Andy Kaufman's Brother Says Comedian Faked His Death



Did Andy Kaufman fake his own death? According to the legendary comedian's brother and a woman claiming to be his daughter, he did.

The Comic's Comic reports that Kaufman's brother Michael took the stage at the annual Andy Kaufman Awards at New York City's Gotham Comedy Club this week and told the crowd that his brother is still alive and has a 24-year-old daughter.

Kaufman died of cancer in 1984 at the age of 35 and is buried on Long Island. His television credits included Taxi and Saturday Night Live, but he was also known for carrying out long-running hoaxes and elaborate practical jokes. In many of his routines and on-screen tantrums, it was unclear whether his outbursts were real or whether he was playing a part.
Michael Kaufman reportedly told the crowd that when he was cleaning out his brother's things after his supposed death, he came across an elaborate plan for how Kaufman was going to fake his death and reappear on Christmas Eve in 1999 at a specific restaurant. Michael said he went to the restaurant on that date, and a waiter gave him a letter from Andy in which the comedian said he had fallen in love, gone into hiding, and had a daughter in 1989. In the letter, Andy allegedly asked Michael to keep his secret as long as their father was still alive.

After their father died this summer, Michael said he got a call from a 24-year-old woman claiming to be Andy's daughter, and she said that he was indeed still alive. The woman also appeared on stage at the awards ceremony Monday, The Comic's Comic reports. The pair suggest Kauffman faked his death in order to escape the spotlight.

http://omg.yahoo.com/news/andy-kaufmans-brother-says-comedian-faked-death-142800600.html

yep,right there with Elvis in Area 51!
But Andy loved the Limelight!

Andy Kaufman Is Alive? Young Woman Claiming to Be His Daughter Says Comic Faked His Death.

Andy Kaufman died on May 16, 1984, due to complications from lung cancer—or so we thought.

But on Monday, Nov. 11, at the Andy Kaufman Awards in NYC's Gotham Comedy Club, a 24-year-old woman claiming to be the comic's daughter told the crowd her father, who passed away 29 years ago, is actually still alive. Andy's brother Michael Kaufman also revealed, per the Comic's Comic, that he'd come across the Taxi star's elaborate plans to fake his death when looking through his belongings in 1984.

Let's backtrack a moment. Michael reportedly told the audience that Andy wrote about how he would use transcendental meditation to fake his death, but would return on Christmas Eve in 1999 at restaurant. Michael claims when that date arrived, he went to the restaurant and got a table under one of his brother's pseudonyms. Andy himself did not show up, but a letter was delivered to Michael purportedly from his brother saying he wanted "to go into hiding and live a normal life" but was still alive.
In this letter, Andy purportedly said he had fallen in love with a woman and had a daughter, and he requested that Michael not mention any of this while their father was still alive. Andy and Michael's father Stanley Kaufman passed away in the summer of 2013. Michael claims that about one month after this death, he received a call from a young woman saying she was Andy's daughter, and yes, that he was still alive. This woman also reportedly told Michael that Andy loved watching the Andy Kaufman Awards from afar.

At this point, per the Comic's Comic, Michael asked the audience if the young woman claiming to be Andy's daughter had by chance come out that night, at which point "a 24-year-old eventually stood up from the back of the room and sheepishly made her way onstage."

The young woman said Andy had "really considered" coming out to the awards himself. She shyly said he was "basically a stay-at-home dad" who helped her mother with "paperwork" with her small business. She claimed Andy's father's death is what made him really want to "reach out."

Andy's brother seemed awestruck, gave the young woman a hug, and kindly escorted her off the stage, asking that no one follow her and her privacy be respected.

Would Andy stage such a prank? But of course.

The far-fetched admission, reported first by The Comic's Comic and Defamer, occurred Monday night at the Andy Kaufman Awards, held annually at the Gotham Comedy Club. The woman was introduced by Michael Kaufman, Andy's brother, who first explained how years ago he'd discovered an essay in which Andy detailed plans to fake his death. Official records state the Taxi star died in 1984 at age 35, of lung cancer. (See a copy of his death certificate here.) Were he alive today, Kaufman would be 64 years old.

"I witnessed the entire thing and I can tell you without a doubt this was not a prank," says Al Parinello, a lifelong friend of the comedian who produces the awards. Parinello relayed to The Hollywood Reporter how Michael, whom he describes as "accountant-like" in demeanor and not prone to mounting hoaxes, followed instructions in the essay to meet his brother at a specific restaurant on Christmas Eve, 1999.

