Tiffany Hansen: This is All of It. I'm Tiffany Hansen in for Alison Stewart today. In the pantheon of American comedy, few acts have raised more eyebrows than Andy Kaufman. From his iconic rendition of the Mighty Mouse theme song on SNL to his brash, aggressive, and just plain mean alter ego, Tony Clifton, Kaufman found the funny in some pretty strange and often very uncomfortable spaces. He wanted to leave his audiences wondering where the bit ended and where reality began. He even saw his very real terminal disease, lung cancer, as an opportunity to mess with people, toying with the possibility of faking his own death.
The film Thank You Very Much, directed by Alex Braverman, brings fresh insight and never-before-seen footage to the screen, including interviews with his closest friends and colleagues. (Andes, by the way, not Alex's—I'm assuming, Alex, we didn’t put all your friends in here, right?) It's been getting praise at film festivals since 2023 and will now be released tomorrow in limited theaters. Alex Braverman is here to discuss the film and the life of one of entertainment's most enigmatic figures. The director is Alex Braverman. Alex, we're glad you're here.
Alex Braverman: Thanks for having me.
Tiffany Hansen: All right, let's talk about Andy Kaufman. So the film opens with Andy—I assume it's his voice, right?—talking about the structure of film. And he says, We start with the climax, and then there's a minute of silence. He calls for a minute of silence. So what is he—first of all, what's he talking about there? And why did you want to start with that? What does it illustrate about him that you think, We just got to get right out of the gate?
Alex Braverman: Well, I believe that he—right out of the gate he wants to play with your idea of expectation and structure. I think for someone walking into the Improv or Catch a Rising Star in the '70s who was unaware of him, they're coming in with a certain expectation of What is your job as a performer? and What is my job as an audience member? And there's an expectation of how this is going to go. I think we just wanted to open with a bit that (A) no one had seen before, to signal this is a film that's going to have a lot of material on Kaufman that you weren’t aware of, and (B) to set the mood and say, This is going to go up and down and left and right and all over the place, but at the end, you’ll be left with something special.
Tiffany Hansen: I want to talk about his call for silence there in a little bit, but let's talk about that up and down and all over the place. Because you take us through his life in a mostly linear way, but not totally linear. I'm curious why you decided to do that and how you see that as different. We're talking about stuff that people haven't seen in other documentaries. How do you think that differs—what you've got here versus the other documentaries that have been done about him?
Alex Braverman: Well, you know, it's 2025. He hasn't been around since 1984. And I think for a lot of people my age—which I'll just leave that vague for now—my generation was introduced to him in the late '90s with Man on the Moon. I'm aware of the fact that there are a lot of people who remember him from SNL, and then there are a lot of people who are going to be coming to this film—
Tiffany Hansen: Taxi.
Alex Braverman: Taxi, of course. There's going to be hopefully people coming to this film that aren’t aware of him at all. So the film is structured in a way where we don’t begin at the beginning of his life—we really begin at the beginning of his career. Because I feel like to understand his story, his life story, you actually kind of need to understand who he was as a performer before diving into his upbringing, his childhood, to understand why he was the way he was. So that's how it's structured. It sort of begins the way it would if you were walking into one of those clubs in the '70s, a little bit cold, bringing your expectations of what that should feel like, and then helping you understand [inaudible 00:04:29]
Tiffany Hansen: Where was-- did you answer-- where that was taken from? Was that one of his bits in the '70s? Where that was taken from?
Alex Braverman: Do you mean the bombing routine?
Tiffany Hansen: We start at the climax and then--
Alex Braverman: Oh, okay. That footage, interestingly enough, was from the mid-'70s. It was shot in Los Angeles in a home that he shared at the time with Richard Beymer, who was Tony in West Side Story and then also Benjamin Horne on Twin Peaks. He was a fellow transcendental meditator, just like Kaufman. They wound up roommates in the mid-'70s before either of them were the household names we know now. But it was just goofing-around home video footage.
