: And this is something that we were just about to
Speaker 1: touch on earlier, which is Bob's Moods, latest book. She
Speaker 1: co authored it. Although I'll be honest, I didn't read
Speaker 1: the book. I read a lot of reviews and a
Speaker 1: lot of synopside of it. And it's very strange because
Speaker 1: whereas Bob goes back and forth about the fact that
Speaker 1: Andy might or might not have died and then kind
Speaker 1: of semi settles on he did, she spends this weirdo
Speaker 1: story about how, oh, yeah, no, Andy actually died, but
Speaker 1: by the way, and he was bisexual, and he didn't
Speaker 1: die of cancer, he died of AIDS. I don't. I
Speaker 1: guess I don't understand why you think that's a bizarro story.
Speaker 1: And I know that my sarcasm is sometimes so sophisticated
Speaker 1: that you don't understand what I'm making a joke. But
Speaker 1: I'm not making a joke. Okay, there's a very huge
Speaker 1: difference between cancer, But think about the symptoms that anybody
Speaker 1: had reported of him, coughing AIDS, severe weight loss. AIDS
Speaker 1: actually leaves you. That's actually leaves you open to certain
Speaker 1: things like cancer too. I get that. But she she
Speaker 1: pulled it out of nowhere. It was very new and
Speaker 1: nobody else. I mean, she was saying that Andrew was
Speaker 1: was patrolling the Castro district looking for men, which has
Speaker 1: never come out, and those kind of stories always come out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of hard to imagine cruising around the
Speaker 1: Castro District and not being recognized by a lot of people.
Speaker 1: That's that's my problem is that when any of these
Speaker 1: very famous people who were doing things trying to keep
Speaker 1: him on the down low, suddenly the revelations come out
Speaker 1: thirty forty years later, Well that's weird. Well, he was
Speaker 1: a very talented character actor, so it's possible he was
Speaker 1: just putting on a character when he was trolling for men.
Speaker 1: But no, I mean, I think, I mean, frankly, the
Speaker 1: idea that he had AIDS isn't so far affetched to me.
Speaker 1: And also the fact that in the you know, eighties,
Speaker 1: that there would be a spin to say, I know,
Speaker 1: he died of cancer to hide the fact that he
Speaker 1: died of AIDS in the eighties, that is also not shocking.
Speaker 1: So I'll give you that. I won't I won't say that.
Speaker 1: There's no way that's possible because so much stuff around
Speaker 1: Kaufman was a spin jobs. It's genuinely I think, I'm
Speaker 1: fairly sure. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, But
Speaker 1: in the eighties that was still a thing that people
Speaker 1: were saying. Even in the nineties, Oh yeah, I know
Speaker 1: he was. He was hidden because it was quote unquote
Speaker 1: gay disease, and so, you know, to not solely his
Speaker 1: I'm rolling my eyes right now what I'm saying, it's
Speaker 1: not his legacy. Yeah, I guess, let's you know, let's
Speaker 1: say that, you know, none of us think the less
Speaker 1: of Andy for being gay, indeed that was the case,
Speaker 1: or bisexual, whatever. Yeah, but his family, especially his parents
Speaker 1: probably would have wanted to keep it hushed up. Even
Speaker 1: a Fandy himself wasn't that secretive about it. You know.
Speaker 1: It's I'm sure his parents would have wanted to keep
Speaker 1: it hushed up. Now, and I will say that if
Speaker 1: if it was that it did come about and he
Speaker 1: was notorious for liking prostitutes, yeah, well he couldn't. I mean,
Speaker 1: and frankly, he wouldn't have had to be bisexual to
Speaker 1: get AIDS. That's why I'm bringing this up is I
Speaker 1: don't want to I don't want to pigeonhole it one way,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to say anything negative to either side.
Speaker 1: But he had a predi action to putting himself in
Speaker 1: a very risky scenario. I mean, he totally could have
Speaker 1: so this that That's what I've got here on on
Speaker 1: this No more, There's there's one There's one funny thing
Speaker 1: that I want to point out. And I'm not tories
Speaker 1: for doing this, and people probably hate me because they
Speaker 1: think it's my nut ship and who cares. But I
Speaker 1: find the relationship between Andy and Lynn over time very funny.
Speaker 1: People lament that they were soul mates and it was
Speaker 1: this perfect relationship and YadA, YadA, YadA, and all this stuff,
Speaker 1: and it turns out that's not the case, according to
Speaker 1: Michael the and some other other reports that I've read
Speaker 1: that yeah, actually they had for the last six months
Speaker 1: both of them been complaining about the other and had
Speaker 1: to leave. But Andy got sick and so they didn't
Speaker 1: They didn't do anything. Yeah, I find I find it
Speaker 1: funny though when it it gets elevated to this this level.
Speaker 1: If you if you watch Man of the Moon, that's
Speaker 1: one of those places where I see that happen. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean again, it's like, okay, was it. They were
Speaker 1: together for a year and for literally half they're saying, Wow,
Speaker 1: we probably don't need to be doing this anymore. It
Speaker 1: really means that, you know, a couple of months in
Speaker 1: they probably were thinking, well, we don't need to do this.
Speaker 1: But he got sick and she was like, well, I'm
Speaker 1: going to be the jerk who weaves a dude with
Speaker 1: cancer or aid, which is you can't do that. That
Speaker 1: looks pretty bad. That looks pretty bad, even if it's
Speaker 1: only been a couple of months. You know. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's kind of admirable that she you know, to me,
Speaker 1: a lot of people would be understandably that's a tough
Speaker 1: thing to handle. We're gonna move on to theory number two,
Speaker 1: which is that or Andy did not die at that
Speaker 1: time and he faked his death. I think or not.
