#Andy kaufman professional#

'This may sound a little wooo-hooo'-she mimics a cuckoo bird-'but I do believe he allowed Andy to come through him. 'I think that Jim Carrey was a vessel,' Kaufman-Kerman says, discussing the experience in a Brooklyn café two decades later. When he spotted the star's real-life sister, he greeted her jovially, the way Kaufman might have: 'Hey, Carol! Over here!' Carrey-as-Kaufman asked if she wanted a milkshake. Or in characters, rather, since he vacillated between Kaufman and Kaufman's favorite alter ego, the obnoxious lounge singer known as Tony Clifton.

Those lines seemed blurred: Carrey was spending the entire film shoot in character. And the star who greeted her was Carrey-or was it Andy? His ghost? The deceased brother was Andy Kaufman, the enigmatic performance artist who had died from cancer in 1984. She had flown to Los Angeles, where the filmmaker Milos Forman was shooting a biopic about her famous big brother. Whether you like the notion of sports entertainment or not, it certainly has done a lot for the wrestling business, and both Lawler and the late Kaufman are partially to thank for that.įollow on Twitter and listen to him on Ring Rust Radio.It's hard to describe the experience of talking to your dead brother through Jim Carrey's body.Ĭarol Kaufman-Kerman tries anyway. The emphasis wasn't on the matches since Kaufman was obviously limited in that regard, but the story that they told was believable and that got a lot of people interested who normally wouldn't have been.

#Andy kaufman professional#

Kaufman feud was great and you could argue that it helped pave the way for what professional wrestling has become. It's all about promotion now, so kayfabe isn't of great importance.Įverything about the Lawler vs. When a heel like The Miz is on a talk show he is using his real personality rather than the one he uses in the ring. You might see wrestling in mainstream outlets a lot more often now, but it's so rare for the superstars to remain in character. Kaufman feud was legitimate for many years and it wasn't revealed until 10 years after Kaufman's untimely death from lung cancer that Lawler and Kaufman were actually friends who were simply putting on a show. The lengths that Lawler and Kaufman went to in order to preserve kayfabe was impressive as well.

Kaufman feud was really the first time that wrestling expanded beyond its small territories and entered the public consciousness. You could argue that wrestling still isn't mainstream, although top stars like John Cena and The Rock are known by most non-wrestling fans. The WWE, which is now a global empire, was still a New York territory in 1982, so wrestling really had yet to go mainstream. Now, we know wrestling as sports entertainment encapsulates so much more than just in-ring work, but such elaborate storylines were the exception rather than the rule 30 years ago. In 1982, professional wrestling was still about wrestling and little else. The vast majority of those watching thought that Lawler and Kaufman were embroiled in a real-life rivalry, so when Kaufman went off on a diatribe and Lawler knocked Kaufman from his chair, most believed it was legitimate. Kaufman feud great, though, was an appearance on the David Letterman Show in 1982. The incident that truly made the Lawler vs. Kaufman would wear a neck brace, but he was selling the injury as being worse than it actually was. Lawler had matches with the puny Kaufman and Kaufman even suffered a neck injury thanks to King's patented piledriver. Kaufman would wrestle women as part of his act and that was eventually used during his feud with Lawler.įrom a kayfabe perspective, Lawler took issue with Kaufman wrestling women and that ultimately led to their feud. Kaufman was no wrestler as he was more of a comedic entertainer, but he took great interest in the business and got involved in it by calling himself the Inter-Gender Champion.