Download or read book Andy Kaufman Revealed written by Bob Zmuda and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2000-01-04 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Best known for his sweet-natured character Latka on Taxi, Andy Kaufman was the most influential comic of the generation that produced David Letterman, John Belushi, and Robin Williams. A regular on the early days of Saturday Night Live (where he regularly disrupted planned skits), Kaufman quickly became known for his idiosyncratic roles and for performances that crossed the boundaries of comedy, challenging expectations and shocking audiences. Kaufman's death from lung cancer at age 35 (he'd never smoked) stunned his fans and the comic community that had come to look to him as its lightning rod and standard bearer. Bob Zmuda -- Kaufman's closest friend, producer, writer, and straight man -- breaks his twenty-year silence about Kaufman and unmasks the man he knew better than anyone. He chronicles Kaufman's meteoric rise, the development of his extraordinary personas, the private man behind the driven actor and comedian, and answers the question most often asked: Did Andy Kaufman fake his own death?
Download or read book Andy Kaufman written by Bob Zmuda and published by BenBella Books. This book was released on 2014-10-07 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time ever, the two people who knew Andy Kaufman best open up about the most enigmatic artist of our generation. Comedian and Taxi star Andy Kaufman, known for his crazy antics on screen and off, was the ultimate prankster, delighting audiences with his Elvis and Mighty Mouse impressions while also antagonizing them with his wrestling and lounge-lizard alter ego, Tony Clifton. Some say he died in 1984, while others believe he performed the ultimate vanishing act. In Andy Kaufman: The Truth, Finally, Bob Zmuda, Andy's writer and best friend, and Lynn Margulies, the love of Andy's life, reveal all—including surprising secrets that Andy made Lynne and Bob promise never to tell until both of his parents had died. Hilarious and poignant, this book separates fact from fiction, and includes a candid inside look at the Milos Forman film Man on the Moon, which Zmuda coexecutive produced and featured Jim Carrey as Andy, Paul Giamatti as Zmuda, Courtney Love as Margulies, and Danny DeVito as Andy's manager, George Shapiro. Finally, Bob Zmuda shares in detail the reasons he believes Andy Kaufman did, in fact, fake his own death, including exactly how he did it and why he will return.
Download or read book Was This Man a Genius written by Julie Hecht and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2002 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Andy Kaufman defied explanation. But between 1978 and 1979, acclaimedNew Yorkershort story writer Julie Hecht attempted to arrange an interview with him, hoping to discover how he came to do what he did. The one-hour interview turned into innumerable surreal meetings and phone conversations with her subject; but she couldn't always tell when his act was on. Whether driving recklessly on icy roads, or drawing the author unaware into his schemes and dada-esque pranks on unsuspecting waiters and college students, Andy Kaufman never seemed to separate himself from his stage personality--or personalities.Was This Man a Genius?is the culmination of a series of bizarre, frequently hilarious meetings; In describing them Hecht, herself a master of wit and observation, illuminates the enigma of Andy Kaufman's work and life.
Download or read book Dear Andy Kaufman I Hate Your Guts written by and published by Process. This book was released on 2009-12 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Famous for his role as Latka Gravas on TV's Taxi, appearances on Saturday Night Live and his own variety show, legendary eccentric performer Andy Kaufman provoked a national outrage in 1977 by taunting the women of America on TV and challenging them to wrestle him live on television. Thousands of fired-up females (and a few males) responded to the call. Kaufman received a torrent of impassioned challenges, hate mail and love letters from would-be wrestling contenders - all exhibited in this fascinating and sometimes bizarre collection.
Download or read book Lost in the Funhouse written by Bill Zehme and published by Delta. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Draws on interviews with Kaufman's family and friends, as well as unpublished letters and manuscripts, to provide a portrait of the comedian's complex personality.
Download or read book I m Dying Up Here written by William Knoedelseder and published by Public Affairs. This book was released on 2010-07-27 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Full of revealing portraits of many of the best-known comedic talents of the 1970s, "I'm Dying Up Here" is also a poignant tale of the price of success and the terrible cost of failure--professional and moral.