Speaker 1: It's that he did not die at that time. If
Speaker 1: he were still alive today, he wouldn't be that old, really,
Speaker 1: so he'd be he was thirty five and eighty four,
Speaker 1: he be in his sixties, the sixty seven or something
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, that's not that's not old. That's not
Speaker 1: crazy old listening, it's not listen a little girl, you
Speaker 1: sure how this? Like goes in the little you know,
Speaker 1: Joe says, that's not ald at all, and Steve goes, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not that old, crazy old. You're right, it's not.
Speaker 1: It's old, but it's not elderly. Listen. Take your piece
Speaker 1: of taffy and stuff. Okay, okay, warm out of your pocket.
Speaker 1: The best time. Let's let's go into this. So Eddie
Speaker 1: had been pretty excited or pretty interested in the concept
Speaker 1: of faking his own death. Think obsessed as the term
Speaker 1: people used, Well, it is, but I don't know that
Speaker 1: obsessed is. But it came up quite a few times.
Speaker 1: And um, to get into this, you have to get
Speaker 1: in the mindset of to a little bit, we've got
Speaker 1: to leave the land of logic behind and just fall
Speaker 1: into the character or the characters of Andy Kaufman to
Speaker 1: kind of think in his realm, that's your favorite thing.
Speaker 1: He had a different way of going about stuff. It was.
Speaker 1: It was a strange, twisted character. I don't mean twisted
Speaker 1: in a really ugly way, no, No, he just there
Speaker 1: was something a little warped about Andy. I think it
Speaker 1: was great though, absolutely so. Let's things that he did though.
Speaker 1: I was around when Andy was around, you know, and
Speaker 1: I remember, I remember all of this stuff. I can't
Speaker 1: believe how damn long ago it was. That was a
Speaker 1: long time ago. It just doesn't seem like it's been
Speaker 1: that long. But I mean, we were watching the so
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about this later. But there's a
Speaker 1: bit where he's on Letterman, and we were watching that
Speaker 1: Letterman bit and it's Letterman's episode for eighty two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he led Herman looks so young in that, and he
Speaker 1: had so much hair, early eighties hair. I had more
Speaker 1: hair back then too. I did too. You guys are
Speaker 1: looking at me like I was alive. I haven't had
Speaker 1: no hair, No, I had no hair. Okay, I didn't
Speaker 1: did any sense of the word we talked about in
Speaker 1: the beginning Andy's This is gonna play into some of
Speaker 1: the stuff we're talking about in a moment. But we
Speaker 1: had talked about Andy's um foreign man character, and I
Speaker 1: want to tell you some of the things that he
Speaker 1: would do with that character, because that's going to help
Speaker 1: us flow through this. So when um Andy got big enough,
Speaker 1: of course, in I think it was nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: because Taxi ran for five years, so seventy eight or
Speaker 1: seventy nine Taxi started vent or seventy nine, and he
Speaker 1: got brought on as the character Latka. I think he
Speaker 1: was originally on the show. I think he was. I
Speaker 1: thought he came out a couple of years after the
Speaker 1: show started. No, he was. I believe he was on
Speaker 1: it from almost the very beginning. He might have come
Speaker 1: in a year late. I gotta be honest. I don't
Speaker 1: have the IMDb up in front of me, and I
Speaker 1: can't remember off the top of my head. I didn't
Speaker 1: watch that. I didn't exactly watch that show religiously myself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But but the point is he came in and it uh,
Speaker 1: it launched him into the Spotlight, and of course he
Speaker 1: was then able to go around and do tours and
Speaker 1: have comedy shows. And again we're talking about what do
Speaker 1: people expect. They expect you to go up on stage
Speaker 1: and tell your jokes and do all your stuff. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: and he wouldn't do that. I mean he uh so
Speaker 1: one of the things that he would do with the
Speaker 1: foreign man character, and this is actually what he did
Speaker 1: when he showed up on Saturday Night Live in ve Is.
Speaker 1: He gets up there. At all he does is he
Speaker 1: walks up and he's got a record player because records
Speaker 1: were the thing then, and he starts playing the theme
Speaker 1: to Mighty Mouse and just standing there. I remember seeing
Speaker 1: him do that the whole time, as except for when
Speaker 1: the chorus comes, and then he gives this super emphatic
Speaker 1: lip sync performance of I think it's the here I
Speaker 1: come to Save the Day line, and he just gets
Speaker 1: into it and he just drops back into completely I
Speaker 1: don't know what the hell is going on, just great,
Speaker 1: he's standing there to to the riot of of the
Speaker 1: record player, and then he's just standing there and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden it goes home to save the
Speaker 1: Day and he he left sinks and then he swings
Speaker 1: his left arm outward and upward, and he gaze us
Speaker 1: up into the air. That's it. I just want to say,
Speaker 1: we can't do this for every single one. This episode
Speaker 1: can't turn down to us. No, no, no no. But
Speaker 1: this is fine. So the reason I bring this this
Speaker 1: particular bit up is this is now, like I said,
Speaker 1: and he's able to travel around and he starts going
Speaker 1: to tours and he wants to screw with people. So
Speaker 1: he would go to a comedy show and he would
Speaker 1: walk out on stage and everybody would applaud and they
Speaker 1: would be excited. And he comes out on stage. He's
Speaker 1: wearing a jacket, and he would look at the crowd
Speaker 1: and in a English accent, obviously faked English accent, he
Speaker 1: would pull out a book and it would be The
Speaker 1: Great Gatsbeat, Governor, and he would begin to read from
Speaker 1: the Great Gatsbeat, and at first, kind of like we've
Speaker 1: talked about, people would laugh, and then they get angry
Speaker 1: and and he would he would respond to the crowd
Speaker 1: in character, stop it, you know, and if you don't
Speaker 1: quiet down, I will I shall put on the record,
Speaker 1: at which point they would go bananas, because yes, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be mighty mouth, and he would finally give in
Speaker 1: and he would play the record, which was him reading
Speaker 1: the great Yeah, oh God, which man is my soulmate?
