1979

http://youtu.be/4KKVHgCujz4

October 22, 1979 - During an interview with Vince McMahon, Andy Kaufman offers $500 to any woman who can beat him in a wrestling match 

Is Andy Kaufman alive? - CNN Article

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/14/showbiz/andy-kaufman-alive-or-not/index.html?hpt=hp_c3

(CNN) -- Did Andy Kaufman get away with his greatest stunt?

The Internet erupted Thursday following reports that Kaufman's younger brother, Michael, suggested the performance artist may have faked his 1984 death.

The reports further fueled long-held conspiracy theories that the comedian's death from a rare form of cancer at age 35 was a hoax.

In a tale almost as outlandish as his brother's skits, Michael Kaufman told an audience at a New York comedy club Monday night that he received a letter from his brother 15 years after his death. He then introduced a woman he said was his brother's daughter born in 1989.

Michael Kaufman explained he was going through Andy's writings many years ago and found a reference to him "talking about faking his death," including the line, "I will reappear." It said Andy's reappearance would take place at a restaurant on Christmas Eve in 1999.

When Michael Kaufman went to the restaurant, he said, a parking attendant gave him a letter purportedly from his brother. Michael Kaufman read the letter to the audience at Monday's annual Andy Kaufman Awards show. Video of the reading was obtained by CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper."

"It was too much pressure to be Andy Kaufman. I just wanted to be Andy," Michael Kaufman read. "I think that's why I got sick. I had to change completely and quickly. I'm extremely very happily married with the most wonderful wife in the whole wide world and with the two greatest kids: a 10-year-old daughter and a son who is 8."

Michael Kaufman said he was "obviously moved by this, but I'm also real skeptical."

He then introduced a 24-year-old woman as Andy's now-grown daughter.

Michael Kaufman told the audience the woman approached him about a month after his father, Stanley Kaufman, died this summer: "She told me a lot of secrets that Andy and I had together, like our secret handshake, the way Andy made fun of me for being too nice of a guy."

On Thursday, The Smoking Gun reported that the woman is a young actress who posed as the comedian's daughter and that she's really the daughter of a 58-year-old psychologist. Earlier reports of Monday's event surfaced on The Hollywood Reporter, which attributed the original reports to The Comic's Comic and Defamer.

The Great Ruse: The comedic genius who rocked wrestling

Kaufman was beloved for his portrayal on "Taxi" of Latka Gravas, the wildly entertaining foreigner who struggled with English and multiple personality disorder. Yet to the dismay of the entertainment world, Kaufman started wrestling women in night clubs around the country in the 1980s.

It was in Memphis, Tennessee, where his wrestling gig hit the stratosphere, challenging local legend Jerry "The King" Lawler in epic matches.

"I would like nothing better than to know that Andy was still alive and been with us all this time," Lawler told CNN Thursday by phone. "But like anybody else, I really don't know any more than what I've heard.

"It could be a great hoax in his honor, dreamed up by his friend Bob Zamuda and his brother, Michael. That would be something that would be in keeping with Andy's tradition, but who's to say. It could really be legit."

If Kaufman were alive, Lawler said he would tell him: "You pulled off your dream stunt, your dream prank."

Lawler also challenged Kaufman, if he really is alive, to get back in the ring with him. "There should be a WrestleMania rematch between Andy and The King," Lawler said. "We could rekindle the feud with no problem."

Kaufman's manager George Shapiro was at the comedian's side at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on May 16, 1984. "Andy's very much alive in our hearts, but I don't think his body is around," Shapiro told CNN Thursday. "He died. I was in the hospital."

Shapiro said Kaufman always talked about faking his death and coming back in five, 10, 15 years. In fact, when Shapiro notified the New York Times and Washington Post of Kaufman's death, both newspapers were reluctant to report it.

"They figured it was a ruse, another Andy Kaufman ploy."

Longtime friend Dennis Raimondi said Kaufman confided in him around 1980 about his desire to fake his death and how he planned to do it.

"It's certainly something he gave a lot of thought to," Raimondi told CNN Thursday. "One of his concerns at the time was the reaction of his parents. He cared about them."