Download or read book Antkind written by Charlie Kaufman and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 721 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bold and boundlessly original debut novel from the Oscar®-winning screenwriter of Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Synecdoche, New York. LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE • “A dyspeptic satire that owes much to Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon . . . propelled by Kaufman’s deep imagination, considerable writing ability and bull’s-eye wit."—The Washington Post “An astonishing creation . . . riotously funny . . . an exceptionally good [book].”—The New York Times Book Review • “Kaufman is a master of language . . . a sight to behold.”—NPR NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND MEN’S HEALTH B. Rosenberger Rosenberg, neurotic and underappreciated film critic (failed academic, filmmaker, paramour, shoe salesman who sleeps in a sock drawer), stumbles upon a hitherto unseen film made by an enigmatic outsider—a film he’s convinced will change his career trajectory and rock the world of cinema to its core. His hands on what is possibly the greatest movie ever made—a three-month-long stop-motion masterpiece that took its reclusive auteur ninety years to complete—B. knows that it is his mission to show it to the rest of humanity. The only problem: The film is destroyed, leaving him the sole witness to its inadvertently ephemeral genius. All that’s left of this work of art is a single frame from which B. must somehow attempt to recall the film that just might be the last great hope of civilization. Thus begins a mind-boggling journey through the hilarious nightmarescape of a psyche as lushly Kafkaesque as it is atrophied by the relentless spew of Twitter. Desperate to impose order on an increasingly nonsensical existence, trapped in a self-imposed prison of aspirational victimhood and degeneratively inclusive language, B. scrambles to re-create the lost masterwork while attempting to keep pace with an ever-fracturing culture of “likes” and arbitrary denunciations that are simultaneously his bête noire and his raison d’être. A searing indictment of the modern world, Antkind is a richly layered meditation on art, time, memory, identity, comedy, and the very nature of existence itself—the grain of truth at the heart of every joke.
Download or read book Comedy at the Edge written by Richard Zoglin and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2009-02-10 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surveys the stand-up comedy of the 1970s, citing the contributions of celebrity comics, from George Carlin and Richard Pryor to Robin Williams and Andy Kaufman, in an account that also evaluates the roles played by such clubs as Catch a Rising Star, the Improv, and the Comedy Store.
Download or read book Almost Black written by Vijay Jojo Chokal-Ingam and published by Affirmative Action Deception. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I got into medical school by saying I was black. I lied. Honestly, I am about as black as my sister Mindy Kaling (The Office / The Mindy Project). Once upon a time, I was an ethically challenged, hard-partying Indian American frat boy enjoying my third year of college. That is until I realized I didn't have the grades or scores to get into medical school. Legitimately. Still, I was determined to be a doctor and discovered that affirmative action provided a loophole that might help. The only problem? I wasn't a minority. So I became one. I shaved my head, trimmed my long Indian eyelashes, and applied as an African American. Not even my frat brothers recognized me. I joined the Organization of Black Students and used my middle name, Jojo. Vijay, the Indian American frat boy, became Jojo, the African American affirmative action applicant. Not everything went as planned. During a med school interview, an African American doctor angrily confronted me for not being black. Cops harassed me. Store clerks accused me of shoplifting. Women were either scared of me or found my bald black dude look sexually mesmerizing. What started as a scam to get into med school turned into a twisted social experiment that taught me lessons I would never have learned in the classroom. I became a serious contender at some of America's greatest schools, including Harvard, Wash U, UPenn, Case Western, and Columbia. I interviewed at 11 schools while posing as a black man. After all that, I finally got accepted into medical school. Before I finished this book, I stirred a hornet's nest by telling my story. It has been featured in more than 100 media outlets, including CNN, NBC, TIME, FOX, and Huffington Post. Many loved it, but not everyone approved of what I did. My college classmate Tucker Max (I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell) disapproved. My sister Mindy Kaling furiously declared, This book will bring shame on our family! I disagree but I'll let you be the judge.
Download or read book It s in the Book Bob written by Bob Eubanks and published by Benbella Books. This book was released on 2004 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Best known to audiences as the host of The Newlywed Game, Eubanks chronicles his life and work from the beginning of his career as a radio dj in the late 1950's, then as a concert promoter (for the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, among others) and manager for several country singers--he gave Dolly Parton her start and spent ten years on the road with Merle Haggard.
Download or read book Wild Milk written by Sabrina Orah Mark and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2018-10-01 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A genre-expanding collection of stories that Publishers Weekly calls “perplexingly captivating” and “astonishing.” Wild Milk is like Borscht Belt meets Leonora Carrington; it’s like Donald Barthelme meets Pony Head; it’s like the Brothers Grimm meet Beckett in his swim trunks at the beach. In other words, this remarkable collection of stories is unlike anything else you’ve read.
Download or read book Surfing Uncertainty written by Andy Clark and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2016 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exciting new theories in neuroscience, psychology, and artificial intelligence are revealing minds like ours as predictive minds, forever trying to guess the incoming streams of sensory stimulation before they arrive. In this up-to-the-minute treatment, philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark explores new ways of thinking about perception, action, and the embodied mind.