Speaker 1: Is hilarious and is great. But if that was all
Speaker 1: that he had done, and this entire legend was based
Speaker 1: upon that, that would be a weak foundation. But it's
Speaker 1: not because there's other things. There's there's a guy who
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine, the guy's name is alan Abel
Speaker 1: Able fake to his own death. Hey, he was at
Speaker 1: a ski resort and he faked a heart attack and
Speaker 1: like the paramedics showed up and they hauled him away
Speaker 1: and all this stuff, and these were all people that
Speaker 1: he had set up to come in. By the way,
Speaker 1: alan Abel was that he was the guy that found
Speaker 1: a decided to clothe naked animals. Yes, no, he he
Speaker 1: He was a giant hoaxer. He was known for hoaxes.
Speaker 1: But he pulls. He does this, and he does such
Speaker 1: a good job that the New York Times runs an
Speaker 1: obituary for you. Oh good. The next day he comes
Speaker 1: out and tells everybody that he's fine and that the
Speaker 1: tales of his death have been grandly overstated and something
Speaker 1: something something. Calvin watches all of this and loves it,
Speaker 1: and Pester's able about how did he pull it off?
Speaker 1: What details that He just trying to get every detail,
Speaker 1: to the point that Abel didn't like him because he
Speaker 1: was a past He kept bugging him for details on
Speaker 1: how he did it and annoyed the crap out of
Speaker 1: him by the way. That it will ever render an
Speaker 1: opinion on whether Andy was dead or not. Nothing I
Speaker 1: know of. I read a few things from him, but
Speaker 1: nothing was ever related to the Kaufman alive versus dead
Speaker 1: uh conspiracy. He never actually seems to have spoken to it.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about there's an album that came out came
Speaker 1: out relatively recently. It's called Andy and his Grandma. Who God,
Speaker 1: who is it that helped narrate the Bill Hayter, Bill Hayter, Okay,
Speaker 1: she's my favorite. This is This is a series of
Speaker 1: conversations that Kaufman had recorded on the phone unbeknownst to people.
Speaker 1: So he's talking to his h his friends, his business
Speaker 1: car partners. Bob Samuda is one of the people that's
Speaker 1: on specifically on the track we're talking about. He's also
Speaker 1: talking to some ladies of the night that he knows,
Speaker 1: which is in the beginning of that track, which is awkward. Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: In the in the I Want Those Tapes track, he
Speaker 1: and Bob talk for guys like two and a half,
Speaker 1: three minutes maybe four, about well, what if we what
Speaker 1: if I faked my death? And how would they go
Speaker 1: about it? How long could they pull it off? For
Speaker 1: these things like like he talked about it there, so
Speaker 1: he not only had been talking about it with trying
Speaker 1: to get the information from Able, now he's talking to
Speaker 1: Bob and they're kind of flushing it out at least
Speaker 1: in this one recording that we know of, if not
Speaker 1: other conversations. We're now going to move to from that.
Speaker 1: So we got those two bits there, We're now going
Speaker 1: to go to the over the top character for Andy Coffin.
Speaker 1: We we briefly mentioned him before when Joe and I
Speaker 1: were talking, which is Tony Clifton. Yeah, I love, I
Speaker 1: love the description that I have worked up of Tony Clifton.
Speaker 1: Tony Clifton is Andy Kaufman's foul mouth, big geled booge,
Speaker 1: drinking giant sunglass and black tupee wearing terrible singing lounge singer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was kind of like a really bad Elvis. He
Speaker 1: was a terrible Elvis. He was. He drank, he smoked,
Speaker 1: he ate red meat, He badgered audiences. He was crude
Speaker 1: and foul to everybody. The Clifton character was the exact
Speaker 1: opposite of Andy Kaufman ors. Andy Kaufman's like his forger
Speaker 1: Man was meek and mild and very polite. Clifton was
Speaker 1: the opposite he was. Andy Kaufman was really a very
Speaker 1: good actor. Yeah, yeah, I mean, particularly when you look
Speaker 1: at the pictures just physically, I mean, he he seemed
Speaker 1: to have made himself into a different person. He did.
Speaker 1: He had a big guy, the Clifton. The Clifton character
Speaker 1: would wear a suit with the ruffle front shirt and
Speaker 1: he had giant Elvis glasses and Andy didn't really have
Speaker 1: those gals. No, those were definitely definitely, um what is
Speaker 1: it you know this? No, he had the mutton shots,
Speaker 1: but then he had the the prosthetics there, the fake
Speaker 1: the fake chin and everything make a look fast. I
Speaker 1: was trying to figure out if you were looking for
Speaker 1: the specific like latex prosthetics or just latex that was
Speaker 1: that was the word I was looking for. Though he
Speaker 1: did this stuff and one of the this is this
Speaker 1: is one of those things. So the Clifton character had
Speaker 1: been around for a long time, and when Kaufman got
Speaker 1: picked up on Taxi, he worked into his contract that
Speaker 1: Tony Clifton could be could be on the show four
Speaker 1: times as Tony Clifton in random episodes which would also
Speaker 1: not have the Latka character on them, and it's in
Speaker 1: other words, Andy Coffin's known character on now and the
Speaker 1: studio agreed to this request. It sounds like they didn't
Speaker 1: know who Clifton was. They he was evidently made out
Speaker 1: to be some great, great lounge ack and it's gonna
Speaker 1: be great except that it except Yeah, he showed up
Speaker 1: and he was such a monumental asked to everybody, to
Speaker 1: the point that the security showed up and they escorted
Speaker 1: him off of the studio a lot and told him
Speaker 1: he was you could never come back again, And then
Speaker 1: all of the other appearances were that bit of the
Speaker 1: contract was cut and scrubbed. Yeah, it was like, Tony
Speaker 1: Clifton can't come back. Lock they can, right, because because
Speaker 1: I think that at least in the beginning, they didn't
Speaker 1: realize that Clifton was Kaufman. They didn't get it. They
Speaker 1: didn't know it sounds like Shapiro probably knew, but the
Speaker 1: studio didn't understand it. Um So eventually though, people do
Speaker 1: figure out, like, wait a second, funny, and he's never
Speaker 1: around when when Tony's around? So what do you did?
