BONUS The Friday Show - Andy, Did You Hear About This One?
Guest:You know what, Mr. Lawler?
Guest:I've heard all these things you've been saying about me on television.
Guest:You want to wrestle me?
Guest:You want to wrestle me, man, for style?
Guest:All right, fine.
Guest:I'm not afraid of you, Mr. Lawler, because let me tell you something.
Guest:True, I only wrestle women, but I've wrestled women that are a lot bigger and stronger than you.
Guest:Matter of fact, they're probably smarter than you because you don't have any brains.
Guest:You're from Memphis, Tennessee.
Guest:All you do is plow the fields and farm and the farm.
Guest:Is that how you're talking, Memphis, Tennessee, Mr. Lawler?
Guest:Boo.
Guest:See, Mr. Lawler, you don't have any brains.
Guest:I am from Hollywood.
Guest:I have the brains.
Music
Guest:So Chris, what was the thing you chose last week when we were doing our movie awards?
Guest:You said the movie Man on the Moon was a worthy thing for one of the categories.
Guest:I think it was like maybe like best movie featuring wrestling or something?
Marc:I think it was Cameo.
Marc:So I said Cameo, you nixed it.
Marc:But yeah, best movie featuring wrestling was Man on the Moon.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I was thinking about this then after we talked about Man on the Moon last week.
Guest:And then lo and behold, WWE announces their Hall of Fame inductions for this year.
Guest:They usually do the Hall of Fame inductions around WrestleMania.
Guest:And...
Guest:Here we go with, you know, the typical things you see, famous wrestlers getting announced.
Guest:They're announcing that the great Muda is being inducted.
Guest:Rey Mysterio Jr.
Guest:is being inducted.
Guest:And then this week they announce Andy Kaufman.
Guest:How about that?
Guest:Is being inducted.
Marc:And Andy Kaufman never was in WWE, right?
Guest:No, never, never set foot in WWE.
Guest:And in fact, was dead before WWE really went national with like Hulkamania and MTV and all that.
Guest:But they've been trying with the WWE Hall of Fame to kind of own wrestling history.
Guest:And they've been, you know, inducting people who haven't been in WWE.
Guest:Grey Muda is a perfect example.
Guest:That's a guy who never set foot in WWE either, but...
Guest:Obviously, someone who's worthy of being honored as part of a Hall of Fame.
Guest:And there's a lot of debate about what is the WWE Hall of Fame?
Guest:Do they just induct people because it's politically friendly to do?
Guest:Or is it really a prestigious thing?
Guest:And one of the reasons that gets raised as a question is because they have...
Guest:all these celebrities, they continuously induct.
Guest:Like Drew Carey, because he had like one match, right?
Guest:And so, and we didn't do anything in the match, but that way he'll come to the ceremony, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or Refrigerator Perry, again, one match.
Guest:William Shatner, that's the crazy one.
Guest:He was on like one episode of Monday Night Raw in 1994 to promote his USA series Tech War.
Guest:Oh God.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's terrible.
Guest:And, you know, he got involved.
Guest:They did this.
Guest:Oh, you know, we'll get him involved.
Guest:And he, you know, did a monkey flip to Jerry Lawler, I think, of other people.
Guest:But yeah, he's in the Hall of Fame.
Guest:Stupid.
Guest:But then here comes Andy Kaufman, another celebrity.
Guest:And this one, I thought my reaction when I heard this, Andy Kaufman is getting inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.
Guest:That is a worthy entry into any Hall of Fame of wrestling.
Guest:And I'd be interested to know from you, what did you know about Andy Kaufman, you know, before like Man on the Moon?
Guest:Did you know anything?
Marc:I didn't.
Marc:I didn't.
Marc:know anything so that was your entry that was my entry and i wish i did know andy kaufman of beforehand because uh in in the 90s when i i started out in radio uh i was i i kind of did like an andy kaufman type of bit wait what do you mean so uh you know when when i when i started doing radio out in uh wnew in new york uh the famous wnew yes
Marc:I guess it's famous, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Sure is.
Marc:So I was the dump operator, which is a silly term, but if someone curses on the air, it's my job to press a button and that deletes four seconds of air so that it doesn't make it onto the radio so no one's hearing a curse word.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's an important job.
Marc:You're the last line of defense.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:So I started doing that.
Marc:I was also the board op overnight.
Marc:And the show that I was doing the dump button for was a show called Ron and Fez, which was Ron Bennington and Fez Wally.
Marc:And these two guys were like old school wrestling and comedy aficionados.
Marc:Like Ron used to own a comedy club.
Marc:And Fez would have like a recurring bit where he's like the nature boy and doing like a promo every week.
Marc:Uh, it was great.
Marc:Uh, it was fun.
Marc:I later became like their producer and then an on-air character as a dumpy, uh, because of course, dumpy, the dump button guy.
Marc:And, uh, they, they, they sort of booked me to, uh, to wrestle and box women in real life on the radio.
Marc:And again, I didn't know about Andy Kaufman.
Marc:I wish I did.
Marc:Cause this was basically, they were asking me to do Andy Kaufman type stuff of, of, uh, intergender, uh, boxing and wrestling.
Marc:Uh,
Marc:Uh, so, so yeah, I wish I knew that.
Guest:Well, that's all interesting about you and Ron and Fez.
Guest:Did you know what Fez's real name was?
Marc:No.
Marc:And there was a very closely guarded secret.
Marc:Like they, they were very, why do you know what Fez is?
Guest:I mean, his name is Todd Hiller.
Guest:I think that's probably known because Fez died a couple of years ago, right?
Guest:I think he died in 2021.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um, and so there were obits about him, but I, uh,
Guest:I was always wondering this, and I guess it's true because it's not his real name, Fez Watley.
Guest:That's a wrestling name.
Guest:Is it?
Guest:He took that... There was a famous wrestler named Pistol Pez Watley.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:And for whatever reason, my guess is he just took that because it sounded cool, Fez or whatever.
Guest:But if you're talking about them being huge wrestling fans, I guarantee there's no way that's a coincidence.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And can I just say...
Marc:They never broke kayfabe with me.
Marc:I was their fucking producer, and they never broke kayfabe.
Marc:And so they would never tell me anything about their lives and everything.
Marc:It was a very weird relationship.
Guest:Well, didn't you tell me one time that Ron or one of them told you, like, this thing that we're doing, the radio, it's all wrestling?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that really helps, honestly.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Like he was talking about like in terms of having rivalries with other shows and, you know, essentially like cutting promos on people, but it's just callers on the radio or whatever.
Guest:Like it's all part of the mindset of wrestling, which brings us back to Andy Kaufman because I was already like an Andy Kaufman kind of voracious fan.
Guest:Like I wanted to know everything about him.
Guest:When was it, was it taxi or was that the wrestling thing?
Guest:I mean, I knew of him from Taxi, right?
Guest:And I knew that when I remember when I was a kid, we'd see reruns of Taxi and I would say things to my parents like, who is that guy?
Guest:Where is he?
Guest:And they'd be like, oh, unfortunately he died.
Guest:So we can't see it.
Guest:He's not going to be in anything else.
Guest:And then, you know, because he was dead and he didn't really know anything about him, I would pick up.
