Andy Kaufman: Comic genius or silly nut

[Kolak of Twilo]

Originally Posted by mlees

It seemed all he did was lip sink "Here I come to save the day!" whenever it came up (which was three times in the 1:44 video I watched).

The Hamster King's response explains this well but I would add that a big part of what he did was create really awkward moments like he does in this clip. Most of his performances involve him behaving in a way where the audience starts feeling uncomfortable watching his twitchy, awkwardness on stage. When he finally lip synchs to the song the audience laughter is partially in response to the tension he creates being released. I tried to explain this as best I can. Hopefully it makes sense to you.

Originally Posted by mlees

Why was the audience laughing while he gets a drink of water?

Think about it for a second - a performer will usually pause for a sip of water because their mouth or throat are dry from the effort of speaking or singing and here this boob is lip synching to a song and yet his throat is dry. It's absurd.

Originally Posted by mlees

I would define someone as "genius" if they define a new genre, or otherwise impact the profession as a whole. He didn't do that... I don't think, anyway.

There aren't too many copy-cats of his style, nor does there appear to be a huge untapped demand for performers who intentionally manipulate/piss of the paying customer.

There are actually a lot of professional stand-up comics and other comic actors who have cited Kaufman as a huge influence. Will Ferrell would be someone whose style is clearly influenced by him. Jim Carrey is another.

I don't know if you know the story about how he first started out in NYC comedy clubs but apparently he started showing up at one of them (The Improv maybe) back in the early 70's totally in character as his Latka character, carrying a suitcase and began bugging the owner to let him on during the open mic portion. Nobody there knew him and everyone thought he really was some poor misguided immigrant who spoke broken English and thought he could do comedy. When he finally convinced the owner to let him get onstage he would start telling horribly unfunny jokes in character and doing really lousy celebrity impersonations. At this point the audience would be squirming in their seats feeling bad for this poor idiot making a fool of himself onstage. Then he would go into his Elvis impersonation, but this time instead of being terrible he was fucking spot on and the audience would be blown away. Once he was done he would go back into his Latka character, gather his things up and leave. This is a link to him doing the bit on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Some of the impact is lost because by this point the audience knew he was doing a character but still a pretty funny performance.

You may not find him amusing but his impact is pretty much undenialble.

[mlees]

Originally Posted by Kolak of Twilo

Think about it for a second - a performer will usually pause for a sip of water because their mouth or throat are dry from the effort of speaking or singing and here this boob is lip synching to a song and yet his throat is dry. It's absurd.

Absurd? He's pretending to be nervous. When your nervous, your mouth goes dry. ("Cotton mouth") Seemed like an innocuos action to me, but the audience laughs.

There are actually a lot of professional stand-up comics and other comic actors who have cited Kaufman as a huge influence. Will Ferrell would be someone whose style is clearly influenced by him. Jim Carrey is another.

They have not made a career out of alienating (or confusing) the audience, though. Were they specific about what was the influence? (Other than maybe making comedy seem like a desired or viable career path.)

I'm not saying you're all stupid for liking him. (To each his own. It's no different than arguing about ice cream flavors.) I just question the "genius" label.

[Kolak of Twilo]

Originally Posted by mlees

I'm not saying you're all stupid for liking him. (To each his own. It's no different than arguing about ice cream flavors.) I just question the "genius" label.

No worries, I'm not taking it that way at all. I learned a long time ago what we find funny can be a very individual thing. I was just trying to elaborate since you seem to be rather intrigued by what Kaufman's appeal is to some of us.

I would recommend you listen to the Marc Maron podcast I linked to in post #43. It's long but I think you would get a good understanding of what he was about and how he influenced comedy in a general way. I remember that coming up in the conversation but the details are fuzzy at the moment. You can play from that link or download it from iTunes. It's pretty interesting just to hear all the stories. And Maron has gotten to be a darn good interviewer.

As for the genius label, I would simply say artistic genius is a very subjective thing.

Unless we're talking about the Marx Brothers of course. They were indisputable geniuses, right?

[Shodan]

I think I've said this in other threads on Kaufman, but I think he started out exploring the boundaries, and what made up comedy, and ended up seeing how irritating he could be and still get people to pay to watch it.

He was brilliant on Taxi, because the sitcom format forced him to deliver on the joke. But his stand-up deteriorated into seeing how many times he could do an act based on shaggy dog stories. There was no punch line, nothing beyond "I do something weird and see if you will fall for it."

And I say this as someone who thought the Mighty Mouse bit was funny as well as subversive.

But everyone knows professional wrestling is a put-on. What is achieved, what does it say, just to do more of it?

It was like a lot of 70s humor, especially on SNL - I think the reason I found a lot of it funny was because I was high at the time.

Comedy as modern art - there is no point beyond "there is no point beyond what you assign to it". I've heard that one enough.

Regards,
Shodan

[mlees]

Originally Posted by Kolak of Twilo

Unless we're talking about the Marx Brothers of course. They were indisputable geniuses, right?

The snarky one is. (Groucho.)

[alfonzos]

Performance Artist. If he were a comedian, then he would worry about not getting laughs.