84 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • OCTOBER 2017 84 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • SEPTEMBER 2017 84 LONGISLANDPRESS.CO M • SEPTEMBER 201-----------TUTU111
REAR VIEW
By ANNIE WILKINSON
The shabbily dressed, wild-eyed
man was sitting quietly at a Chock
full o’Nuts counter when he
suddenly started banging his cup
and screaming. Other customers
glanced quickly at him and looked
away, savvy New Yorkers knowing
to avoid eye contact. A few decided
it was time to get moving. No big
deal. This was 1981 Manhattan.
Wackos were an everyday thing.
The wacko in this case was Andy
Kaufman, a once shy, Jewish kid
from Long Island who was then at
the top of his stardom, mesmerizing
audiences with the oddball
characters they loved and the jerks
they despised.
Kaufman later described the coffee
shop scene to an interviewer, but did it
really happen? Or was it just another
fantasy from his make-believe world,
one more put-on from the master of
performance art? The man, as the Los
Angeles Times put it, who “may have
been the greatest con artist in modern
entertainment history.”
(Or not. As David Letterman once
said, “Sometimes, when you look
Andy in the eyes, you get a feeling
somebody else is driving.”)
Either way, audiences remain
fascinated by Kaufman’s story, even
though it ended abruptly, in 1984,
when the comic was 35. Netflix, in
fact, has just acquired the rights to
Jim & Andy, a new documentary
based on the 1999 biopic Man on
the Moon, which starred Jim Carrey
as Kaufman in a performance Carrey
called a “psychotic” experience.
Andy’s Mad Funhouse
Kaufman’s inspirations sprang from
what appeared to be a normal, middle
class childhood. Born in New
York City in 1949, Kaufman was
raised in affluent Great Neck, just
another a suburban kid addicted to
1950s television. Cartoons and puppet
shows were nourishing fodder
for the future performer, who started
out “producing” children’s shows
from his room and by age 9 was
performing at children’s birthday
parties with a portable record player
and puppets, props that would become
part of his grown-up act.
Moon man
Great Neck comic Andy Kaufman was the ultimate put-on artist
Kaufman appeared regularly on the first season of Saturday Night Live.