Iain Lee on Andy Kaufman

Great Lives

BBC

Documentary, History, Society & Culture

4.2 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 30 May 2017

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There were so many hoaxes in Andy Kaufman's brief career that for years his fans believed that he wasn't really dead.

Kaufman's best known as Latka Gravas in the American TV sitcom Taxi, and his life was undoubtedly weird. Performance artist, Elvis impersonator, wrestler - he's difficult to pin down.

Nominator Iain Lee believes he was a genius, while Olly Double of the University of Kent school of arts reckons Kaufman didn't really care if his audience laughed or not.

Presenter Matthew Parris draws his own conclusions about Kaufman's extraordinary life, later turned into a film starring Jim Carrey called Man on the Moon.

Produced at BBC Bristol by Miles Warde.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in May 2017.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Doleepa, and I'm at your service.
0:04.7	Join me as I serve up personal conversations with my sensational guests.
0:08.8	Do a leap interviews, Tim Cook.
0:11.2	Technology doesn't want to be good or bad.
0:15.0	It's in the hands of the creator.
0:16.7	It's not every day that I have the CEO of the world's biggest company in my living room.
0:20.7	If you're looking at your phone more than you're looking in someone's eyes,
0:24.6	you're doing the wrong thing.
0:26.0	Julie, at your service.
0:27.8	Listen to all episodes on BBC sales.
0:31.3	This is the BBC. Have you got that archive, Miles?
0:37.0	I have a lot of problems with the archive for the program.
0:39.0	We can't do a program about a life's work and not give examples of the work.
0:44.0	It's all from Saturday Night Live or David Letterman or Johnny Carson.
0:47.2	It's really, really complicated.
0:48.4	I can't get to the people who are going to say yes.
0:49.8	Oh, the BBC are just dreadful over copyright.
0:51.8	We don't have any broadcast it.
0:53.8	Because we get in trouble.
0:56.3	Very well.
0:57.6	Well, let's just do our best.
1:01.9	In the run-up to today's's programme I began searching for clips of our subject.
	...

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