The Tragic Real-Life Story Of Andy Kaufman

A dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker, Andy Kaufman grew up in a middle-class Jewish family. Despite his shy tendencies, by the age of eight, he had already become passionate about making people laugh: When he wasn't doing make-believe TV shows in his bedroom, according to Biography, he was performing stand-up at birthday parties. As pointed out by AndyKaufman.com, it was in these early years that Kaufman first donned his father's jacket and developed his famous "Foreign Man" character, mostly to entertain his younger sister.

Kaufman struggled in high school, according to Bill Zehme's biography Lost in the Funhouse, but kept going largely to please his father. After graduating in 1967, he could have been drafted into the Vietnam War, but following a psychological evaluation, received a permanent 4-F deferment. The reason? A letter from the doctor claimed that Kaufman had lived "in a fantasy world since preschool days," completely disconnected from reality, and that if he were ever put in the military, he would "lose his mind." Kaufman, for the record, absolutely loved this letter. He proudly displayed it to all his buddies, who knew full-well that Kaufman had purposely treated his psych evaluations as a high-stakes joke. As friend Gil Gevins said, "He was aware that it was all this kind of game that he played. He knew what he was doing — not all the time, but a lot of the time. He just encouraged people to believe what they wanted."

WTFwhatthehell on March 12nd, 2021 at 04:38 UTC »

Richard Feynman, the nobel winning physicist has an even better one.

He just answered all the questions truthfully.

"Who do you work for, Dick?" says the psychiatrist, smiling again. "General Electric."

"Do you like your work, Dick?" he says, with that same big smile on his face.

"So-so." I just wasn't going to have anything to do with him.

Three nice questions, and then the fourth one is completely different. "Do you think people talk about you?" he asks, in a low, serious tone.

I light up and say, "Sure! When I go home, my mother often tells me how she was telling her friends about me." He isn't listening to the explanation; instead, he's writing something down on my paper.

Then again, in a low, serious tone, he says, "Do you think people stare at you?"

I'm all ready to say no, when he says, "For instance, do you think any of the boys waiting on the benches are staring at you now?"

While I had been waiting to talk to the psychiatrist, I had noticed there were about twelve guys on the benches waiting for the three psychiatrists, and they've got nothing else to look at, so I divide twelve by three — that makes four each — but I'm conservative, so I say, "Yeah, maybe two of them are looking at us."

He says, "Well just turn around and look" — and he's not even bothering to look himself!

So I turn around, and sure enough, two guys are looking. So I point to them and I say, "Yeah — there's that guy, and that guy over there looking at us." Of course, when I'm turned around and pointing like that, other guys start to look at us, so I say, "Now him, and those two over there — and now the whole bunch." He still doesn't look up to check. He's busy writing more things on my paper.

Then he says, "Do you ever hear voices in your head?"

"Very rarely," and I'm about to describe the two occasions on which it happened when he says, "Do you talk to yourself?"

"Yeah, sometimes when I'm shaving, or thinking; once in a while." He's writing down more stuff.

"I see you have a deceased wife — do you talk to her?"

This question really annoyed me, but I contained myself and said, "Sometimes, when I go up on a mountain and I'm thinking about her."

More writing. Then he asks, "Is anyone in your family in a mental institution?"

"Yeah, I have an aunt in an insane asylum."

"Why do you call it an insane asylum?" he says, resentfully. "Why don't you call it a mental institution?"

"I thought it was the same thing."

....

After a while I was called over to a different desk to see another psychiatrist. While the first psychiatrist had been rather young and innocent-looking, this one was gray-haired and distinguished-looking — obviously the superior psychiatrist. I figure all of this is now going to get straightened out"

...

While I'm waiting in the line, I look at the paper which has the summary of all the tests I've taken so far. And just for the hell of it I show my paper to the guy next to me, and I ask him in a rather stupid-sounding voice, "Hey! What did you get in 'Psychiatric'? Oh! You got an 'N.' I got an 'N' in everything else, but I got a 'D' in 'Psychiatric.' What does that mean?" I knew what it meant: "N" is normal, "D" is deficient.

The guy pats me on the shoulder and says, "Buddy, it's perfectly all right. It doesn't mean anything. Don't worry about it!" Then he walks way over to the other corner of the room, frightened: It's a lunatic!

I started looking at the papers the psychiatrists had written, and it looked pretty serious! The first guy wrote:

Thinks people talk about him.

Thinks people stare at him.

Auditory hypnogogic hallucinations.

Talks to self.

Talks to deceased wife.

Maternal aunt in mental institution.

Very peculiar stare. (I knew what that was — that was when I said, "And this is medicine?")

The second psychiatrist was obviously more important, because his scribble was harder to read. His notes said things like "auditory hypnogogic hallucinations confirmed." ("Hypnogogic" means you get them while you're falling asleep.)

He wrote a lot of other technical-sounding notes, and I looked them over, and they looked pretty bad. I figured I'd have to get all of this straightened out with the army somehow.

At the end of the whole physical examination there's an army officer who decides whether you're in or you're out. For instance, if there's something the matter with your hearing, he has to decide if it's serious enough to keep you out of the army. And because the army was scraping the bottom of the barrel for new recruits, this officer wasn't going to take anything from anybody. He was tough as nails. For instance, the fellow ahead of me had two bones sticking out from the back of his neck — some kind of displaced vertebra, or something — and this army officer had to get up from his desk and feel them — he had to make sure they were real!

I figure this is the place I'll get this whole misunderstanding straightened out. When it's my turn, I hand my papers to the officer, and I'm ready to explain everything, but the officer doesn't look up. He sees the "D" next to "Psychiatric," immediately reaches for the rejection stamp, doesn't ask me any questions, doesn't say anything; he just stamps my papers "REJECTED," and hands me my 4-F paper, still looking at his desk

TorgoLebowski on March 12nd, 2021 at 02:49 UTC »

"treated his psych eval life as a high-stakes joke."

wjbc on March 12nd, 2021 at 01:51 UTC »

Arlo Guthrie had a similar experience -- he was rejected because he had a criminal record of littering -- and turned it into a 18-minute song, "Alice's Restaurant Massacree."