Andy Kaufman/Tony Clifton on the HBO Young Comedians Special, 1977, conclusion.
Andy Kaufman as Tony Clifton with remarkably little disguise. Excerpt from the HBO Young Comedians Special, 1977, part 3.
Andy Kaufman on the 1977 HBO Young Comedians Special, part 2.
“Right now I’d like to do a comedy routine.”
With these words—far more on-the-nose than a comic doing an actual comedy routine would EVER lead with—Andy Kaufman gets a laugh, and kicks off one of his finest performances, in the HBO Young Comedians Special of 1977, collected here in four clips.
Never mind that this first clip opens with “Thank you very much, that was Gallagher” from host David Steinberg; we leave that crap behind, and what follows is a spectacle of showmanship. Most of Andy’s TV guest appearances are one five or ten-minute spot featuring one premise, but here he segues from one immersive conceit to the next—starting, uncharacteristically, with what appears to be straightforward standup.
"Gozer the Gozerian! Good evening. As a duly designated representative of the city, county, and state of New York, I order you to cease any and all supernatural activity and return forthwith to your place of origin, or to the nearest convenient parallel dimension."
— That oughta do it, thanks very much, Ray.
The war stories women of the United States Military tell don’t sound a thing like myths from people who oppose the U.S. military’s evolving new rules about women in combat
Lt. Tina Turner
[Via Kelly Sue DeConnick]
