I don't want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me.
We are in the most extreme and utter region of the human mind. A radiant abyss, where men meet themselves... We're in Hell.
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain. Time to die.
I'm the Anti-Christ. You got me in a vendetta kind of mood. You tell the angels in heaven you never seen evil so singularly personified as you did in the face of the man who killed you.
I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people... There are times when I look at people and I see nothing worth liking. I want to earn enough money that I can get away from everyone.
Samuel Michael Fuller (August 12, 1912 – October 30, 1997) was an American screenwriter, novelist, and film director known for low-budget genre movies with controversial themes.
He was born Samuel Michael Fuller in Worcester, Massachusetts, the son of Benjamin Rabinovitch, a Jewish immigrant from Russia, and Rebecca Baum, a Jewish immigrant from Poland. After immigrating to America, the family's surname was changed from Rabinovitch to "Fuller" possibly by inspiration of a Doctor who arrived in America on the Mayflower.[1] At the age of 12, he began working in journalism as a newspaper copyboy. He became a crime reporter in New York City at age 17, working for the New York Evening Graphic. He broke the story of Jeanne Eagels' death.[2] He wrote pulp novels and screenplays from the mid-1930s onwards. Fuller also became a screenplay ghostwriter but would never tell interviewers which screenplays that he ghost-wrote explaining "that's what a ghost writer is for".[citation needed]
During World War II, Fuller joined the United States Army infantry. He was assigned to the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, and saw heavy fighting. He was involved in landings in Africa, Sicily, and Normandy and also saw action in Belgium and Czechoslovakia. In 1945 he was present at the liberation of the German concentration camp at Sokolov and shot 16 mm footage which was used later in the documenatary Falkenau: The Impossible. For his service, he was awarded the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, and the Purple Heart.[3] Fuller used his wartime experiences as material in his films, especially in The Big Red One (1980), a nickname of the 1st Infantry Division.
After his controversial film "White Dog" was shelved by Paramount pictures, Fuller moved to France, and never directed another American film.[4][5] Fuller eventually returned to America. He died of natural causes in his California home. In November 1997, the Directors Guild held a three hour memorial in his honor, hosted by Curtis Hanson, his long time friend and co-writer on White Dog. He was survived by his wife Christa and daughter Samantha.[6]
Career
Writing and directing
Hats Off (1936) marked Fuller's first credit as a screenwriter. Fuller wrote many screenplays throughout his career, but he is best remembered as a director. He was unimpressed with Douglas Sirk's direction of his Shockproof screenplay, and he accomplished the move to direction after being asked to write three films by Robert Lippert. Fuller agreed to write them if he would be allowed to direct them as well, with no extra fee for direction, to which Lippert agreed. Fuller's first film under this arrangement was I Shot Jesse James (1949)[7] followed by The Baron of Arizona with Vincent Price.
Fuller's third film, The Steel Helmet, established him as a major force. One of the first films about the Korean War, he wrote it based on tales from returning Korean veterans and his own World War II experiences. The film was attacked by reporter Victor Riesel for being pro-communist and anti-American while another critc Westford Pedravy wrote that he was secretly financed by the Reds.[8] Fuller had a major argument with the US Army that provided stock footage for the film. When army officials objected to his American characters executing a prisoner of war, Fuller replied he had seen it done during his own military duty. A compromise was reached when the Lieutenant threatens the Sergeant with a court martial.
Fuller was sought by the major studios to join them. He asked each of them what they did with the profits from their films.[citation needed] All of them gave advice on tax shelters, except for Darryl F. Zanuck of 20th Century Fox, who replied "we make better movies", the answer Fuller was seeking. Zanuck signed Fuller for a contract for seven films, the first being another Korean War film, Fixed Bayonets!, in order to head off other studio competition copying The Steel Helmet. The US Army assigned Medal of Honor recipient Raymond Harvey as Fuller's technical advisor.
The proposed seventh film Tigrero, based on a book by Sasha Siemel, is the subject of 1994 a documentary by Mika Kaurismäki, Tigrero: A Film That Was Never Made, that featured Fuller and Jim Jarmusch visiting the proposed Amazon locations of the film. Film Fuller shot on that location at the time was featured in his Shock Corridor.
Fuller's favourite film was Park Row,[9] a story of American journalism. Zanuck had wanted to adapt it into a musical but Fuller refused.[10] Instead he started his own production company with his profits to make the film on his own. Park Row was a labor of love and served as a tribute to the journalists he knew as a newsboy. His flourishes of style on a very low budget led many critics[who?] to call the film Fuller's version of Citizen Kane.
Fuller followed this with Pickup on South Street (1953), a film noir starring Richard Widmark, which became one of his best-known films. Other films Fuller directed in the 1950s include House of Bamboo, Forty Guns, and China Gate, which led to protests from the French government and a friendship with Romain Gary. After leaving Fox, Fuller made Run of the Arrow, Verboten!, and Merrill's Marauders. In 1959 he wrote and directed the The Crimson Kimono.
Fuller's films throughout the 1950s and early 1960s generally were lower-budget genre movies that explored controversial subjects. Shock Corridor (1963) is set in a psychiatric hospital, while The Naked Kiss (1964) features a prostitute attempting to change her life by working in a pediatric ward.
Between 1967 and 1980, Fuller directed only two films, the Mexican-produced Shark (1969) and Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street (1972), which featured his wife Christa Lang. Fuller asked the Director's Guild to remove his name from the credits of Shark.[citation needed] He returned in 1980 with the epic The Big Red One, the semi-autobiographical story of a platoon of soldiers and their harrowing experiences during World War II. The film won critical praise but failed at the box office.
"Shelve the film without letting anyone see it? I was dumbfounded. It’s difficult to express the hurt of having a finished film locked away in a vault, never to be screened for an audience. It’s like someone putting your newborn baby in a goddamned maximum-security prison forever ... Moving to France for a while would alleviate some of the pain and doubt that I had to live with because of White Dog."
—White Dog: Sam Fuller Unmuzzled, Samuel Fuller, as quoted by J Hoberman, Criterion Collection[5]In 1981, he was selected to direct the film White Dog, based on a novel by Romain Gary.[4] The controversial film depicts the struggle of a black dog trainer trying to deprogram a "white dog," a stray that was programmed to viciously attack any black person. He readily agreed to work on the film, having focused much of his career on racial issues.[11] Already familiar with the novel and with the concept of "white dogs," he was tasked with "reconceptualizing" the film to have the conflict depicted in the book occur within the dog rather than the people.[5] He used the film as a platform to deliver an anti-racial message through the films examination of the question of whether racism is a treatable problem or an incurable disease.[4][12]
During filming, Paramount Pictures grew increasingly concerned that the film would offend African-American viewers and brought in two consultants to review the work and offer their approval on the way black characters were depicted.[5][11][13] One felt the film had no racist connotations, while the other, Willis Edwards, vice president of the Hollywood NAACP chapter, felt the film was inflammatory and should never have been made.[11] The two men provided a write-up of their views for the studio executives, which were passed to producer Jon Davison along with warnings that the studio was afraid the film would be boycotted. Fuller was not told of these discussions nor given the notes until two weeks before filming was slated to conclude. Known for being a staunch integrationist and for his regularly giving black actors non-stereotypical roles, Fuller was furious, finding the studio's actions insulting. He reportedly had both representatives banned from the set afterwards, though he did integrate some of the suggested changes into the film.[11][13] After the film's completion, Paramount refused to release it, declaring that it didn't have enough earnings potential to go against the threatened NAACP boycotts and possible bad publicity.[4][5][11][14]
After Fuller's move to France, he never directed another American film. He directed two theatrical French Films, Les Voleurs de la nuit in 1984 and Street of No Return in 1989. Les Voleurs de la nuit was entered into the 34th Berlin International Film Festival.[15] He directed his last film, Madonne et le dragon, in 1990, and he wrote his last screenplay, Girls in Prison, in 1994.
Acting
Fuller made a cameo appearance in Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le fou (1965), where he famously intones: Film is like a battleground... Love, hate, action, violence, death. In one word, emotion![16] He also made a cameo appearance in Luc Moullet's Brigitte et Brigitte (1966) with Claude Chabrol and Eric Rohmer. He plays a film director in Dennis Hopper's ill-fated The Last Movie (1971);[17] an Army colonel in Steven Spielberg's 1941 (1979); a war correspondent in his own The Big Red One (scene deleted in the original release, restored in the reconstructed version)[18] and a cameraman in Wim Wenders' The State of Things (1982). He portrays an American gangster in two films set in Germany: The American Friend by Wenders and Helsinki Napoli All Night Long by Mika Kaurismäki. He also appeared in Larry Cohen's A Return to Salem's Lot (1987). His last work in film was as an actor in The End of Violence (1997).
Style and theme
Fuller's work is generally included in the primitive style.[citation needed] It has been noted it is based in the narrative tabloid style of filmmaking.[19] This was the result of his often lower budgets, but also reflected Fuller's pulp-inspired writing. The dialogue in his films has been criticized[who?] by some[specify] as heavy-handed or over-the-top. Directors Quentin Tarrantino, Jim Jarmusch, and Martin Scorsese have a lot of Fuller's influence in their work.
