How Andy Kaufman's Alter Ego Almost Took Down Taxi

It took a savvy comedy fan to know what Andy Kaufman was doing with his career. More than a mere funnyman, Kaufman tended to satirize the trappings of standup comedy, often using his routines to play pranks on the audience. As detailed in Miloš Forman's 1999 biopic "Man on the Moon," Kaufman wanted to host a TV special that contained artificial signal "static" in the hope that viewers would get up out of their seats and whack their "broken" TV sets. That's not funny for the audience, but it's certainly funny for Kaufman.

Part of Kaufman's satirical act was a whole separate stage persona named Tony Clifton, a foul-mouthed, alcoholic lounge singer who cussed and behaved badly. Clifton was also occasionally played by Kaufman's close friend and associate Bob Zmuda, allowing Clifton and Kaufman to occasionally appear in the same room, calling the reality of the character into question. Tony Clifton was little more than a very elaborate prank and wasn't really meant to be funny.

Kaufman's comedy was curiously popular in the 1970s and he managed to secure a regular role on the 1978 sitcom "Taxi," wherein he played a strange Eastern European man named Latka Gravas, whose actual home country remained obscure. Kaufman's presence added a note of surreality to an already strange, high-energy show.

To appear in "Taxi," however, Kaufman worked a stipulation into his contract: he would be a regular on the show, but his friend, Tony Clifton, needed to be allowed to appear in an episode. The studio agreed. What came next was utter bedlam. The makers of "Taxi" reminisced on the very, very strange day Clifton came to the set in a 2018 retrospective for The Hollywood Reporter.

There is no (public) film of Tony Clifton's visit to the "Taxi" set, although the scene was recreated in "Man on the Moon," and it was evidently no exaggeration. "Taxi" stars Marilu Henner, Danny DeVito, and show co-creator James L. Brooks all recalled the weird, weird day when Tony came to visit the set and how bizarre everything became. Strangely, most of the cast was in on the joke and knew that Tony was actually Kaufman in disguise, making the day only that much more surreal.

Henner recalled:

"The producers tell us it's Andy, but it isn't Andy. Just play along. On Monday morning, this guy with very orange makeup, a wig and fake moustache shows up chain-smoking in a blue ruffled tuxedo shirt. [...] We thought, 'Okay, that's kind of funny.' Then he began to act. We thought this guy's going to take down 'Taxi.'"

The "joke," of course, was that Tony Clifton was difficult. Again, this likely isn't funny for anyone other than Andy Kaufman. DeVito recalled Tony Clifton viscerally, saying:

"He stank like, I can't even defame the names of the perfumes that it smelled like. [...]  He said he had some rewrites. That was the roller coaster going over the edge. Then it was a ride all the way to the finish."

It seems that Andy was engaging in an art experiment: what would it look like if a really horrible actor was fired from the set? Brooks recalled the background wrangling, saying:

"Dave [Davis] said an artist doesn't piss on another artist and that made enormous sense to me. So, then we had that fantastic experience of Ed [Weinberger] and Andy figuring out the theater of firing him. Andy said that was one of the greatest moments of his life."

The experiment worked.

It seems not everyone was amused. "Taxi" stars Tony Danza and Judd Hirsch were baffled and enraged, respectively. Indeed, Danza managed to capture the incident on film, using his personal 8mm camera. Sadly for "Taxi" fans, that footage is not readily available, but it did allow the cast to reminisce about Andy Kaufman's terrible, terrible prank. Indeed, watching the footage after the fact created a weird and awkward moment ... that quickly breezed past. Danza explained:

"Clifton comes in through the back door with two hookers. He sits them down at the table and announces that he's rewritten the script. [...] I happened to have a Super 8 camera with me and shot the whole thing. A week later, I had everyone meet me in my dressing room to see the film. Everyone's laughing. Then Andy walks in and we all think, 'S***.' After the longest pregnant pause, he says, 'What an a**hole,' and walks out."

Hirsch, meanwhile, thought nothing was funny, furious that "Tony Clifton" should come in and interrupt a professional set. But then, Hirsch began to figure that anger might have been a part of the prank from the start. This part, Hirsch said, isn't in "Man on the Moon":

"You won't see it in the movie, but I threw him out of the studio. I was really angry. Later, I started to think about it and realized he knew someone's going to come up and do this to him." 

The series continued, and Latke was a regular for all five of the show's seasons, as were Henner, DeVito, Hirsch, and Danza. The prank was terrible and hilarious, depending on whom you ask. Luckily, no one was sued or injured.