Guest:little bits here and there and I would remember like comedians talking like if they were on a late night show or something and it was a comedian I admired a lot of times they'd bring up Andy Kaufman and they'd say you know oh hey but he's the guy who taught me I learned everything watching Andy and oh okay that guy from Taxi and so I was backfilling a lot of info and then once I saw the footage of him doing the wrestling and I was already a big wrestling fan oh man I was like
Guest:Oh, this is all part of his act.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And I would start to kind of piece it all together.
Guest:And then I just wanted to absorb any information that I could get about Andy Kaufman.
Guest:So by the time Man on the Moon came out, I actually was disappointed in that movie because I didn't think it got me over the hump.
Guest:of where I already had been as an Andy fan and the kind of new information I wanted to get.
Guest:And I always took that as a me problem, not a movie problem.
Guest:I didn't hold that against the movie Man on the Moon.
Guest:I held it more against me being like, oh man, I was way too into Andy Kaufman and this movie was unsatisfying for me.
Guest:Well, fast forward to this book called Is This Guy For Real?
Guest:The Unbelievable Andy Kaufman by Box Brown.
Guest:Now, Box Brown is an illustrator, cartoonist.
Guest:I think he'd be fine if you called him a comic book writer.
Guest:He writes these graphic novels that are, I would call them like biographical or non-fictional.
Guest:He's got one on Andre the Giant.
Guest:He's got ones that are about things other than wrestling.
Guest:He has one on Vladimir Putin.
Guest:But Box Brown is the name he goes by.
Guest:His real name is Brian Brown.
Guest:And I knew about this Andy Kaufman book.
Guest:I knew that it was written in his style as a graphic novel.
Guest:And I finally got my hands on it and read it.
Guest:And it is, I would say, the definitive Andy Kaufman book.
Guest:It really tells you everything you need to know, not just about Andy, but about how wrestling integrates with comedy.
Guest:And wrestling is the foundational drive behind Andy Kaufman and everything he ever did.
Guest:This is a well-researched book.
Guest:He really nailed it.
Guest:And so when I saw that Andy Kaufman was going to be in the Hall of Fame, I reached out to Brian Brown, Box Brown, who I actually know from back in the Air America days.
Guest:We're going to talk to him a little bit about that.
Guest:And he said, yeah, come on.
Guest:I'd love to talk about Andy Kaufman.
Guest:So why don't we do that now?
Guest:We'll take a listen.
Guest:And I want to preface this by apologizing ahead of time that I, for my whole life,
Guest:have called this guy Andy Kaufman.
Guest:And only like in recent history, do I know that his name is Andy Kaufman, like cough, but I still call him Kaufman all the time.
Guest:So apologies in advance.
Guest:You're going to hear me saying Kaufman a whole bunch.
Guest:And it's not out of disrespect.
Guest:It's just my brain.
Marc:Pronouncing stuff is hard.
Marc:I don't know how Mark does it all these years.
Guest:Talking is hard.
Guest:Why would anyone want to just talk all the time?
Guest:It's crazy to me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Unfortunately, that's what we've decided to do here every Friday.
Guest:But we'll take up some of that talking with, at this point, Brian Brown, author of Is This Guy For Real, the unbelievable Andy Kaufman.
Guest:And he's talking to us from Philadelphia.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:Before we start talking about your books and before we start talking about Andy Kaufman and wrestling and anything else having to do with your work, we know you from way, way back when we were doing the Break Room Live show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Do you remember how that all came to be?
Guest:Were you just a viewer of it or did somebody hip you to it?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, someone told me about the show.
Guest:I remember when it came out and they were like, oh, this is the best show.
Guest:political show at the time because it was like you guys were just doing commentary and they're like i remember them being like oh yeah it's in the break room at air america and uh i was like what and then it's funny because it really was in the break room like people would come in and get their lunch and stuff like yeah in the middle of the microwave yeah yeah yeah yeah um so yeah i started listening that's when i got into like mark and uh sam both of them sam cedar yeah yeah yeah
Guest:And they were doing something back in the day.
Guest:It was just after the 2008 financial crisis.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they were doing something called the Unemployee of the Month.
Guest:That's exactly right.
Guest:I had been unemployed for a long time.
Guest:Not that long, but I quit my job right before the downturn and then moved to Philly.
Guest:And so I had a regular job, quit my job, moved to Philly, then the...
Guest:the financial crisis happened.
Guest:And then I had, I was working data entry at like a porn company.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And they were like, if you have, if you've recently like, you know, are unemployed or taking like a lower paid job, like, you know, call us.
Guest:And that's, that's what I did.
Guest:I just talked, I got fired from that job actually.
Guest:Also after you got fired from the porno job, the porno job.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:They had taken on too many,
Guest:data entry people and i had the uh like the worst numbers oh really the most errors i think yeah they had blown their load and they had to get rid of you yeah they were like there's too many people so you're out um it
Guest:It was fine.
Guest:That was kind of like when I was just starting to make comics, too.
Guest:Well, yeah, I remember that was part of the personality profile we did of you.
Guest:You were a cartoonist, at least.
Guest:That was how I think we ID'd you at the time and that you were illustrating.
Guest:And because of that appearance on Break Room Live, I've definitely followed you throughout.
Guest:I think you're probably one of the first follows I have on Twitter just because I think I got on Twitter around that time, 2009 or so.
Guest:And I was I've always been following what you do and then noticed, OK, writes about wrestlers.
Guest:I saw the Andre the Giant book that you put out.
Guest:And then Andy Kaufman, which is now in the news, very relevant for us to talk about because he's being inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.
Guest:And I will say this.
Guest:I was, in my teenage years, kind of obsessed with Andy Kaufman.
Guest:I think I came to it mostly because of the I'm from Hollywood documentary.
Guest:So I was already a huge wrestling fan.
Guest:And then I saw that I'm from Hollywood thing on Comedy Central or something.
Guest:They would replay it all the time.
Guest:This is like the exact...
Guest:method the same way I came to know about Andy Kaufman oh yeah I would guess most people our age because you know I knew taxi from when I was a kid I saw the reruns and whatnot and then what I wound up doing was just kind of there wasn't a way to go find that Jerry Lawler clip on Letterman right yeah so when you saw it on that documentary and saw him actually get smacked in the face it was like oh wait a minute and then they're showing I knew about the story of it but I didn't know all the stuff in Memphis I didn't know oh
Guest:that he was doing all of these television hits and sending tapes and the, you know, I'm from Hollywood tapes and all that, the promos.
Guest:So backfilling it became like this fascination for me.
Guest:And I was kind of devouring everything I could on Andy Kaufman.
Guest:And I don't know if you had this experience too, but I remember reading a bunch of books on him.
Guest:One was by Zamuda and I found the books to be all pretty lousy.
Guest:Like they did not capture anything.
Guest:Like this guy felt unknowable to me, even in these books that were supposed to let you know who he was.
Guest:And I'm like, wait, the whole thing is I'm trying to figure out who the hell Andy Kaufman is.
Guest:These books are not helpful.
Guest:So reading your book, Is This Guy For Real?
Guest:The Unbelievable Andy Kaufman.
Guest:This was the first time I actually think I know him.
Guest:It figures him out.
Guest:It's a great way to identify who Andy Kaufman is and why.
Guest:And I think fundamentally the wrestling persona that he adopted to be the intergender champion and that is...