Fuller often featured marginalized characters in his films. The protagonist of Pickup on South Street is a pickpocket who keeps his beer in the East River instead of a refrigerator. Shock Corridor concerns the patients of a mental hospital. Underworld U.S.A. (1961) focuses on an orphaned victim of mobsters. The leading ladies of Pickup on South Street, China Gate, and The Naked Kiss are prostitutes. These characters sometimes find retribution for the injustices against them. White Dog and The Crimson Kimono (1959) have definite anti-racist elements. The Steel Helmet, set during the Korean War, contains dialogue about the internment of Japanese-Americans and the segregation of the American military in World War II, and features a racially mixed cast.
Legacy
Although Fuller's films were not considered great cinema in their times, they gained critical respect in the late 1960s. Fuller welcomed the new-found esteem, appearing in films of other directors and associating himself with younger filmmakers.
The French New Wave claimed Fuller as a major stylistic influence,[20] especially Luc Moullet.[21] His visual style and rhythm were seen as distinctly American, and praised for their energetic simplicity. Martin Scorsese praised Fuller's ability to capture action through camera movement.[citation needed] Recently[specify], Quentin Tarantino and Jim Jarmusch credited Fuller as influential upon their works.[citation needed]
In the mid-1980s, Fuller was the first international director guest at the Midnight Sun Film Festival.[22] The festival's hometown, Sodankylä, Finland, named a street "Samuel Fullerin katu", Samuel Fuller's street.
He was born Samuel Michael Fuller in Worcester, Massachusetts, the son of Benjamin Rabinovitch, a Jewish immigrant from Russia, and Rebecca Baum, a Jewish immigrant from Poland. After immigrating to America, the family's surname was changed from Rabinovitch to "Fuller" possibly by inspiration of a Doctor who arrived in America on the Mayflower.[1] At the age of 12, he began working in journalism as a newspaper copyboy. He became a crime reporter in New York City at age 17, working for the New York Evening Graphic. He broke the story of Jeanne Eagels' death.[2] He wrote pulp novels and screenplays from the mid-1930s onwards. Fuller also became a screenplay ghostwriter but would never tell interviewers which screenplays that he ghost-wrote explaining "that's what a ghost writer is for".[citation needed]
During World War II, Fuller joined the United States Army infantry. He was assigned to the 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, and saw heavy fighting. He was involved in landings in Africa, Sicily, and Normandy and also saw action in Belgium and Czechoslovakia. In 1945 he was present at the liberation of the German concentration camp at Sokolov and shot 16 mm footage which was used later in the documenatary Falkenau: The Impossible. For his service, he was awarded the Bronze Star, the Silver Star, and the Purple Heart.[3] Fuller used his wartime experiences as material in his films, especially in The Big Red One (1980), a nickname of the 1st Infantry Division.
After his controversial film "White Dog" was shelved by Paramount pictures, Fuller moved to France, and never directed another American film.[4][5] Fuller eventually returned to America. He died of natural causes in his California home. In November 1997, the Directors Guild held a three hour memorial in his honor, hosted by Curtis Hanson, his long time friend and co-writer on White Dog. He was survived by his wife Christa and daughter Samantha.[6]
Career
Writing and directing
Hats Off (1936) marked Fuller's first credit as a screenwriter. Fuller wrote many screenplays throughout his career, but he is best remembered as a director. He was unimpressed with Douglas Sirk's direction of his Shockproof screenplay, and he accomplished the move to direction after being asked to write three films by Robert Lippert. Fuller agreed to write them if he would be allowed to direct them as well, with no extra fee for direction, to which Lippert agreed. Fuller's first film under this arrangement was I Shot Jesse James (1949)[7] followed by The Baron of Arizona with Vincent Price.
Fuller's third film, The Steel Helmet, established him as a major force. One of the first films about the Korean War, he wrote it based on tales from returning Korean veterans and his own World War II experiences. The film was attacked by reporter Victor Riesel for being pro-communist and anti-American while another critc Westford Pedravy wrote that he was secretly financed by the Reds.[8] Fuller had a major argument with the US Army that provided stock footage for the film. When army officials objected to his American characters executing a prisoner of war, Fuller replied he had seen it done during his own military duty. A compromise was reached when the Lieutenant threatens the Sergeant with a court martial.
Fuller was sought by the major studios to join them. He asked each of them what they did with the profits from their films.[citation needed] All of them gave advice on tax shelters, except for Darryl F. Zanuck of 20th Century Fox, who replied "we make better movies", the answer Fuller was seeking. Zanuck signed Fuller for a contract for seven films, the first being another Korean War film, Fixed Bayonets!, in order to head off other studio competition copying The Steel Helmet. The US Army assigned Medal of Honor recipient Raymond Harvey as Fuller's technical advisor.
The proposed seventh film Tigrero, based on a book by Sasha Siemel, is the subject of 1994 a documentary by Mika Kaurismäki, Tigrero: A Film That Was Never Made, that featured Fuller and Jim Jarmusch visiting the proposed Amazon locations of the film. Film Fuller shot on that location at the time was featured in his Shock Corridor.
Fuller's favourite film was Park Row,[9] a story of American journalism. Zanuck had wanted to adapt it into a musical but Fuller refused.[10] Instead he started his own production company with his profits to make the film on his own. Park Row was a labor of love and served as a tribute to the journalists he knew as a newsboy. His flourishes of style on a very low budget led many critics[who?] to call the film Fuller's version of Citizen Kane.
Fuller followed this with Pickup on South Street (1953), a film noir starring Richard Widmark, which became one of his best-known films. Other films Fuller directed in the 1950s include House of Bamboo, Forty Guns, and China Gate, which led to protests from the French government and a friendship with Romain Gary. After leaving Fox, Fuller made Run of the Arrow, Verboten!, and Merrill's Marauders. In 1959 he wrote and directed the The Crimson Kimono.
Fuller's films throughout the 1950s and early 1960s generally were lower-budget genre movies that explored controversial subjects. Shock Corridor (1963) is set in a psychiatric hospital, while The Naked Kiss (1964) features a prostitute attempting to change her life by working in a pediatric ward.
Between 1967 and 1980, Fuller directed only two films, the Mexican-produced Shark (1969) and Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street (1972), which featured his wife Christa Lang. Fuller asked the Director's Guild to remove his name from the credits of Shark.[citation needed] He returned in 1980 with the epic The Big Red One, the semi-autobiographical story of a platoon of soldiers and their harrowing experiences during World War II. The film won critical praise but failed at the box office.
"Shelve the film without letting anyone see it? I was dumbfounded. It’s difficult to express the hurt of having a finished film locked away in a vault, never to be screened for an audience. It’s like someone putting your newborn baby in a goddamned maximum-security prison forever ... Moving to France for a while would alleviate some of the pain and doubt that I had to live with because of White Dog."
—White Dog: Sam Fuller Unmuzzled, Samuel Fuller, as quoted by J Hoberman, Criterion Collection[5]In 1981, he was selected to direct the film White Dog, based on a novel by Romain Gary.[4] The controversial film depicts the struggle of a black dog trainer trying to deprogram a "white dog," a stray that was programmed to viciously attack any black person. He readily agreed to work on the film, having focused much of his career on racial issues.[11] Already familiar with the novel and with the concept of "white dogs," he was tasked with "reconceptualizing" the film to have the conflict depicted in the book occur within the dog rather than the people.[5] He used the film as a platform to deliver an anti-racial message through the films examination of the question of whether racism is a treatable problem or an incurable disease.[4][12]
During filming, Paramount Pictures grew increasingly concerned that the film would offend African-American viewers and brought in two consultants to review the work and offer their approval on the way black characters were depicted.[5][11][13] One felt the film had no racist connotations, while the other, Willis Edwards, vice president of the Hollywood NAACP chapter, felt the film was inflammatory and should never have been made.[11] The two men provided a write-up of their views for the studio executives, which were passed to producer Jon Davison along with warnings that the studio was afraid the film would be boycotted. Fuller was not told of these discussions nor given the notes until two weeks before filming was slated to conclude. Known for being a staunch integrationist and for his regularly giving black actors non-stereotypical roles, Fuller was furious, finding the studio's actions insulting. He reportedly had both representatives banned from the set afterwards, though he did integrate some of the suggested changes into the film.[11][13] After the film's completion, Paramount refused to release it, declaring that it didn't have enough earnings potential to go against the threatened NAACP boycotts and possible bad publicity.[4][5][11][14]
After Fuller's move to France, he never directed another American film. He directed two theatrical French Films, Les Voleurs de la nuit in 1984 and Street of No Return in 1989. Les Voleurs de la nuit was entered into the 34th Berlin International Film Festival.[15] He directed his last film, Madonne et le dragon, in 1990, and he wrote his last screenplay, Girls in Prison, in 1994.
Acting
Fuller made a cameo appearance in Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le fou (1965), where he famously intones: Film is like a battleground... Love, hate, action, violence, death. In one word, emotion![16] He also made a cameo appearance in Luc Moullet's Brigitte et Brigitte (1966) with Claude Chabrol and Eric Rohmer. He plays a film director in Dennis Hopper's ill-fated The Last Movie (1971);[17] an Army colonel in Steven Spielberg's 1941 (1979); a war correspondent in his own The Big Red One (scene deleted in the original release, restored in the reconstructed version)[18] and a cameraman in Wim Wenders' The State of Things (1982). He portrays an American gangster in two films set in Germany: The American Friend by Wenders and Helsinki Napoli All Night Long by Mika Kaurismäki. He also appeared in Larry Cohen's A Return to Salem's Lot (1987). His last work in film was as an actor in The End of Violence (1997).