Tiffany Hansen: Oh, okay. So not a bit in a club or—
Alex Braverman: No, they was just very candid home movies.
Tiffany Hansen: Well, let's talk about this new footage that you have. You have a lot of it, right? Tell us how you got that and how you sifted through it.
Alex Braverman: Well, I've been working on this film for a long time—eight and a half years. It started as an idea in 2016. Some reach-out. Then in 2017, I traveled to Lake Tahoe and interviewed Bob Zmuda and Lynn Margulies there. That was the first bit of production. At the end of two days at Bob's home, he had been speaking about "the vault" this whole time—All this material, it's in the vault. I didn’t really know if he was legend-building or if this was a true physical vault. At the end of the weekend, he took me to a room in his house on the ground floor and said, I'm gonna open this door for you and show you what's inside, but you can't go in here.
But he did open the door, and it was like the scene in Pulp Fiction where they open the briefcase and you just see the gold reflecting in my eyes. It was box after box that had the letter K on it. It took a little while to convince him to let me in there. It took years actually. But then ultimately when production really kicked off, my producer and I, Lauren Belfer, drove back to Tahoe and just loaded a van full of those boxes. It took months and months to sift through everything that was in there.
Tiffany Hansen: There have been other documentaries made about him. So what do you think it was in your argument to—first, remind us who Bob Zmuda is, and then tell us what you think was so compelling about your argument to him that he was willing to let you drive away with it in a van?
Alex Braverman: Well, let's separate that out a little bit. There are films that have been made about him—notably Man on the Moon, Jim & Andy (an incredible film, I would say is partly about him but more so, in my opinion, about Jim Carrey becoming him). And then there have been some other documentary programs, like A&E Biography, E! True Hollywood Story–type things. But I didn’t feel like there was the definitive feature documentary treatment ever given to him. I really wanted to take a whack at giving him his due. When I showed up at Bob's house—Bob was Andy's creative collaborator, writer, good friend for 10 years.
When I showed up at his house, I had watched everything I could at that point. I had read every book you could read. I was just quite familiar, and I had a lot of questions. I think it was a combination of showing up prepared, but also—we're 40 years out at this point from 1984 and I think he was just ready to tell the story and hand over the reins. With Lynn, Andy's girlfriend, being on hand this weekend as well, I think she was like, This is someone that kind of sees this story the way that we do. And they both just decided, Let’s work with this guy.
Tiffany Hansen: What's the first reel you pulled out?
Alex Braverman: Wow. I can't remember the first reel I pulled out, but I can tell you the first reel I remember having a visceral reaction to. There were quite a few people that I wish we could have spoken to for the making of the film that had unfortunately already passed away. One of them was Andy’s father, Stanley. Bob and Lynn, Bob Zmuda and Lynn Margulies over the years, have filmed interviews with just tons of people, getting their stories and recollections—almost like an oral history. When I pulled up the tape of Andy’s father, I just got chills and goosebumps. I still do.
I don’t want to give too much away from the movie but there's a scene in the movie where the legend is that these two—Andy and his father—had a really tough relationship, especially when he was a teenager and early 20s. And I found this story of them coming back together, he tells the story of how—it was so moving to me. This was early on in the process of going through the archival. That's when I knew, Okay, this is just gonna be a process of sifting for gold. There's so much valuable emotional stuff in here.
Tiffany Hansen: Was his dad like him? Was he that kind of quirky, weird--
Alex Braverman: No, his whole family—his parents especially—were very, as described to me, traditional Jewish, Long Island, Great Neck family. And he was a puzzle for them. Although they loved him and thought he was hilarious and sweet, and all these things. He was very puzzling.
Tiffany Hansen: To be fair, a lot of kids are puzzling to their parents.
Alex Braverman: Yes. There's some indication that his dad could be a very stern and angry person. They clashed when he was a teen, but ultimately they came back together. And then as you can see in some of the footage, his parents participated in some of his later bits on TV as well.