Download or read book The Book of Hidden Things written by Francesco Dimitri and published by Titan Books (US, CA). This book was released on 2018-07-03 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Four old friends confront their darkest secrets in this fantasy steeped in nostalgia, folklore, religion, and the seductive landscape of Southern Italy—by the Italian Neil Gaiman. “A tale of adventure, mystery, friendship and heart-wrenching beauty that will make you re-examine what is holy, what is true, and what is beyond the realm of possibility.” —BookPage Four old school friends have a pact: to meet up every year in the small town in Puglia they grew up in. Art, the charismatic leader of the group and creator of the pact, insists that the agreement must remain unshakable and enduring. But this year, he never shows up. A visit to his house increases the friends’ worry: Art is farming marijuana. In Southern Italy doing that kind of thing can be very dangerous. They can’t go to the Carabinieri so must make enquiries of their own. This is how they come across the rumors about Art—bizarre and unbelievable rumors that he miraculously cured the local mafia boss’ daughter of terminal leukemia. And among the chaos of his house, they find a document written by Art, “The Book of Hidden Things”, that promises to reveal dark secrets and wonders beyond anything previously known. Set in the beguiling and seductive world of Southern Italy, Francesco Dimitri’s first novel in English is a story friendship, landscape, love, betrayal, and mystery that will entrance fans of Elena Ferrante, Neil Gaiman, and Donna Tartt.
Download or read book Leading with My Chin written by Jay Leno and published by Thorndike Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long before he became the host of the tonight show, Jay Leno was dubbed by the media and his peers alike as the "Hardest-working Man in Show Business." Performing comedy at a breakneck pace, he played more than 300 dates a year and traveled to every corner of the nation. Or as his mother who never quite understood what he did for a living, liked to say, "Going from town to town, putting on his little skits."--
Download or read book It Never Ends written by Tom Scharpling and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From cult comedy icon and beloved radio host Tom Scharpling, an inspiring, funny, and thoughtful memoir It Never Ends is Tom Scharpling’s harrowing memoir of his coming of age, a story he has never told before. It’s the heartbreaking account of his attempt at suicide, two stays in a mental hospital, and the memory-wiping electroshock therapy that saved his life. After his rehabilitation, Scharpling committed himself to reinvention through the world of comedy. In this book he will lift the curtain on the turmoil that still follows him, despite all of his accolades and achievements. In the vein of candid memoirs from comedians like Mike Birbiglia's Sleepwalk with Me and Norm Macdonald's Based on a True Story, It Never Ends is a revealing book by a beloved comedy icon.
Download or read book Bachelor Nation written by Amy Kaufman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *A New York Times Bestseller* The first definitive, unauthorized, behind-the-scenes cultural history of the Bachelor franchise, America’s favorite guilty pleasure. For sixteen years and thirty-six seasons, the Bachelor franchise has been a mainstay in American TV viewers’ lives. Since it premiered in 2002, the show’s popularity and relevance have only grown—more than eight million viewers tuned in to see the conclusion of the most recent season of The Bachelor. Los Angeles Times journalist Amy Kaufman is a proud member of Bachelor Nation and has a long history with the franchise—ABC even banned her from attending show events after her coverage of the program got a little too real for its liking. She has interviewed dozens of producers, contestants, and celebrity fans to give readers never-before-told details of the show’s inner workings: what it’s like to be trapped in the mansion “bubble”; dark, juicy tales of producer manipulation; and revelations about the alcohol-fueled debauchery that occurs long before the Fantasy Suite. Kaufman also explores what our fascination means, culturally: what the show says about the way we view so-called ideal suitors; our subconscious yearning for fairy-tale romance; and how this enduring television show has shaped society’s feelings about love, marriage, and feminism by appealing to a marriage plot that’s as old as the best of Jane Austen.
Download or read book Letterman written by Jason Zinoman and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-04-11 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times comedy critic Jason Zinoman delivers the definitive story of the life and artistic legacy of David Letterman, the greatest television talk show host of all time and the signature comedic voice of a generation. In a career spanning more than thirty years, David Letterman redefined the modern talk show with an ironic comic style that transcended traditional television. While he remains one of the most famous stars in America, he is a remote, even reclusive, figure whose career is widely misunderstood. In Letterman, Jason Zinoman, the first comedy critic in the history of the New York Times, mixes groundbreaking reporting with unprecedented access and probing critical analysis to explain the unique entertainer’s titanic legacy. Moving from his early days in Indiana to his retirement, Zinoman goes behind the scenes of Letterman’s television career to illuminate the origins of his revolutionary comedy, its overlooked influences, and how his work intersects with and reveals his famously eccentric personality. Zinoman argues that Letterman had three great artistic periods, each distinct and part of his evolution. As he examines key broadcasting moments—"Stupid Pet Tricks" and other captivating segments that defined Late Night with David Letterman—he illuminates Letterman’s relationship to his writers, and in particular, the show’s co-creator, Merrill Markoe, with whom Letterman shared a long professional and personal connection. To understand popular culture today, it’s necessary to understand David Letterman. With this revealing biography, Zinoman offers a perceptive analysis of the man and the artist whose ironic voice and caustic meta-humor was critical to an entire generation of comedians and viewers—and whose singular style ushered in new tropes that have become clichés in comedy today.