Style and theme
Fuller's work is generally included in the primitive style.[citation needed] It has been noted it is based in the narrative tabloid style of filmmaking.[19] This was the result of his often lower budgets, but also reflected Fuller's pulp-inspired writing. The dialogue in his films has been criticized[who?] by some[specify] as heavy-handed or over-the-top. Directors Quentin Tarrantino, Jim Jarmusch, and Martin Scorsese have a lot of Fuller's influence in their work.
Fuller often featured marginalized characters in his films. The protagonist of Pickup on South Street is a pickpocket who keeps his beer in the East River instead of a refrigerator. Shock Corridor concerns the patients of a mental hospital. Underworld U.S.A. (1961) focuses on an orphaned victim of mobsters. The leading ladies of Pickup on South Street, China Gate, and The Naked Kiss are prostitutes. These characters sometimes find retribution for the injustices against them. White Dog and The Crimson Kimono (1959) have definite anti-racist elements. The Steel Helmet, set during the Korean War, contains dialogue about the internment of Japanese-Americans and the segregation of the American military in World War II, and features a racially mixed cast.
Legacy
Although Fuller's films were not considered great cinema in their times, they gained critical respect in the late 1960s. Fuller welcomed the new-found esteem, appearing in films of other directors and associating himself with younger filmmakers.
The French New Wave claimed Fuller as a major stylistic influence,[20] especially Luc Moullet.[21] His visual style and rhythm were seen as distinctly American, and praised for their energetic simplicity. Martin Scorsese praised Fuller's ability to capture action through camera movement.[citation needed] Recently[specify], Quentin Tarantino and Jim Jarmusch credited Fuller as influential upon their works.[citation needed]
In the mid-1980s, Fuller was the first international director guest at the Midnight Sun Film Festival.[22] The festival's hometown, Sodankylä, Finland, named a street "Samuel Fullerin katu", Samuel Fuller's street.
Jonathan Franzen (born August 17, 1959) is an American novelist and essayist. His third novel, The Corrections (2001), a sprawling, satirical family drama, drew widespread critical acclaim, earned Franzen a National Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His most recent novel, Freedom, was published in August 2010.[4]
He is known for his 1996 Harper's essay "Perchance to Dream" bemoaning the state of literature, and for the 2001 controversy surrounding the selection of The Corrections for Oprah Winfrey's book club. Franzen writes for The New Yorker magazine.
Franzen was born to an American mother and Swedish father,[5][6] in Western Springs, Illinois,[7] raised in Webster Groves, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, and graduated from Swarthmore College with a degree in German in 1981.[8] As part of his undergraduate education, he studied abroad in Germany during the 1979-80 academic year with Wayne State University's Junior Year in Munich program.[9] He also studied on a Fulbright Scholarship at Freie Universität Berlin in Berlin in 1981-82.[10] From these experiences, he speaks fluent German. While struggling with his first novel, he briefly worked in the seismology laboratory at Harvard University.[11]
Fiction
Early novels
The Twenty-Seventh City, published in 1988, is set in Franzen's hometown, St. Louis, and deals with the city's fall from grace, St. Louis having been the "fourth city" in the 1870s. This sprawling novel was warmly received and established Franzen as an author to watch.[citation needed]
Strong Motion (1992) focuses on a dysfunctional family, the Hollands, and uses seismic events on the American East Coast as a metaphor for the quakes that occur in family life.
The Corrections
Franzen's The Corrections, a novel of social criticism, garnered considerable critical acclaim in the United States, winning both the 2001 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2002 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.[12] The novel was also on the short list for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction[12] and was named a finalist for the 2002 PEN /Faulkner Award.[13] A finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, it lost to Empire Falls by Richard Russo.[14]
In September 2001, The Corrections was selected for Oprah Winfrey's book club. Franzen initially participated in the selection, sitting down for a lengthy interview with Oprah and appearing in B-roll footage in his hometown of St. Louis (described in an essay in How To Be Alone titled "Meet Me In St. Louis"). In October 2001, however, The Oregonian printed an article in which Franzen expressed unease with the selection. In an interview on National Public Radio's Fresh Air, he expressed his worry that the Oprah logo on the cover dissuaded men from reading the book:
So much of reading is sustained in this country, I think, by the fact that women read while men are off golfing or watching football on TV or playing with their flight simulator or whatever. I worry — I'm sorry that it's, uh — I had some hope of actually reaching a male audience and I've heard more than one reader in signing lines now at bookstores say "If I hadn't heard you, I would have been put off by the fact that it is an Oprah pick. I figure those books are for women. I would never touch it." Those are male readers speaking. I see this as my book, my creation.[15]
Soon afterward, Franzen's invitation to appear on Oprah's show was rescinded. Winfrey announced, "Jonathan Franzen will not be on the Oprah Winfrey show because he is seemingly uncomfortable and conflicted about being chosen as a book club selection. It is never my intention to make anyone uncomfortable or cause anyone conflict. We have decided to skip the dinner and we're moving on to the next book."[16][17]
These events gained Franzen and his novel widespread media attention. The Corrections soon became one of the decade's best-selling works of literary fiction. At the National Book Award ceremony, Franzen said "I'd also like to thank Oprah Winfrey for her enthusiasm and advocacy on behalf of The Corrections."[18]
Following the success of The Corrections and the publication of The Discomfort Zone and How to Be Alone, Franzen began work on his next novel. In the interim, he published two short stories in The New Yorker: "Breakup Stories", published November 8, 2004, concerned the disintegration of four relationships; and "Two's Company", published May 23, 2005, concerned a couple who write for TV, then split up.[19]
On June 8, 2009, Franzen published an extract from Freedom, his novel in progress, in The New Yorker. The extract, titled "Good Neighbors", concerned the trials and tribulations of a couple in St. Paul, Minnesota. On May 31, 2010, a second extract — titled "Agreeable" — was published, also in The New Yorker.[20]
On October 16, 2009, Franzen made an appearance alongside David Bezmozgis at the New Yorker Festival at the Cedar Lake Theatre, reading a portion of his forthcoming novel.[21][22] Sam Allard, writing for North By Northwestern about the event, said that the "…material from his new (reportedly massive) novel" was "as buoyant and compelling as ever" and "marked by his familiar undercurrent of tragedy". Franzen read "an extended clip from the second chapter."[22]
On September 9, 2010, Franzen appeared on Fresh Air to discuss Freedom in the wake of its release. Franzen has drawn what he describes as a "feminist critique" for the attention that male authors receive over female authors—a critique he supports. Franzen also discussed his friendship with David Foster Wallace and the impact of Wallace's suicide on his writing process.[23]
Freedom was the subject of a highly unusual "recall" in the United Kingdom starting in early October 2010. An earlier draft of the manuscript, to which Franzen had made over 200 changes, had been published by mistake. The publisher, HarperCollins initiated an exchange program, but thousands of books had been distributed by that time.[24]
While promoting the book Franzen became the first American author to appear on the cover of Time magazine since Stephen King did so in 2000.[25] He discussed the implications of the Time coverage, and the reasoning behind the title of Freedom in an interview in Manchester, England in October 2010.[26]
On September 17, 2010, Oprah Winfrey announced that Jonathan Franzen's Freedom would be an Oprah book club selection, the first of the last season of the Oprah Winfrey Show.[27] On December 6, 2010 he appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show to promote Freedom where they discussed that book and the controversy over his reservations about her picking The Corrections and what that would entail.[28]
In 1996, while still working on The Corrections, Franzen published a literary manifesto in Harper's Magazine entitled "Perchance to Dream." Referencing manifestos written by Philip Roth and Tom Wolfe, among others, Franzen grappled with the novelist's role in an advanced media culture which seemed to no longer need the novel. In the end, Franzen rejects the goal of writing a great social novel about issues and ideas, in favor of focusing on the internal lives of characters and their emotions. Given the huge success of The Corrections, this essay offers a prescient look into Franzen's goals as both a literary and commercially-minded author.[29]
Since The Corrections Franzen has published How to Be Alone (2002), a collection of essays including "Perchance To Dream", and The Discomfort Zone (2006), a memoir. How To Be Alone is essentially an apologia for reading, articulating Franzen's uncomfortable relationship with the place of fiction in contemporary society. It also probes the influence of his childhood and adolescence on his creative life, which is then further explored in The Discomfort Zone.
In September 2007, Franzen's translation of Frank Wedekind's play Spring Awakening (German: Frühlings Erwachen) was published. In his introduction, Franzen describes the Broadway musical version as "insipid" and "overpraised." In an interview with New York magazine, Franzen stated that he had in fact made the translation for Swarthmore College's theater department for $50 in 1986 and that it had sat in a drawer for 20 years since. After the Broadway show stirred up so much interest, Franzen said he was inspired to publish it because "I knew it was a good translation, better than anything else out there."[30]
Franzen published a social commentary on cell phones, sentimentality, and the decline of public space, I Just Called To Say I Love You (2008),[31] in the September/October, 2008 issue of "Technology Review", published by MIT.