Raimondi said he couldn't comment further on the latest reports.

CNN spoke to Kaufman's father prior to his death this summer. Stanley Kaufman, then 90, said his son had driven him and his wife crazy from a young age -- even more so when he entered the wrestling ring.

"My wife and I used to go bananas when we would see what he was doing. We thought: 'Good God, he's gonna get killed!'" he said. "But my son was a nut, what can I tell you? He knew what he wanted to do."

He said he had no doubts of his son's death and that he missed his boy greatly. "Andy scared the hell out of us," he said. "In retrospect, of course, I'm so, so very proud of him. But at the time, it was scary. I used to be embarrassed by my son. But he knew everything that he did, everything was deliberate, everything was calculated.

"He did a good job with what he intended to do. I am proud of the kid."

Still, his fans wonder: Could he have even fooled his father?

The Demon: A Film About Andy Kaufman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu82Qm9LtlU

Andy and his grandmother

http://www.dragcity.com/products/andy-and-his-grandmother

ANDY AND HIS GRANDMOTHER posted May 20th, 2013 Sometimes here at Drag City, we like to let the world present our news to you, the consumerfan, for us. Then, once every tiny inch of blog-space has been infiltrated with said news, we wait just a minute for the dust to settle before striking once more, direct from HQ, with a reminder of just who brought you such exquisite and exciting information in the first place. Yes, who knew? Drag City = Spin City. And this be one of those spinning wheels; in this case, said news is the announcement of the first Andy Kaufman LP ever to be released, Andy And His Grandmother! Plus, the blogs probably di'nt tell you, but it's both funny and freaky! You heard it here first.

To recap: Andy Kaufman changed the worlds of comedy and performance in the 1970s, showing fans and friends alike a determination to follow put-ons into territory no one had ever even considered "comic" before. His fervor was so intense that when he passed away suddenly in 1984, it seemed as if the ultimate disappearing act had been staged; one that some people believe is still ongoing, with the reveal yet to come. This makes him the quintessential entertainer of our generation, a man ahead of his time and ours, and a force that has yet to be matched - even in the mega-saturated media world of the 21st century. Andy and His Grandmother is material never heard before, a skimming from 82 hours of micro-cassette tapes that Andy recorded during 1977-79. Real life was the ultimate frontier for him, and these tapes demonstrate the heart of Andy's comedy: with gusto, he involves those closest to him, as well as total strangers, in put-ons, falsehoods and other provocations, pushing the limit on logic and emotional investment in everyday situations from the trivial to the deeply personal until any suspension of disbelief is out of the question for all involved, and everyone becomes fully immersed in whatever scenario Andy is suggesting as the new reality.

Vernon Chatman (South Park, Wonder Showzen, Xavier: Renegade Angel, The Heart She Holler, and Doggie Fizzle Televizzle, Final Flesh) dug deeply into the tapes, coming up with a concept for a single LP that would include several dozen excerpts. Slowly and carefully the final sequence took shape, and SNL's Bill Hader drafted to provide narration for the journey. The finished album, with liner notes from Vernon and Kaufman cohort Bob Zmuda is a work of comedy for our times - one that was performed over thirty years ago. Finally, July has a date worth celebrating - Andy And His Grandmother comes July 16th!

Artists in this story: Andy Kaufman

source: http://www.dragcity.com/news/732

Cool sites..check them out

Heck Yeah Andy Kaufman
On facebook: http://www.facebook.com/heckyeahandykaufman
On twitter: https://twitter.com/heckyeahandyk
on tumblr: http://heckyeahandykaufman.tumblr.com/

"I Shall Be Heard" by Alex J. Mann

>> http://www.themorningnews.org/article/i-shall-be-heard

This article about Andy is from March 14, 2013 (due to busy life I couldn't have posted it earlier)

Andy Kaufman Typography Project by Justin Cammer

check his website out:
http://justincammer.com/design/school-projects/andy-kaufman-typography-project/#.UXJDEaKBWSo

Happy 64th Birthday Andy!