Tiffany Hansen: Let's talk about the title of the film, which is Thank You Very Much. And I feel like I should say it—Thank you very much.
Alex Braverman: Or you could say it—Thank you very much.
Tiffany Hansen: Yeah, right. Or that. What does it tell us about—what are you trying to convey with that as the film? Is it just something that people-- like me, instantly if you know Andy Kaufman, you know the way he delivered that.
Alex Braverman: It's just a series of words that shows up in the film in many different contexts, as it does in our daily life as well. But yeah—
Tiffany Hansen: Like How you doing?
Alex Braverman: How you doing? Latka says, I won’t do it but Thank you very much. He’s got Elvis saying Thank you very much. He’s constantly saying it in interviews like this one, or whether he’s talking to Letterman or on The Tonight Show. To me, it became—not to segue into the TM stuff—but it became a little bit of a mantra that was just popping up all over the place. It’s such a showbiz phrase that has great meaning and no meaning at all. I just felt like it was becoming emblematic of the film itself.
Tiffany Hansen: Right. I mean, that's the first thing I thought—it's kind of a throwaway phrase for a lot of people. And again, I don’t know if you can draw this parallel, but in the film, there are women who talk about his emotional unavailability. I just wonder if the lack of sincerity in something like Thank you very much is sort of emblematic of his larger dissociation from that kind of feeling moment that he might have with somebody.
Alex Braverman: I think it's both.
Tiffany Hansen: Both and
Alex Braverman: It's both and. There are instances in his life and in the film where he's quite aloof and distant and opaque. And then there are other moments in his life and in the film et cetera where I feel that he's being quite sincere. I think you could find instances of both of those where he's saying Thank you very much. In some cases, I think he means it. In others, I think it is that throwaway, winking expression. The fact that I can't answer that definitively is what makes it special and work for me.
Tiffany Hansen: Well, it's sort of the way most people might feel broadly about Andy Kaufman which is I can't explain him. And that was his intent, right?
Alex Braverman: Yeah. And I think if we could, we probably wouldn’t be talking about him ad nauseam for decades. It’s what keeps it going.
Tiffany Hansen: Did he know that?
Alex Braverman: Did he know that?
Tiffany Hansen: Yeah. Did he think that you and I would be sitting here 40 years later going, What is it with Andy Kaufman?
Alex Braverman: I think that was his goal. I think it was his hope. His friend and girlfriend, Lynn Margulies, tells us they discussed his desire to be remembered. So I think all of his performances and material, and the way that he presented himself is designed and presented in a way to be remembered and to echo out basically forever.
Tiffany Hansen: Going back to that thing I mentioned at the beginning there where you have him saying, And now for the climax, and then a moment of silence, a lot of what he does is make the audience feel embarrassed by what he's doing. He's not embarrassed by what he's doing but he makes the audience feel embarrassed. I think that is probably his goal, right?
Alex Braverman: It's what a lot of his work is about.
Tiffany Hansen: Is embarrassment?
Alex Braverman: Yeah.
Tiffany Hansen: And what is it about embarrassment that's funny? Because sometimes I feel like embarrassment can feel—if you're going to poke fun at it, it can feel a little mean-spirited.
Alex Braverman: Well, I don’t feel that with the work that he’s doing revolving around embarrassment—specifically, that he's embarrassing the audience. As you pointed out, it's at his expense. But I do think what all of his work is about—whether we're talking about embarrassment or wrestling or singing, anything, I do think that it’s about demanding your total attention. And I think embarrassment, the sensation of it, does fully suck you in. It puts you on the edge of your seat wondering, What is happening to this guy who is just bombing so terribly on stage right now? Where is this going to go?
As Bob points out in the film, he thinks of Andy first and foremost as a performance artist, but also sometimes as a magician. These are illusions, they're magic tricks. And what a magician does is puts out one set of actions over here for you to look at, and then the real act is taking place on the other side. Embarrassment functions as a way to really suck you in.
