history
In the middle of a cold winter night in 1999, fifteen major U.S. cities were bombed with brightly-hued propaganda posters. Like circus advance men of old, soldiers of the Andy Kaufman Army (AKA) stormed said cities and plastered the orange-violet likenesses of Andy Kaufman and Tony Clifton everywhere.
By the light of day, pedestrians were greeted by the intense gaze of Kaufman, as if he'd gotten up extra early and made breakfast for everyone. When the strolling urbanite inspected the poster with care, he found, printed in small type beneath the portraits, an internet url to this very web site.
These were exciting times for Kaufman fans. After years of nothing, there was now action on the front. Buzz had been building for months about the Andy Kaufman biopic, "Man On The Moon". There was talk of Jim Carrey being possessed by Andy. There was the neck injury he sustained while reenacting the wrestling match with Jerry Lawler. Something was in the air. Fans waited on the edge of MOTM, giddy with anticipation. The posters and web site came the same day out of nowhere. Word spread on the net fast. It was like getting an early Christmas present, or Hannakuh gift.
On entering the web site, the neon mugs of Kaufman and Clifton appeared as gate keepers. Once inside the colors and the attitude hit you. Links to "love/hate" and "conspiracy" and "theory" drew you deeper in. A snotty punk-ass voice set the tone. The AKA commanded, "we want you, to send cool shit". Vibrant, energetic, irreverant fun was the message. Its forum was pure verve - creative, funny, innocent and puerile.
The designers of the site needed content and showed up at Bob Zmuda's first book signing of Andy Kaufman Revealed prepared with a video camera. They later wrote that it was "boring as dirt", except for a clown that managed to get himself thrown out. They went with the clown angle. On their page of video clips they had streaming video of Andy playing bongos and Bob at the book signing. Sandwiched between these two was footage of F'Ugly th3 Kl*wn. This odd juxtaposition kindled forum wildfire. Who was this character? Some thought it might be Jim Carrey pulling publicity pranks. Some thought he was Crispin Glover, another contender for Andy's role before Carrey got it. And some thought F'Ugly was Andy himself! It got more complicated when Crispin (or someone playing him) and F'Ugly (whoever that is) started writing at the forum.
Another kooky character from the Andy Lives forum was Jim Brandy. Brandy's name was familiar from Kaufman's brilliant PBS Soundstage show as a has-been crooner dethroned when Elvis returned from the Army. It was one of the most honest, gut-wrentching spectacles ever televised. This Brandy was different though. He was a devout Christian who chastised the more offensive posters of the forum. His participating climaxed with his exodus to his own, quickly constructed, Christians for Andy Kaufman Squad, or Society. The timing was flawless and the gag was pure magic. CAKS eventually evolved into the more secular Celebrating Andy Kaufman Society which is presently the most active and engaged Kaufman fan site on the web.
Not everyone liked Andy Lives though. Some complained. It was apparent that something, or someone was behind the whole thing - the matching posters, the web site. It wasn't long before people cried foul. It's now common knowledge that Universal Pictures indirectly funded the faux fan site as a promotional tool, in conjunction with the poster blitz, for 'Man On The Moon'. I believe that most fans enjoying the web site didn't really care.
The process of the creation of Andy Lives went something like this. One of the film's producers, Stacy Sher, convinced then-Universal Pictures Marketing Chief, Marc Shmuger that this film needed an unconventional campaign to create a buzz in the market. Most likely at that time she suggested the poster and fake fan site idea, as 'The Blair Witch Project' had recently been a huge success using a similar marketing technique. At that point a Universal lacky was assigned to call up and hire the marketing and trend analysis firm, Look-Look. They essentially served as a go-between to legally distance Universal from hiring BLK/MRKT, Inc. Black Market, Inc. is the company formed by graphic designer skate punk Shepard Fairey, whose interests also include phenomenology. His creative experiment with the staying- power of semiotic images evolved from a sticker of Andre the Giant. The former pro-wrestler was pictured with his vital stats and the legend, "Andre the Giant has a posse". The nonsensical, non-commercial advertisement for nothing caught on with the skate crowd and spread virally from there. From little acorns...
Shepard Fairey already had a built-in underground of poster plasterers (in P.T. Barnum's day, he called them his "Paste Brigade") for his Andre posters. The Andy Lives posters were designed quickly, printed up and distributed to his contacts in the major cities for the Paste Brigade to put up. The contacts, like MENES, drew upon his crew to disseminate the propaganda. He recalls:
"...you can refer to me as MENES and I am not sure what the AKA was, I did it for the money. The Kaufman job paid better than the Obey. There was basically one wheat paster in each region of the country. I covered the Seattle area in the Kaufman run and did SF and NY for the Obey shit. I was asked to put them up in the most conspicuous places I could and photograph the results. Many times the posters were obliterated before the next dawn so I kind of didn't do such a good job as I would've liked. However, I did enlist my crew 4DC and we crushed several towns in the south of Washington with many high vis spots that lasted months. It was a covert ad campaign for the movie. Illegal. If we got busted we were on our own. I also did Atlanta. That city was really easy. Cops would drive by as I pasted and some times even come over and ask for a poster (well once a cop did). 'No me molestaron demasiado pero soy listo entonces puse duro.'"
And then we woke up.
The posters and the web site stayed up for many months after the movie had come and gone. When the domain name registration lapsed, the url was grabbed by an automated squatter robot, programmed to snatch up expired domains. It laid inactive for a while, showing links to pornography temporarily, until we successfully made contact with the owner and finagled with them. After some struggle and a lot of patience we took over ownership of the domain name at the end of July, 2002. Then we wasted a lot of time.