Untitled

by Don

Here's the way I see it--

>>Andy wanted to always have characters that weren't him while he was in the presence of an audience that were monitoring him and studying him.<<

Yes, but this was ALL THE TIME. Reporters, co-workers, even his best friends and family to Andy comprised an audience.

>>In that way, he could keep his private life in some way intact while still doing the many characters and acts that he loved to do.<<

He didn't have a private life. He was ALWAYS acting. No matter who else was around, they were an audience to Andy.

>>And just as a fail-safe plan for people not to think he wasn't doing characters, he had to lay it down pure and simple that it was just the act.
Example from 'Andy's Funhouse': 'Ladies and Gentlemen, up until now I've only been fooling, but this is the real me...' etc. Then when they went to commercial he had to hit the audience with the fact that it was just another character.<<

This was just part of his ongoing joke. Since reporters and fans were constantly trying to find out who the 'real" Andy was, he would tease his audience with the idea that "OK, that was an act, but here's the 'real' Andy Kaufman", only to launch into a further act. He knew that it was ALL an act, and that there was no 'real' Andy Kaufman: and he loved to tease the public, reporters, and even friends and family about that concept.

>>He saw the downside in being the self-proclaimed wacko with no real self, and that was that the audience would think themelves clevar to spot the 'real' Andy. So to always slap us in the face and say 'I got you again suckers!' he'd give the audience the little wink that they needed to realize he was merely acting more.<<

Not sure I understand what you are saying here. What I saw him doing on stage was just what he loved to do to reporters, colleages, employers, even friends. He would just tease them about the whole Andy Kaufman concept-who he was, what drove him, the myth, the characters. For example he would love to tell reporters that what drove him was a girl from the 7th grade, with whom he'd been madly in love for the last 20 years. He's say that he had to become a big star so that she would want to go out with him.

Or he'd tell Dan Akroyd at SNL that he used to do Tony Clifton, but that the real Tony Clifton had gotten so mad that he no longer does the act, and that the real Tony now opens his shows. No matter WHO was around, Andy was ACTING. 24 and 7. There were no moments, from all I've been able to determine, when Andy was just Andy. He was always someone else, always acting.

>>In almost every act he's ever done I have discovered he always hides these messages in there, almost subliminally.<<

Part of the act.

>>I however, also believe that once and a while, he would have had to slip and let out little bits and pieces of who he really was. Nothing so major that we could actually piece together much of him which we don't know, but enough to prove he was in fact human to some degree.<<

Not a slip--again: part of the act. It was to keep his "audience" (which consisted of everybody else in the world except him) off balance, wondering what was "real" and what was an act.

My conclusion, therefore, is that there just flat wasn't any 'real' Andy Kaufman, free from acting and put-on.

Posted on May 13, 2001, 8:41 PM

Respond to this message

Goto Forum HomeResponses

...And My God Was it Hard. Sean, May 14, 2001

That's genius.. Don, May 15, 2001

Generous, more likely.... Sean, May 15, 2001

Create your own forum at Network54