The story of Andy Kaufman’s ban from Saturday Night Live is an extended and tangled one. And, in line with the boundary-pushing comic’s profession objective of preserving audiences guessing, the payoff of the late comic’s last SNL look solely doubled down on the controversy surrounding Kaufman’s tumultuous time on the groundbreaking sketch comedy sequence.
As the story goes, Kaufman after which Saturday Night Live producer Dick Ebersol bought right into a screaming, profanity-laden argument backstage through the Nov. 13, 1982, episode, reportedly as a result of Ebersol had lower Kaufman’s newest visitor look on the final minute. Kaufman stormed off, and, through the episode, Ebersol made a uncommon look on the present itself, explaining that Kaufman’s materials had grown stale and that Kaufman merely wasn’t humorous anymore.
It was a wierd and uneasy factor to look at, which, naturally, was all a part of the plan. Kaufman, whose current stint because the self-created “intergender wrestling champion” noticed the comedian grappling with ladies throughout his act and at professional wrestling venues, had succeeded in producing quite a lot of unfavorable publicity, as was Kaufman’s intention. So the concept that the notoriously controlling Ebersol would take to SNL to trash Kaufman was a minimum of believable — which is how he and Kaufman wished it. The subsequent week, SNL introduced an unprecedented call-in vote wherein viewers may dial considered one of two 900 numbers to find out whether or not Andy Kaufman would ever be invited again to Saturday Night Live.
The vote was performed straight by the forged — as a result of virtually all of them had been, just like the viewers, at midnight. Kaufman, in accordance with Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad’s account of the early days of SNL, Saturday Night, spent the week main as much as the vote worrying that the vote — cooked up because it had been between he and Ebersol — would go in opposition to him. And that’s simply what occurred, with 195,544 callers voting (at 50 cents per name) to ban Kaufman from SNL eternally. Kaufman by no means would seem on Saturday Night Live once more, earlier than the comic died from a uncommon lung most cancers simply over a yr later on the age of 35.
Or reasonably, Kaufman by no means appeared stay on Saturday Night Live once more. It was on the Jan. 22, 1983, episode of the present, hosted by Lily Tomlin, that SNL viewers had been handled to what seemed to be one other gratuitous low cost shot on the now-exiled comic. With forged member Brad Hall performing because the anchor for Ebersol’s “Weekend Update” information section (briefly retitled “Saturday Night News”), Kaufman was given yet one more kick whereas he was down. Hall, precisely reporting that Kaufman had been shopping for advert area on TV stations across the nation, defined that the “semiretired comedian” was desperately begging America for an additional likelihood to come back again to Saturday Night Live.
Watch When Andy Kaufman Was Voted Off ‘SNL’
Hall then aired Kaufman’s precise advert, which the anchor defined had run solely within the extra reasonably priced markets of Macon, Ga., Des Moines, Iowa, and Omaha, Neb. In it, Kaufman stands uncomfortably posed in entrance of a backdrop of blue-screened pine bushes and explains that he’s utilizing his personal cash to buy airtime at particular person stations in an try and get Ebersol and SNL to rescind his ban. Kaufman performs it completely straight, thanking Saturday Night Live for “all the great years” and thanking the “169,000 people” who voted to maintain him on the present (the whole was 169,186), explaining that it made him really feel good that so many individuals appreciated his work.
“That’s pretty sad,” Hall famous sadly because the advert ends, incomes a chuckle from the confused viewers, earlier than occurring to notice that not solely is Kaufman nonetheless banned, “but he now owes the NBC network $80,000 and some change.” Andy Kaufman’s comedy was a one-of-a-kind mix of showmanship and provocation, and this last bit on the present that helped elevate his profession (Kaufman was on the very first SNL episode in 1975) was an ideal encapsulation of Kaufman’s inimitable model. Kaufman did prepare dinner up the entire thought with Ebersol, despite the fact that he relished his recurring highlight on the present.
Just as his supposed feud with professional wrestler Jerry Lawler was revealed as a hoax lengthy after Kaufman’s loss of life, virtually everybody at Saturday Night Live was stored clueless as to the actual stakes behind the vote. On a podcast look, forged member Gary Kroeger famous that he regrets being the one to introduce the 900 numbers on that fateful evening, explaining that he imagined all of it to be a joke.
Kroeger was half proper: While Kaufman was behind the stunt, he was nonetheless dedicated to abiding by the end result. His subsequent, low-rent public pleas for a keep of SNL execution had been one other piece of Kaufman’s efficiency artwork however had been additionally little doubt supposed to convey him again into the present’s orbit. That SNL aired his pleas solely to mock him one last time was simply the icing on the cake, a meta-textual gag that left these watching baffled and uneasily amused. It could not have been how Andy Kaufman wished his tenure on Saturday Night Live to finish, nevertheless it’s powerful to think about he wasn’t happy to exit on such a wierd and chaotic observe.
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