Guest:foundational for everything in his life, understanding his comedy, understanding his stage shows, his just general persona.
Guest:It all comes from wrestling.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, like the stuff he was doing comedy wise, you were like, is this comedy?
Guest:Like he'd get out and like insult the audience and all this stuff like the Tony Clifton.
Yeah.
Guest:Stuff and other things like, you know, the way he would just play with the audience like that.
Guest:And I remember like watching, you know, I rewatched man on the moon and I just remember being like, this isn't, they make Andy seem like he's like a complete alien, like a total space cadet maniac, like just totally uncontrollable lunatic.
Yeah.
Guest:From doing research on him and watching all this stuff and knowing what I know about wrestling and talking to the wrestling people and talking to his brother, Michael, that's not what Andy was like.
Guest:He had a weird style of comedy for the time period.
Guest:He created a character, basically.
Guest:A persona that people can't tell if it's real or not, really.
Guest:What part of him is real and what's this character that he's doing?
Guest:That's what Andy's whole thing was.
Guest:The whole thing was that it was amusing to him and the people in on the joke.
Guest:You had to be in on it or else it really wasn't funny.
Guest:If you weren't in on the joke...
Guest:You were, you know, confused, maybe insulted.
Guest:And you were like, why is this funny at all?
Guest:But if you were in on the joke, if you knew what he was doing, then it becomes like so funny.
Guest:And, you know, that stuff is all pro wrestling related.
Guest:Like the concept of like just being mean to the audience is,
Guest:And trying to get the audience to hate you seems so out of place in a comedy club, but is 100% the role of a heel wrestler and has been for 100 years.
Guest:That's totally the entire point of what they do.
Guest:And so Andy was like...
Guest:you know, applying these other ways to deal with crowds and other ways to interact with the crowd.
Guest:Like he's like what happened in pro wrestling and brought it to his comedy and not just in his thing where he wrestled women, but also in his regular, you know, his comedy, he'd mess with the audience.
Guest:Like when he got out and just like read the great Gatsby,
Guest:to the crowd, like, and they were just getting more and more mad.
Guest:And like the stuff he did with Tony Clifton was so brilliant too, where he'd have like the whole audience put out their cigarettes and be like, this is a non-smoking for Tony Clifton has to maintain, you know, the quality of his voice.
Guest:And they make it seem like real serious.
Guest:People are all mad and putting up, you know, you could smoke back then putting out their cigarettes and,
Guest:And then Tony Clifton comes out smoking.
Guest:And it was just like, you know, all that stuff is like classic, like amazing heel stuff.
Marc:I just want to know, how did you get involved with, you know, what was your first knowledge of Andy Kaufman?
Marc:Was it the wrestling?
Marc:Was it the comedy?
Marc:Definitely.
Guest:It came from...
Guest:The I'm from Hollywood stuff.
Guest:But I remember seeing like on Comedy Central, they had I'm from Hollywood.
Guest:And they also had like another special that was mostly like a stand up.
Guest:I think that was a network special NBC or something.
Guest:And then it would get rerun on Comedy Central.
Guest:I remember exactly what you're talking about because they play them back to back usually.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So this was like 96 or 97.
Guest:I was like, you know, I grew up into pro wrestling.
Guest:So I was like 16 or something.
Guest:And I knew who Jerry the King Lawler was way before I knew who Andy Kaufman was, you know.
Guest:And so when I'm flipping through Comedy Central, I'm like, what the hell is Jerry the King Lawler doing on Comedy Central?
Guest:You know, and that's when I was that's what made me like stop and be like, what's the deal with Andy?
Guest:What's this Andy Kaufman thing?
Guest:And I ever talk to my mom about like my mom, who is not into pro wrestling or comedy, really.
Guest:Remembered this happening on Letterman.
Guest:And she was like, oh, yeah, the wrestler really beat him up.
Guest:Like she's still it was like, you know, 2010 or something.
Guest:And she still was like, yeah, that the pro wrestler really beat up Andy Kaufman on TV.
Guest:Andy wanted to get into pro wrestling.
Guest:You know, he was a fan as a kid.
Guest:And then as an adult, he would go to Madison Square Garden and Vince McMahon Sr.
Guest:Not just Vince McMahon Sr., but it was his it was his order.
Guest:But all of pro wrestling kind of thought that celebrities in pro wrestling was like a really bad thing.
Guest:Like it would, you know, pro wrestling is fake.
Guest:And at the time you had to pretend that it was real.
Guest:And so the idea that a celebrity would come in and wrestle made it seem like if this guy could come in and wrestle, then anybody could do it.
Guest:And like, it like lessens the effect that the actual pro wrestler has when they get to the ring.
Guest:Takes away from that.
Guest:That was the thinking.
Guest:So he found Memphis.
Guest:You know, he got he got in touch with, you know, he ended up meeting Bill after the photographer for Pro Wrestling Weekly is the editor, too.
Guest:And Pro Wrestling Illustrated, I'm sorry.
Guest:And he was talking to wrestling with him.
Guest:He calls up Jerry Lawler.
Guest:They set this whole thing up.
Guest:blah, blah, blah.
Guest:They set up a whole event in Memphis and they go on Letterman and they do this slap thing, this fake, you know, this fight that looks really real and there's swears in it and stuff.
Guest:And that event was,
Guest:That thing happening on Letterman made wrestling appeal appear like the most legitimate of like anything that happened in pro wrestling in decades.
Guest:Like it added so much legitimacy to like it did the exact opposite of what they thought that it would do.
Guest:And because it was the genius of Andy that did that because he made it seem so real on the Letterman show and played into the character so well.
Guest:So then when and then he went back to Memphis and he's doing he did like an entire run in Memphis, sending in tapes, doing multiple different in ring matches and stuff, doing interviews in the studio, sending in stuff, all kinds of stuff.
Guest:And when you're watching it, no celebrity, none.
Guest:And there's been infinite celebrities in pro wrestling at this point.
Guest:No one did it better than Andy Kaufman.
Guest:Andy Kaufman was as effective or more effective than the best heel wrestlers in the country at the time.
Guest:Like no one could really stand up to what he was doing and the effectiveness of how he was doing it.
Guest:Well, and part of that, don't you think that a lot of that has to do with he, you know, the best wrestlers like any real performance or sport or anything are the people who have put in their time and their reps.
Guest:And obviously there are ones who are just naturally talented.
Guest:But like if you become one of the greats, like you've done it really well over and over and over again.
Guest:And he already had.
Guest:He was a heel on the stage.
Guest:And he was also, even when he wasn't being the Tony Clifton character or the guy reading The Great Gatsby, and you identify this in the book, that the way he built the foreign man character, which became Latke, right?
Guest:He would draw it out.
Guest:And this delaying of the gratification of getting to the Elvis, right?
Guest:So if anybody's listening to this and you don't know what Andy Kaufman's bit was there, he would go on stage fully pretending that he was this foreign person from an unknown island somewhere.
Guest:And he had no jokes.
Guest:He would do the Mighty Mouse thing where he sang one lyric of Mighty Mouse and then go back to trying to do Impressions.
Guest:And it would go on and on.
Guest:And these impressions were just him saying, I am President Carter or whatever.
Guest:And then finally, when the audience is just kind of at their wits end, their patience is thin, they've been trying to be nice to this guy because they think this might be real, like he might be foreign.
