Even five decades after Andy Kaufman burst onto the national comedy scene, his friends and collaborators still wrestle, so speak, with what was real and what was part of the act.
As you learn in the new documentary “Thank You Very Much,” even Kaufman’s death from cancer at age 35 in 1984 was viewed with suspicion that it could be a bit.
The documentary probes the link between the brief innocence of Kaufman’s childhood and his approach to whimsy in his unique style of comedy. It also spotlights detours that perhaps haven’t aged as well, like the misogyny of Tony Clifton and the “intergender” wrestling matches he staged.
The film by Alex Braverman is coming to theaters and video on demand starting Friday.
I read that you said you are obsessed with Andy Kaufman. What is it about him that captivates you?
There's something about his, his essence, his act. The way he presents to the world that just to me fully can't be cracked. It can't be understood all the way through from its core outward. And so to me that just means that there's something always fresh something fresh to think about like. I just feel like you can't finish him as a topic. And so that is kind of a prerequisite for any sort of obsession of mine, and just makes it so personally, it doesn't get old to me.
You know, some of the Andy Kaufman Highlights are really well known, in comedy circles, but other of this footage that you include in the film was new to me. How did you go about finding all the archives?
As far as the more familiar clips and appearances, I've seen some of them presented as well. But one thing that we wanted to do was give the familiar clips a chance to breathe a little bit more, since so much of his work is about time and feeling the burn of time, as something gets more and more awkward. So we wanted to put those in there for both fans and people that weren't as familiar with his work to get a sort of primer going. But then, yeah, as you mentioned, it was important to us to also unearth material that, even like the most diehard of fans, would not have seen. Really the key to the footage for us was Andy's two closest friends or collaborators towards the end of his life at least. And that that would be Lynne Margulies, who was his girlfriend and collaborator, as well as Bob Zmuda, who was his good friend and writing partner; there's a lot of ways it could be described. But they were partners in crime, and they, over the years did a very good job of cataloging everything that he had done. But they had also the way that kids might do, filmed a bunch of things on their own that were never really intended for air. They hung on to home videos and photos and all sorts of thing ideas that have been rejected over the years. And then, later on, also made a habit of filming people, interviews with people, their recollections of Andy. And so there was a big process of going through all that footage as we were editing the film, but just feel very fortunate to have had their blessings, and their help obtaining and sorting through a lot of that material.
You have a family connection to all of this. Can you explain that way into the material for us?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as a kid I grew up with, you know, shelves lined with tapes of various productions, concerts, comedy shows things like that that my parents had produced in the 70s and early 80s, and one of the shows that they produced was the Showtime special ‘Andy Kaufman Plays Carnegie Hall’ from 1979. I grew up watching that, and also just hearing stories from them as far as what was Andy like what, what was Bob like? And so, just from a young age, was aware of him and his work, and was happy to have parents that were proud to show that to me and celebrate that kind of performer. And then over the years I wouldn't say that they were close with Bob, but my dad in particular stayed in touch with him, and that's how I was able to sort of get his phone number and call him up and see if he was sort of ready to tell the real story, and if see if he had any material, and he was very ready to talk at this point. It took them a little while to let go of some of the material, but ultimately we got there.
It's so funny watching all of the archival footage and seeing Zmuda showing up like a Zelig figure in a lot of the Andy Kaufman bits. He's a wrestling referee, or he's someone in the audience. I mean, he's kind of always around helping contribute to whatever the particular scene was.
Yeah, exactly. I mean, he shows up throughout the years. And sometimes in costume, sometimes not. He's a wrestling referee, or he'll be a heckler in the crowd, or you there are some appearances that we didn't include where they are going on talk shows together as different people with fake names, and then, of course, famously, he also is Tony Clifton sometimes as well.
You can tell that they're just always having so much fun together and best friends, and just playing off of each other's energy and really stirring things up together as much as they can.
So how did you approach what is really, I think, an impossible question, which is: what was real and what wasn't? I don't know that your film makes a determination because it's almost not necessary at this point. But I mean, so much of what Andy said in interviews and in bits, I mean, just wasn't true. So how did you approach trying to verify what was included in the film?
You know, the real answer is that we kind of approached everything on a case-by-case basis. So, for instance, just to run through a few examples, this idea that he was kicked out of the TM movement, we included a couple different perspectives, because the idea is essentially, like, you'll have to sort of decide for yourself. But he would lie. Sometimes in interviews he would seemingly for no reason. Sometimes like saying that he was born in 1939 when he was really born in 1949. And there's really no reason to do that, but we would just sort of leave things in like that because we thought they were funny. I think, you know, for the person who really wants to chase down all the facts, you can look into it yourself and determine were he and Lawler, Jerry Lawler, in on something together, or was it real? But the real answer is, we approached every single instance of that with a fresh approach, and sort of just decided one by one, like, is this worth verifying or not? You know, to me, like something that's new that comes out in the film is that he had this roommate.
I was gonna ask you about his college roommate!
Yeah. We discovered a college roommate of his in the process of making the film, someone claiming to have shared a room with him at times at Grahm Junior College in Boston, and this guy named Bijan Kimiachi, essentially says, like, you know, Andy Kaufman used my accent as the basis for his foreign man. And Latke. I mean, he doesn't seem very bitter about the portrayal.
I mean, when he talks, he sounds like Andy Kaufman’s character, there's no question.