Michael did so, he said, whereupon a man he did not know walked up to him and handed him a typed letter. The letter, which Michael read for the crowd on Monday night, was allegedly from Andy, who wrote that "everything was great in his life and he just wanted to get away from being Andy Kaufman," Parinello says. The letter also stated that the comedian, famous for his bizarre alter-egos like cantankerous lounge singer Tony Clifton, had fallen in love with a woman and that the couple were raising a daughter together.
Michael then explained that the daughter, now 24, had made contact with him several months prior, and had subsequently agreed to accompany him to the awards. The woman then shyly took the stage, wearing a black dress covered in a pattern of colored bows. (TMZ has posted video of the moment.) No one in attendance seems to know the woman's first name, though Parinello says she went by the surname "McCoy," a name Kaufman used when checking himself into hospitals.

An account of the event posted to Facebook by one audience member says the woman then told the crowd that her alleged father "is alive" and that "the passing of [their] father [Stanley Kaufman] this July made him want to reach out" to his brother. The account calls the moment "as real as any reality that I've seen." Another account said the room fell silent during the presentation and that one woman "burst into tears" as Michael read the letter.

According to Ed Cavanagh, showroom manager at the Gotham Comedy Club, "You could see by the look on [Michael's] face that it had an emotional impact on him." Asked whether or not he believes the woman's story, Cavanagh adds, "I don't know whether somebody is perpetrating something on [Michael] or not. I'm truly 50-50 on this one."

Parinello, who met Kaufman when they were undergrads at Grahm Junior College in Boston, says he is convinced of the story's veracity, even though he attended Kaufman's funeral and saw his body with his own eyes.
"It was a closed casket," he recalls. "Only the family [and myself] actually saw the body." How then does he reconcile Monday's events? "Andy was an aficionado of meditation," he explains. "One of the things Andy was taught at the highest level was a process where one could slow down his breath to a point where you can literally fool anyone that you may be dead when in fact you are alive. So that's the one thing that Michael checked for."

Adds Parinello: "It was a very formal affair -- it wasn't as though they could prod or anything else. They were simply in the room and saw Andy laying in a coffin."

Contacted by THR, Michael Kaufman said that the woman claiming to be Kaufman's daughter was impossible to reach, for reasons he would explain later. He then excused himself, saying he had a dinner date with his wife.

What do you think?

I think he would fake his death if he could. He was an amazing comic.

Andy Kaufman is living in the hide-away that Elvis created after faking his own death.


/sarc

oh, ok, Dodo. You can just say what you will. Do you have evidence or links to this so called "hide-away"? Or is this in the Heibie Province of Northern China?

First, His brother would have to be in on any hoax, you don't die over night from lung cancer so his brother would have to know he wasn't really sick.
Second, you would have to have the Medical examiner fraudulently fill out and sign death certificate, a State and Federal offense. He would lose his medical license and possible jail time.

Its all a scam, probably because his brother is broke and needs publicity and money.

In any event,who really gives a sh%t?

Maybe nobody gives a sh%t? But leave it to Andy to play a joke on us nearly 30 years later.
Thanks Andy, you still are entertaining us today. We love you and still miss you.

Jerry Lawler comments.

- With family members of the late comedian Andy Kaufman claiming this week that he is still alive and his death was a hoax, CNN spoke to WWE Hall of Famer and Kaufman rival Jerry Lawler about the story. Lawler said:

"I would like nothing better than to know that Andy was still alive and been with us all this time. But like anybody else, I really don't know any more than what I've heard. It could be a great hoax in his honor, dreamed up by his friend Bob Zamuda and his brother, Michael. That would be something that would be in keeping with Andy's tradition, but who's to say. It could really be legit. There should be a WrestleMania rematch between Andy and The King. We could rekindle the feud with no problem."

Andy Kaufman still alive, still posing as Sacha Baron Cohen

Ignore all the debate about whether Andy Kaufman is alive: Of course he is. He’s spent more than a decade hiding in plain sight as Sacha Baron Cohen.

Cohen is kind of like Kaufman with some rough edges shaved off, and slightly more streamlined jokes. Like Kaufman, he likes staging wrestling matches and plays characters who are themselves playing characters. He’s probably a genius.

Kaufman’s brother, Michael, gave a talk Monday at the annual Andy Kaufman awards that ended with him saying his brother is still alive, in hiding, and has a 24-year-old daughter. Michael Kaufman introduced a woman purporting to be her. (The Smoking Gun later exposed her as an actress, describing the revelation as “news that should shock nobody.”)

Kaufman continued a tradition started by his later brother’s confidante Bob Zmuda, who has long hinted that Andy Kaufman may still be alive.

