Reality Game January 2008

Hello. Thank you very much!

It has been almost twenty-five years since Andy Kaufman died. I realize now that I never really got to know him in an in-depth way back then. This became clear to me on a snowy day last month when I watched Jim Carrey portray him in a movie called, The Man on the Moon. Watching the film brought back memories of Andy on Saturday Night Live goofin’ on Elvis (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0csJyL5ERI), singing the chorus line of the Mighty Mouse theme or playing the bongos. These sketches accelerated his career. Later, I personally enjoyed the old Taxi series where Andy played Latka Gravas, the immigrant taxi mechanic.

Andy had his own take on sitcoms and comedy. The role of Latka evolved from one of his early characters called “foreign man.” Kaufman hated sitcoms and was not thrilled with the idea of being on one. In order to allow Kaufman to demonstrate some comedic range, his character was given multiple personality disorder, which allowed him to randomly portray other characters. In one episode, for example, Kaufman's character came down with a condition which made him act like Alex Reiger, the main character played by Judd Hirsch. Another such recurring character played by Kaufman was the womanizing Vic Ferrari.

Andy didn’t want to be referred to as a comedian either. He felt that put pressure on people to laugh when they were supposed to rather than in an authentic way. He disdained telling jokes and engaging in comedy as it was traditionally understood; instead, he saw himself as a practitioner of anti-humor or absurdist performance art. He preferred to be called a song and dance man.

I lost touch with the song and dance man after that as he morphed into Tony Clifton, an abusive lounge singer, who began opening for Kaufman at comedy clubs and eventually even performed concerts on his own around the country. Sometimes it was Andy performing as Clifton, sometimes it was his brother Michael or his friend Bob Zmuda. Later, during his dark wrestling period, I just stopped watching him all together. Kaufman began wrestling women during his act and was the self-proclaimed, Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion of the World, taking on an aggressive and ridiculous personality based upon the characters invented by professional wrestlers. He offered a $1,000 reward to any woman who could pin him. He made several appearances on mainstream talk shows during the time where the show’s host watched in complete horror Kaufmann’s politically incorrect antics not knowing if it was funny or serious. He also was involved in a feud at this time with a male professional wrestler (Jerry Lawler). The feud erupted on The David Letterman Show and Andy supposedly broke his neck during a physical confrontation with the wrestler.

It got really dark, confusing and absurd… just like Andy probably wanted it to be. You see, Andy Kaufmann was playing with the delicate line between reality and absurdity and our perceptions of it. There were times during his later performances, for example, when attendees wanted him to do Latka or Elvis, when he would slip into a quasi-intellectual persona (which he often said was his real personality), pull out the book The Great Gatsby, and read it from start to finish. As people left his performance, he would sometimes ask them if they preferred that he continue reading or play a record. If they asked him to play a record, the record would be him reading from The Great Gatsby. He never told us who he really was, if his gags were real or the negative repercussions of his many offenses to people were intended or not. Were some people in on it? Yes. It was all an elaborate hoax. Some followers even believe he faked his own death and that he and Elvis hang out together!

Andy’s career, and the film that documented it, reminds us that many things around us are staged. They are staged to influence our thinking on a specific issue, cause us to pay more or less attention to something, motivate us, manipulate our emotions, get us to act in certain ways, or to let us know just how predictable we are as Andy Kaufmann showed me personally.

I have a very different reaction to Andy and his act now probably because I am a bit older and wiser. He is not the only song and dance man that has fooled me. I have been fooled by presidents, corporate executives, clients, friends, colleagues and others. I have also seen how the political correctness issue has strangled the breath out of genuine conversation that needs to take place to deal with the song and the dance of life. Not knowing what is real and being afraid to address the depth and breadth of a perceived issue in an important situation often confounds me. If I don’t know if something is real and can suffer career or interpersonal consequences as a result of how I approach it is …. well… challenging to say the least.

I think we have three alternatives for dealing with the reality game. Option one is to remain naïve and suffer via the manipulation of the gamers. Option two is to be aware of the hoax, manipulation or perceptual slant and do nothing which allows the absurdness to continue. Option three is to confront your perception of reality by addressing the issue and those associated with it in order to get closer to the truth. It takes courage to do this but it must be done. This option can lead to a clearer view of what is real. It can also get you ostracized in some settings or make you a hero in others or both at the same time as I have recently experienced.

Play the reality game with insight, awareness and integrity. Let the chips fall not for personal gain but for purposeful illumination of important issues and situations so individuals and groups can move forward with confidence on the clarity and rightness of their perceptions and direction.

Key Things Learned:

1. Triple; no quadruple your check on reality in important situations. 2. Keep your radar up even in seemingly unimportant situations. 3. Work on your courage to confront situations and people where what is real is unclear. 4. The great song and dance men can help us learn a lot about courage, reality and integrity, and how, in the final analysis, reality is actually defined.