Andy Kaufman, 30 Years Ahead Of His Time

Andy's Glyn Styler post got me digging around for old Andy Kaufman clips, and I hit the motherlode. This is Kaufman at his best, baiting the good people of Memphis. I actually remember seeing this on Saturday morning local television when I was a kid. We call it rasslin' here.

From the sometimes reliable Wikipedia:

Kaufman grew up admiring professional wrestlers and the world in which they perform. Inspired by the theatricality of kayfabe, the staged nature of the sport, and his own tendency to form elaborate hoaxes, Kaufman began wrestling women during his act and was the self-proclaimed "Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion of the World," taking on an aggressive and ridiculous personality based upon the characters invented by professional wrestlers. He offered a $1,000 reward to any woman who could pin him.

Later, after a challenge from professional wrestler Jerry "The King" Lawler, Kaufman would step into the ring (in the Memphis wrestling circuit) with a man—Lawler himself. Their ongoing feud, often featuring Jimmy Hart and other heels in Kaufman's corner, included a broken neck for Kaufman as a result of Lawler's piledriver and a famous on-air fight on a 1982 episode of Late Night with David Letterman. For some time after that, Kaufman appeared everywhere wearing a neck brace, insisting that his injuries were worse than they were. Kaufman would continue to defend the Inter-Gender Championship in the Mid-South Coliseum, and offered an extra prize, other than the $1,000.00: that if he was pinned, the woman who pinned him would get to marry him and that he (Kaufman) would shave his head bald as well.

Kaufman and Lawler's famous feud and wrestling matches were later revealed to have been staged, or a "work," as the two were actually friends. The truth about its being a "work" was not disclosed until more than 10 years after Kaufman's death, when the Emmy-nominated documentary, A Comedy Salute to Andy Kaufman, aired on NBC in 1995. Coincidentally, Jim Carrey (who also shares Kaufman's birthday) is the one who reveals the secret, and would later go on to play Kaufman in the 1999 film Man on the Moon. In a 1997 interview with the Memphis Flyer, Lawler claimed he had improvised during their first match and the Letterman incident. Although officials at St. Francis Hospital stated that Kaufman's neck injuries were real, in his 2002 biography It's Good to Be the King ... Sometimes, Lawler detailed how they came up with the angle and kept it quiet. Even though Kaufman's injury was legitimate, the pair pretended that the injury was more severe than it was. He also said that Kaufman's explosion on Letterman was the comedian's own idea, including when Lawler slapped Kaufman out of his chair.

Lawler also revealed in his autobiography that after Kaufman's death, family members discovered numerous uncashed checks from his wrestling tenure, suggesting that Kaufman participated in wrestling purely for the love of the sport, and not for money.

Comedian or performance artist, I think Andy Kaufman was a genius.