Who was the real Andy Kaufman? It’s a question that had people scratching their heads even before the actor/performance artist—who was often pigeonholed as being a comedian, much to his own chagrin—passed away in 1984 at the age of 35. Within his too-short lifetime, the Taxi star managed to pack in a lifetime’s worth of rich material that we’re still analyzing today. Whether he was lip-synching the Mighty Mouse theme song—specifically, the chorus—wrestling women as the self-proclaimed Intergender Wrestling Champion of the World, reading The Great Gatsby in its entirety to an audience, crooning as an obnoxious lounge singer named Tony Clifton, or taking the entire audience of Carnegie Hall out for milk and cookies, Kaufman is still keeping us guessing as to what is and isn’t real.

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