Personal life
He married Valerie Cornell in 1982; they separated in 1994 and are now divorced.[32] Franzen now lives part of the year on the Upper East Side of New York City and part in Boulder Creek, California.[33]
In 2010, he attracted attention while on a visit to London when a literary event was stormed and his spectacles were whisked from his face, a ransom note for $100,000 deposited and a police chase initiated through the city.[34][35][36]
“Rules for Writing”
In February 2010, Franzen (along with writers including Richard Ford, Zadie Smith and Anne Enright) was asked by The Guardian to contribute what he believed were ten serious rules to abide by for aspiring writers.[37] Franzen's rules ran as follows:
1.The reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator.
2.Fiction that isn't an author's personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn't worth writing for anything but money.
3.Never use the word "then" as a conjunction – we have "and" for this purpose. Substituting "then" is the lazy or tone-deaf writer's non-solution to the problem of too many "ands" on the page.
4.Write in the third person unless a really distinctive first-person voice offers itself irresistibly.
5.When information becomes free and universally accessible, voluminous research for a novel is devalued along with it.
6.The most purely autobiographical fiction requires pure invention. Nobody ever wrote a more autobiographical story than "The Metamorphosis".
7.You see more sitting still than chasing after.
8.It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction (the TIME magazine cover story detailed how Franzen physically disables the Net portal on his writing laptop).
9.Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting.
10.You have to love before you can be relentless.
He is known for his 1996 Harper's essay "Perchance to Dream" bemoaning the state of literature, and for the 2001 controversy surrounding the selection of The Corrections for Oprah Winfrey's book club. Franzen writes for The New Yorker magazine.
Franzen was born to an American mother and Swedish father,[5][6] in Western Springs, Illinois,[7] raised in Webster Groves, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, and graduated from Swarthmore College with a degree in German in 1981.[8] As part of his undergraduate education, he studied abroad in Germany during the 1979-80 academic year with Wayne State University's Junior Year in Munich program.[9] He also studied on a Fulbright Scholarship at Freie Universität Berlin in Berlin in 1981-82.[10] From these experiences, he speaks fluent German. While struggling with his first novel, he briefly worked in the seismology laboratory at Harvard University.[11]
Fiction
Early novels
The Twenty-Seventh City, published in 1988, is set in Franzen's hometown, St. Louis, and deals with the city's fall from grace, St. Louis having been the "fourth city" in the 1870s. This sprawling novel was warmly received and established Franzen as an author to watch.[citation needed]
Strong Motion (1992) focuses on a dysfunctional family, the Hollands, and uses seismic events on the American East Coast as a metaphor for the quakes that occur in family life.
The Corrections
Franzen's The Corrections, a novel of social criticism, garnered considerable critical acclaim in the United States, winning both the 2001 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2002 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction.[12] The novel was also on the short list for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction[12] and was named a finalist for the 2002 PEN /Faulkner Award.[13] A finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, it lost to Empire Falls by Richard Russo.[14]
In September 2001, The Corrections was selected for Oprah Winfrey's book club. Franzen initially participated in the selection, sitting down for a lengthy interview with Oprah and appearing in B-roll footage in his hometown of St. Louis (described in an essay in How To Be Alone titled "Meet Me In St. Louis"). In October 2001, however, The Oregonian printed an article in which Franzen expressed unease with the selection. In an interview on National Public Radio's Fresh Air, he expressed his worry that the Oprah logo on the cover dissuaded men from reading the book:
So much of reading is sustained in this country, I think, by the fact that women read while men are off golfing or watching football on TV or playing with their flight simulator or whatever. I worry — I'm sorry that it's, uh — I had some hope of actually reaching a male audience and I've heard more than one reader in signing lines now at bookstores say "If I hadn't heard you, I would have been put off by the fact that it is an Oprah pick. I figure those books are for women. I would never touch it." Those are male readers speaking. I see this as my book, my creation.[15]
Soon afterward, Franzen's invitation to appear on Oprah's show was rescinded. Winfrey announced, "Jonathan Franzen will not be on the Oprah Winfrey show because he is seemingly uncomfortable and conflicted about being chosen as a book club selection. It is never my intention to make anyone uncomfortable or cause anyone conflict. We have decided to skip the dinner and we're moving on to the next book."[16][17]
These events gained Franzen and his novel widespread media attention. The Corrections soon became one of the decade's best-selling works of literary fiction. At the National Book Award ceremony, Franzen said "I'd also like to thank Oprah Winfrey for her enthusiasm and advocacy on behalf of The Corrections."[18]
Following the success of The Corrections and the publication of The Discomfort Zone and How to Be Alone, Franzen began work on his next novel. In the interim, he published two short stories in The New Yorker: "Breakup Stories", published November 8, 2004, concerned the disintegration of four relationships; and "Two's Company", published May 23, 2005, concerned a couple who write for TV, then split up.[19]
On June 8, 2009, Franzen published an extract from Freedom, his novel in progress, in The New Yorker. The extract, titled "Good Neighbors", concerned the trials and tribulations of a couple in St. Paul, Minnesota. On May 31, 2010, a second extract — titled "Agreeable" — was published, also in The New Yorker.[20]
On October 16, 2009, Franzen made an appearance alongside David Bezmozgis at the New Yorker Festival at the Cedar Lake Theatre, reading a portion of his forthcoming novel.[21][22] Sam Allard, writing for North By Northwestern about the event, said that the "…material from his new (reportedly massive) novel" was "as buoyant and compelling as ever" and "marked by his familiar undercurrent of tragedy". Franzen read "an extended clip from the second chapter."[22]
On September 9, 2010, Franzen appeared on Fresh Air to discuss Freedom in the wake of its release. Franzen has drawn what he describes as a "feminist critique" for the attention that male authors receive over female authors—a critique he supports. Franzen also discussed his friendship with David Foster Wallace and the impact of Wallace's suicide on his writing process.[23]
Freedom was the subject of a highly unusual "recall" in the United Kingdom starting in early October 2010. An earlier draft of the manuscript, to which Franzen had made over 200 changes, had been published by mistake. The publisher, HarperCollins initiated an exchange program, but thousands of books had been distributed by that time.[24]
While promoting the book Franzen became the first American author to appear on the cover of Time magazine since Stephen King did so in 2000.[25] He discussed the implications of the Time coverage, and the reasoning behind the title of Freedom in an interview in Manchester, England in October 2010.[26]
On September 17, 2010, Oprah Winfrey announced that Jonathan Franzen's Freedom would be an Oprah book club selection, the first of the last season of the Oprah Winfrey Show.[27] On December 6, 2010 he appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show to promote Freedom where they discussed that book and the controversy over his reservations about her picking The Corrections and what that would entail.[28]
In 1996, while still working on The Corrections, Franzen published a literary manifesto in Harper's Magazine entitled "Perchance to Dream." Referencing manifestos written by Philip Roth and Tom Wolfe, among others, Franzen grappled with the novelist's role in an advanced media culture which seemed to no longer need the novel. In the end, Franzen rejects the goal of writing a great social novel about issues and ideas, in favor of focusing on the internal lives of characters and their emotions. Given the huge success of The Corrections, this essay offers a prescient look into Franzen's goals as both a literary and commercially-minded author.[29]
Since The Corrections Franzen has published How to Be Alone (2002), a collection of essays including "Perchance To Dream", and The Discomfort Zone (2006), a memoir. How To Be Alone is essentially an apologia for reading, articulating Franzen's uncomfortable relationship with the place of fiction in contemporary society. It also probes the influence of his childhood and adolescence on his creative life, which is then further explored in The Discomfort Zone.
In September 2007, Franzen's translation of Frank Wedekind's play Spring Awakening (German: Frühlings Erwachen) was published. In his introduction, Franzen describes the Broadway musical version as "insipid" and "overpraised." In an interview with New York magazine, Franzen stated that he had in fact made the translation for Swarthmore College's theater department for $50 in 1986 and that it had sat in a drawer for 20 years since. After the Broadway show stirred up so much interest, Franzen said he was inspired to publish it because "I knew it was a good translation, better than anything else out there."[30]
Franzen published a social commentary on cell phones, sentimentality, and the decline of public space, I Just Called To Say I Love You (2008),[31] in the September/October, 2008 issue of "Technology Review", published by MIT.
Personal life
He married Valerie Cornell in 1982; they separated in 1994 and are now divorced.[32] Franzen now lives part of the year on the Upper East Side of New York City and part in Boulder Creek, California.[33]
In 2010, he attracted attention while on a visit to London when a literary event was stormed and his spectacles were whisked from his face, a ransom note for $100,000 deposited and a police chase initiated through the city.[34][35][36]
“Rules for Writing”
In February 2010, Franzen (along with writers including Richard Ford, Zadie Smith and Anne Enright) was asked by The Guardian to contribute what he believed were ten serious rules to abide by for aspiring writers.[37] Franzen's rules ran as follows:
1.The reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator.
2.Fiction that isn't an author's personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn't worth writing for anything but money.
3.Never use the word "then" as a conjunction – we have "and" for this purpose. Substituting "then" is the lazy or tone-deaf writer's non-solution to the problem of too many "ands" on the page.
4.Write in the third person unless a really distinctive first-person voice offers itself irresistibly.
5.When information becomes free and universally accessible, voluminous research for a novel is devalued along with it.
