There have been many rumours over the years that
Andy Kaufman faked his own death. He had spoken in the past about the idea and had met up with
Alan Abel, a hoaxer who had faked his death a few years earlier. Kaufman was also obsessed with Elvis, and especially with the ideas that Elvis too had faked his own death. These rumours had been fanned over the years by the repeated appearances of
Tony Clifton at small clubs. While his writing/performance partner
Bob Zmuda admitted that he had sometimes played Tony during Kaufman's life, and also insisted that Kaufman was definitely dead, he still wouldn't categorically state it was him playing Clifton.
These rumours flared up again in the wake of the film Man On The Moon, but slowly died down again. However, Kaufman had stated that if he ever did fake his own death, he would return on the 20th anniversary. 'Just in case', Zmuda, along with Kaufman's girlfriend, placed ads in the press 'to remind him' and hosted a party at the House Of Blues in LA and the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, as well as a vigil at Kaufman's old apartment. However, to no-one's great surprise, Kaufman didn't show up.
However, two days later, on May 18, 2004, a news story appeared on Yahoo! news: "Andy Kaufman, by all accounts, is alive and well at age 55 and is now living in New York City on the upper west side. To his loyal supporters and fans, Andy says "sorry about faking my death," in a recent interview with ABC News at his apartment. "
Many people uncritically accepted this 'news' item, which was actually a verbatim press release, and visited the linked blog - http://andykaufmanreturns.blogspot.com - where they found what at first seemed a semi-plausible account of his 'return', including photos of him in Tony Clifton costume (which turn out to be photos of Zmuda from the party).
Immediately, anyone with the slightest interest seemed to fall into two opposing camps - "It's him! He did it!" and "It's not him" - the "It's not him" people in turn seemed to split into two more camps - "this is evil exploitation of a dead man" and "It's exactly what he would have wanted", with subgroups arguing over whether it was the work of Zmuda or just a fan.
Soon, the blog became less convincing, with posts being removed after factual errors were exposed, and Snopes posting a rather-more-scathing-than-necessary debunking, and someone claiming to be the wife of a journalist, Steve Maddox, who was annoyed because he was spending all his time posting as 'Kaufman', set up a rival blog, andykaufmanisdead.blogspot.com .
However, the people who complained, or set out to 'expose' this, seemed to slightly miss the point. Kaufman's art was always about blurring the line between performance and reality and leaving the audience to draw their own conclusions, and this whole thing, no matter who is responsible, serves as a worthy addition to Kaufman's art.
And even if, as seems already to be happening, the quality of blog posts deteriorates, and the writer is 'debunked', well... the only possible joke better than faking one's own death would be to fake one's own death, come back, and then fake a debunking of the comeback, wouldn't it?
Next time you see a report of an Elvis sighting in the Weekly World News, look at the photo carefully... are you sure that isn't really Andy?
Sources:
"Andy Kaufman"'s blog - http://andykaufmanreturns.blogspot.com/
ANdy Kaufman Lives - a fan's speculation - http://www.andykaufmanlives.com/enrique
Andy Lives! ("An Andy Kaufman And Tony Clifton Tribute Site With An Emphasis On Faking Death") - http://andylives.org/
Yahoo! News Report of Andy's return - http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/040519/234/726q1.html
Snopes debunking - http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/kaufman.asp
Andy Kaufman Is Dead - blog of the supposed wife of the supposed hoaxer - http://andykaufmanisdead.blogspot.com/
Update: Since writing this a few hours ago I have discovered that the Steve Maddox who it is being claimed wrote the Kaufman blog is actually the owner of the domain andykaufmanlives.com - which featues writing about Kaufman in a far, far stranger manner than that on the blog, and is a far more unusual site. That site has also been dropping hints for several months about Kaufman maybe coming back. Steve Maddox is also the name of a character in a film called The Running Man, a insurance investigator who chases someone who faked his own death. But the phone number on the whois registration for andykaufmanlives.com really was registered to a Steve Maddox. Whoever has been doing this has been planning it for far longer than it would first appear, or there are quite a few interesting coincidences...