Speaker 1: Is he got Bob's Muda to get good enough at
Speaker 1: the character that suddenly the two could show up at
Speaker 1: the same time, and they'd show up on stage together
Speaker 1: and you can say, hey, it's not me that this
Speaker 1: guy's I think he's great, but it's not me. Again,
Speaker 1: one of those things that he just took it so
Speaker 1: far and he worked so hard. But here's the thing
Speaker 1: about the Clifton angle. There's a movie script I think
Speaker 1: it was written in and bohabs A Muda and Andy
Speaker 1: Kaufman write it, and it's called the Tony Clifton Story.
Speaker 1: Now this thing is hard to read. Did either of
Speaker 1: you I didn't actually find a copy of the script. Okay,
Speaker 1: I found a copy of it, and it's effing weird.
Speaker 1: I've read scripts before it, and a lot of them,
Speaker 1: but I've read scripts. This thing was so far into
Speaker 1: left field. Is somebody had converted it to Microsoft Word
Speaker 1: and it was a hundred and twenty four pages of
Speaker 1: absurdity where Clifton is the star character and Kaufman discovers
Speaker 1: him and all of this weird stuff happens, and and
Speaker 1: evidently Andy Coffin was pretty excited about the idea of
Speaker 1: breaking the fourth wall. Either you guys heard of the
Speaker 1: fourth wall? Yes, okay, okay, I'm just I'm just asking
Speaker 1: because I have to ask these things. But that's when
Speaker 1: it's when you look at the TV screen to your
Speaker 1: audience and and then you speak to him. Yes, So
Speaker 1: it's not I'm just frankly. You know, it's a theater,
Speaker 1: so it's before TV. So the thing was what Coffin
Speaker 1: like to do is he liked to try to break
Speaker 1: the fourth wall and then twist things to bring the
Speaker 1: viewer even farther in and re established the fourth wall
Speaker 1: like he did these weird twists and turns. That's not weird.
Speaker 1: The the big thing about the script, the script is weird.
Speaker 1: What happens, though very suspiciously in this script is Tony
Speaker 1: Clifton dies of cancer? Where did he diet? In Cedar Sinai,
Speaker 1: exactly the place that Andy Kaufman dies four years later
Speaker 1: of cancer. But here's my question about lung cancer. Actually,
Speaker 1: doesn't show up in the script. Oh, it's just it's
Speaker 1: unspecified cancer. But my question about the script is is
Speaker 1: that do we actually know for certainty that the script
Speaker 1: was written by Andy before Andy died? Absolutely not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't. I cannot. I cannot validate that because the
Speaker 1: copies that I found, we're all converted copies. So it
Speaker 1: could be that at one point somebody made it up,
Speaker 1: or it could be that that Tony and Bob actually
Speaker 1: did write a script, but somebody else did a little
Speaker 1: additing to it. Indian Bob, you mean, what did I say,
Speaker 1: Tony Clinton person percent positive to Clifton Tony and Bob
Speaker 1: got together to a movie about Andy Kaufman. Actually, Andy
Speaker 1: Kaufman is the character, Tony is the real guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. I I thank you for bringing it up,
Speaker 1: because I was going to bring that up. I have
Speaker 1: no way to know that that's true, no way to
Speaker 1: know that. Yeah, but that is another a little bit
Speaker 1: of evidence that he might have faked it. Okay, we
Speaker 1: have one more big thing that we have to talk about,
Speaker 1: which is the big one. Would you call it to
Speaker 1: the Kuda Graw that that's not the right one. It's
Speaker 1: not that's okay, not, but it was this is this
Speaker 1: is one of his greatest gags. That's that's I was
Speaker 1: trying to think of his his best thing ever, and
Speaker 1: this is one of his his his great characters he played.
Speaker 1: You know, he's playing himself but but a little different.
Speaker 1: But yeah, jerk right, So here's what happened. He's the
Speaker 1: green bastard. In UH nineteen seventy nine, Kaufman comes up with,
Speaker 1: as we said, maybe his greatest prank ever, which is wrestling.
Speaker 1: He shows up on Saturday Night Live. It's his ninth appearance.
Speaker 1: By the way, remember guys, N seventy nine SNL is tiny,
Speaker 1: it's a tiny studio. It's he bits he thing, and
Speaker 1: he shows up in thermal underwear with black trunks on
Speaker 1: over the top, saying that he is the world intergender
Speaker 1: Wrestling Champion and that he will pay five hundred dollars
Speaker 1: to any woman who can beat him at wrestling in
Speaker 1: three minutes or less, and at that point proceeds to
Speaker 1: just make fun of women's lib and just generally be
Speaker 1: a chauvin his jerk. That was great. It's been pretty funny.
Speaker 1: It's funny because in retrospect we know it's a gay
Speaker 1: and it's really funny, but it really pissing people off.
Speaker 1: And mobi holds some lady gets into the ring with him,
Speaker 1: by the way, she's a plant, and he beats her
Speaker 1: in under three minutes. Yeah, it's it's it's great to
Speaker 1: watch this interview of him. What he's bragging about. Hell,
Speaker 1: you know, like I totally I just totally kick their
Speaker 1: asses every time. I like when he you know, he
Speaker 1: does the whole uh well, you know, I don't think
Speaker 1: women are dumb. I think women are really great at
Speaker 1: you know, cooking and ironing, and I think they're really
Speaker 1: good at all of that stuff. He's hitting hot buttons
Speaker 1: because this is women's move Yeah, and this is early
Speaker 1: eighties and he is just he's just poking fun and
Speaker 1: hitting all the right spots. And over the course, that
Speaker 1: wasn't his first time to wrestle a woman in the
Speaker 1: ring in this character, and he does this character as himself,
Speaker 1: as Andy Coffin. Over the course of four years, he
Speaker 1: wrestles over four hundred women across the country, and in
Speaker 1: the beginning it's pretty clear that most of those women
Speaker 1: were plants, but later on he took it far enough.