Guest:And this is his first time on the stage.
Guest:And he cried at one point, right?
Guest:And then, boom, he does this full-on Elvis impersonation with the rhinestones and everything.
Guest:And he's just, it's this...
Guest:catharsis and that is wrestling like he roped him in roped him in roped him in and then boom got the pop and so you're saying he's the best celebrity at this and that's because even celebrities who get pulled into wrestling who like it right like Jon Stewart was a wrestling fan and they bring him in and he does a bit and it's fine but it still seems like a guy acting like he's in wrestling Andy was in it from the get go
Guest:Yes, he was it.
Guest:I mean, you watch any heel promo from the early 80s, and you can stand Andy Kaufman's stuff up right next to it.
Guest:And he's a believable character, a believable heel, a creative heel, obviously.
Guest:It really was not even fair.
Guest:He was so far away.
Guest:advanced and so and just so good at what he did and you're right like that was that's part of pro wrestling I was thinking about it the other day right because I'm starting a new book and the beginning of the book is kind of slow you're building up to something and it's like Bret Hart talked about this in pro wrestling how and he is an amazing storyteller in wrestling and
Guest:in the beginning of the match you want the audience bored like you want them like sitting on their hands so like that's like kind of what andy did in the he's got you're taking them off guard you're you're saying you know this is not going to be like a regular boring match and then slowly you're building building building so by the end the people are standing and jumping like on their seats like you've taken them on this journey and
Guest:And that's when you talk about storytelling and pro wrestling.
Guest:That's what they mean.
Guest:And that's what Andy was – he was brilliant at it.
Guest:And it was – in another world, Andy died in 84.
Guest:WrestleMania happened in 85 with a bunch of celebrities.
Guest:I think if Andy didn't die, he probably – they probably would have brought –
Guest:if not Lawler in also, Andy in to do something.
Guest:I thought it was really interesting how you lined up that there's similar impulses that led to both Andy and Jerry Lawler getting involved with wrestling, right?
Guest:It's like, well, like literally everyone we've ever talked to on this show, on WTF, and anyone I've ever talked to in my life about wrestling, if they're a fan, they're like, I got involved in it when I was a kid, right?
Guest:And it was no different for those two.
Guest:They're watching it on TV.
Guest:This is their escapism.
Guest:But they both had these very intense, driving, artistic impulses.
Guest:And the fact that Jerry Lawler essentially got involved through his art, through doing his drawings, and he gets pulled in.
Guest:And it's very similar with Andy.
Guest:And I think that that's probably...
Guest:It's also fascinating to me that Andy's from Long Island and he is, you know, fascinated with the guys who are coming through that Northeast loop.
Guest:So, and it's all the heels, Buddy Rogers, like that's the one he's really fascinated with.
Guest:Fast forward to today, you've got the AEW champion is Maxwell Jacob Friedman, another Jewish kid from Long Island who grew up doing the same things.
Guest:And also,
Guest:had these artistic impulses wanted to be an actor wanted mostly to just be performing he's on as five years old he's on the rosie o'donnell show singing a song right like that's the same as andy yeah yeah i mean it's it's you know this drive to perform you know but it's something else like with pro wrestling you are like essentially like you're the writer and the
Guest:there's more to it you're not just an you're not just the actor you're making up your own character your own lines and some in most cases until you get to like way at the top you know you're making up everything yourself it's such a creative you know endeavor and jay free that guy is amazing that guy is incredible and he's so young and but it with pro wrestling it's weird because you have to be like this uh
Guest:anomaly you have to be an anomaly yes because you have to be an artsy person like a person who's into the arts and somebody that's also into like sports that's right well that was the thing that mark identified when we went to the uh aew show in los angeles and we were backstage we were hanging out with the wrestlers we were in catering and he's just getting that kind of feel for all of them and he's like
Guest:Oh, these guys, they're coming in.
Guest:They're huge.
Guest:Everybody's ready to perform.
Guest:So they're looking jacked.
Guest:They're looking great.
Guest:They're looking tan.
Guest:But he's like, they're all much more like me than like an athlete, right?
Guest:Yeah, they're the kids that were in the play and stuff.
Guest:Like those kids in high school, the artsy kids.
Guest:And then you have to get jacked and ripped.
Guest:I mean, there's plenty of guys that come in from sports too.
Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, the people that are like, I'm going to become a wrestler from a childhood and they like push themselves in every direction to try to get on there.
Guest:Those people are always artsy art people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And the dudes that are like huge athletes that get into it later, they get recruited by guys like, you know, Jim Ross.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And somebody they go in and say, wow, this guy's freaking like Brock Lesnar.
Guest:You're like, holy shit, this guy's enormous.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, and I think also like from, you know, you have that scene in the book where he tries to meet Freddie Blassie and Freddie Blassie says, get the hell out of here and that.
Guest:And this idea of protecting kayfabe was, you know, a big part of the reason why I think, you know, in generations prior to Vince McMahon taking Wrestling National, you had a lot of guys who came from
Guest:you know, undesirable parts of society, right?
Guest:You had bouncers and bounty hunters, guys who, you know, were now going to try to make, exactly, mobsters, guys who are now going to try to make a legit buck, but doing something that was still essentially disreputable.
Guest:And now we're talking about all these generations of kids growing up watching Hulk Hogan, right?
Guest:Watching the rock and wrestling era, and then onward, watching Steve Austin, watching The Rock, watching John Cena.
Guest:And that's forming in their brains of
Guest:I want to be a superhero, right?
Guest:I want to be like, I've got these artistic impulses, but I, you know, I'm not, I'm also geared toward this, this thing.
Guest:Like I kind of want to be in this comic universe of wrestling and the, they move toward it as a alternative to, you know, whatever other kind of impulse they might've had.
Yeah.
Guest:We talk all the time about the similarities between pro wrestling comics, superhero comics especially.
Guest:It even followed the same trajectory in the sense that by the early 90s,
Guest:the bodies were so outrageously buffed up.
Guest:They were so steroided up before 95.
Guest:And right before then was when the extreme bodies came about in comics.
Guest:It's like there was something going on, something in the water in the mid-90s where they were like, all right, everybody's as big and as jacks as they could possibly be, but let's see what happens if we make them more...
Guest:jacked than that.
Guest:That's when you had the guys coming out.
Guest:If you look at pro wrestling in early 1990, everybody was so bloated even from the steroids.
Guest:A guy like Dino Bravo
Guest:Yeah, couldn't even put his arms down, right?
Guest:Yeah, he was like, couldn't even move, you know.
Guest:And like all the biggest, you know, all the most famous guys were like that.
Guest:It took a really long time for that to change.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And comics had, you know, both of them basically hit rock bottom in like the mid-90s because Marvel went bankrupt and, you know, WWE 1995 saw like the
Guest:you know, the lowest numbers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think that's their worst year of business was, was 95 and 96.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was like the same, this really similar and the same type of kids, you know, it's a super male power fantasy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In both of them.
Guest:But in both mediums, things have changed so much since then.
Guest:In the sense that in comics, the late 90s, you started to see really alternative comics coming to the forefront.
Guest:Stuff like Dan Klaus and Adrian Tamina and guys like that coming out.
Guest:And you're not just seeing superhero stuff.
Guest:And now there's an entirely broad...
Guest:like every genre is represented by comics.