6.The most purely autobiographical fiction requires pure invention. Nobody ever wrote a more autobiographical story than "The Metamorphosis".
7.You see more sitting still than chasing after.
8.It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction (the TIME magazine cover story detailed how Franzen physically disables the Net portal on his writing laptop).
9.Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting.
10.You have to love before you can be relentless.
Andrew Geoffrey "Andy" Kaufman (January 17, 1949 – May 16, 1984) was an American entertainer, actor and performance artist. While often referred to as a comedian, Kaufman did not consider himself one.[1] He disdained telling jokes and engaging in comedy as it was traditionally understood, referring to himself instead as a "song-and-dance man". Elaborate hoaxes and pranks were major elements of his career.
Kaufman was born in New York City, on January 17, 1949, the first son of Janice (née Bernstein) and Stanley Kaufman. He grew up in a middle-class Jewish family,[2] in Great Neck, Long Island, New York, and began performing at age nine.[3] He attended the now defunct two-year Grahm Junior College,[4] in Boston, graduating in 1971. He then began performing stand-up comedy at various small clubs along the East Coast.
Career
Foreign Man and Mighty Mouse
Kaufman first caught major attention with a character known as Foreign Man, who claimed to be from Caspiar (a fictional island in the Caspian Sea) and would appear on the stage of comedy clubs to play a recording of the theme from "Mighty Mouse" and lip-synch one line—"Here I come to save the day." He would proceed to tell a few jokes and perform a number of impersonations (Archie Bunker, Richard Nixon, et al.). Some variations of this performance were broadcast in the first season of Saturday Night Live; the Mighty Mouse number was featured in the October 11, 1975 premiere, while the joke-telling and Bunker impression were included in the November 8 broadcast that same fall.[5]
Foreign Man would often try to impersonate a whole series of different celebrities, with the comedy arising from Foreign Man's obvious ineptitude at impersonation. For example, in his fake accent Kaufman would say to the audience, "I would like to imitate Meester Carter, de President of de United States", and then in the same voice, "Hello, I am Meester Carter, de President of de United States. T'ank you veddy much." At some point in the performance, usually when the audience were entirely used to Foreign Man's inability to perform a single convincing impression, Foreign Man would announce, "And now I would like to imitate the Elvis Presley," turn around, take off his jacket, slick his hair back, and launch into an Elvis Presley impersonation which Presley himself described as his favorite.[6] Like Presley, he would take off his leather jacket and throw it into the audience, but Kaufman would then immediately ask for it back again. After, he would take a simple bow and say in his Foreign Man voice, "T'ank you veddy much!"
Latka
Main article: Latka Gravas
Kaufman first used a version of the Foreign Man character as Andy the Robot in the pilot for the sitcom Stick Around in 1977. The character was then changed into Latka Gravas, for ABC's Taxi sitcom, appearing in 79 of 114 episodes from 1978 to 1983.[7] The producers of Taxi had seen Andy's Foreign Man act and, according to producer Ed Weinberger, "We weren't considering Andy for the show before we saw him. Then we wrote a part for him." Bob Zmuda confirms this: "They basically were buying Andy's Foreign Man character for the Taxi character Latka."[8] Andy's long-time manager George Shapiro encouraged Andy to take the gig. "My feeling was that it would be a nice boost for his career...and he would be playing a character that he knew very well, the Foreign Man—this particular character speaks poor English in Taxi and his name is Latka Gravas."[9]
Kaufman disliked sitcoms and was not thrilled with the idea of being in one. In order to allow Kaufman to demonstrate some comedic range, his character was given multiple personality disorder, which allowed Kaufman to randomly portray other characters. In one episode, Kaufman's character came down with a condition which made him act like Alex Reiger, the main character played by Judd Hirsch. Another such recurring character played by Kaufman was the womanizing Vic Ferrari. His role did lead to two Golden Globe nominations, in 1979 and 1981.[10]
Taxi was an award-winning show with a large audience and Kaufman was widely recognized as Latka. On some occasions, audiences would show up to one of Kaufman's stage performances expecting to see him perform as Latka, and heckling him with demands when he did not. Kaufman would punish these audiences with the announcement that he was going to read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald to them. The audience would laugh at this, not realizing that he was serious, and Kaufman would proceed to read the book to them, continuing despite audience members' departure. At a certain point, he would ask the audience if they wanted him to keep reading, or play a record. When the audience chose to hear the record, the record he cued up was a recording of him continuing to read The Great Gatsby from where he had left off.
Tony Clifton
Main article: Tony Clifton
Another well-known Kaufman character is Tony Clifton, an audience-abusing lounge singer who began opening for Kaufman at comedy clubs and eventually even performed concerts on his own around the country. Sometimes it was Kaufman performing as Clifton, sometimes it was his brother Michael or his friend Bob Zmuda. For a brief time, it was unclear to some that Clifton was not a real person. News programs interviewed Clifton as Kaufman's opening act, with the mood turning ugly whenever Kaufman's name came up. Kaufman, Clifton insisted, was attempting to ruin Clifton's "good name" in order to make money and get famous.
As a requirement for Kaufman accepting the offer to star on Taxi, he insisted that Clifton be hired for a guest role on the show as if he were a real person, not a character. After throwing a tantrum on the set, Clifton was fired and escorted off of the studio lot by security guards. Much to Kaufman's delight, this incident was reported in the local newspapers. Paramount TV and producers James L. Brooks and Stan Daniels later released a statement that said that although Clifton was "no longer welcome on the set", his friend Andy Kaufman would continue in his role as Latka, which he did until the show ended its run in 1983.
Carnegie Hall "milk and cookies" show
At the beginning of an April 1979 performance at New York's Carnegie Hall, Kaufman invited his "grandmother" to watch the show from a chair he had placed at the side of the stage. At the end of the show, she stood up, took her mask off and revealed to the audience that she was actually comedian Robin Williams in disguise. Kaufman also had an elderly woman (named Eleanor Cody Gould) appear to have a heart attack and die on stage, at which point he reappeared on stage wearing a Native American headdress and performed a dance over her body, seeming to revive her.
The performance is most famous for Kaufman ending the show by actually taking the entire audience, in twenty buses, out for milk and cookies. He invited anyone interested to meet him on the Staten Island Ferry the next morning, where the show continued. This kind of performance art is a hallmark of Kaufman's career. This was depicted in the biopic Man on the Moon; however, in the movie, it takes place after Kaufman was diagnosed with cancer, when in reality, it took place nearly four years earlier.
Andy's Funhouse aka The Andy Kaufman Special and The Andy Kaufman Show
The Taxi deal with ABC included giving Kaufman a television special/pilot. He came up with Andy's Funhouse, based on an old routine he had developed while in junior college. The special was taped in 1977 but did not air until August 1979, on ABC.[11] It featured most of Andy's famous gags, including Foreign Man/Latka and his Elvis Presley impersonation, as well as a host of unique segments (including a special appearance by children's television character Howdy Doody and the "Has-been Corner"). There also was a segment that included fake television screen static as part of the gag, which ABC executives were not comfortable with, fearing that viewers would mistake the static for broadcast problems and would change the channel - which was the comic element Kaufman wanted to present. Andy's Funhouse was written by Kaufman, Zmuda, and Mel Sherer, with music by Kaufman. In 1980 a very similar looking show would be filmed for PBS's SoundStage, called the The Andy Kaufman Show. It would feature a peanut gallery like Funhouse and is often confused with Andy's Funhouse. The show opens right in the middle of an interview Kaufman is doing in which he is laughing hysterically, and then he proceeds to thank the audience for watching and the credits roll. After this, opening credits do come on and the show has its "proper" beginning. This show is easy to confuse with Andy's Funhouse as they both feature "The Has-Been Corner" and Kaufman wears his "I Love Grandma" shirt in both shows among other similarities.
The Fridays incident
In 1981, Kaufman made three appearances on Fridays, a variety show on ABC that was similar to Saturday Night Live.[12] Kaufman's first appearance on the show proved to be memorable. During a sketch about four people out on a dinner date who excuse themselves to the restroom to smoke marijuana, Kaufman broke character and refused to say his lines.
In response, cast member Michael Richards walked off camera and returned with a set of cue cards and dumped them on the table in front of Kaufman. Andy responded by splashing Richards with water. Co-producer Jack Burns stormed onto the stage, leading to a brawl on camera before the show abruptly cut away to commercial.[13] It was later revealed that this incident was a practical joke.[14]
Regardless, Kaufman appeared the following week in a videotaped apology to the home viewers. Later that year, Kaufman returned to host Fridays. At one point in the show, he invited a Lawrence Welk Show gospel and standards singer, Kathie Sullivan, on stage to sing a few gospel songs with him and announced that the two were engaged to be married, then talked to the audience about his newfound faith in Jesus (Kaufman was Jewish). That was also a hoax. Later, following a sketch about a drug-abusing pharmacist, Kaufman was supposed to introduce the band The Pretenders. Instead of introducing the band, he delivered a nervous speech about the harmfulness of drugs while the band stood behind him ready to play. After his speech, he informed the audience that he had talked for too long and had to go to a commercial.