Speaker 1: He started just grab he would pull five women out
Speaker 1: of the crowd. He would have the crowd vote on
Speaker 1: which one they wanted him to wrestle, which means they
Speaker 1: wanted to pick the biggest, baddest lady in the bunch,
Speaker 1: and then he would wrestler and he would win. He
Speaker 1: would wrestle them, and it just it was so absurd,
Speaker 1: And he kept taking this inter gender wrestling champion thing
Speaker 1: farther and farther, and over four years he this staff
Speaker 1: almost every woman in the country because a lot of
Speaker 1: people thought he was being serious, because again, as we
Speaker 1: talked about, he never broke character. Man he was he
Speaker 1: was willing to take it, just go on and on
Speaker 1: and on with these gags. Yeah, and and so he
Speaker 1: starts moving this gag in to Memphis, Tennessee, and he
Speaker 1: starts mocking women as he had been, but then he
Speaker 1: starts also mocking the people of Memphis, and a local
Speaker 1: wrestler by the name of Jerry the King. Lawler takes notice,
Speaker 1: gets a little gets upset, and starts exchanging words with Kaufman,
Speaker 1: at which point Kaufman starts ripping on Lawler and Memphis.
Speaker 1: He's sending videotapes. This is the age of video tapes.
Speaker 1: He's sending videotapes telling the people of Memphis, how do
Speaker 1: you soap? Calling it the redneck capital of the world.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna imitate him, but he just he does
Speaker 1: so many outlandish, over the top things, and he he's
Speaker 1: he's of coursing. Well, you know whatever, Jerry Lawler, I
Speaker 1: don't wrestle women, wrestle men. I wrestle women because I'm
Speaker 1: the intergender champion. Except that there's a top time where
Speaker 1: suddenly Lawlers shows up and they get into it, and
Speaker 1: he agrees to wrestle him, and he gets him into
Speaker 1: the ring, And of course this whole thing was a
Speaker 1: set up from the very beginning. Yeah, Lawlers in Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna spoil it, Lawlers, I guess it's not
Speaker 1: really spoiler. Most people know this. Lawlers in on it
Speaker 1: from the beginning, and he and Kaufman would sit around
Speaker 1: and work out the lines and how the gag was
Speaker 1: gonna go. So what happens Howler and he finally agreed
Speaker 1: to wrestle. They get in the ring, and Kaufman runs
Speaker 1: around the ring and circles away from Lawler until Lawler
Speaker 1: eventually catches him and appears to knock the snot out
Speaker 1: of him, and then deliver two pile drivers in a row.
Speaker 1: And Kaufman is laying on the grounds. Those of us
Speaker 1: who don't may not know what a pile driver is.
Speaker 1: That's where you pick somebody up so their feet are
Speaker 1: straight up in the air, their head is pointed at
Speaker 1: the ground. You jump. The wrestler who was holding the
Speaker 1: upside down person lands on their butt, and the person
Speaker 1: who is upside down lands on their head. It's a
Speaker 1: pile you're piling driving their head into the ground, and
Speaker 1: it does two in a row. It looks it looks painful.
Speaker 1: I'm sure Lawler was a professional size I'm sure he
Speaker 1: knew how to do it without actually hurting. Sure they
Speaker 1: had practiced it, I'm sure. But anyway, so Kaufman injrews
Speaker 1: his neckan Yeah, he's all on the ground, he's failing,
Speaker 1: He's flipping around the and the paramedics show up and
Speaker 1: they haul Andy out of the ring on a stretcher.
Speaker 1: I was telling you two earlier that I had read
Speaker 1: stuff from Lawler that talked about or somebody was talking
Speaker 1: about Lawler was prancing around the ring all excited because
Speaker 1: he was playing a part of winning, and Kaufman is
Speaker 1: laying on the ground trying not to move his mouth
Speaker 1: so that nobody gets it, going clawing ambulance and was going, no, right,
Speaker 1: that's going to cost two fifty bucks all period, called
Speaker 1: the ambulance. It'll be great for the gag, which it
Speaker 1: was because then people really believed it. Kaufman is then
Speaker 1: seen running around screaming about Lawlor in a neck brace
Speaker 1: for months and months, and six months later they go
Speaker 1: on TV they fight or six months later. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: they're trading insults via videotape back and forth, and this
Speaker 1: is the day when the kind of WrestleMania, the wrestler
Speaker 1: will stand there and talk to the announcer and talk
Speaker 1: trash and then go wrestling. Well, in fact, then it's
Speaker 1: when it was new they first figured it out. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's why that's not true. But um so that they're
Speaker 1: sending these tastes back and forth, and finally there's a
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was if it was proffered
Speaker 1: as a way to broker peace between the two, but
Speaker 1: they go on the Letterman Show and there we watched
Speaker 1: this and they're they're kind of being civil and then
Speaker 1: it slowly starts escalating until Kaufman says something. Lawler stands
Speaker 1: up and smacks Kaufman in the face and knocks him
Speaker 1: out of his chair, at which point Kaufman stands up.
Speaker 1: And the version we watched together today was edited for
Speaker 1: foul language. Well, and we should also mention that at
Speaker 1: this point Andy Kaufman is still wearing his neck brace
Speaker 1: and character. Five months later and still in character. And
Speaker 1: by the way, I don't think Letterman's live, isn't it.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I thought they taped in like
Speaker 1: in the afternoon. Maybe it's not. You know what, you're
Speaker 1: probably I don't know if it was at that time.
