He was a troll. The ur-troll, if you will. Thank God he died before the internet took off.
Andy Kaufman, as well as many other so-called “comic geniuses” were early versions of hype over substance. I sometimes think critics/fans had better drugs back then and found these people hysterically funny - then again, with those drugs, they probably would have thought the employees at the DMV were a laugh riot.
Pauly Shore - other than his mother owning the comedy club and her being an agent, he would never have found work and was never funny.
Sam Kinnison - there is only so much of a screaming tantrum anyone can take in one setting - ask any parent or teacher or employee at a psych ward.
Gilbert Gottfried - his supposedly funny voice is about as entertaining as fingernails on a chalkboard, and gets tired faster than drunk Uncle Fred telling jokes using his version of a negro accent.
J.J. Walker - dyn0mite! Oh yeah, nothing more funny that to hear that catch phrase in his stand up act, over and over and over again. I remember catching one of his shows (free ticket) in Chicago and within five minutes, people were leaving the club in droves.
All of these guys may have had some funny bit somewhere along the line, but like all one-trick ponies, they quickly ran out of originality and material.
Kaufman is someone I have gone back and forth on a different times but I’ve settled on the side of genius. Possibly deranged. Definitely not to everyone’s taste.
I just watched the Might Mouse clip again for the first time in years and it still cracks me up too.
I recently listened to this podcast with Marc Maron interviewing Kaufman’s partner in crime Bob Zmuda. I found it highly entertaining and it added a layer of complexity to my understanding of what they were doing that increased my appreciation of his work.
Anyone who has even a slight interest should give it a listen. And even those who don’t care for him may find it worth the time.
I’ll have to check it out. I’m also the guy who thought Freddy Got Fingered was borderline genius (and I have the New York Times critic, A.O. Scott, to at least back me up on this one with a surprisingly positive review), so I like comedy that tends to be a bit off the beaten path.
I watched a youtube of a mighty mouse act. 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). That’s it. I cracked a smile the first time he did it. By the end I was thinking “That’s it? That’s all?”.
This “genius” label seems pretty subjective. You have to find that approach to comedy/entertainment/humor as one that suits your taste to be able to apply the “genius” label, it seems to me.
How do we define “genius”?
Here’s the secret of Kaufman’s success:
[spoiler]He walks out on stage.
[/spoiler]
I can agree with that. Applying the term genius, particularly in the arts, is very much a subjective thing. It either speaks to you or connects on some level or completely leaves you cold. It seems Kaufman was/is an extreme example of that.
But that’s not all that he’s doing. Look at what he’s doing with his hands and his posture. The nervous twitches and the false starts when he’s waiting, and the sudden shift in body language when he actually starts to sing. What’s funny is not that he’s lip-synching a stupid song. What’s funny is the character he creates. It’s a loving self-referential send-up of the sort of person who would choose to lip-synch a stupid song, the tension between the dorky awkwardness of the situation and the sudden soaring joy of the singing. It’s a butterfly of goofy grace bursting forth from a cocoon of flop-sweat and inadequacy.
I noticed that. I just didn’t mention it. (He switches from someone who appears to be awkward performing in a public setting, and appearing to be confident while actually singing.) I get it. Still “meh” for me.
Why was the audience laughing while he gets a drink of water?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
The snarky one is. (Groucho.)
Performance Artist. If he were a comedian, then he would worry about not getting laughs.