Andy Kaufman documentary

Mr. Blue Sky said
As someone who loves the old tv show Taxi, i have always thought that the Latka character he played was the weakest part of the show .. to me, he just wasn’t funny .

But ill admit that outside of his infamous Letterman show appearance, im not familiar with Kaufman’s work, his standup or anything else.. Maybe it’s becuase in his heyday i was a little too young to be exposed to his performance art or whatever we are calling it in this thread.. I may check out this docu, and maybe it’ll give me an appreciation for him .

It could also be that outside his SNL appearances, his Latka role on "Taxi", and the infamous-yet-still kind of silly but memorable scripted Lawler Memphis wrestling angle, Kaufman's career really didn't last very long before his death in 1983. Less than a decade before appearing along with many mostly-unknown Second City comedians and writers for some bold, off-the-wall live Saturday night comedy variety show in a TV landscape still primitive where cable was about a decade away from being widely-available (and affordable), decades before streaming service platforms, somehow over the couple of years became an American cultural landmark series.

Kaufman was odd, and more then a bit weird but in a way that more people.curious or interested about his bizarre antics, and why he did them then really coming to a clear consensus about whether he's funny or not. But he also had a bit of an " underdog" personality whether with the actual person or with Latka that led audiences wanting to see him succeed. There's a sense that maybe the world itself, Blue, isn't such a terrible place when comedians, artists or even musicians can succeed despite such immense, Herculean odds or industry expectations or trends suggest they fail.

I have similar sentiments about a massively underrated, overlooked U.K. 70's-early 80's band Supertramp who wrote great, catchy songs, whimsical yet lyrically meaningful hit songs like "Logical Song" but didn't seem to "fit" the 1970's-early 80's music industry's model of what a successful "rock group" or "singer-songwriters" should look or sound like but within a span of 7-8 years, they recorded 4-5 well-received, commercially successful albums but critically, Supertramp were seen as quirky, aloof musical pushovers and a few critics openly wondered aloud how an odd-ball bunch of weirdos ever got big.