Guest:And in pro wrestling, it's come a long way too.
Guest:I mean, you know, mid nineties, you didn't even have women's pro wrestling.
Guest:it didn't exist at all.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Not in this country, not in the U S it was just like totally gone.
Guest:You know, now there's, there's everybody type wrestler, all different characters.
Guest:You don't have to be a huge on steroids type person.
Guest:Um, you know, they're more, you know, smaller dudes are more creative in the ring.
Guest:It's just like a fact.
Guest:Um, and so like the business has come a long way.
Guest:AEW becoming a, uh,
Guest:legitimate competitor has made an enormous big deal for pro wrestling.
Guest:Well, and I wonder if this is the same as with comics, where AEW is essentially, you know, owned and run by a huge wrestling fan, right?
Guest:And that even with WWE, even though it's a, you know, massive global conglomerate now, it's, you know, publicly traded, it has, you know, ties to Saudi Arabia and NBC Universal and Fox.
Guest:And
Guest:But, you know, and Vince McMahon is still involved in the company and he's still involved in creative.
Guest:But the movement that's happened within there in the past years of people becoming more prominent in roles there are wrestlers who are from the generation that we're talking about here.
Guest:You know, Triple H and and then his compatriots that he's put in, you know, William Regal and and and and the Road Dog.
Guest:And these people are in roles of authority in WWE.
Guest:Well, they were also fans of wrestling when they were kids, you know, generally in our generation.
Guest:I know it's it's it's really it's because it didn't used to be like that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:People in management positions.
Yeah.
Guest:I mean, you could, you know, you could say that some of the management positions in the WWF have always been former wrestlers.
Guest:Yeah, but they were also former wrestlers who were like charged with keeping the Omerta, right?
Guest:Like they had to keep the code.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:You know, it's like Pat Patterson was like, you know, Vince's consigliere.
Guest:That's right, right.
Guest:And a lot of the promoters, that's what I'm saying, weren't like fans of the business.
Guest:They were just like scumbags that saw this.
Guest:That's a good way to con audiences out of money.
Guest:I mean, like marks.
Guest:I mean, that's the whole thing.
Guest:That's where that came from.
Marc:You know, in your book, you have a scene where Andy goes to Graceland and gets a private tour.
Marc:And did Elvis actually tape all of Andy's appearances?
Yeah.
Guest:I mean, that's what he says.
Guest:They say that it's been well-known.
Guest:He said a number of times that Andy did his favorite impression.
Guest:And I think there's a lot to that, too, because when people – anyone –
Guest:does an elvis impression they often the first thing they say is thank you very much right that was andy's thing that he said that was that was his thing that he said at the end because that's what foreign man was saying after all of his jokes thank you very much thank you very much then he does elvis and he says thank you very much and elvis's voice
Guest:And then everybody does.
Guest:It's like when the George H.W.
Guest:Bush impression from Saturday Night Live, that became everybody's Bush impression.
Guest:And that was Andy for Elvis, I think.
Guest:There's a million Elvis impersonators, all that stuff.
Guest:And, you know, as far as Elvis impersonators go, like, and he was like the most famous Elvis impersonator and he was really good at it.
Guest:And so like people copied his impression.
Guest:So a couple of things from the book that were revelations to me, and I want to ask you about them because, you know, if it's find out if they're really true.
Guest:So the,
Guest:When he fights Jerry Lawler and takes a pile driver and then goes to the hospital, obviously it was all kayfabe.
Guest:But there was always this story that he actually did get hurt.
Guest:And he actually, you know, something was identified in the hospital that he was hurt in that match.
Guest:But in your book, you ID it as scar tissue from a previous injury.
Guest:Is that true?
Guest:Yes, that's true.
Guest:true wow i've never never in anything else i've read about it it was even wrestling stuff the whole idea was he actually did get a little bit hurt by jerry lawler and and the weirdest thing was i never bought it because i've watched it so many times and i'm like that looks like the safest pile driver you'll ever see in your life it really really was and jerry lawler was such a safe worker yeah total pro you never hear about him injuring someone in wrestling never never so safe
Guest:But that's hilarious that it actually, even in the legend of it, they maintained this element of the kayfabe.
Guest:And he was nuts.
Guest:Nobody would do what he did because, you know, they would say things like, oh, he was in the hospital for a week.
Guest:But the guys never even went to the hospital.
Guest:They would just like say that.
Guest:This is Andy literally got a real ambulance, not a fake one, not a kayfabe ambulance, a real made him call like 911.
Guest:Come get him.
Guest:And he stayed in the hospital complaining about neck pain for three days.
Marc:Oh, so that was all real.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was all, you know, he's had no injury at all.
Guest:He was just maintaining that this wrestler beat him up so bad and put him in the hospital.
Guest:And he stayed in the hospital.
Guest:Well, then I also, I wonder if that was a established wrestling trope, or if it's, again, like the Elvis thing, is it something that Andy helped to usher into everyone emulating it, is the idea of a heel with an injury who leaves their protective measures, whatever gimmick they're using, whether it's a cast or a neck brace, leaves it on way too long.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:The fact that he's on Letterman and Letterman's like, do you still need that?
Guest:Yeah, I still have some pain.
Guest:And it's like, now to this day, if you hurt a manager and he has a cast or any guy, any heel, chicken shit heel, the cast is there forever.
Guest:It's like Bob Orton at WrestleMania 1.
Guest:He had that cast because he kept...
Guest:Hitting people with his cast.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:As a foreign object.
Guest:I wonder if Andy has helped to popularize that.
Guest:Now, do you know, I'd always heard, I think from Dave Meltzer or some chronicle of the Andy stuff in Memphis that I read that it didn't maintain huge business, right?
Guest:Like that it kind of went off.
Yeah.
Guest:That's what I spoke with Jim Cornette about this.
Guest:He was like there for all of this stuff.
Guest:He was a photographer actually at the first, he was like 16 or something at the first time Andy was there.
Guest:And he was there for the night that he went in the ambulance and all that stuff.
Guest:So he gave me some inside info.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:about that stuff and he said that yeah that they you know it was hot but no hotter than their other hot businesses right in Memphis you know and eventually trailed off just like all every gimmick all wrestling eventually you got to move on to something else eventually and tickets started going down so they had to like
Guest:do something else.
Guest:You know, they would do crazy stuff in Memphis, like whatever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But yeah, the business, you know, he would have had to, he ran its, it ran its course.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Which happens.
Guest:Just happens.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So they would have had to either give them a new storyline or,
Guest:Uh, or move on to another territory.
Guest:I also got to just tip my hat to you for there's a, there's a scene.
Guest:I think, uh, it's when Andy goes to have dinner with Blassie in your book and there's, they're at a restaurant, it's a Danny's restaurant or something.
Guest:And on the sign, it says, grab them cakes.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Reference to.
Guest:Was the Junkyard Dogs theme song.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I always like throw little references to pro wrestling in my work all the time.
Guest:Like even stuff that's not wrestling related.
Guest:Well, so that's interesting.
Guest:You have the Andre book, right, is a wrestling book.
Guest:And then, you know, the other things you've done are largely what?
Guest:How would you describe them?
Guest:You'd say biographical or.
Guest:Some are biographical, just nonfiction generally.
Guest:Sometimes I call them documentary comics or something like that.