Interview with Andy's Brother

KAUFMAN ON KAUFMAN: AN INTERVIEW WITH ANDY'S BROTHER

quote

on Creating Reality, by Andy Kaufman

"On Creating Reality, by Andy Kaufman" January 12 - February 16th, 2013

Maccarone is pleased to present "On Creating Reality, by Andy Kaufman," a project presented by artist Jonathan Berger, in collaboration with the Estate of Andy Kaufman, Lynne Margulies, Bob Zmuda, and Tony Clifton, on view from January 12- February 16th, 2013.

The show presents an extensive collection of ephemera and artifacts from Andy Kaufman's personal and professional life: photographs, correspondence, performance notation, scripts, props and costumes including the original Tony Clifton jacket, record collections, transcendental meditation materials, hand written drafts of his novel "The Huey Williams Story," hundreds of pieces of hate mail he received from women challenging him to wrestle, in addition to numerous personal effects. The exhibition will act as a portrait of an unclassifiable figure in American cultural history whose work has been seminal in the evolution of performance art, new media and relational aesthetics.

In lieu of explanatory text labels accompanying these materials, a rotating series of Kaufman's friends, family, and collaborators will be physically present in the exhibition at all times, for all 25 days that the exhibition is on view, representing the diverse range of relationships, which span Kaufman's life, work, and interests. A central table and chairs within the gallery space will allow these guests to interact and talk with visitors, offering the opportunity for intimate and unscripted conversations about Kaufman with those that knew him, a rare opportunity to engage with primary sources of this particular history.

Guests for the exhibition include Gina Acre, Bill Boggs, Tony Clifton, Prudence Farrow Bruns, Joe Franklin, Dennis Hof, Carol Kane, Michael Kaufman, Carol Kaufman-Kerman, Johnny Legend, Lynne Margulies, Carolyn Marks Blackwood, Al Parinello, Laurie Simmons, Gregg Sutton, Joe Troiani, Little Wendy, and Bob Zmuda amongst others.

Berger's treatment of the exhibition is largely inspired by the variety show format in which much of Kaufman's work was presented. Moreover, the accumulation of the special guest testimonies serves to both activate the material on display and reflect upon the often elusive and even contradictory way that Kaufman lived. Similarly, Berger's relationship to the exhibition exists in a gray area that both incorporates and rejects the standard conventions attached to the role of artist, curator, producer, journalist, director, archivist, biographer, historian, and documentarian. He has chosen to present evidence of Kaufman's life and work, and not the work itself. The positioning of these materials, coupled with the interactive and unpredictable nature of the circumstances, further underscores how the fluid nature information shapes our understanding of reality and truth, an exploration at the core of Kaufman's artistic practice, a practice which continues to defy definition.

Accompanying "On Creating Reality, by Andy Kaufman" will be a selection of both classic and obscure audio and video performance documentation from the Comic Relief archive, presented at Maccarone's new adjacent gallery space on the corner of Morton and Washington Streets.

Michael Kaufman, Andy's brother and Chairman of the Andy Kaufman Award, an annual event that works to preserve the legacy of Andy's art, states: "The Andy Kaufman Award assures the world that Andy's legacy will continue through those who imbibe his spirit, his aliveness and his amazing capacity to seemingly do the impossible. The Kaufman family is happy to know that Andy's body of work continues to impact the art world as is recognized with the Maccarone project, one I know Andy would strongly embrace."

In conjunction with Maccarone's presentation, "Andy Kaufman's 99cent Tour," a series of screenings and events at Participant Inc., will take place from February 12th- 24th ( www.participantinc.org.).

Additionally, MOMA/PS1 will host a Sunday Session devoted to the work of Andy Kaufman on February 17th, 2013 featuring the New York premiere of "Tony Clifton Plays the Sunset Strip" (www.momaps1.org/calendar/sundaysessions).

For information on Tony Clifton visit: www.tonyclifton.net For more information on the Andy Kaufman Award: (www.TheAndyKaufmanAward.com)

For more information on the exhibition, please call the gallery at 212 431 4977 or email press@maccarone.net.. Gallery hours are Tuesday - Saturday 10 AM - 6 PM.

source: http://www.maccarone.net/