Speaker 1: That's my problem. I didn't know. What I didn't know
Speaker 1: is I actually had never thought to look to see
Speaker 1: if Letterman was live. But you're probably right, probably is
Speaker 1: not was not live. But he readets out and he starts.
Speaker 1: Kaufman freaks out and wisely and this is the great
Speaker 1: this is the part of the love the best. He
Speaker 1: gets on the other side of Letterman's desk and puts
Speaker 1: Letterman between him and Lawler and starts swearing at Lawler
Speaker 1: and saying angry. Oh, he was a good actor. He
Speaker 1: was spinning mad foul, like's like the beeps. You know,
Speaker 1: sometimes you hear somebody be just like beep word word,
Speaker 1: beep word. No, this is just people sounds like Morris Code.
Speaker 1: They're beeping him so much, and they're actually black blacking
Speaker 1: out his face and his mouth. Apparently Letterman was not
Speaker 1: in on it, because he's like he's cowering. Where is
Speaker 1: cowering between the pair of them if you watch their
Speaker 1: certain angles, and you can just see him just he's
Speaker 1: just like, oh God, what's going to happen. And at
Speaker 1: the end he grabs aged coffee and that Andy grabs
Speaker 1: age coffee and throws it Lawler's face and then runs away.
Speaker 1: Apparent you know to watch this if you haven't already.
Speaker 1: Are are retellings are long and not quite as good
Speaker 1: but still fun but still fun. Yeah, yeah, but you
Speaker 1: you should watch it. But this thing is actually I
Speaker 1: would recommend if you're going to watch this whole thing
Speaker 1: that happened with Lawler. We may post this up, but
Speaker 1: there is of YouTube playlist that is almost two hours
Speaker 1: long of all of the crap that happens back and
Speaker 1: forth between these guys, and it it is so absurd.
Speaker 1: It is again. It's just taking the joke and never
Speaker 1: letting it go, and it just gets funnier. And I
Speaker 1: watched it and after a half hours, like god, I
Speaker 1: remember to watch more. And then twenty minutes later, I
Speaker 1: I I'm about to pee myself. I'm laughing so hard.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure that after the lean thing, I'm sure
Speaker 1: Lawler and and Andy Kaufman probably got met at the
Speaker 1: bar around the corner and had a beer together. Oh yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: But they they took it so far. At one point,
Speaker 1: U Kaufman is offering money to other wrestlers to quote
Speaker 1: unquote take out Lawler, and then eventually he tagged teams
Speaker 1: with another wrestler and I can't remember who it is is,
Speaker 1: but they they beat him, and then Kaufman's running around
Speaker 1: in the crown saying he's the King of wrestling, at
Speaker 1: which point Lawler runs out of a crowd and throws
Speaker 1: a fireball of some kind in Kaufman's face, and they
Speaker 1: show Kaufman in the back room all burnt up. I mean,
Speaker 1: like they just they'd never let this. This whole thing
Speaker 1: went on for over a year on national television. That
Speaker 1: never broke, I know, I say, I remember when this
Speaker 1: happened too. It makes me feel kind of old that
Speaker 1: because I remember talking about what we were talking to
Speaker 1: my friends about at the time. We're going, is this
Speaker 1: is this for real? And most of us were like,
Speaker 1: they cannot yeah, you know, I mean yeah, but it
Speaker 1: just it kept going on and on. And of course
Speaker 1: there's the whole thing. When Andy died, they some wrestling
Speaker 1: announcer asked Lawler about him, and he said very few
Speaker 1: words but made it sound like he didn't like him
Speaker 1: at all. Again, he kept it up. He he had,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing, must have told Andy, I'll keith the character
Speaker 1: going and would not give in. So this this is
Speaker 1: this is one of those things where this is an
Speaker 1: example of Kaufman ran a gag that was so above
Speaker 1: and beyond, and he planned it out so far in advance,
Speaker 1: and he let it run for so long. And of
Speaker 1: course Andy is alive, right right, And and of course
Speaker 1: Bob is involved in this thing thet the whole time,
Speaker 1: so he's the man behind the scenes that nobody sees
Speaker 1: that's setting things up. So Bob's working tirelessly for him.
Speaker 1: The only the only thing in this entire theory that
Speaker 1: doesn't work is who the hell was in the casket,
Speaker 1: which I've seen various various tellings of. Uh, there's two
Speaker 1: different ways that this guy. One is that and he
Speaker 1: never was sick, and he actually met a cancer patient
Speaker 1: who agreed or an aids. He met a sick patient
Speaker 1: who was willing to stand in for him and be
Speaker 1: in his casket and let Andy run this gag or
Speaker 1: and he did actually have cancer, but the treatments actually
Speaker 1: did cure him, at which point he found this person
Speaker 1: who was willing to be his body double and sit
Speaker 1: in the cat or lay in the casket. Is the
Speaker 1: case maybe for him, And that's where the body came from.
Speaker 1: I gotta say everything else about Andy Kaufman and how
Speaker 1: he masterminded this crap. I like, I want to believe
Speaker 1: the body double is the only thing that I have
Speaker 1: a hard time getting behind. That's part. But you know
Speaker 1: the thing about it is is that if he really
Speaker 1: had lost a lot of weight and everything and he
Speaker 1: was looking like a die of cancer, possibly, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you could have just he could have just had himself
Speaker 1: drugged and been laying in the cat in the coffin,
Speaker 1: you know, So that way when people poked him, he
Speaker 1: didn't react because he was out cold. It's possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then later on he gets out of the coffin
Speaker 1: and it's uh, it's of course taken off and buried.
Speaker 1: So possible. He looked at the pictures of Andy Kaufman
Speaker 1: like when he was sick, Like when he's amazingated and sick,
Speaker 1: he looks terrible. It doesn't really look like him. Okay,
Speaker 1: are you looking at the ones that are the photograph
Speaker 1: reproductions and newspapers or okay, yeah, they some of those.