Guest:I did one about Tetris, which isn't about a person, but about an event that occurred.
Guest:I did one about the history of cannabis.
Guest:I just illustrated one about Vladimir Putin, but I was just the illustrator.
Guest:It was written by a legitimate
Guest:Putin expert.
Guest:And now the one you've got coming out later this year is called The He-Man Effect, which I will be reading because you and I have talked about this before when Mark wanted to cite something you were saying about it on the show.
Guest:I asked for your permission and asked for some research sources on it.
Guest:And it's because this general idea of the toy industry of the 80s kind of being the, I don't know, what would you call them?
Guest:The progenitors of like modern fan culture?
Guest:I mean, it was just a change in the culture where we decided to give corporations full access to children.
Guest:Things change.
Guest:It wasn't always like that.
Guest:And it was like at a time when we knew that it was bad, like the research had already been done.
Guest:like that children can't tell the difference between commercials and TV shows and all this information already was out there.
Guest:And we made a conscious decision, not us, but United States.
Guest:And it started under Carter before Reagan even got there, but Reagan finished the job and it decided that's totally unregulate children's television.
Guest:Basically.
Guest:The guy at the time said that, um,
Guest:television is just like a toaster with images on it.
Guest:So that's all we need to do is regulate it the same way we would regulate a toaster, make sure nobody's getting electrocuted, but that's it.
Guest:And, um,
Guest:I think we all kind of knew all of us growing up at that time period.
Guest:Um, we, all the boys have like this fond remembrance for He-Man and all this stuff.
Guest:Um, but I didn't realize that it was like how, um, nefarious the whole thing was until like later on when I was like in a fully like an adult, like in my thirties and, um,
Guest:I was just seeing how wild people were getting.
Guest:The stuff that would happen when a Star Wars character would be shown in a one-second clip in the trailer and then get pushed off of Twitter by Star Wars maniacs.
Guest:They did a Lone Ranger movie.
Guest:And nobody gave a shit about it.
Guest:You didn't see any boomers being like, oh, this isn't Johnny Depp shouldn't be playing this character.
Guest:Right.
Guest:None of that shit happened at all.
Guest:So I was like, what?
Guest:happened here.
Guest:Something happened that made people nuts.
Guest:And I took it back to this thing where they deregulated advertising and made us all into just like insane consumers where our most precious memories are full of branded characters that still exist and are still being sold to us.
Guest:Like...
Guest:You know, you go to like a toy convention and it's like people are still getting super rich and wealthy off advertising that was done in 1982.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like we've always had this like obsession with the past and nostalgia being as like a good thing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So even when Disney got started, their first productions were like,
Guest:Not stuff that they made.
Guest:It was stuff that was already popular when like Walt Disney played Peter Pan in his like high school production.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So Peter Pan was already a well-known story.
Guest:They just were like, oh, people have nostalgia for this.
Guest:The adults are going to bring the kids.
Guest:It's like this perfect scam.
Right.
Guest:Where you just like constantly are recruiting, people are recruiting their own children to be consumers for life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, it's brutal.
Guest:It's just that I like, part of me is like, what?
Guest:I'm such a...
Guest:Such a buzzkill here.
Guest:Everybody's having like this nice time, you know?
Guest:Well, but, you know, I guess, but there's also the idea that these were some of the worst people in the world who, you know, were like, there's some quote from a toy executive about He-Man.
Guest:And when they created and he was like, yeah, we pummeled He-Man into their little pea brains.
Guest:And he's so proud of it and happy to do it.
Guest:So that Netflix documentary, The Toys That We Love or something, was kind of like the inspiration for this because I was like, it's so fluffy and light and happy.
Guest:Look at all this happy stuff we remember.
Guest:And I'm like, this is killing people.
Guest:This is making people insane.
Guest:And the thing that always comes back is that things were not better then.
Guest:Everybody's like, oh, things were great in 1983.
Guest:It was so good back then.
Guest:I want to go back then and just play with my He-Mans.
Guest:And the world was a much shittier place back then.
Guest:The further you go back, the shittier it is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:So that kind of made me so crazy going into that and then just doing research in it and seeing the indifference of the executives and the White House and just everyone.
Guest:No one saw anything wrong with this.
Guest:And now we're living with the consequences of it.
Guest:Well, I'm excited.
Guest:It's in July, right?
Guest:Is that when it comes out?
Guest:7-Eleven, it comes out.
Guest:7-Eleven, oh, where you would buy your comics.
Guest:This is the He-Man effect, how American toy makers sold you your childhood.
Guest:But for most of this time, we've been talking about, is this guy for real, the unbelievable Andy Kaufman by Box Brown?
Guest:Brian, it's been awesome talking with you about this.
Guest:I
Guest:couldn't think of a better person when i saw andy kaufman was inducted in the hall of fame uh i thought you know everybody's going to talk to bill after and you know there's there's all these people who know about the memphis stuff but uh i i don't i don't believe i've read anything about andy kaufman that got to the core of him as much as this so uh congrats on that and thanks for doing this thank you so much for having me on
Guest:Let's go!
Guest:Andy always dreamed of wrestling Andy always dreamed of wrestling
Guest:That song is Andy Always Dreamed of Wrestling.
Guest:That's by The Bobs.
Guest:The Bobs are also the group that did Andy Kaufman's theme music, which you heard at the beginning of that interview.
Guest:He actually would come out to the ring to that music, which is awesome.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:And they were like a acapella band out of San Francisco in the 80s.
Guest:Very cool that The Bobs not only paid tribute to Andy Kaufman, but were his theme music.
Guest:which I still play.
Guest:I still have them in a playlist to this day.
Guest:Of course you do.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Well, thank you again to Brian Box Brown for talking to us.
Guest:Is This Guy For Real?
Guest:The Unbelievable Andy Kaufman is his book, which you can get wherever you get books.
Guest:It's from 2018, so it's available in paperback or...
Guest:Kindle, whatever digital format you want.
Guest:And I love talking to him and I love that book.
Guest:Did you get a chance to read it, Chris?
Guest:I sure did.
Marc:I got it on the Kindle.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:It looks great on the Kindle.
Marc:And I got to say, reading that book, man, it really had all these memories bubble up for me that are so...
Marc:In the recesses of my mind, there would be callers who were sick to their stomach at the thought of me boxing women, and I would just cut a promo on them, call them a pencil neck, blue-collar dummy, doesn't know anything.
Guest:Wait, wait.
Guest:So you would just do that without like they didn't tell you, hey, you should be doing this thing like a heel like Andy Kaufman.
Marc:No.
Guest:You just did it.
Marc:They would tell me, dude, rip into this guy.
Marc:And that's what I would do.
Marc:And if I knew that I was doing an Andy Kaufman fucking bit, I would have enjoyed it much more.
Guest:Wait, but so now you've said that multiple times.
Guest:You've said that you would have enjoyed it much more.
Guest:Was your memory of it that you, what did you, what were you thinking at the time?
Guest:You were, you thought it was just deplorable.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:At the time I was like, what, what the hell am I doing?
Marc:Like I, I'm, I'm not someone who is picking a fight with callers and boxing women.
Marc:And like, I think we, I know.
Guest:Who are the women?
Marc:The callers who would come in and, and I would, I would box just strangers.
Marc:I swear to God.
