httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C570byQCLpI
Mighty Mouse
Andy Kaufman died of cancer 26 years ago at the tragically young age of 35. These performances are more than 30 years old but they still retain their liberating strangeness: mime-singing the refrain from a Mighty Mouse record, reading The Great Gatsby to an audience that doesn’t want to be read The Great Gatsby, and conducting a variety show in a sort of Mediterranean/Aegean gibberish, and then leading his audience through a sing-along in the same language.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL3Dp6Oh3Fw
The Great Gatsby (This video cannot be embedded, but click on the image and hit the YouTube link.)
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ass1coasd0
???
A couple years ago, at my school’s 24-hour “Improvathon”, instead of playing an improv game, I stole Kaufman’s act and spent my stage time reading a portion of Les Chants de Maldoror. I thought I’d get away with twenty minutes or so, but complete pandemonium broke out within five. The audience started throwing trash and I was assaulted with an inflatable doll. It’s quite extraordinary how intolerant the supposedly cutting-edge is, and how this kind of thing never dates.
Kaufman on the Midnight Special, singing the best country song ever:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRyk5QyYGU8