Looking for Andy Kaufman

A woman claiming to be Andy Kaufman’s daughter who said the eccentric standup faked his death to be with his family, has been exposed as a hoaxster. But she’s only the latest in a long line of people who have claimed that Andy Kaufman’s 1984 death of lung cancer was a fake. How did Andy Kaufman become the Bigfoot of dead comics? Is it because he started his career as an Elvis impersonator and Elvis really is Bigfoot? There are still more people who see Elvis than who spot Andy. They are tied with the people who see Jesus in tacos.

Andy Kaufman, who embodied just the right parts of Mighty Mouse on Saturday Night, played Latka and his multiple personality Vic Ferrari on Taxi, pushed comedy to new highs and lows in his reign as America’s most out-there standup. You never knew when the joke ended. Andy didn’t always let the audience in on the joke. Whether he was wrestling women on Merv Griffin in a chauvinistic guise or sending his stand-in, Tony Clifton, to meetings with TV executives, or pushing Michael Richards to his wits end on Fridays, Kaufman was his own audience laughing in the wings. He set up the audience to be his personal entertainment. What could be more entertaining than letting it out that he was dead and sitting back spending the rest of his watching himself perform without having to leave his chaise lounge? It’s funny as hell.

Andy Kaufman's “daughter” yanked Andy’s brother Michael Kaufman on stage at the Andy Kaufman Awards at New York's Gotham Comedy Club to let everyone know her old man was fine. Look, I got his brother, he just wanted to be a good dad.

She said "He just wanted to be a stay-at-home dad, because that's why he wanted to leave the show biz. I know don't know how much longer he can keep everything away. He was really thinking about coming."

That would have made for a great coming out party. Andy Kaufman appear at the Andy Kaufman Awards to say, hey I’ve been driving a Taxi for the past, what? Thirty years? That’s like Elvis Presley looking for his keys at Graceland or Bigfoot turning himself in at Area 51 (or Studio 54).

Kaufman was born in New York City on January 17, 1949. Kaufman would be 64-years old if he were alive today.  JFK would be in his 90s if he was still alive. George Washington would be over 300 so who are we kidding?  According to legend, Kaufman claimed that if he were to fake his death, he come out of hiding 20 years later. That would have happened in 2004. Of course, maybe he did fake his death in 1984 and died in the meantime.

A few years ago a grey-haired guy was caught on video in Albuquerque that everyone swore was Andy. Years after Andy Kaufman died, Tony Clifton was still performing. Everyone thought Tony Clifton was Andy, but Clifton was actually a character played by Kaufman’s writing partner, co-conspirator, and best friend, comedian Bob Zmuda, who everyone also thought was Andy. Zmuda maintains that, on his deathbed, Andy Kaufman said keep Tony Clifton alive.

There have been dozens of Kaufman spottings in the meantime. Most of them probably go unreported. In 1993, my wife and I got a plane in from New Orleans and took a taxi from JFK to our apartment on 19^th Street. The driver looked just like Andy Kaufman. He didn’t say much, so I couldn’t get a take on his voice. When I was paying my fair I was thinking, that would just be too fucking perfect, Latka driving a cab. The cabbie winked before he drove off.

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