Tiffany Hansen: Alex, we got a text in here from Emily in Park Slope: Andy was my brother’s best friend in high school. I’m eight years younger. When he would ring the bell and I would answer it, it would be super awkward. They’d go down— That’s not surprising. They’d go down into the basement and play congas and talk in funny accents. That’s a great memory.
Alex Braverman: Beautiful. His love for congas, by the way, was very real. And I think he’s an incredible drummer. Supposedly, the story is that in middle school, Babatunde Olatunji, the drummer, came and visited the school and did a performance that stuck with him for his entire life.
Tiffany Hansen: Before we leave embarrassment and take a quick break, I just want to follow up on one thing: That is some people do find it funny, whereas in an entire room full of people, you’ll have some who are absolutely in hysterics when he does that and other people just kind of like, Huh? He didn’t care really what your reaction was, right?
Alex Braverman: Not one bit. I think he cared that you reacted, but I don’t think he cared what the reaction was.
Tiffany Hansen: There’s a part in the film where he says, You’re laughing at the parts that aren’t funny, and you’re not laughing at the parts that are funny. And then everybody laughs at the parts that—
Alex Braverman: Like right now.
Tiffany Hansen: Right. That’s a major manipulator move. He was, to your point, not really a comic. There were other people in the film who were like, I went to see a comedian or I went to see a singer, and that’s not what I saw.
Alex Braverman: Right.
Tiffany Hansen: But he’s a performer. He’s a stage performer. He’s a high-concept performer.
Alex Braverman: He’s a performer. He’s an artist. If we could put those two words together and say he was a performance artist. But yeah, I think he was an entertainer.
Tiffany Hansen: All right, we're talking with Alex Braverman about the new documentary film called Thank You Very Much, which is a film about Andy Kaufman. And we'll return to the conversation in just a minute so don't go anywhere. I am Tiffany Hansen in for Alison Stewart. This is Alis-- This is Alison Stewart. No, I'm not. That is a lie. That is a bold faced lie, Alec. Alex. Let's get all the names wrong. This is All of It. I am Tiffany Hansen. You are Alex Braverman. And we are talking together about Andy Kaufman and we're talking about a new documentary called Thank You Very Much.
I really have to restrain myself, Alex, from doing that in a particular voice. You mentioned a couple of times about Andy Kaufman’s meditation and his transcendental meditation. First of all, when in his life did that happen? Are we mid-'70s?
Alex Braverman: Yeah, he would have been a late teenager—I want to say. I think it was 1969.
Tiffany Hansen: Oh, okay.
Alex Braverman: I could be wrong, but that’s what I recall from the interviews.
Tiffany Hansen: Well, this is some of the new footage that you have. I want to play a clip here for us of Andy talking about the intersection of entertainment and enlightenment with one of his gurus.
Andy Kaufman (Clip): What is the value of entertainment? If everybody was enlightened, would there be any need for entertainment—like comedy and tragedy and literature and going to the movies and television? Will there be sad programs? Willie [unintelligible 00:20:35] dies at the end and you're crying. I mean, I like to watch programs that make me want to cry at the end. Will there still be things like that?
Guru (Clip): There’ll be more comedies and less tragedies.
Andy Kaufman (Clip): There won’t be any sad programs? And what if a crazy man—a comedian who specializes, let’s say, in insulting people—and he’s a comedian because of that, because people laugh at his oddness, but he likes it and everything. And if we just tell him that if you meditated—
Guru (Clip): No, no. Oddness is just a means to create contrast. Big contrast on both sides, and a deeper silence is experienced.
Tiffany Hansen: There’s a lot in that tape that I have questions about, but I’m going to start with the fact that people are laughing. He wasn’t trying to be funny.
Alex Braverman: Not at all.