Professional wrestling
Kaufman grew up admiring professional wrestlers and the world in which they perform. Inspired by the theatricality of kayfabe, the staged nature of the sport, and his own tendency to form elaborate hoaxes, Kaufman began wrestling women during his act and was the self-proclaimed "Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion of the World", taking on an aggressive and ridiculous personality based upon the characters invented by professional wrestlers. He offered a $1,000 prize to any woman who could pin him.
Kaufman initially approached then-World Wrestling Federation (WWF) owner Vince McMahon, Sr. about bringing his act to the New York territory. McMahon found Kaufman's act too gimmicky and suggested to Kaufman that he try his luck in the Southern wrestling territories, where his gimmick might have more appeal.
Later, after a challenge from professional wrestler Jerry "The King" Lawler, Kaufman would step into the ring (in the Memphis wrestling circuit) with a man — Lawler himself. Their ongoing feud, often featuring Jimmy Hart and other heels in Kaufman's corner, included a broken neck for Kaufman as a result of Lawler's piledriver and a famous on-air fight on a 1982 episode of Late Night with David Letterman. For some time after that, Kaufman appeared everywhere wearing a neck brace, insisting that his injuries were worse than they were. Kaufman would continue to defend the Inter-Gender Championship in the Mid-South Coliseum and offered an extra prize, other than the $1,000: that if he were pinned, the woman who pinned him would get to marry him and that Kaufman would also shave his head.
Kaufman and Lawler's famous feud and wrestling matches were later revealed to have been staged, or a "work", as the two were actually friends. The truth about its being a "work" was not disclosed until more than 10 years after Kaufman's death, when the Emmy-nominated documentary, A Comedy Salute to Andy Kaufman, aired on NBC in 1995. Coincidentally, Jim Carrey is the one who reveals the secret, and would later go on to play Kaufman in the 1999 film Man on the Moon. In a 1997 interview with the Memphis Flyer, Lawler claimed he had improvised during their first match and the Letterman incident. Although officials at St. Francis Hospital stated that Kaufman's neck injuries were real, in his 2002 biography It's Good to Be the King...Sometimes, Lawler detailed how they came up with the angle and kept it quiet. Even though Kaufman's injury was legitimate, the pair pretended that the injury was more severe than it was. He also said that Kaufman's explosion on Letterman was Kaufman's own idea, including when Lawler slapped Kaufman out of his chair.
Kaufman also appeared in the 1983 film My Breakfast with Blassie with professional wrestling personality "Classy" Freddie Blassie, a parody of the art film My Dinner With Andre. The film was directed by Johnny Legend, who employed his sister Lynne Margulies as one of the girls who appears in the film. Margulies met Kaufman for the first time on camera, and they later became a couple, living together until Kaufman's death.
Appearances
Although Kaufman made a name for himself as a guest on NBC's Saturday Night Live, his first prime time appearances were several guest spots as the 'Foreign Man' on the "Dick Van Dyke Variety" Show in 1976. He also appeared four times on The Tonight Show[15] from 1976–1978, three times on The Midnight Special in 1972, 1977 and 1981.[16] In the 1977 episode, Kaufman performed a song called "I Trusted You" (which features only those three words, repeated over and over, as lyrics), while in 1981 he is shown sitting in the audience during Tony Clifton's act (although it was obvious Kaufman was not in the audience during the sketch).
His SNL appearances started with the inaugural October 11, 1975 show; he made 16 SNL appearances in all,[17] although his last two appearances were simply aired video-tapes and not live. He would do routines from his comedy act, such as the Mighty Mouse sing-along, Foreign Man character, the Elvis impersonation, etc. After he angered the audience with his female wrestling routine, in January 1983 Kaufman did make a pre-taped appearance (his 16th) on the show, where he asked the audience if he should ever appear on the show again, and said that he would honor the audience's decision and stay off the show if the vote was negative. SNL ran a phone vote, and close to 195,544 people voted to "Dump Andy" and approximately 169,186 people voted to "Keep Andy",[18] so Kaufman did not appear "live" but Saturday Night Live did air a tape of him thanking the 169,186 people who had voted "yes" for him to appear again, which could be considered a 17th appearance.
Though it was never made clear whether this was a gag, Kaufman did not appear on the show again. During the SNL episode with the Keep Andy/Dump Andy phone poll, many of the cast stated their admiration for Andy's work and read the "Keep Andy" number more clearly than the "Dump Andy" number.[19] After Eddie Murphy read both numbers, he said, "Now Andy Kaufman is a friend of mine. Keep that in mind when you call. I don't want to have to punch nobody in America in the face." Mary Gross read the "Dump Andy" number at a rate so fast that audiences were unable to catch it.[19] The final tally was read by Gary Kroeger to a cheering audience. As the credits rolled, announcer Don Pardo said, "This is Don Pardo saying, 'I voted for Andy Kaufman.'"
Kaufman made a number of appearances on the daytime The David Letterman Show in 1980, and eleven appearances on Late Night with David Letterman in 1982-1983,[20] including one where he claimed to be homeless and begged the audience for money and one where he talked about his adopted children, who turned out to be three fully-grown black men.
He appeared twice on The Merv Griffin Show (1979–1980),[21] and once, in 1978 as a participant, on The Dating Game[22] under a presumed name and as a supposedly real contestant. He also made numerous guest spots on other television programs hosted by or starring celebrities like Johnny Cash (1979 Christmas special), Dick Van Dyke, Dinah Shore, Rodney Dangerfield, Cher, Dean Martin, Redd Foxx, Mike Douglas, Dick Clark, and Joe Franklin.[23]
He appeared in his first theatrical film God Told Me To in 1976, where he portrayed a murderous policeman. He also appeared in several others, including as a televangelist in the 1980 film In God We Tru$t.
Laurie Anderson worked alongside Andy Kaufman for a time in the 1970s, acting as a sort of straight woman in a number of his Manhattan and Coney Island performances. One of these performances included getting on a ride that people stand in and get spun around. After everyone was strapped in Kaufman would start saying how he did not want to be on the ride in a panicked tone and eventually cry. Anderson later described these performances in her 1995 album The Ugly One with the Jewels.
At Park West Theatre in Chicago on March 26, 1982, Kaufman performed stage hypnosis where he induced local DJ Steve Dahl to urinate while sitting in a large box. Other staged inductions included Bob Zmuda's childhood friend Joe Troiani mimicking the behavior of a pig and long-time friend Bill Karmia dressed as a police officer arresting Kaufman for inducing public nudity with a woman he had hypnotized.
Personal life
Kaufman never married. He was survived by his father[24] and daughter, Maria Colonna, who was born in 1969 out of wedlock with a high-school girlfriend of Kaufman's, but later placed for adoption. Colonna learned in 1992 that she was the daughter of Andy Kaufman, when she traced her biological parentage.[25]
In college, Kaufman learned Transcendental Meditation. According to a BBC article, Kaufman used Transcendental Meditation to build confidence and take his act to comedy clubs. For the rest of his life Kaufman meditated and performed yoga for three hours a day.[26] He trained as a teacher of Transcendental Meditation in Majorca, Spain from February to June, 1971.[27]
Death
At Thanksgiving dinner with his family on Long Island in November 1983, several family members grew concerned over Kaufman's persistent coughing during the dinner, and openly expressed worry about it. Kaufman claimed to them that he had the cough for nearly a month, but also claimed that an initial visit to his doctor told him that nothing was wrong. After returning to Los Angeles, Kaufman consulted a physician where he checked himself into Cedars-Sinai Hospital for a series of medical tests and a few days later, he was diagnosed with a rare type of lung cancer. Despite his doctor's prognosis that there was no hope for recovery, he was committed to fighting the disease until his death. After audiences were shocked by his gaunt appearance during his performances in January 1984, Kaufman acknowledged having an unspecified illness, which he hoped to cure with "natural medicine" including an all-fruit and vegetables diet, among other measures. Kaufman received palliative radiotherapy, but by then the cancer had rapidly spread from his lungs to his brain. His last resort was "psychic surgery", a debunked procedure that includes the use of sleight of hand, performed in Baguio, Philippines, in March 1984. Kaufman died in a hospital in Los Angeles on May 16, 1984[28] of kidney failure, caused by metastasized large cell carcinoma, and was interred in the Beth David Cemetery in Elmont, New York (Long Island). He was 35 years old. Because he kept the true nature of his illness a secret—almost until the day he died—fans have, over the years, doubted Kaufman's death, thinking that he staged it as the ultimate Andy Kaufman stunt.
Kaufman allegedly told many people—including Bob Zmuda—that he wished to fake his own death prior to his actual death. This has caused some fans to believe Kaufman is still alive.[29] Kaufman himself purportedly claimed that if he were to fake his death, he would return 20 years later, which would have been in 2004.[30]
The 1999 Jim Carrey film Man on the Moon leaves the question open-ended. "Tony Clifton" performed a year after Kaufman's death at The Comedy Store benefit in Kaufman's honor, with members of his entourage in attendance. Bob Zmuda has acknowledged "death hoax" rumors over the years quite tongue-in-cheek, admitting that Kaufman and he had discussed faking his death at times and that he seemed "obsessed with the idea", but he maintains the opinion that Kaufman truly did die and his death was not faked. Bob Zmuda claims he does not think he would be cruel enough to go this long without making contact with his family if he was still alive. His official website states that his death was not a hoax and he did die.[31]
During the 1990s, "Tony Clifton" made several appearances at LA nightclubs, prompting speculation that perhaps Kaufman was still alive and working under the makeup. Jim Carrey stated on the NBC special Comedy Salute to Andy Kaufman that the Clifton character had been passed on by Kaufman to Bob Zmuda while he was still alive. Kaufman's death certificate is on file with the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services and is also available on the website The Smoking Gun.[24]
Kaufman was born in New York City, on January 17, 1949, the first son of Janice (née Bernstein) and Stanley Kaufman. He grew up in a middle-class Jewish family,[2] in Great Neck, Long Island, New York, and began performing at age nine.[3] He attended the now defunct two-year Grahm Junior College,[4] in Boston, graduating in 1971. He then began performing stand-up comedy at various small clubs along the East Coast.
