(3 of 3)
Kaufman is at his best and most challenging when he does not let anyone in on the joke, doesn't even admit there's a joke at all. The playroom innocence of Kaufman's live show is a touch indulgent, almost always inspired. Sometimes at the beginning, a pretty girl comes out with an invitation to milk and cookies, a promise made good at show's end, when the entire audience is conveyed by bus to a snack with the star. But it is in Tony Clifton, with his crass, abusive desperation, that Kaufman may have found his strongest comic voice. A distant cousin to Lenny Bruce's abrasive small-timer bombing at the London Palladium, Tony is the dark side of every comic. He is also, to Andy Kaufman, very real. Tony Clifton has a separate agent, gets separate billing, demands—and receives—separate dressing-room facilities when he works with Andy. The producers of Taxi wrote Clifton into the show, had to negotiate a separate contract, then, when he was late for rehearsal three days running, had to fire him. "Don't tell me," said Andy Kaufman. "Tell Tony." Tony showed up, got canned, threw such a fit that studio guards had to carry him off the lot.
Now the Tony doppelgänger appears beside Andy to take bows at the end of the show. Kaufman insists Clifton is a real person he once mimicked, who is now appearing in person. "Everyone thinks he's me," Kaufman says. "It's really destroying Tony's career." It is clear that Kaufman's comedy in every incarnation is like a full-dress masque that sets new rules, tests new limits. "I never told a joke in my life," he says, with pride. The essence of his gift, the full range of his promise, is just this simple. Andy Kaufman is not kidding.