Dear Andy Kaufman, I Hate Your Guts!

Introduction by Lynne Margulies

Foreword by Bob Zmuda

(Process)

Book Review by Adam McKibbin

Confession: I still routinely watch Saturday Night Live.  Why?  Not entirely sure.  Maybe it’s nostalgia for a time when Wayne’s World was the equivalent of a Monday morning water cooler event for little kids.  Maybe it’s for those fleeting moments of real cultural impact (Tina Fey’s Palin) or getting the “live” experience of watching those all-too-rare moments of real comedic impact – though most of those moments recently have been digital shorts taped in advance.  Maybe it’s to marvel over the fact that there are apparently people in the universe who find Kenan Thompson entertaining. 

Once upon a time, of course (or maybe it’s so long ago that it’s no longer a given), SNL was a place for risk-takers and innovators.  Love him or hate him, Andy Kaufman qualified as both.  One of the stranger and certainly more elaborate stunts in his career was his sojourn into professional wrestling.  After wrestling a lady on SNL, Kaufman – who was thrilled and inspired by the response provoked by the villains of wrestling – made some rather bold proclamations.  In a nutshell, women were inferior and, to prove it, he would wrestle any of ‘em.  Bring it on!  And so it was brought.  Kaufman always hoped to assemble the cream of the crop for a book; he didn’t get a chance to see it happen, but Dear Andy Kaufman, I Hate Your Guts! would probably have been one of his career highlights. 

The letter writers fall into a few different camps:  1) those who are totally in on the gag and want to show their appreciation or get a laugh out of Kaufman; 2) women who are kind of turned on and 3) people who definitely don’t see it as a joke and want to kick his ass.  Sometimes the writers (mostly women, of course) fit into a couple of camps.  “You are cute by the way,” one writer says, “Even if you are a sadistic moron.”

There are also noble little kids rushing to the rescue of womankind.   There’s a man who hopes Kaufman isn’t joking because he sees his wrestling effort as an important statement against those damned feminists.  There are a lot of strange characters.  Some of them get in some good zingers, like this one: “I’m not big on brains (that’s why I like Saturday Night Live)."  What’s clear is that Kaufman saw his role as a comedian as something much more interesting than “provider of cheap laughs.”  Lynne Margulies (Kaufman’s girlfriend) and Bob Zmuda (his key collaborator) offer some additional insights in their introduction and foreword, respectively.

And that’s really all there is to the book.  It’s a great addition to the bookshelves of any Kaufman fan, as well as anyone with a general interest in hoaxes, controversy or button-pushing.  Another side benefit of Dear Andy Kaufman, I Hate Your Guts! is that it will provoke a fond remembrance for the days of letter writing.  These days, these responses would be coming in via email – and what kind of a book would that make?  Here, we get wonderful insights into the people behind these letters based on their penmanship, their stationary, the old photos slipped into the envelopes.   Lost artforms all around.