THE STORY – Through personal audio diaries and puppet animations, an intimate portrait emerges of the complex comedian Andy Kaufman, while those closest to him reveal the man behind his famous performances.
THE CAST – Andy Kaufman, Michael Kaufman, Carol Kaufman, David Letterman, Carol Kane, Tim Heidecker, Eric André & Kristen Schaal
THE TEAM – Clay Tweel (Director/Writer), Luis Lopez & Shannon E. Riggs (Writers)
THE RUNNING TIME – 101 Minutes
It is a crying shame that modern audiences were first (and far too recently) introduced to Andy Kaufman’s idiosyncratic brand of comedy in the form of a Nicholas Braun impersonation. Playing the entertainer in Jason Reitman’s “Saturday Night,” Cousin Greg went on the voice work offensive in his Kaufman portrayal, shooting the timbre up a few octaves and squirming in a manner that fit the comic’s aura, mainly when he was uncomfortable or playing a signature part. “This is my favorite suit,” he tells Lorne Michaels (Gabriel Labelle), seeking the “Saturday Night Live” boss’ approval of his garb moments after stepping out of his mother’s car. “You can pick him up at 1:00, Mrs. Kaufman,” Michaels tells Andy’s makeshift chauffeur, who can’t find a place to park. The two then slowly make their way inside, with Michaels coaxing Kaufman through security as though he is a small child unaware of basic societal regulations. This, of course, was Kaufman’s shtick; it just feels off watching anyone but him, in the flesh, doing it.
Perhaps it’s no coincidence that Braun’s performance — and “Saturday Night,” by extension — is at its best when he has to do very little to play Kaufman apart from embracing his awkwardness and using it as a weapon, primarily without speaking. One of the funniest scenes in Reitman’s movie is the recreation of Kaufman’s iconic “Mighty Mouse“ routine, which he first deploys to prove Willem Dafoe’s Dave Tebet that Lorne’s crazy dream might have some merit. “Here I come to save the day!” the 1940s cartoon’s theme bellows and it’s fitting that those are the only words Kaufman perks up to lip sync. Whether or not this specific moment truly happened in the lead-up to the first episode of “Saturday Night Live” doesn’t matter so much as what the scene says about Kaufman’s ability to alleviate tension with his humor and timing, a gift as much as a honed skill. Maybe he was born with it, but as Clay Tweel’s documentary “Andy Kaufman Is Me” depicts, it’s also a kind of artistry that takes a lifetime of practice to perfect, a luxury Kaufman afforded himself by spending days in his room, pretending that there was a camera implanted in his wall broadcasting his antics for millions to see.
Of course, there are detriments to this sort of approach, a method-adjacent performance art that can impact one’s psyche as much as it sharpens one’s craft. And that was certainly Kaufman’s experience, which Tweel attempts to chart over 102 minutes via unlimited access to Kaufman’s personal audio recordings and the conduction of interviews with the comedian’s family members, frequent collaborators, former partners, and those who were influenced by his style. A handful of childhood mates describe taking drugs with Kaufman, noting that he “didn’t really need the acid” but took it anyways; another friend notes that Kaufman was “totally unfit for military service” and thus avoided being drafted for the Vietnam War; Robin Williams describes Andy as the joke and the world as the punchline. These are just some of the many audio snippets that make their way into Tweel’s film, which basically amounts to a collection of descriptions of the funnyman that he himself can’t offer. (Kaufman died of cancer in 1984 at 35.) It works for those who never understood him and becomes repetitive for anyone who ever tried.
To be fair, it’s a nice idea to distill an uncontainable personality into a little under two hours, as plenty of documentarians have tried to do with a bevy of complex subjects in the past, humorists or not. The film’s style, not at all unfamiliar, only manages to take a few bold swings – the use of marionettes, a nod to Kaufman’s love of “Howdy Doody,” is touching, if somewhat out of place – while mainly sticking to its audio-dominant narrative, with Andy’s brother and sister (Michael and Carol, respectively) serving as our foremost subjects on the interview front. Yet it’s Tweel’s insistence on never remaining stagnant, knowing full well that he must jam as much archival footage into his proceedings to show Kaufman at work, that renders “Andy Kaufman Is Me” a barrage of greatest hits clips and shots of a spinning tape recorder with descriptions of its subjects triumphs, trials, and tribulations playing in the background. It’s not distracting so much as it is distracting a movie with several clear points of view and an unwillingness to commit to any of them.
There’s an element to this structural flaw that feels in stride with the arc of Kaufman’s career, from its up-and-coming stage to its most successful period, and then the inevitable fall from grace, brought on more by Kaufman’s cancer diagnosis and falling outs with various partners in crime (his regular collaborator Bob Zmuda is featured most notably in that regard) than by a lack of talent. Footage from an SNL-hosted telethon that beckoned viewers to vote on whether Kaufman should ever be allowed back on the program is shown. It was obviously performative but certainly stung for the one-time cast member. It was only held because, at the time, audiences were growing tired of Kaufman’s “bit,” that of an insecure trouper who didn’t appreciate an audience’s laughter if it was out of place with what he’d planned for. Ironic or not, the World Premiere screening of “Andy Kaufman Is Me” received the most laughs from any Tribeca audience I’ve sat with thus far, and it’s difficult to gauge whether those laughs came at appropriate times or not, at least per Kaufman’s register.
What most fans and interested parties have still somehow failed to realize is that Kaufman’s fragility wasn’t much of a bit at all, instead an active realization of the man’s inability to satisfy broad audiences with his acts, a quality that more or less tortured him until his death in 1984. That’s precisely why he tried anything and everything from the moment he broke out in his early 20s to the day he switched off his mic. He wrestled women on live television, poking at the opposite gender’s stereotypical lack of mental fortitude; he created a children’s variety show called “Uncle Andy’s Funhouse,” targeting young audiences with a brand of comedy that was somehow both on their level and clever enough for more mature audiences to appreciate; he portrayed a nasty lounge singer named Tony Clifton, relentlessly attempting to uphold the myth that Kaufman and Clifton were not the same person. “He wanted to be the most famous entertainer in the world and to be all of these different people,” his former assistant, Linda Mitchell, says in the documentary. In order to do that, Kaufman would have to set foot on a certain intensity, like isolating himself for a year, in order to perfect his Elvis Presley impression.
If anything holds “Andy Kaufman Is Me” back from being wholly revelatory, it’s that it never digs beyond what curious parties might be able to scrounge up off the internet floor, at least in terms of Kaufman’s many accomplishments, gags, and the psychological toll his career took on him. While Tweel’s many interviewees tend to provide additional insight into the man they knew far better than any viewer could pretend to, they are more effective in illustrating how Kaufman influenced their lives and how they perceived the impact his behavior had on him. The audio recording device that Tweel returns to again and again is the film’s most functional (albeit mechanical) choice, as it allows Kaufman to speak for himself; naturally, that’s the best way to get to know someone, especially when the documentary in question has the words “Is Me” in its title following the subject’s name. A more appropriate name, given what the film seems most interested in showing, might be “Andy Kaufman Was…” with no descriptor to follow. After all, he was easy to describe but never to pin down. That Tweel and Co. attempt to do exactly that is as wrong footing as dubbing Kaufman a comedian and a comedian alone. It fits, but there’s much more to the formula than that.
