I'm from Hollywood

My 1st exposure to Andy came on this special that used to show often on Comedy Central way way back in the day. Kinda saddens me to some extent most younger generations wouldn't be familiar with him. Maybe more so Sacha Cohen who I think parroted a lot of Andy's humor.

I've read numerous takes on Andy over the years and the two things I found consistent were:

He loved wrestling since he was a boy. The badder the wrestler the more he loved them.

He never liked TV sitcoms and wasn't especially fond of his role in Taxi.

So I think those two things put together inspired his foray into this area. It's a must watch for any Kaufman fan. The thing I found most interesting was the Kaufman/Lawlor "feud" played out for years. The David Letterman appearance was the zenith of it though.

Viewers unfamiliar with the late Andy Kaufman might appreciate this enlightening glimpse at his unique (if indefinable) comic personality, detailing his exploits as the self-crowned 'inter-gender wrestling champion' of the world. Because any man would no doubt have beaten him to a pulp, Kaufman extended his competitive challenge only to (mostly smaller) women, but what began as an inflammatory prank soon evolved, in the words of Robin Williams, "from comedy to Roman Circus". Of course the real challenge was to audiences wondering if he was serious or not. Kaufman never pretended to be a conventional stand-up comedian so much as a masochistic exhibitionist, who liked to carry his 'act' into the outer limits of entertainment by refusing to admit the joke. And make no mistake, it might have become an obsession but it was, at the same time, a joke: note the ironic repetition of his brag "I'm from Hollywood!" (as if that somehow proved his superiority), and his facetious celebrity habit of suing everyone in sight. If nothing else he proved the truth behind the famous P.T. Barnum maxim: there is indeed a sucker born every minute, at least among wrestling fans in Memphis, Tennessee.

Like the previous reviewer, I too laugh out loud every time I see this. I watched it again today on Comedy Central and laughed continuously.

Kaufman must have been one of the truly funniest, most inventive comics of his day. He operated on so many levels, and satirized the entertainment culture, its idols and himself. Who else could wow an audience with an Elvis routine and then shyly accept their applause with such a silly "Tank you berry much."?

It's a lot of fun to hear Zmuda, Williams and the others describe how Andy played with his audiences, and hooked them in to his premise so cleverly. It must have really been something to watch.

One of the ideas bandied about in this movie is whether Andy was sincere about wrestling, or simply playing his audience for laughs. To hear Williams and Henner discuss it, you would think Kaufman was at least partly sincere.

Kaufman no doubt had fantasies about being a wrestler. I think these fantasies propelled him to choose this venue for his act. But I think it was an act, and I think that's where his fantasy ended. Perhaps it was too difficult for his friends to see this; they were just too close to him. What do I know, I've never met any of them. I just think that Andy must have been one of those people who decided that performing was too much fun to turn off, and just behaved bizarrely even around (or maybe especially around) others in show business. What better way to prove your genius then to fool the best of the best?

I think Andy was playing his hick Memphis audience like a cheap fiddle. He must have sat in his hotel room, looking at their simian, neandrathal faces, and absolutely laughed his butt off. The way they grimaced at his antics and condemned him, they must have thought professional wrestling was a morality play. If I were him, I would have gotten a big kick out of it.

Of course this was an act. It was performance art by a master. He could make professional comics embarrassed to watch him; why not convince a Memphis audience he was sincerely behaving like a spoiled, obnoxious Hollywood cretin. His lawyer, after all, was Zmuda. It took me a few viewings to catch that.

The close-ups of faces in the Memphis crowd are priceless. You have never seen so much backwater, shallow-end-of-the-genepool, jutting cranial ridges as in this audience. You know how so many comedians just happen to mention the scary hick southern towns they have to play? Well, this crowd is proof that those comedians aren't lying. Those people do exist, and the highlight of their lives is driving into town to watch wrestling.

I'm looking forward to seeing Man in the Moon. I hope it's not a disappointment. With Carrey being directed by Forman, I don't think it can lose.

"I'm From Hollywood" is just about as thorough a synopsis of Kaufman's wrestling career as a 60-minute mockumentary could ever hope to be. It begins on a huge high note, covering Andy's early career via a series of tongue in cheek interviews with big name co-stars and friends, stretching the truth while maintaining an anchor in reality a'la "This is Spinal Tap." It's when the subject turns to his exploits in the Memphis wrestling scene, though, that the picture pulls a complete 180. Those celebrity chats quickly disappear, replaced with direct archival footage of the actual matches and promotional segments that eventually built to Kaufman's long-term feud with a very young Jerry Lawler. It's great in a sheerly historical sense, but considering this rivalry lasted for well over a year (in regular once-a-week installments) there's a lot of redundancy to the material that could've been cut out. I would have rather seen a continuation of those interviews spliced in with the raw footage to keep the commentary fresh and the pace quick, because this catches a terrible case of the drags midway that it never manages to shake. It's a major disappointment that the producers couldn't secure the rights to Kaufman and Lawler's infamous fight on Letterman, too, which was the real hook of the entire storyline. A true let-down.

This film makes me laugh out loud every time I watch it.This is the one that turned me into a life long fan of Andy's work.To imagine a HOLLYWOOD comic,(even though he didn't see himself that way)would go into wrestling and take it to a "higher level" with an element of comedy as the twist,is too unbelievable.

There is also brief clips of Kaufman playing the bongos,and impersonating Tony Clifton,the self absorbed lounge singer. With great comments by Henner and Robin Williams about Andy being so bizarre and taking his wrestling so serious.

It sent me into a frenzy looking for more Kaufman material, I would love to have more of the wrestling footage than is shown on the videotape.

"It was like,Andy was the premise and the entire world was the punchline" -Robin Williams