But these kinds of proclamations are kind of a bummer, because they feel like Kaufman-esque routines by people who can’t do Kaufman as well asKaufman.Where’s the joke? We believe them or don’t. And we know almost nothing would be less funny than the eventual emergence of an old man claiming to beKaufman, submitting to DNA tests that may or may not be real, answering probing questions from David Letterman, possibly in on the joke — ick. If he faked his own death, he should stay fake-dead.

The magic of Kaufman’s jokes was how they twisted reality. He fought pro wrestler Jerry Lawler for real, sustaining nasty-sounding injuries in the process. That’s comedy, if we accept Mel Brooks’ definition: “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.”

For it to be really funny, we have to really believe the comedian is falling. Or — better yet — that other people really believe he’s falling, while we know he’s not. Or is he? We don’t know.

Cohen is great at that. It’s hard not to read the wrestling match as the climax of “Bruno” as an homage to Kaufman. If anything, Cohen takes commitment even futher than Kaufman — unless Kaufman really did fake his death, in which case he gets the grand prize. And no one will ever know for sure.

Cohen commits by putting his character not just in danger of a pro wrestler who may be in on the joke, but in the line of fire of human variables: armed homophobic hunters, angry cops, rabid wrestling fans.

His latest Kaufmanesque stunt was his straight-faced killing of a Charlie Chaplin co-star at the BAFTA awards. Brilliant. He caught the audience off-guard by starting with a lame Chaplin routine — poor Sacha, we thought, his best years are behind him — before slipping and pushing an octogenarian to her apparent death.

Cohen has taken some of the knottier aspects out of Kaufman’s routines — we know that he, at heart, seems quite sane, though we still don’t have a read onKaufman — while amplifying the slapstick and social commentary. While not as groundbreaking as Kaufman, he’s building on what Kaufman did in the best possible sense. (Let’s not talk about “The Dictator.”)

There’s a dash of Kaufman in “Bad Grandpa,” too. And all the “Jackass” projects. And the absurdist humor of “Mr. Show,” “Conan,” and every other comedic outlet that knows how to bend reality and make it a lot funnier. If Kaufman is alive, he’s managed to subvert the most brutal reality of all, death.

Our not knowing is the most Kaufmanesque possibility of all.

Andy would have wanted it this way...

If you look on YouTube you can see people digging up his grave and opening the coffin
I was watching that about 6 months ago.
there was definitely a body in the coffin.
why would he ? for the alltimate prank.
he loved the public eye???

Gotta love Andy! He was a master of the theatre of the absurd. Who but Andy could script and stage a magnificent performance on his deathbed that upstages even the legendary Elvis?

Congrats Andy, wherever you are (or aren't)...This was your greatest performance and you weren't even here to act it out...BRAVO!

King Barry did fake his own birth certificate, so I don't see why Kaufman couldn't have faked his death certificate.

No way would Andy Kaufman stay out of the spotlight for that long, he loved attention which is exactly why he did what he did.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big Kaufman fan, I even like his movie Heartbeeps.

Tony Clifton making appearances over the years is most likely Bob Zmuda.

To me it just sounds like Andy's brother his hard up for money.

Nobody could! My words exactly, nobody believed
he was going to die,especially his own parents
and siblings,even at the hospital, hearing it from a DR., were they sceptic, as they thought he's an
Entertainer/actor and he would be able to stage
the whole hospital scene.
If he is dead ?Anythings possible with Kaufman,
even in death.
All these doubts over the years, its him & Bobs
planing in his sickness; if infact he was sick?
That's the beauty of the master, I guarantee Andy's
behind it, dead or alive!

Part Lyrics of Man on the Moon that latter inspired
the tittle to the movie with Jim Carey portraying
the LATE,? GREAT Andy Kaufman.
Carey spent many months studying Kaufman and
to the point where he though he was him.
he never came out of character for months,Carey said. I loved the movie and have seen it
about 6 times. Never could I get my wife or
friends to watch it with me.f* 'em!
R.E.M.
Moses went walking with a staff of wood, yeah yeah yeah yeah
Newton got beamed by an apple good, yeah yeah yeah yeah
Egypt was troubled by a horrible asp, yeah yeah yeah yeah
Mister Charles Darwin had the gall to ask yeah yeah yeah yeah

Now Andy did you hear about this one
Tell me, are you locked in the punch
Andy are you goofing on Elvis, hey,baby
are we loosing touch

Did you believe, we put a man on the moon,
man on the moon
IF YOU BELIEVE THERE'S NOTHING UP HIS SLEEVE
Then NOTHING cool

Here's a little ghost for the never- believer
yeah yeah yeah yeah
Here's a little ghost for the offering yeah yeah yeah yeah
........
......
~Man on the Moon~
Awesome story, great thread

"I'll be back"