>>Last night I just caught the tail end of a film biopic essentially about the dissolution of Andy Kaufman, "Man on the Moon", played by Jim Carey.
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>>Now there have been several seminal TV sit-coms from the USA, that were loved over here: Rhoda, Taxi, Cheers, Frasier, Friends. And Kaufman, as Latka, was one of the main draws. Apart from this, esp. as he died quite young, I don't think a lot was known of him over here. From this film though it appears that, outside of his role in Taxi, he was, to the British senses, about as funny as a dose of distemper in a dog's home. And he was nutsoid, arrogant, single-minded in his conviction of his own talent and funniness and self-destructive.
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>>Did you guys really find him all that interesting and hilarious, outside his Latka role?
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>I'm with you 100% on this. Other than Latka, and the finest Elvis impersonation in the history of mankind, he did nothing I found remotely worthwhile. I felt that he was simply laughing at his audience. I figure he was doing things he knew were not remotely funny or entertaining and betting the audiences would laugh anyway because they thought they were supposed to, and because they wanted to show that they'd 'got' it while others less hip than themselves did not.


A guy I know from the old CompuServe Showbiz forum is a screenwriter who has had a number of movies produced, including one starring Andy Kaufman. He described Kaufman as being a class A jerk on the set. During one part of the shoot they were doing some outdoor scenes and the director wanted a certain kind of light that only occurred an hour or so a day at that time of year. Kaufman had it in his contract that he could break for an hour during the day to practice yoga. You've probably already guessed where this is going -- the hour he did yoga was the exact same one when the light was best. The director tried to get him to be flexible and he just said it's in my contract, talk to my agent. So the entire group of people involved with the movie had to cool their heels for an hour waiting for Young Milord Kaufman to return.