Career
Foreign Man and Mighty Mouse
Kaufman first caught major attention with a character known as Foreign Man, who claimed to be from Caspiar (a fictional island in the Caspian Sea) and would appear on the stage of comedy clubs to play a recording of the theme from "Mighty Mouse" and lip-synch one line—"Here I come to save the day." He would proceed to tell a few jokes and perform a number of impersonations (Archie Bunker, Richard Nixon, et al.). Some variations of this performance were broadcast in the first season of Saturday Night Live; the Mighty Mouse number was featured in the October 11, 1975 premiere, while the joke-telling and Bunker impression were included in the November 8 broadcast that same fall.[5]
Foreign Man would often try to impersonate a whole series of different celebrities, with the comedy arising from Foreign Man's obvious ineptitude at impersonation. For example, in his fake accent Kaufman would say to the audience, "I would like to imitate Meester Carter, de President of de United States", and then in the same voice, "Hello, I am Meester Carter, de President of de United States. T'ank you veddy much." At some point in the performance, usually when the audience were entirely used to Foreign Man's inability to perform a single convincing impression, Foreign Man would announce, "And now I would like to imitate the Elvis Presley," turn around, take off his jacket, slick his hair back, and launch into an Elvis Presley impersonation which Presley himself described as his favorite.[6] Like Presley, he would take off his leather jacket and throw it into the audience, but Kaufman would then immediately ask for it back again. After, he would take a simple bow and say in his Foreign Man voice, "T'ank you veddy much!"
Latka
Main article: Latka Gravas
Kaufman first used a version of the Foreign Man character as Andy the Robot in the pilot for the sitcom Stick Around in 1977. The character was then changed into Latka Gravas, for ABC's Taxi sitcom, appearing in 79 of 114 episodes from 1978 to 1983.[7] The producers of Taxi had seen Andy's Foreign Man act and, according to producer Ed Weinberger, "We weren't considering Andy for the show before we saw him. Then we wrote a part for him." Bob Zmuda confirms this: "They basically were buying Andy's Foreign Man character for the Taxi character Latka."[8] Andy's long-time manager George Shapiro encouraged Andy to take the gig. "My feeling was that it would be a nice boost for his career...and he would be playing a character that he knew very well, the Foreign Man—this particular character speaks poor English in Taxi and his name is Latka Gravas."[9]
Kaufman disliked sitcoms and was not thrilled with the idea of being in one. In order to allow Kaufman to demonstrate some comedic range, his character was given multiple personality disorder, which allowed Kaufman to randomly portray other characters. In one episode, Kaufman's character came down with a condition which made him act like Alex Reiger, the main character played by Judd Hirsch. Another such recurring character played by Kaufman was the womanizing Vic Ferrari. His role did lead to two Golden Globe nominations, in 1979 and 1981.[10]
Taxi was an award-winning show with a large audience and Kaufman was widely recognized as Latka. On some occasions, audiences would show up to one of Kaufman's stage performances expecting to see him perform as Latka, and heckling him with demands when he did not. Kaufman would punish these audiences with the announcement that he was going to read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald to them. The audience would laugh at this, not realizing that he was serious, and Kaufman would proceed to read the book to them, continuing despite audience members' departure. At a certain point, he would ask the audience if they wanted him to keep reading, or play a record. When the audience chose to hear the record, the record he cued up was a recording of him continuing to read The Great Gatsby from where he had left off.
Tony Clifton
Main article: Tony Clifton
Another well-known Kaufman character is Tony Clifton, an audience-abusing lounge singer who began opening for Kaufman at comedy clubs and eventually even performed concerts on his own around the country. Sometimes it was Kaufman performing as Clifton, sometimes it was his brother Michael or his friend Bob Zmuda. For a brief time, it was unclear to some that Clifton was not a real person. News programs interviewed Clifton as Kaufman's opening act, with the mood turning ugly whenever Kaufman's name came up. Kaufman, Clifton insisted, was attempting to ruin Clifton's "good name" in order to make money and get famous.
As a requirement for Kaufman accepting the offer to star on Taxi, he insisted that Clifton be hired for a guest role on the show as if he were a real person, not a character. After throwing a tantrum on the set, Clifton was fired and escorted off of the studio lot by security guards. Much to Kaufman's delight, this incident was reported in the local newspapers. Paramount TV and producers James L. Brooks and Stan Daniels later released a statement that said that although Clifton was "no longer welcome on the set", his friend Andy Kaufman would continue in his role as Latka, which he did until the show ended its run in 1983.
Carnegie Hall "milk and cookies" show
At the beginning of an April 1979 performance at New York's Carnegie Hall, Kaufman invited his "grandmother" to watch the show from a chair he had placed at the side of the stage. At the end of the show, she stood up, took her mask off and revealed to the audience that she was actually comedian Robin Williams in disguise. Kaufman also had an elderly woman (named Eleanor Cody Gould) appear to have a heart attack and die on stage, at which point he reappeared on stage wearing a Native American headdress and performed a dance over her body, seeming to revive her.
The performance is most famous for Kaufman ending the show by actually taking the entire audience, in twenty buses, out for milk and cookies. He invited anyone interested to meet him on the Staten Island Ferry the next morning, where the show continued. This kind of performance art is a hallmark of Kaufman's career. This was depicted in the biopic Man on the Moon; however, in the movie, it takes place after Kaufman was diagnosed with cancer, when in reality, it took place nearly four years earlier.
Andy's Funhouse aka The Andy Kaufman Special and The Andy Kaufman Show
The Taxi deal with ABC included giving Kaufman a television special/pilot. He came up with Andy's Funhouse, based on an old routine he had developed while in junior college. The special was taped in 1977 but did not air until August 1979, on ABC.[11] It featured most of Andy's famous gags, including Foreign Man/Latka and his Elvis Presley impersonation, as well as a host of unique segments (including a special appearance by children's television character Howdy Doody and the "Has-been Corner"). There also was a segment that included fake television screen static as part of the gag, which ABC executives were not comfortable with, fearing that viewers would mistake the static for broadcast problems and would change the channel - which was the comic element Kaufman wanted to present. Andy's Funhouse was written by Kaufman, Zmuda, and Mel Sherer, with music by Kaufman. In 1980 a very similar looking show would be filmed for PBS's SoundStage, called the The Andy Kaufman Show. It would feature a peanut gallery like Funhouse and is often confused with Andy's Funhouse. The show opens right in the middle of an interview Kaufman is doing in which he is laughing hysterically, and then he proceeds to thank the audience for watching and the credits roll. After this, opening credits do come on and the show has its "proper" beginning. This show is easy to confuse with Andy's Funhouse as they both feature "The Has-Been Corner" and Kaufman wears his "I Love Grandma" shirt in both shows among other similarities.
The Fridays incident
In 1981, Kaufman made three appearances on Fridays, a variety show on ABC that was similar to Saturday Night Live.[12] Kaufman's first appearance on the show proved to be memorable. During a sketch about four people out on a dinner date who excuse themselves to the restroom to smoke marijuana, Kaufman broke character and refused to say his lines.
In response, cast member Michael Richards walked off camera and returned with a set of cue cards and dumped them on the table in front of Kaufman. Andy responded by splashing Richards with water. Co-producer Jack Burns stormed onto the stage, leading to a brawl on camera before the show abruptly cut away to commercial.[13] It was later revealed that this incident was a practical joke.[14]
Regardless, Kaufman appeared the following week in a videotaped apology to the home viewers. Later that year, Kaufman returned to host Fridays. At one point in the show, he invited a Lawrence Welk Show gospel and standards singer, Kathie Sullivan, on stage to sing a few gospel songs with him and announced that the two were engaged to be married, then talked to the audience about his newfound faith in Jesus (Kaufman was Jewish). That was also a hoax. Later, following a sketch about a drug-abusing pharmacist, Kaufman was supposed to introduce the band The Pretenders. Instead of introducing the band, he delivered a nervous speech about the harmfulness of drugs while the band stood behind him ready to play. After his speech, he informed the audience that he had talked for too long and had to go to a commercial.
Professional wrestling
Kaufman grew up admiring professional wrestlers and the world in which they perform. Inspired by the theatricality of kayfabe, the staged nature of the sport, and his own tendency to form elaborate hoaxes, Kaufman began wrestling women during his act and was the self-proclaimed "Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion of the World", taking on an aggressive and ridiculous personality based upon the characters invented by professional wrestlers. He offered a $1,000 prize to any woman who could pin him.
