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4+ verk 203 medlemmar 3 recensioner

Om författaren

Bob Zmuda was Andy Kaufman's creative producer, writer, straight man, & closest friend. He is the Emmy & ACE Award-winning creator & Executive Producer of HBO's "Comic Relief" telecasts, hosted by Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg, & Robin Williams. He was coexecutive producer of the Andy Kaufman visa mer biopic, "Man on the Moon", directed by Milos Forman & starring Jim Carrey, Danny DeVito, Paul Giamatti, & Courtney Love. (Bowker Author Biography) visa färre

Inkluderar namnen: Bob Zmuda, Bob et al Zmuda

Verk av Bob Zmuda

Associerade verk

I Killed: True Stories of the Road from America's Top Comics (2006) — Bidragsgivare — 136 exemplar
Comic Relief (1996) — Inledning — 56 exemplar

Taggad

Allmänna fakta

Födelsedag
1949-12-12
Kön
male

Medlemmar

Recensioner

Bob Zmuda was Andy Kaufman's collaborator and writer for many years. As such he is a lifetime practitioner of absurdist humour and practical jokes. Anybody who reads a book subtitled "The Truth, Finally" by such an unreliable narrator needs to take it with a huge pinch of salt.

The book gives out very little information that people acquainted with Kaufman's story wouldn't already know. Much of it is taken up with the making of the film Man on the Moon, and people who have seen that film aren't going to learn much about Kaufman from this. The bulk of the rest of the book is Zmuda laboriously trying to sell the idea that Kaufman isn't dead and is coming back. Occasionally Lynne Margulies gets to contribute a snippet where she comments on something Zmuda wrote. It's pretty clear from what he writes here that Zmuda is trying to have a lend of the reader; just one more lame attempt at a practical joke.… (mer)
 
Flaggad
gjky | 1 annan recension | Apr 9, 2023 |
Avid Andy Kaufman fans know how closely connected to Andy’s career that Bob Zmuda was, and for that reason, a new book by Zmuda on Kaufman is likely to grab their attention. But those same fans, knowing Kaufman and Zmuda as well as they probably do, will also know better than to expect “the truth, finally” from this book.

Andy Kaufman was more performance artist than comedian, a man who enjoyed nothing more than getting some kind of genuine emotional response from his audience – be that response negative or positive. Bob Zmuda was Andy’s partner in crime for years, and the two of them concocted some great schemes together. There is little doubt that Zmuda helped make Kaufman into a star/celebrity, but there is also little doubt that, without Andy Kaufman, relatively few people would know who Bob Zmuda is.

So what is “the truth, finally” that Zmuda has decided to reveal in Andy Kaufman: The Truth, Finally? It’s simply this: Zmuda wants the rest of us to believe that he actually still thinks that Andy Kaufman faked his own death thirty years ago, and that he will soon be making his first public appearance since that “death.” That’s it; that’s all there is to it. Zmuda, for obvious reasons, wants to sell books about Andy Kaufman – and he does not want this to be the last of those books, so he’s leaving the door wide open to a Truth sequel. Very Kaufman-like, that.

There are, however, some interesting aspects to Andy Kaufman: The Truth, Finally that potential readers will want to consider. Fans of “Man on the Moon, the remarkable Andy Kaufman biopic, for instance, will be intrigued by all the details into the making of that film that Zmuda and Margulies share in the book. Too, Jim Carrey fans are certain to be fascinated by Carrey’s total immersion into the Andy Kaufman persona that he took on during the entire making of that movie. (That more “truth” about Jim Carrey is revealed in the book than about Andy Kaufman may be what Zmuda intended all along.)

It should also be noted that the role of Lynne Margulies in Andy Kaufman: The Truth, Finally is a limited one. Her contributions amount to short pieces in which she briefly reflects on her memories about something that Zmuda introduces and covers in detail. This is very much Bob Zmuda’s book, and it shows. One gets the impression that Zmuda enjoys being disliked (much as Kaufman did), and that he almost goes out of his way here to show all the worst aspects of his own character in order to get an emotional reaction from his readers.

Worth reading? Well, how big an Andy Kaufman fan are you?
… (mer)
 
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SamSattler | 1 annan recension | Jan 15, 2015 |
sped through this like it was no one's business. andy kaufman was one of the coolest people ever alive, ever. everything that's in the movie but more more more. hard to put down once you start. a touching life.
 
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stipe168 | Jan 10, 2007 |

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Statistik

Verk
4
Även av
2
Medlemmar
203
Popularitet
#108,639
Betyg
3.2
Recensioner
3
ISBN
9

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