Marc:I'm hoping there's no documentation of this, but there would be there was one match.
Marc:I think there was like one of my final matches.
Marc:It was we were both handcuffed behind our back and we had to like get one of us get like a shirt off.
Marc:And that was that was the bit.
Marc:And like, oh, my God.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:This is so like, first of all, it's so like classic, like 90s talk radio, stern copy.
Marc:And it also, it was for the radio.
Marc:No one could see it.
Marc:It's not like we had a webcam or anything.
Marc:They were just for the radio.
Guest:But that was the whole thing.
Guest:That was the stern thing.
Guest:Like, if you just say you have lesbians on there doing lesbian things, you are going to get good ratings, right?
Guest:Like, it was all bullshit.
Guest:But that's so funny that these guys were, like, just running classic wrestling storylines through you.
Marc:Yeah, without me knowing.
Marc:So, yeah, it was great reading that book.
Marc:I highly recommend it.
Marc:I do not recommend boxing women.
Yeah.
Guest:I'm glad you got a chance to read it.
Guest:I'm glad we got a chance to talk to Brian.
Guest:I will watch the Hall of Fame ceremony to see.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:They haven't announced yet who's going to induct him.
Guest:Maybe they will by the time we air this.
Guest:Oh, I mean, it has to be Jerry the King, right?
Guest:Or is he...
Guest:I would think so, but he had a stroke recently, and so I don't know what his health situation is.
Guest:I would hope that he's well enough that he could do it.
Guest:If he doesn't, I don't know, maybe they're going to go try to get Jim Carrey.
Guest:They usually try to do something like that, like land a pretty high-profile name.
Guest:So we'll see.
Guest:I don't know if Jim Carrey will want to be involved with it.
Guest:So you went to YouTube and watched the clip of it, like the full Letterman appearance?
Guest:Yeah, it was like two or three segments.
Guest:Yeah, had you ever seen it before?
Guest:I did, yeah.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:You saw it for real, not just the version that they did in the movie?
Marc:Oh, that's a good question.
Marc:I think actually I only saw it from the movie.
Marc:So this is my first time seeing it.
Guest:So that was like the recreation of it, right?
Marc:Yes, yeah.
Guest:Do you know what I think is the greatest thing about that clip?
Guest:And Brian details it pretty well in the book is how the crowd was booing Jerry Lawler when he came out.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because he's like the, you know, guy from Memphis that they're in New York.
Guest:He must be the he he's the.
Guest:He's a big burly wrestler.
Guest:Andy Kaufman is the fun comedian they've seen on the show before.
Guest:They know him as Laka, like they're gonna cheer for him.
Guest:And he came out and over the course of, I don't know, what would you say?
Guest:It was eight minutes or so?
Guest:He turns the crowd against him.
Guest:By not doing anything to the crowd.
Guest:He is not... No cheap heat.
Guest:It's just fully his character of being a total asshole to Jerry Lawler, a complete wimp who does not want anything...
Guest:He's going to talk about how he could have sued.
Guest:And Letterman points out that this neck brace, he's had it on for months now.
Guest:And he's like, I'm still a little sore.
Guest:He does everything perfectly to get this crowd against him and then continues to needle Jerry Lawler to the point.
Guest:Now, again, as I said to Brian, I never know how much of this stuff is real or not, even when people are still telling the story to this day.
Guest:Because like I said, you've got plenty of wrestlers that were like, well, yeah, they kayfabed going to the hospital, but he actually did really hurt his neck.
Guest:And as Brian pointed out, no, he didn't.
Guest:Like they found scar tissue from an old injury that he had when he was a kid, but not really hurting his neck.
Guest:Well, you know, to this day, Jerry Lawler maintains that they did not plan to hit him.
Guest:In fact, he said that Andy raised it as a possibility.
Guest:What if, what if you just slugged me?
Guest:And he's like, they'd arrest me and then they wouldn't air the bit.
Guest:Like, we gotta be careful here.
Guest:Like we want this to go on TV.
Guest:And so to this day, Lawler maintains that him standing up and slapping Andy Kaufman was totally ad libbed.
Guest:And it was just that in the moment he was being so annoyed that
Guest:by Andy's character and in his own mind as the character of Jerry the King Lawler, he was like, well, I wouldn't stand for this.
Guest:I would not sit here as the character I play all the time and put up with a guy talking to me like this.
Guest:I would slap the taste out of his mouth.
Guest:So he did.
Guest:Right.
Marc:And in the book, he mentions that, you know, Andy was giving him, you know, cues with his hands.
Marc:And I kept on trying to find the cues on the, you know, in the clip.
Marc:And I couldn't find it.
Marc:You're probably very, you know, you're very good at picking up on hand cues.
Marc:Could you tell when Andy was motioning to Jerry to, hey, you know, you know, hit me or anything?
Guest:I don't know if I.
Guest:I don't know if I've noticed anything physical, but I guarantee it's part of how Andy knew how far to push things verbally.
Guest:That like, you know, if he's starting to attack him in his manhood, right?
Guest:Like you're not much of a man if you're, you know.
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:And like that kind of stuff will escalate to a point where, well, now this guy is going to have to get physical.
Guest:So I think Andy was probably the cues, whether there were physical ones or not.
Guest:He was absolutely leaving him no choice in character to let it stand.
Marc:So how did that air?
Marc:I mean, did you, were you, I guess you weren't around, right?
Marc:When did you watch that clip?
Guest:Oh, I was a little kid.
Guest:I had no knowledge of it.
Guest:I didn't know about it until seeing it on, I believe it was that network special we were talking about with Brian.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:And they showed a clip of it.
Guest:That was where they showed the clip of the famous sketch that he did as part of that show Fridays, where he screws up a sketch in the middle of it.
Guest:And him and Michael Richards start throwing food at each other.
Guest:And it was another one of these things where, is that real or is it fake?
Guest:And I remember seeing all those clips.
Guest:And those were part of the things that got into my head of like, oh, this guy, Andy Kaufman, what an amazing guy.
Guest:I should learn everything I can about him.
Guest:So, yeah, but it wasn't until much later that I saw all of the wrestling stuff.
Guest:And then Mark talked to Dave about it.
Guest:Like Dave Letterman, when he was on WTF, it was one of the first times that anyone involved with it ever, like, really talked through the entire process of it.
Guest:Where he's like, oh, yeah, those guys came to me.
Guest:They said they were going to do this.
Guest:It was...
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:He even, Dave, in the aftermath of it for years and years and years, kind of treated it like it was a thing that shouldn't have happened.
Guest:Like whenever he'd be asked about it in an interview, he'd be like, you know, like, oh, yeah, I wasn't a fan of that happening on my show.
Guest:Like I would, you know, rather if people are going to do a wrestling angle that they don't do it on my show or whatever.
Guest:And he knew all of it.
Guest:Like he was 100% in the whole thing.
Guest:And he talked to Mark about that.
Marc:And so when he talked to Mark, was he like, yeah, no, like, so he finally broke, you know.
Guest:Yeah, I know.
Guest:And it didn't even seem like he was breaking.
Guest:He was just kind of, it was like, oh, yeah, crazy.
Guest:And Andy, yeah, he was fun, man.
Guest:He just wanted to do this thing.
Guest:I remember he came to us and they talked about it.
Yeah.
