The Death of Andy Kaufman

Comedian Andy Kaufman is one of the most fascinating characters of the latter part of the 20th century. A wholly unique talent who did things that comedians had never done before, Kaufman is, bar none, the most interesting comedian of the past 30 years.

So why, then, am I fighting the urge to bail out before the end of "The Death of Andy Kaufman," a film that ostensibly questions whether Kaufman is even actually dead and should be, by all accounts, a fantastic film?

Well, first off, director Christopher Maloney delivers a dreary, awkward, rambling narration delivered ... in slow ... clipped ... fashion offering wild theories, circumstantial evidence and a lot of supposition. His draggy, unnatural delivery of the dull, clipped, badly written narration very nearly put me to sleep several times.

Don't get me wrong, the idea of Kaufman faking his own death is certainly plausible given his style of comedy, which uses often complex trickery, a penchant for creating awkward situations and controversial stunts like becoming a women's professional wrestler. If he stepped into the spotlight tomorrow, I wouldn't be shocked, but that doesn't mean it's true.

Maloney keys in on a couple of theories — that Kaufman used to speak about faking his own death, apparently to everyone, and thought it would be the greatest hoax of all time. Maloney speaks with a man who actually did fake his own death as a stunt whom Kaufman befriended after he heard about the stunt.

A couple of other things: Kaufman once wrote a screenplay for a movie about his alter ego, Tony Clifton. At the end, the 47-year-old Clifton dies at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center of lung cancer; the 35-year-old Kaufman also died of lung cancer at Cedar-Sinai Medical Center. But wait! Lest you say 'he wasn't 47 like Clifton was," it's important to note that Kaufman also sometimes gave an erroneous date of birth — one that, if it had been his real date of birth, would have made him ... 47 years old.

There are other tidbits — most of which would require massive conspiracy involving the Kaufman family and an extremely difficult secret for a large group of people to keep this long — and a tacked-on "rebuttal" section where Maloney discusses why some of these theories may not hold as much water as his film makes them out to.

This is all cutesy stuff that, while interesting for conspiracy theorists, it's just as likely that Kaufman did have cancer and died, but that he set all of this stuff up to make everyone simply think he wasn't really dead. That would be a great final joke, would it not?

Film: 2 Yaps