Speaker 1: The problem is is that black and white photography was
Speaker 1: crap and most of it was done. It's black and white,
Speaker 1: and he looks like hell. But it also I've known
Speaker 1: some people who got pretty sick and they didn't look
Speaker 1: like they had several years so prior for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I mean just too because I I like, you
Speaker 1: want to believe that Andy totally faked the whole thing
Speaker 1: for this, I mean, quote unquote hilarious gag. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: so I kind of you know, I'm looking for that stuff, right,
Speaker 1: I'm looking to say, well, it doesn't totally look like him,
Speaker 1: so it could totally be someone else. He did go
Speaker 1: away for a while for six weeks and came back
Speaker 1: looking totally different. So what's to say that, you know,
Speaker 1: he that he didn't. He didn't look totally different, but
Speaker 1: he went down the hill immediately upon his return, he
Speaker 1: looked totally different when he returned. I think it was
Speaker 1: black and he answered to the name Bob Zamuda. It
Speaker 1: was weird. It was very strange. I M the only,
Speaker 1: the only, the last thing that I have here. So
Speaker 1: Kaufman got a weird kind of cult following. I mean,
Speaker 1: not too long after he is supposed death, people are
Speaker 1: still writing about did Andy fake his death? There's obviously
Speaker 1: three dummies with the right Yeah. I read an article
Speaker 1: that was just published like last year. Yeah, people are
Speaker 1: still talking about it, and he's still being excited. I mean,
Speaker 1: we were talking about the one that was Albuquerque they
Speaker 1: had and by the way, that that that was the
Speaker 1: worst video ever. I mean, I'll see it actually made
Speaker 1: the news in Albuquerque and they played some of that
Speaker 1: security camera bit and I don't see. I mean, it
Speaker 1: could be any Kaufman, it could be a million anybody.
Speaker 1: It could be anybody. And that was the problem. But
Speaker 1: there's all these cult followings, all these cults sightings. One
Speaker 1: of the things it's I find it entertaining every five
Speaker 1: year anniversary of his death. Suddenly there's reports that Coffin
Speaker 1: said he was gonna take it for fifteen years, so
Speaker 1: he's gonna come back this year. Coffin said he's gonna
Speaker 1: take it for twenty years. He's gonna come back this year.
Speaker 1: Thirty thirty five, Like like thirty five is the next
Speaker 1: number that we've got. I really, in my heart of hearts,
Speaker 1: want to believe Eve that Andy Kaufman is sitting in
Speaker 1: a retirement home right now, getting his giggle over the
Speaker 1: fact that the entire world thinks he died in mostly Actually,
Speaker 1: I think he's probably in a nursing home somewhere, saying
Speaker 1: to some nurse, you know I was Andy Kaufman, and
Speaker 1: the nurses like, I don't know who that is in
Speaker 1: a nursing home yet, did you know? You know what?
Speaker 1: You know? What I want? I mean, this is this
Speaker 1: is I want this to be true, just like what
Speaker 1: I saw in Bubba ho Tap for Elvis to be true,
Speaker 1: because that was a hilarious story as well, and I
Speaker 1: want that to be truly what had happened to Elvis? Yes,
Speaker 1: because well I just have a weird thing about famous
Speaker 1: people like that. Yeah, No, I mean I think that, Uh,
Speaker 1: in my perfect world, Andy Kaufman faked his death, and
Speaker 1: I mean sure, he faked his death when he was
Speaker 1: thirty five, so it makes sense he would come back
Speaker 1: thirty five years later. Could there's a little serendipity in that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that you can. You could find you could
Speaker 1: pick and choose a number from his thirty five years.
Speaker 1: You could very easily do it. One year increments you
Speaker 1: could do. I'm sure that you could. You know, you
Speaker 1: could say, well, you know, twenty was a really sacred
Speaker 1: number to to to Andy. So he's so he's going
Speaker 1: to come back twenty. You know. You guys ready to
Speaker 1: know the truth? Yeah? Andy? Yeah, No, I don't want
Speaker 1: the true and you have too much hair to be Andy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But you know what happened is he did fake his
Speaker 1: own death. He moved to Mexico, and he became a pro. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Actually did die. Yeah. Actually, I think that if if
Speaker 1: he had faked his own death, he wouldn't have I
Speaker 1: don't think he would have stayed away more than a year.
Speaker 1: I'd agree. I don't think he would have. He would
Speaker 1: have done enable. It would have been like two days later, well, no,
Speaker 1: I think Joe's the most joke before people consider it offensive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you don't know. What I really think is that
Speaker 1: I don't know if I do, but okay, yeah, now
Speaker 1: I think that it's it's entirely possible. What I think
Speaker 1: really probably happened is that he actually faked faking his
Speaker 1: own death. I think that probably when he found out
Speaker 1: he was terminally ill. And this is this really kind
Speaker 1: of fits in with his personality. He probably got together
Speaker 1: with Samoda and with his manager Shapiro and said, guys,
Speaker 1: we've got to pull off this one last big joke.
Speaker 1: We've got to convince the world, or at least half
Speaker 1: the world, that I faked my death. And I since
Speaker 1: I said, I'm not saying that's proof, that's proven that.
Speaker 1: I just know that I get where you're coming from.
Speaker 1: But I get where you're coming from. Is the last
Speaker 1: gag is death? Yeah? Yeah, except I don't know that
Speaker 1: that would be. It doesn't fit in his character, like
Speaker 1: his character was always pulling the wool over their eyes
Speaker 1: for what wasn't happening instead of what was really happening,
Speaker 1: which is the I'm alive is what wasn't happening so
Speaker 1: that's why I'm in the camp of I want him
Speaker 1: to have faked all of it, all of it too,
Speaker 1: But I don't think he did. I don't sadly don't
Speaker 1: think so either, But I agree with that. I want
Speaker 1: him too, but I don't think. Yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: you know, as far as faking on death and not
Speaker 1: letting anybody in on it other than a couple of
Speaker 1: close associates, it's kind of a dick move. You know,
Speaker 1: you come back a year, a year or two later.