Marc:He was talking about it like wistfully, nostalgically, right?
Marc:Wow.
Marc:What episode for our new subscribers, like what episode is the David Letterman episode so they can check it out?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:It wasn't that long ago.
Guest:It was May 30th, 2019.
Guest:And that's episode 1023, 1023.
Guest:Awesome.
Guest:David Letterman.
Guest:Really one of our great episodes, like a fantastic, fantastic conversation.
Guest:Speaking of great things, before we wrap up here, I want us to talk about something.
Guest:I'm not even going to ask you what I normally ask you about.
Guest:What's the best thing that you saw in wrestling?
Guest:Because on Wednesdays, AEW Dynamite on TBS, they had a match with Kenny Omega, who's one of the best wrestlers in the company, probably one of the best wrestlers in the world.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And a wrestler from AAA in Mexico.
Guest:Named El Hijo del Viquingo.
Marc:I'm so glad you got to pronounce that because I would not be able to pronounce that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's no Andy Kaufman.
Guest:But so this match was billed as a dream match because these two guys were going to fight each other two years ago and an injury prevented that from happening.
Guest:It was going to be part of a big show in Mexico.
Guest:Didn't happen.
Guest:Instead...
Guest:It suddenly, all of a sudden, cropped up on social media last week that this match was going to happen on AEW Dynamite with no further announcement.
Guest:Just all of a sudden is going to happen.
Guest:It turns out this is when this guy, Vikingo, was available.
Guest:And they do the match.
Guest:They had a few video packages to set it up and make it, you know, give a little context to what was going on.
Guest:But otherwise, all you kind of knew was that Kenny Omega was going to fight this guy who's a great champion.
Guest:Sensational champion wrestler in Mexico.
Guest:And Chris, what would you say transpired in this match?
Marc:Like Superman showed up and just started doing fucking flips in the air?
Marc:Holy fucking shit.
Guest:What did I just watch?
Guest:It defied logic.
Guest:It was like the things these men were doing...
Guest:Did not seem like what human beings can do.
Guest:It was funny.
Guest:It's this thing I remember.
Guest:I think it was Alan King was talking about Robin Williams once.
Guest:And they were talking about it in a documentary setting.
Guest:So I don't even remember what it was from.
Guest:But it was the comedian Alan King.
Guest:And he said, you know, when a bunch of golfers saw Jack Nicklaus for the first time...
Guest:And he was on the PGA Tour.
Guest:There's one of these famous golfers said, I am not familiar with the game he plays.
Guest:Oh, funny.
Guest:And he's like, that's what I felt when I first saw Robin Williams.
Guest:Like I had no idea what he was doing.
Guest:And it seemed so far beyond anything I'd ever learned in comedy.
Guest:And I got to imagine if you talk to a pro wrestler today, hey, what'd you guys think of that match the other night on Dynamite?
Guest:They would probably, 99% of them would say a very similar thing.
Guest:Hey, I got no idea what those guys were doing because I could never do that in my life.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, there were so many spots from the very jump.
Marc:And I got to say, the camera work was ready for it.
Marc:They did those pan shots wide.
Marc:And all of a sudden, Kenny's on the outside.
Marc:And all of a sudden, this guy is just torpedoing out of the middle rope.
Marc:It was awesome.
Guest:He hadn't even taken his entrance gear off yet.
Guest:So it's this big flowing cape that's made out of fur.
Guest:And you just see, it looks like a flying squirrel just darting across the ring and just jumping over out of nowhere onto Kenny Omega.
Guest:And then he does another flip onto Kenny Omega.
Guest:Then he brings him in the ring and does like a reverse hurricanrana on Kenny Omega.
Guest:And I just, within that first 30 seconds, all I remember thinking to myself was,
Guest:Oh, I'm in good hands here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like these guys, like, you know, sometimes you hear about these matches and it's going to involve a guy, a luchador from Mexico.
Guest:There's going to be a lot of flips and a lot of gymnastics.
Guest:And you do kind of wonder like, oh yeah, are they going to do something dangerous?
Guest:Are they going to screw things up?
Guest:Because it's going to involve like a triple jump on multiple ropes and
Guest:And it was going to get a little bit like you're like, yeah, he kind of hit that move, but he didn't.
Guest:As soon as I saw these guys go for about 30 seconds, I was like, oh, we are in good hands.
Guest:Like these guys are going to deliver.
Guest:And they delivered everything.
Guest:There was not a single botch.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:The table spot was frankly the highlight of all highlights.
Marc:I actually told my wife, I was like, hey, you should watch this.
Marc:And yeah, we saw Kenny Omega take out the table.
Marc:I was like, well, usually that's a bad news for the guy who takes out the table.
Marc:Hmm.
Marc:Probably going to go through it soon.
Marc:And sure enough, I mean, first of all, AEW has new ropes.
Marc:Did you notice the red, white, and blue ropes?
Marc:Yeah, red, white, and blue.
Marc:It looked like old WWF ropes from when I was a kid.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And the fact that this guy ran across the ring and then back hit the fucking middle rope and did, how many 360s did he do?
Guest:He did like three.
Guest:They called it a 630.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that's essentially like, so full rotation would be 360.
Guest:Two full rotations would be 720.
Guest:So he basically rotated his body one and three quarter times.
Marc:I mean, that's something that if I was playing a video game, I'm like, oh, look, my video game's broken.
Marc:I'm doing all these weird things that I'm not able to do.
Marc:This guy fucking did it and nailed it.
Marc:I mean...
Marc:Like, just holy shit was being screamed out.
Marc:And yeah, that was the best fucking thing I've seen in a long, long time.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:If anyone is listening to this and you haven't had a chance to see it, go to AEW's YouTube page.
Guest:They put a lot of clips up there.
Guest:If you have, like, the TBS app and a cable subscription, go back and watch it.
Guest:It is... I mean...
Guest:There's there are very few things this week that will be worth your time as much as that.
Guest:And especially if you're listening to this because you if you listen to this because you enjoy wrestling, you owe it to yourself to see it.
Guest:If you listen to this and you do not like wrestling and you just kind of keep the show on because it's here and you think maybe these chumps will say something amusing one of these days.
Guest:I can promise you this.
Guest:If you watch that match, you will not be bored or disappointed or you won't think you watched something silly.
Guest:You will think you watched something spectacular, like a circus act or a daredevil stunt.
Guest:Somebody, you know, Evil Knievel jumping the Snake River Canyon, you know, like you will have watched something.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And they did this again for free.
Marc:I don't know how AEW does this.
Marc:You know how they do it?
Guest:They have a guy who is worth billions of dollars who funds it.
Guest:And you know who he is?
Guest:A wrestling fan like you and me.
Guest:Like he is just like a nerd who wants to see the coolest shit.
Guest:And he has billions of dollars so he can make it happen.
Guest:Bravo to Tony Khan.
Marc:Yeah, seriously.
Marc:Oh my God.
Guest:Well, yes, please go enjoy that if you haven't seen it.
Guest:And we will hope to see something equally as cool next week.
Guest:It is WrestleMania season next week, so maybe we'll talk about some of that and perhaps have some more guests.
Guest:I've got some things lined up.
Guest:We'll see if it's happening next week or not.
Guest:But until then, I am Brendan.
Guest:That is Chris.
Guest:Peace.
Guest:Take care.