Yeah, and you can hear me ask him in the movie, , Are you saying that he stole your identity? Because showing up to interview him, I was a little nervous that this guy would be bitter, or that, you know, he was owed some sort of money or recognition or whatever. And his attitude was like, no, he didn't steal anything. It was a gift for me. It's kind of a beautiful way of looking at the world and thinking about these things. But at the same time, you know, it meant a lot to him to try to get in touch with me and get that story out as well, and I think he's excited for when the film comes out, to sort of have that recognition.
I was wondering, Alex, because I remember there was a lot of this exploration about Andy Kaufman at the time that the Milos Forman biopic came out, obviously, some of the same people are featured in that film as are in your doc. That was with Jim Carrey playing Andy Kaufman about 25 years ago. How do you think our understanding of Andy Kaufman's life and art has changed since that round of kind of reappraisals happened?
It's a great question. I think at the time that that film came out, and I could be wrong, because, you know, I was a teenager then, and so maybe my perception of what the world was thinking about and how they were thinking about it is a little different than actually how it was. But my sense then is that ‘Man on the Moon’ was really about us trying to understand Andy a little bit and process what it was that he was doing, but as it stands now, I think that in the world it's a little bit harder to decipher what is real and what's not, especially looking at our entertainment and our politics and everything.
And so I feel like Andy has a little bit more to teach us about our world now, as opposed to our world teaching us about him, if that makes any sense. I think he was extremely ahead of his time in terms of forcing us to question reality, question the narrative that's being presented to us at any given time. And you know, as far as performers and performances goes that's something that we're used to now. And so we can look at a performer or a performance in the cultural space and ask ourselves, is this guy doing a character? Is this real or not? But when you go a little bit deeper and just look into like, the news media landscape or politics or whatever, like, there's generally more, for me at least, more of a trend now than there was then, as far as questioning whether or not any of this is true, or, you know, trying to figure out who's talking to us and what the real message is.
I'm so glad you mentioned that, because I was trying to think, after watching the film, who's the spiritual heir to the kind of work that Andy Kaufman was doing? And it's like, you know, on the one hand, you have maybe obvious choices like Sacha Baron Cohen or Nathan Fielder to a degree, but on the other hand, it's like, it's also everything in your feed that might be a deep fake is also something that he was kind of getting to.
Yeah, it's a trap, in a way, to try to identify who is Kaufman-esque at this point, because, like, I was saying, like, that's something that he created. But he also kind of killed it in the sense that once you learn that that's a thing, you're able to look for it again. But at the same time, those people that you mentioned, whether they're Sacha Baron Cohen or Nathan Fielder or Tim Heidecker, like I think that they get brought up in the conversation around his legacy because they're doing something unique to them and new as well, and so like that feeling that they create in us, where it's like, ‘Whoa,’ like, I thought I was looking at one thing, but it's actually turning out to be something else. That is part of the Kaufman legacy. But in my opinion, Nathan Fielder deserves to be called Fielder-esque, or something like that, or Sasha Baron Cohen-esque, but, I think it's fun to think about, and it's fun to sort of point out, like, who is doing their own original thing, and challenging us to look at our feed, so to speak, in a in a critical and yet entertained way.
So after having spent all this time thinking about Andy Kaufman and watching the old footage and putting your film together, what is your read on the wrestling stuff?
Yeah, well, it's a great question. I think everyone has a different reaction to it, which is what makes it kind of amazing. I mean, look, he's a complicated guy, like, on the one hand, he is truly a wrestling fanatic, this is something that he grew up with. We get a little bit into it in the movie. But you know, he went to wrestling matches as a kid with his grandmother. His first sense of theatrics, which Bob says in the movie, is really like good versus evil. And so, on the one hand, I think he really enjoys playing the heel and getting that attention. And I also think that the message of his character, the wrestler, can be read a couple different ways. If you want to see it as misogynistic, I think you can. If you want to see it as some a somewhat feminist read, it's making fun of misogynism, I think that reading of it is available too. Ultimately, he's not the kind of performer that's ever going to explain what he was trying to do or what he was trying to say. I think if it were up to him, he would say, I'm just having fun or it's a real thing. I'm wrestling. But the read on it really says more about you as a viewer than it does about him, in my opinion. So I probably take a somewhat generous view and say, you know, he's mocking misogyny, he's mocking these types of macho characters. But for anyone who disagrees with me, I sort of respect their take as well.
Your film includes the rumor that this was all an elaborate bit, his death, and that people were still having ‘sightings’ of him panhandling30 and 40 years later. And I wonder what you think that's about, because it does tie into the way that America dealt with Elvis after Elvis’ death. There were sightings of him. And obviously there's a connection between Elvis and Andy Kaufman, but what do you think it is that among the public that kind of wants to root for Andy Kaufman doing a four-decade bit?
Part of his desire as he was getting into the 80s, and he was seeing his career go, let's just say, go downhill, as far as traditional expectations, I think he just really wanted to be remembered, and so what better way to be remembered than to design a question that just truly cannot be answered. And it kind of goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning of our conversation, as to, like, why I'm into him, why it's still interesting to me, even though I've been working on this film for eight and a half years now, is because it's unanswerable. It's like an echo that rings out forever. And so there's a genius to that bit, whether it's real or a bit. It's like Lynne says at the end of the movie, isn't it kind of more fun to not know? But not knowing is the recipe for something just living on forever. So in a way, that bit allows him to live forever, and we love that, because we can't finish it, we can't complete it, we can't answer it. And so for us, it just echoes on forever as well.