Speaker 1: You know, not everybody's gonna be thrilled about it. They're
Speaker 1: gonna be happy that you're alive, but they're gonna be
Speaker 1: really and they're never There's gonna be a lot of
Speaker 1: people that don't talk to you ever. Again, he's a
Speaker 1: huge emotional trauma. Yeah it is. He did one out
Speaker 1: of his relationship. But yeah, that that is. That is
Speaker 1: the ultimate way to get relationship. You know that A
Speaker 1: few times I have to move away. But anyway, that's
Speaker 1: that's what I'm taking a half. I think that's what happened.
Speaker 1: I think he probably toyed with the idea what it
Speaker 1: was before he became tremorally ill. He toyed with it.
Speaker 1: And then uh, and then when I finally came around,
Speaker 1: he talked to you, talked to you, talked to Bob
Speaker 1: and greg or George George and said, dudes, dudes, you know,
Speaker 1: just keep this alive, okay, you know. And when you
Speaker 1: think about it too, because he was he was a
Speaker 1: celebrity and you know, famous guy and everything, he probably
Speaker 1: didn't want to fade away. And this is a way
Speaker 1: to keep his It is a way to keep the
Speaker 1: legend going out. Yeah. Absolutely, So that's kind of what
Speaker 1: I suspect. Well, that's all we got on this particular one.
Speaker 1: We will of course have some links that will be
Speaker 1: discussions or articles about Andy. We might put a link
Speaker 1: to a YouTube playlist on the website. I don't know
Speaker 1: what it'll be at this point, but if you want
Speaker 1: to see that stuff, you're more than welcome to do
Speaker 1: so that website, of course, as always his Thinking Sideways
Speaker 1: podcast dot com. On the website, we do have several
Speaker 1: different options for supporting the show. We've got merchandise. This
Speaker 1: will all be on the right hand side by the
Speaker 1: way in the in the little callum there. We've got
Speaker 1: shirts and phone cases and bugs and all of those
Speaker 1: good things, So those are available on Zazzle or red Bubble.
Speaker 1: The stickers as well. Uh, if you want to do
Speaker 1: a monetary contribution to the show, you're welcome to do that.
Speaker 1: We have PayPal for a one time contribution, So if
Speaker 1: that's what works for your budget, thank you very much.
Speaker 1: We appreciate that. If you would like to be more
Speaker 1: of a ongoing donation sustaining, as Devn likes to say it,
Speaker 1: you are welcome to do that. We have we have
Speaker 1: a profile set up or account set up on Patreon,
Speaker 1: Patreon dot com, slash Thinking Sideways and that is just
Speaker 1: so everybody knows that is a donation per episode that
Speaker 1: we come out with. So if you decide that you
Speaker 1: want to give us twenty bucks per be aware that
Speaker 1: that's going to be twenty bucks per episode, not just
Speaker 1: a flat twenty bucks unless you cap it at a
Speaker 1: monthly a month, which then yeah, then it's weird. It
Speaker 1: becomes weird. Also, by the way, we we we drop
Speaker 1: a regular episode once a week, ye and yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: so so occasionally we drop a short or something like that.
Speaker 1: We never charged, you know, those are those are extras
Speaker 1: bonuses I've never charged that we're not putting those in
Speaker 1: there to make more money as much is Joe asked
Speaker 1: me to do it, I decided not to take. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And by the way, this is this is optionality. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the contribute if you don't want to, we make this.
Speaker 1: We make the content because we like to. If you'd
Speaker 1: like to contribute, we appreciate that, but by no means
Speaker 1: a requirement. Yep, we are. We are on iTunes. That
Speaker 1: is seems to be the primary portals that people find
Speaker 1: the show through. If you're finding us on iTunes, please
Speaker 1: do to take the time to subscribe, and if you're
Speaker 1: enjoying it, leave a positive review and rating. Uh. If
Speaker 1: you're not enjoying it, go ahead and leave a positive
Speaker 1: review and rating, and and then go ahead and email
Speaker 1: us with the things that aren't working for you. You
Speaker 1: can email us at Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: Where we do we feel, conversations, story suggestions, general fan letters,
Speaker 1: anything and everything. We will respond to all of it eventually. Eventually.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it takes a little bit while we're on just
Speaker 1: about every streaming site that's out there. So I'm not
Speaker 1: going to name all because I don't have that kind
Speaker 1: of time. But if you use one of those awesome.
Speaker 1: Find us on it. Are on the Facebook. We are
Speaker 1: on the Facebook. We are on the Facebook, and we
Speaker 1: have a Facebook page and a Facebook group, both of
Speaker 1: which are very busy and very fun. So do take
Speaker 1: the time to like the page and or on the group.
Speaker 1: We have a subreddit, which Devin knows about, and I
Speaker 1: still haven't gone to Thank god, I have gone to it,
Speaker 1: I just don't. I'm just not in the habit of
Speaker 1: going up there forget um. And we also have a
Speaker 1: Twitter account, so we are on Twitter at thinking Sideways
Speaker 1: without the G in the middle. You can see pictures
Speaker 1: of my weird bruises I didn't really have. That was weird,
Speaker 1: really weird. People liked it, and I get to prove
Speaker 1: that I'm falling apart at yeah, weird robotic device you. Um, okay,
Speaker 1: Well that's all I've got on this particular episode. You
Speaker 1: guys got anything else? Not? Just if you're Andy, like
Speaker 1: you know, find us on Facebook and join the group
Speaker 1: and tell us what you've been up to. You can
Speaker 1: just email us and you don't have to at yourself publicly.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's a good point. I'm just gonna go ask
Speaker 1: my uncle Andy. All right, good idea, Andy,