you've seen my next guest on saturday night live and he was seen on the hit series taxi as
latke uh however he has not been on television much lately he's been i
guess busy doing other things nonetheless i'm glad that he has agreed to be with us
here this morning please welcome mr andy kaufman
andy thank you
i really i really appreciate you being here this morning it's nice to see you um
tell me about uh tell me about taxi uh was
would you like a tissue would you like a tissue
just a little bit of
something um
so um uh tell me about them
see the people sometimes eat breakfast while they watch the show
um now the uh this the there was a tv strike you know and uh
some shows were not in production but now they're they're going back into production and uh are
you gonna i guess are you gonna be on taxi you mentioned before the show there were some problems
uh yeah i quit the show you quit the show you're no longer gonna be on taxi right you have your own
show no um they're i'm not doing much uh special right now um this is you know i'm once in a while
making appearances like on this show yeah yeah i know you're probably gonna do movies hopefully
and i guess you'll be you used to be on saturday night live an awful lot so i
don't know i really don't um have any control of that if they asked me i would do it but i
don't real there's nothing planned right now in the for the near future
um you're doing a lot of nightclubs though
um occasionally appearing at the improvisation in new york there's a place i started out at yeah
not really much i'm just staying i'm living in new york now
uh but things are things are okay
so you know woman mentioned you
um
you um
can i get you a mint
um yeah i know you wanted to your um you had a little uh you're gonna do a little piece for us
this morning you wanna you wanna go to that now you're what do you wanna do um if you'd like okay
we have a stool there you want to do it thank you thank you andy kaufman ladies and gentlemen
i'd just like to before i begin um i would like to just say thank you very much to david letterman
and the producers of this show and the people that run this show for having me
as a guest and it's a very pleasure to come on the show and be here i like to talk about my marriage
i met my wife uh several years ago when i was struggling in new york performing every night at
the improvisation nightclub i would perform every night for free and once in a while i would get
jobs elsewhere for maybe 50 a night and stuff
and i met her while i was driving up from southern new jersey one time she was a cocktail waitress
and uh we went out a few times fell in love and got married and she kind of she worked
as a waitress while i was working for free in nightclubs and we lived together outside
outside of new york city we had two children and uh names were mark and lisa and um
the saturday night live it just discovered me i'm gonna i'd rather
if you don't uh laugh because i'm not trying to be funny right now
and shortly after that i went to california and things really started happening
i started i had a manager i got a manager shapiro west and associates george shapiro a wonderful man
and he was my manager for for next few years and then taxi came along and i was doing all these
far out things on television shows but when taxi came along it was just one character the latka and
i kind of felt inhibited by it that you know i was just able to do
the one character i wanted to have more freedom creatively to do these other things
and the things i used to do on saturday night live and stuff
so anyway i quit the show and my wife
at that time i was wrestling women on saturday night live i got a lot of hate mail and
um no producer would hire me after that so one day i was at my manager's office
trying to get a engagement for a dinner theater in wisconsin and i got a call from my wife's
lawyer she wanted a divorce and she got a divorce she got the kids the house she got all my money
i'm not all my money but some anyway she got everything i moved to new york and now
that's what i'm doing now living in new york and i'd um i i don't really have anything
um so anyway um if any buddy could i i know this sounds like a cliche but
uh if you could any extra money i do appreciate it
uh
oh
thank you very much
it's always a pleasure to have
always a pleasure to have the young talent on the show we'll be right back
you