Talk:Andy Kaufman

Punishing the audience

The article says, 'In the fictionalized version of Kaufman's life, Man on the Moon, Kaufman would punish such audiences by reading the novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald to them. The film depicted audiences laughing at this, not realizing that he was serious, with Kaufman proceeding to read the entire book to them in passive-aggressive frustration, despite most of the audience members' departure.'

Does it mean that he didn't really do this in real life, is it partially true, or completely true? The text is unclear.--86.173.213.247 (talk) 15:35, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Not only are you correct that it was confusingly written, but the cited source says nothing at all about "punishing" the audience, and it was was POV about audiences laughing when they were purportedly being punished. Best I can tell, that was an overzealous fan adding his personal interpretation. Good catch. I've removed it. --Tenebrae (talk) 00:27, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Fan site

Why are we using the fan site Andykaufman.jvlnet.com. as a reference source? The site's owner, B.K. Momchilov, is not a published or otherwise recognized authority on Kaufman, and if the material is simply taken from publicly available sources, then we should go to those sources. I don't know if we need to go to the trouble of an RfC since this fan site violates WP:RS, but anyone wanting to discuss the issue in the next few days please do, because I'm planning to go through its claims one-by-one and if RS sources don't confirm the claims, I'm removing them. --Tenebrae (talk) 00:24, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

I removed the Note statement.

I removed the following statement, "Note, however, that Simon's association with Taxi did not begin until the show's third season, and he was not a witness to the Tony Clifton appearance described below." It doesn't sound encyclopedic, and it doesn't matter when Simon was on Taxi. It's Simon's statement that's important. Paige Matheson (talk) 20:58, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

Mental Illness Section

This section appears to be an inserted link for the last reference's book sales. All but one reference is just links to other general Wiki pages such as Mental Illness, just coded to appear as a numeric reference, and the one "source" is to a fictional book that randomly assigns mental illness to famous people in the view of an 8 year old child. At no time has any sourcing noted (other than casual discussion in retrospect of 40 years later), nor any biographies or any other sources stated Kaufmnan was at all mentally ill, let alone a laundry list of mental health diagnosis.

This page has gone through a lot of editing in the last several months, particularly for someone deceased for so long. Probably should be watched for other odd editing in the recent wars/erroneous info. Seola (talk) 05:02, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Removal of father's middle name

I've removed Andy's father's middle name, which biographer Bill Zehme purports to be Robert. His conscription records from World War II lists a middle initial of L., which I've been told stood for Lawrence. With only one source claiming Robert, and a primary source contesting that, I've removed it. -- Zanimum (talk) 22:50, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

New Infobox picture

So I saw I got my Public Domain pics were reverted for the infobox, there's this picture I found on an Ebay listing that I've already checked that wasn't registered by ABC during the 5 year Period that was required for Copyrights during 78-89.

p.d.:Why does it need to be consensus to replace a "Fair Use" image to one that's free? Hyperba21 (talk) 21:18, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

A freely licensed image is always superior to fair use, except in cases where the former is illegible noise. No clue why anyone would undo that. ―Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:26, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Comedian

I think we should consider calling Kaufman a comedian in the lede. It currently reads that he was an "American entertainer and performance artist. While often called a "comedian", Kaufman preferred to describe himself instead as a "song and dance man". He has sometimes been called an "anti-comedian". He disdained telling jokes and engaging in comedy as it was traditionally understood, once saying in an interview, "I am not a comic, I have never told a joke. The comedian's promise is that he will go out there and make you laugh with him. My only promise is that I will try to entertain you as best I can" I have a few thoughts on that.

Firstly, it seems that we are refraining from calling him a comedian mainly due to his own self-definition; he didn't call himself one and said he'd never told a joke. That's all well and good but a lot of artists refute being pigeonholed like this. Green Day famously don't like being called pop punk. Nirvana said they weren't a grunge band. It shouldn't have a major bearing on how we define these artists if the sources are there to say otherwise - and there are a lot of sources we could find that describe Kaufman as a comedian. I think we are being a little biased by not describing him as one.

Secondly, it is mentioned that he has been called an anti-comedian. He often is, but anti-comedy is comedy - our page for it says so, too. Anti-comedy is also not something that is unique to Kaufman, but by not calling him a comedian in our lede, we are anointing him with a kind of exceptionalism that seems off for Wikipedia.

I would propose we refer to him as "a comedian and performance artist" in the lede. What do we think? Humbledaisy (talk) 14:52, 25 October 2024 (UTC)