Box Brown returns to the subject that gave him his breakthrough in Andre the Giant: Life and Legend - wrestling, in Is This Guy For Real? And it’s for real a decent biographical comic on the great comic Andy Kaufman, mostly focused on Andy’s wrestling.
What little I know about Kaufman outside of his comedy is thanks to the Milos Forman film Man on the Moon, though Brown’s book doesn’t really add much to that so I guess it was a pretty thorough biopic! I did find out though that Andy’s wrestling costume was designed purely to hide his boners as his fetish was wrestling women and he didn’t want to show his arousal in public. That and a better understanding of his beautiful Buddhist beliefs are the two main things I’ll take away from this book.
The book asks the question: why would such a gentle, sweet guy create characters who were so intentionally obnoxious and calculated to be hated by the audience, like the misogynistic wrestler and Tony Clifton, the drunk lounge act? Brown’s answer seems to point towards Kaufman’s love of wrestling and its then-secretive nature of kayfabe (pretending wrestling was real instead of scripted).
Except the premise is really only set up in the book jacket’s blurb and, if you didn’t bother reading that (and I usually don’t - I read it this time as I wondered what the point of the book was beyond the obvious), I can’t imagine the story’s purpose will be at all understandable. And that’s really my only major critique of this book: that Box Brown didn’t clearly establish what he was trying to achieve within the book itself, nor did he firmly answer it.
Taken at face value, it’s a truncated but fine bio of Kaufman, from his regular guest appearances on Saturday Night Live and the sitcom Taxi to his Buddhist values, though mainly the focus is on his love of wrestling. Much of the book is about his kayfabe rivalry with Jerry “The King” Lawler and their public spats (the two were actually close friends in real life). And it’s kinda interesting - Kaufman’s jokes, particularly his ridiculous taunting of women, still make me laugh - but doesn’t make for a terribly gripping narrative.
Wrestling fans or Kaufman fans wanting to find out more on his wrestling antics will get the most out of this one; I’m neither but I still thought Is This Guy For Real? was a fairly entertaining and informative read about a true comedy original.
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