Kaufman Fandom: 2004 - Year
in Review
Not since the "Man On the Moon" ballyhoo of 1999-2000 have fans of Andy Kaufman enjoyed such a plethora of rewards for their patience.
As the 20th anniversary of Andy Kaufman's departure from our realm neared, news was announced of a tribute party put on by Tony Clifton at the House of Blues in Hollywood, California. Bob Zmuda elaborately planned the multi-layered extravaganza. Brad, a fan, kept a detailed record on his 'blog, of the night's activities and later constructed an excellent overview. For those audience members persistent enough to stay for the entire show that evening, they made their way, candlelight vigil-style, up to Andy's old apartment where Wally Wingert's collection of Kaufman paraphenalia was on display.
That same night, May 16th, 2004, alongside the honorable efforts made by Bob Zmuda to celebrate his departed friend's life and art, Lynne Margulies offered a couple of items she had made. After the House of Blues show one had the opportunity at the Comedy Store to purchase a Tony Clifton t-shirt and DVD called the Tony Clifton Movie. Thanks to these successful offerings Lynne went on to co-create and compile several more priceless jewels. She eventually opened an Ebay store, the AK Underground, to provide fans with awesome Kaufman rarities and some previously unavailable videotape (such as the Bananaz footage) transferred to DVD. The importance of these projects and footage brought to us cannot be overestimated. When Kaufman fans figured they had seen all they were going to get, Lynne cracked the vault. All totalled in 2004, Lynne brought to the fanbase: the Tony Clifton t-shirt, the Andy's Funhouse t-shirt (a perfect four-color reproduction of the original), Tony Clifton's Movie DVD, Tony Clifton's Stormy Justice courtroom TV pilot, the Kaufman Files vol. 1 DVD and the Kaufman Files vol. 2 "Ears of the Rabbit" DVD. These were pure gold for the AK fanatics.
AK-related websites popped up this year, most substantially AndyKaufman.org. It was actually a 'blog that got the most publicity however. AndyKaufmanReturns was a humorous stab at a fake Andy Kaufman online journal which was aided enormously by a free web-based press release. PRWeb is a company that provides a press release distribution service that anyone can access and the clever person behind the 'blog took full advantage of it. Various online news outlets including Yahoo automatically posted the information and hoardes took the thing seriously. The hoax became so widespread that the Snopes urban legend website eventually created a page debunking (but slyly corroborating) it. The 'blog hoax was written up by so many online news agencies and by other bloggers that any attempt to search for Andy Kaufman now results in thousands of pages related to the prank. As far as publicizing the potentially faked death of Andy Kaufman, this person's brilliant ploy exceeded any other stunt.
2005 should be another interesting year but it will be hard to top '04. Lynne's works-in-progress will definitely keep us entranced with the Kaufman magic.