Andy Kaufman, the famous joker of the seventies and eighties, didn't consider himself a comedian. He considered himself more of a "Song-and-dance" man. Every time Kaufman went on stage, he did something new. He would always make the audience uncomfortable in some way. What he was, was a performance artist. When he goes live, he uses the audience, the actors, the stage, almost anything he can find, as a prop for his act. Half the time not everyone even knows who is part of his acts.

Kaufman would create acts that stretched for years at a time, feuds between him and others that were taken as far as national television, only to be known as purely an act. Kaufman had the ability to endure extreme awkwardness, something very few could do, and this is what made him so good. Kaufman's act entirely, was an act based on an act. Merely everything was purely fictional.

Kaufman brought originality to the table, as we see no one doing what he does. No one has even attempted it. We see some shows that pull pranks, like "Punked". But these are not anywhere near the magnitude of Andy Kaufman's stunts. Kaufman's live acts consisted of multiple personalities put on by him, singing and dancing, and extremely awkward moments. One of his alter ego characters, Tony Clifton, was an opening act for many of Andy's shows. Clifton was a lounge singer, with a really interesting character, but was brutally rude to the audience. Kaufman stated that sometimes the audience likes to have that person to hate on.

Kaufman's style of performance was so original, not only have we not seen anything like it since, I doubt we will be seeing anything of the style for quite some time. Many modern celebrities that try to act normal are uninteresting and those that act out of hand get lots of media interest. What Andy did was fake himself as an out of hand person and essentially put a huge parody on the entire thing. Kaufman showed just how funny the whole thing is.

He always spoke of faking his death. At times he would seem to be obsessed with the concept of it. So when he died at the age of 35 with a type of rare lung cancer and wasn't even a smoker, it left some with the idea that perhaps even Kaufman's death was part of just a big act. You never know with Kaufman, he is an original act that entertainment needs today.