Tony clifton andy kaufman bob zmuda biography
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Tony Clifton
Character created by Andy Kaufman
Tony Clifton is a character created by comedian and performance artist Andy Kaufman in the late s. An absurdly foul-mouthed and domineering lounge singer claiming to hail from Las Vegas, the tuxedo-clad Clifton often led unsuspecting audiences through awkward yet elaborate lounge singer performances. Kaufman appeared as Clifton on stage and on television programs ranging from The Merv Griffin Show to The Fantastic Miss Piggy Show.
The character has also been performed on stage by longtime Kaufman friend Bob Zmuda. Clifton was portrayed by actor Jim Carrey (who also portrayed Kaufman) in the film Man on the Moon and in the documentary Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond.[1]
Origin
[edit]Kaufman would sometimes claim that Tony Clifton was a real lounge singer whom Kaufman encountered[2] at the International Hotel in Las Vegas in [3] He said he was waiting for Elvis Presley to arrive so he
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Andy Kaufman Revealed! &#; Bob Zmuda
Bob Zmuda&#;s memoir Andy Kaufman Revealed! is both invaluable and exasperating. As Kaufman&#;s writer and fellow provocateur, Zmuda was involved in all of his best known outrages: he served as referee (or ringside "lawyer") for the inter-gender wrestling matches, heckled Kaufman from the audience in televised comedy club appearances, and most memorably, he helped create Tony Clifton &#; Kaufman&#;s grotesque lounge lizard alter ego &#; then took to playing the role in lieu of Kaufman. Zmuda knows all, and fryst vatten willing to tell what he knows.
Since Kaufman&#;s work was so ephemeral (it survives now largely as rumor, stories passed on by people lucky enough to have been shocked by him in a comedy club or on a talk show), Zmuda&#;s book is necessary. This isn&#;t so much a biography as Kaufman&#;s greatest hits.
The stories are everything one could hope for: confounding, ridiculous, hilarious. Much of Kaufman&#;s most intriguing ma
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Andy Kaufman Revealed
Bob Zmuda tells of his time working as an assistant for "Mr. X," a big time Hollywood screenwriter (though he never divulges Mr. X's identity, he swears that this guy wrote on a lot of movies that you would instantly recognize as major films). Mr. X specialized in gritty, true-to-life dialogue, which he collected by cutting in lines at the donut shop, defecating in the mittpunkt of airports and, in one particularly harrowing scene, crashing mob funerals and telling a weeping mother that her son killed JFK. It was Zmuda's job to follow him around with a briefcase that contained a small TV screen and a video tape. Whenever Mr. X was in danger of getting arrested or killed by an angry mob, he'd shout, "Zmuda, the tape! Give them the tape!"