I don’t know about that.
I was a teenager in the late 70s and I was familiar with him before Taxi due to his late night appearances on all the various shows.
His Carnegie Hall show was legendary. The whole bus everyone to cookies and milk cemented his legend outside of Taxi.
Your point is valid but…
A lot of us parents and grandparents were aware of everything about Andy at the time.
A couple of years ago, I introduced AK to a girl, my upstairs neighbor, in her twenties…just a clip of him explaining how to use soap on a local newscast in Tennessee because she was from Tennessee. She thought it was funny. It turns out that she went upstairs after that…I later learned that she had spent the night watching every clip she could find on the internet. HIs humor is timeless.
You misspelled woman.
This.
When I was a teen I first recognized that there are people who care about culture-- music, movies, art, literature-- and people who don’t. I was excited when I first heard the Velvet Underground and my friends were “like whatever, it’s sounds kinda lame.”
So many people go through life just listening to whatever is popular, only seeing blockbuster movies, etc. A guy I run into sometimes at the thrift store heard me and another music nerd discussing some obscure LP we found and was flummoxed-- “how do you guys know this stuff?” and we said, almost in unison “because we’re interested in this stuff.” I was always just curious.
Sounds familiar. I would’ve added that I didn’t know popular stuff because I found most of it dead boring.
“I’ll sue you! Leave your name at the door!” 
As a comedy nerd, the cast of Taxi was just stacked with character work. Andy Kaufman, and Danny DeVito, and Christopher Lloyd, and Carol Kane, and Judd Hersh.
Oh, Tony Danza was there too.
I guess shows like Curb, or Arrested Development are modern equivalents, but Taxi remains a powerhouse. Toss in a banger opening theme, and the sad closing theme. Its a masterclass.
Millennials killed Andy Kauffman!
Millennials and Gen Z don’t remember someone who died 40 years ago because he’s been dead for literally their entire lives. They don’t remember Edna St. Vincent Millay or T. S. Eliot for the same reason.
Now, if he didn’t have a big enough impact on the culture to still be well-known after his death, that’s unfortunate, in an abstract way, I suppose, but it’s hardly surprising.
Did someone say it is?
Even the bb post says, “fame is fleeting, obviously.”
Kind of meta that Danny DeVito played a major character (not himself) in the Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon considering how big a role Taxi played in both their careers.
I was wondering if they were going to have another actor playing a young DeVito but they kind of just skipped over that part.
And other Taxi cast members played themselves, while Danny played George Shapiro, who was also in the film, playing someone else.
Not sure what part of my brain enjoys that level of meta, but it’s getting itched real good.
Everyone’s forgotten. It’s hard to NOT be forgotten as a celebrity, I think. If you’re not constantly in the chaotic pop culture conversation, it’s easy to slip through the cracks. But Kaufman left enough media behind that he won’t ever be TRULY “forgotten”. There will always be kids who’ll discover him. Sure, if you walk up to a Joe Schmo on the street and ask “Who’s Andy Kaufman” you may draw lots of blanks – but there are also lots of ignorant people on the street.
I don’t know. I listened to two guys approximately my age (late 50s) go on about how it’s a shame kids today don’t know about Johnny Carson. I was a fly on the wall, they didn’t know I existed.
I mean, i liked Johnny Carson. He was a good talk show host. Delivered a monologue well.
But if we subjected The Kids Today to a two hour The Best of Carson, I don’t think they’d be blown away.
Unless you’re going into the field of stand up comedy, I don’t know what either of these performers Carson and Kaufman has to offer to anyone under the age of 30.
Steve Allen > Johnny Carson
Nobody talks about Lamb Chop and Charley Horse anymore either.
I think some people are still singing their theme song though.
Yes some things will never end.
I have a document on our internal file server for test prints. There’s a header with a timestamp for the print and this:
This is the test doc that never ends
It Just prints on and on my friend
Some people started queueing it
Not knowing what it was
And now it prints forever just because
Kaufman was a genius. I watched his confrontation with Jerry Lawler on Letterman, live, and found it hysterical.
So, is Andy Kaufman the new Lenny Bruce, the pioneering comedian who people talk about but few actually remember?