Tiffany Hansen: Were people at a certain point just sort of cued to laugh at him in inappropriate moments because he had trained them to do that? In the way that comedians train their audiences, right? After a certain point.
Alex Braverman: In this clip, that we've heard, he’s in a room filled with practitioners of meditation. This isn’t a comedy club. For the most part, to be able to ask a question of Maharishi that involves getting in line and waiting for hours and hours. The expectation is that you’re going to get up there and ask some serious, some hyper-specific question about meditating or enlightenment. And I think that he’s just so laser-focused on what he’s concerned with that it’s a little bit shocking for those practitioners to hear him go off-script as they might think and ask something so specific to him and what he's concerned with. And it is funny.
Tiffany Hansen: How do you think the comment—Oddness is a way to create contrast—he sort of embodies that whole thing, that whole phrase there but how do you think we see that in him and in his work and his playing with the comfortable and the uncomfortable, familiar and the unfamiliar, laughter, silence?
Alex Braverman: That phrase—Oddness is a way to create contrast— and this whole exchange, I feel like you could do a semester on it. But it goes back to the beginning of our conversation of expectation versus-- what you’re expecting to happen versus what’s going to happen. I think what we see in Andy’s work—and it’s reflected in this conversation, which was recorded before he becomes the performer we know and to become is basically-- Maharishi is saying oddness is a way of asking the audience to believe that one thing is going to happen, but in contrast, what you're going to deliver is going to be a surprise, and that’s going to generate laughter.
Tiffany Hansen: I promised we would talk about the silence that he uses. A lot of comedians use silence as a tool to wait for the joke, they anticipate that people will know the punchline. They know where the joke is going. They're pre-laughing at what they think the comedian is going to do about it. Or do with the end of the joke. How did he use that technique and turn it on its head do you think?
Alex Braverman: Well—
Tiffany Hansen: Or did he? Maybe he didn’t.
Alex Braverman: I think for him, silence—obviously, there’s a connection to meditation here—but when they talk about silence and meditation, it’s creating room for ideas to bubble to the surface. I think he’s doing the same thing in his act. When he’s doing Mighty Mouse on SNL and he's just standing there silently, not mouthing the words, all of your ideas are bubbling to the surface: What is going on here? What is he going to do? Why am I watching this? How is he burning up airtime right now? I think he uses silence as a tool to get the audience invested and participating in their own silent way.
Tiffany Hansen: Yeah, he was kind of a master at that—he would try to get audiences invested while at the same time pushing them away a little bit. I’m thinking of the Gatsby thing. Like, Who wants to sit here and— but he totally reeled you in on and what I'm talking about is like he's going to just basically read the entire Great Gatsby
Alex Braverman: For hours.
Tiffany Hansen: For hours. So he alienates you and also completely draws you in.
Alex Braverman: Yeah, I think to a certain extent, everything is performance for him. He’s constantly pushing the boundaries of what we imagine a performance space is. That’s why the first thing I probably learned about Andy Kaufman was that he took his Carnegie Hall audience out for milk and cookies after the show. What’s mind-blowing about that for me as a child learning about it is that the performance continued to take place after the show "was over." Whether he's intending to do this or not, he’s just shining a light on the fact that we’re all performing all the time. Doesn’t matter if you bought a ticket—this is a show.
Tiffany Hansen: Right. That was the whole thing with Is this the real Andy Kaufman? The show never ends.
Alex Braverman: Yeah. And after milk and cookies, he instructed everyone: The show continues tomorrow afternoon at the Staten Island Ferry. See you there.
Tiffany Hansen: All right. The documentary is called Thank You Very Much. The director is Alex Braverman. We’ve been talking about the film and about Andy Kaufman. We could probably talk for another two hours.
Alex Braverman: Or we could sit in silence.
Tiffany Hansen: Or we could just sit in silence. Or we could start reading The Great Gatsby. Either way, you decide. There it is. Alex Braverman, thanks so much.
Alex Braverman: Thank you.