Kaufman initially approached then-World Wrestling Federation (WWF) owner Vince McMahon, Sr. about bringing his act to the New York territory. McMahon found Kaufman's act too gimmicky and suggested to Kaufman that he try his luck in the Southern wrestling territories, where his gimmick might have more appeal.
Later, after a challenge from professional wrestler Jerry "The King" Lawler, Kaufman would step into the ring (in the Memphis wrestling circuit) with a man — Lawler himself. Their ongoing feud, often featuring Jimmy Hart and other heels in Kaufman's corner, included a broken neck for Kaufman as a result of Lawler's piledriver and a famous on-air fight on a 1982 episode of Late Night with David Letterman. For some time after that, Kaufman appeared everywhere wearing a neck brace, insisting that his injuries were worse than they were. Kaufman would continue to defend the Inter-Gender Championship in the Mid-South Coliseum and offered an extra prize, other than the $1,000: that if he were pinned, the woman who pinned him would get to marry him and that Kaufman would also shave his head.
Kaufman and Lawler's famous feud and wrestling matches were later revealed to have been staged, or a "work", as the two were actually friends. The truth about its being a "work" was not disclosed until more than 10 years after Kaufman's death, when the Emmy-nominated documentary, A Comedy Salute to Andy Kaufman, aired on NBC in 1995. Coincidentally, Jim Carrey is the one who reveals the secret, and would later go on to play Kaufman in the 1999 film Man on the Moon. In a 1997 interview with the Memphis Flyer, Lawler claimed he had improvised during their first match and the Letterman incident. Although officials at St. Francis Hospital stated that Kaufman's neck injuries were real, in his 2002 biography It's Good to Be the King...Sometimes, Lawler detailed how they came up with the angle and kept it quiet. Even though Kaufman's injury was legitimate, the pair pretended that the injury was more severe than it was. He also said that Kaufman's explosion on Letterman was Kaufman's own idea, including when Lawler slapped Kaufman out of his chair.
Kaufman also appeared in the 1983 film My Breakfast with Blassie with professional wrestling personality "Classy" Freddie Blassie, a parody of the art film My Dinner With Andre. The film was directed by Johnny Legend, who employed his sister Lynne Margulies as one of the girls who appears in the film. Margulies met Kaufman for the first time on camera, and they later became a couple, living together until Kaufman's death.
Appearances
Although Kaufman made a name for himself as a guest on NBC's Saturday Night Live, his first prime time appearances were several guest spots as the 'Foreign Man' on the "Dick Van Dyke Variety" Show in 1976. He also appeared four times on The Tonight Show[15] from 1976–1978, three times on The Midnight Special in 1972, 1977 and 1981.[16] In the 1977 episode, Kaufman performed a song called "I Trusted You" (which features only those three words, repeated over and over, as lyrics), while in 1981 he is shown sitting in the audience during Tony Clifton's act (although it was obvious Kaufman was not in the audience during the sketch).
His SNL appearances started with the inaugural October 11, 1975 show; he made 16 SNL appearances in all,[17] although his last two appearances were simply aired video-tapes and not live. He would do routines from his comedy act, such as the Mighty Mouse sing-along, Foreign Man character, the Elvis impersonation, etc. After he angered the audience with his female wrestling routine, in January 1983 Kaufman did make a pre-taped appearance (his 16th) on the show, where he asked the audience if he should ever appear on the show again, and said that he would honor the audience's decision and stay off the show if the vote was negative. SNL ran a phone vote, and close to 195,544 people voted to "Dump Andy" and approximately 169,186 people voted to "Keep Andy",[18] so Kaufman did not appear "live" but Saturday Night Live did air a tape of him thanking the 169,186 people who had voted "yes" for him to appear again, which could be considered a 17th appearance.
Though it was never made clear whether this was a gag, Kaufman did not appear on the show again. During the SNL episode with the Keep Andy/Dump Andy phone poll, many of the cast stated their admiration for Andy's work and read the "Keep Andy" number more clearly than the "Dump Andy" number.[19] After Eddie Murphy read both numbers, he said, "Now Andy Kaufman is a friend of mine. Keep that in mind when you call. I don't want to have to punch nobody in America in the face." Mary Gross read the "Dump Andy" number at a rate so fast that audiences were unable to catch it.[19] The final tally was read by Gary Kroeger to a cheering audience. As the credits rolled, announcer Don Pardo said, "This is Don Pardo saying, 'I voted for Andy Kaufman.'"
Kaufman made a number of appearances on the daytime The David Letterman Show in 1980, and eleven appearances on Late Night with David Letterman in 1982-1983,[20] including one where he claimed to be homeless and begged the audience for money and one where he talked about his adopted children, who turned out to be three fully-grown black men.
He appeared twice on The Merv Griffin Show (1979–1980),[21] and once, in 1978 as a participant, on The Dating Game[22] under a presumed name and as a supposedly real contestant. He also made numerous guest spots on other television programs hosted by or starring celebrities like Johnny Cash (1979 Christmas special), Dick Van Dyke, Dinah Shore, Rodney Dangerfield, Cher, Dean Martin, Redd Foxx, Mike Douglas, Dick Clark, and Joe Franklin.[23]
He appeared in his first theatrical film God Told Me To in 1976, where he portrayed a murderous policeman. He also appeared in several others, including as a televangelist in the 1980 film In God We Tru$t.
Laurie Anderson worked alongside Andy Kaufman for a time in the 1970s, acting as a sort of straight woman in a number of his Manhattan and Coney Island performances. One of these performances included getting on a ride that people stand in and get spun around. After everyone was strapped in Kaufman would start saying how he did not want to be on the ride in a panicked tone and eventually cry. Anderson later described these performances in her 1995 album The Ugly One with the Jewels.
At Park West Theatre in Chicago on March 26, 1982, Kaufman performed stage hypnosis where he induced local DJ Steve Dahl to urinate while sitting in a large box. Other staged inductions included Bob Zmuda's childhood friend Joe Troiani mimicking the behavior of a pig and long-time friend Bill Karmia dressed as a police officer arresting Kaufman for inducing public nudity with a woman he had hypnotized.
Personal life
Kaufman never married. He was survived by his father[24] and daughter, Maria Colonna, who was born in 1969 out of wedlock with a high-school girlfriend of Kaufman's, but later placed for adoption. Colonna learned in 1992 that she was the daughter of Andy Kaufman, when she traced her biological parentage.[25]
In college, Kaufman learned Transcendental Meditation. According to a BBC article, Kaufman used Transcendental Meditation to build confidence and take his act to comedy clubs. For the rest of his life Kaufman meditated and performed yoga for three hours a day.[26] He trained as a teacher of Transcendental Meditation in Majorca, Spain from February to June, 1971.[27]
Death
At Thanksgiving dinner with his family on Long Island in November 1983, several family members grew concerned over Kaufman's persistent coughing during the dinner, and openly expressed worry about it. Kaufman claimed to them that he had the cough for nearly a month, but also claimed that an initial visit to his doctor told him that nothing was wrong. After returning to Los Angeles, Kaufman consulted a physician where he checked himself into Cedars-Sinai Hospital for a series of medical tests and a few days later, he was diagnosed with a rare type of lung cancer. Despite his doctor's prognosis that there was no hope for recovery, he was committed to fighting the disease until his death. After audiences were shocked by his gaunt appearance during his performances in January 1984, Kaufman acknowledged having an unspecified illness, which he hoped to cure with "natural medicine" including an all-fruit and vegetables diet, among other measures. Kaufman received palliative radiotherapy, but by then the cancer had rapidly spread from his lungs to his brain. His last resort was "psychic surgery", a debunked procedure that includes the use of sleight of hand, performed in Baguio, Philippines, in March 1984. Kaufman died in a hospital in Los Angeles on May 16, 1984[28] of kidney failure, caused by metastasized large cell carcinoma, and was interred in the Beth David Cemetery in Elmont, New York (Long Island). He was 35 years old. Because he kept the true nature of his illness a secret—almost until the day he died—fans have, over the years, doubted Kaufman's death, thinking that he staged it as the ultimate Andy Kaufman stunt.
Kaufman allegedly told many people—including Bob Zmuda—that he wished to fake his own death prior to his actual death. This has caused some fans to believe Kaufman is still alive.[29] Kaufman himself purportedly claimed that if he were to fake his death, he would return 20 years later, which would have been in 2004.[30]
The 1999 Jim Carrey film Man on the Moon leaves the question open-ended. "Tony Clifton" performed a year after Kaufman's death at The Comedy Store benefit in Kaufman's honor, with members of his entourage in attendance. Bob Zmuda has acknowledged "death hoax" rumors over the years quite tongue-in-cheek, admitting that Kaufman and he had discussed faking his death at times and that he seemed "obsessed with the idea", but he maintains the opinion that Kaufman truly did die and his death was not faked. Bob Zmuda claims he does not think he would be cruel enough to go this long without making contact with his family if he was still alive. His official website states that his death was not a hoax and he did die.[31]
During the 1990s, "Tony Clifton" made several appearances at LA nightclubs, prompting speculation that perhaps Kaufman was still alive and working under the makeup. Jim Carrey stated on the NBC special Comedy Salute to Andy Kaufman that the Clifton character had been passed on by Kaufman to Bob Zmuda while he was still alive. Kaufman's death certificate is on file with the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services and is also available on the website The Smoking Gun.[24]
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