“Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Tony Clifton!” announces the balding, overenthusiastic stage master. He overextends the “on” of Clifton’s name as if he’s wringing the last drop of juice out of a mangled grapefruit.
Trained as well as any Beverly Hills poodle, the audience claps. The drumroll cues; and our bald friend moves to the side of the stage.
Don’t buy a used dog from this man.
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov inhumanely used dogs for his legendary conditioning excperiments, but their perverse little successors–studio-audience humans–work nearly as well, even though conditioned to respond with applause in lieu of saliva. Granted, given how great they’d look drooling en masse, the switch is kind of unfortunate.
Seconds after, the clapping stops. The audience already feels betrayed. They deserve some entertainment! Clap, and the entertainment always follows! Always!
Backstage, a middle-aged man, arguing with the now overly-concerned sargeant-baldy.
Sarge returns to the center stage, shaking his head apologetically. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he nervously explains, “due to Mr. Clifton’s vocal constraints, he…out of respect for him he…he asks that you please extinguish your smoking materials, cigars and cigarettes…please.”
Discontented chatter fills the room, no doubt in response to the recent stipulation. Despite their obvious dissatisfaction, the good little human units comply, especially one woman who yanks her husband’s cigar out of his mouth and smothers it in a nearby glass container.
Sarge apologizes, again, and reintroduces “Mr. Tony Clifton” with the same cheesy bravado as before.
Cue stereotypical entrance music from the house band.
A slouching, overweight middle-aged man with bushy brownish-black hair and muttonchops to match struts to the microphone, takes a long drag on a cigarette., and blows smoke rings at the outraged audience.
Meet Tony Clifton, who may or may not be himself.
After what appears to be a conscious effort at dancing, he begins to sing off-key “Vo… (extending the note)…lare. Whoa oh. Ca-wa-wa-wa-wa-wantare! Whoa, whoa whoa whoa! No wonder my happy heart sings. Your love has given me wings. I got the wings of a dove. I got the wings…”
The band stops playing but Tony continues to half-sing.
“I got the wings from Kentucky Fried.”
He looks around. The venue is dead silent. Awkward isn’t the best word to describe the situation, but it works.
“Whoop-de-doo, whoop-de-di!” he continues. “Stick a-a needle in your eye!”
Some people look on and laugh, others wipe their foreheads as if embarassed for the showman. One woman says “Oh, my God.”
“Let’s get somethin’ straight, people,” Tony announces. “I play big showrooms in Vegas. I need this place like I need a shotgun blast to the face!”
The audience is becoming even more disgusted.
As if warning his prey, Tony says “Now, let’s go down and meet some of the audience.”
For the next few minutes, he roams the floor, ridiculing the patrons as they dine. “Whoops! Hey, look out! I think you sat in some cottage cheese! Oh, pardon me. That’s your ass!” he tells one woman, right before walking over to a timid man with curly hair and dumping water on his head.
Satisfied, Tony begins to sing and leaves as quickly as he entered.
Despite their love or hatred for Mr. Clifton, each audience member departs with a unique story for friends and relatives. All in attendance now have an irreplaceable, one-of-a-kind memory, thanks to performance artist Andy Kaufman.
Tony Clifton isn’t real. He’s a fictional character created by Kaufman because “everyone loves a villain.” The curly haired-man he dumped water on? That’s Andy’s longtime friend and writer, Bob Zmuda.
Kaufman’s shenanigans continued long after the public caught on–and even after his presumed death in 1984–but the effect just wasn’t the same. The all-important shock value had been worn away by repeated use.
But what if the incorrigible subversive applied this “everybody loves a villain” Tony Clifton entertainment concept to modern times?
Here’s my theory:
Andy Kaufman didn’t die. He’s actually still alive and writing movie reviews.
The uncredited godfather of modern-day “professional wrestling” staged his own death and slipped underground. Now he’s the mastermind behind one of the greatest farces in modern crticism. Legions of Zmudas are now stationed in some of the highest ranking positions in entertainment journalism, toying with anyone and everyone who pours blind faith into the “objective assessments” of others. This emotional fishing worked well on unsuspecting patrons back in 1979, but it works even better in today’s fanboy-infested culture.
Film critics are dying en masse. Well, not really. They’re just getting tossed to the curb as their former positions fall into the hands of Cro-magnons prone to etching religious symbols on concrete slabs right next to their doodles of Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt (if you don’t know who they are consider yourself lucky). The future isn’t bleak, it’s a sand-blasted nuclear wasteland.
Roger Ebert knows what’s up. Late last November the high priest of movie criticism (I mean that with unending jealousy) posted a 1200 word blog entry chronicling the death of film critics and their replacement “the CelebCult.” “The lengthening toll of former film critics,” he wrote, “acts as a poster child for the self-destruction of American newspapers, which once hoped to be more like the New York Times and now yearn to become more like the National Enquirer. We used to be the town crier. Now we are the neighborhood gossip.”
At the end of the article, Ebert confesses he’s not placing the blame on individual critics, but on “the death of an intelligent and curious, readership, interested in significant things and able to think critically,” along with “the failure of the educational system; “ending the piece with “It is not about dumbing-down. It is about snuffing out.”
Ebert’s far too kind. Ultimately critics are the ones pulling the text/star gun’s triggers, so shouldn’t they take at least some of the blame? I could be wrong, but I imagine Mr. Chicago Sun Times had a few particular “journalists” in mind when he wrote this fyi/call-to-arms.
I’m not as kind or eloquent as Roger Ebert, but I’m not in the mood to burn any potential bridges, so I’ll just point my bony little finger at one nutjob who deserve to be pointed at. She doesn’t exactly fit the previously mentioned “CelebCult,” but could easily be one of Kaufman/Clifton’s subpersonalities.
Mentally, I prepared a long and not-very-friendly commentary on self-described “conservative political commentator” Debbie Schlussel’s “review” of the film adaptation of Watchmen. In fact, da Debilicious wun was the entire catalyst for this article, but I later learned Ebert’s traveled that road before.
On January 18, 2006 he took five quotes from Schlussel’s “reviews” and five from Ann Coulter’s “reviews,” mixed them up, and compiled them into what he called “Critics & Pundits: A Game Show.” He even placed Gong Show creator, and possible CIA assassin, Chuck Barris as the host. Contestants/readers were to guess which quote came from which “venomous, blonde-tressed scribe who wrote blurbs about contemporary movies that may or may not have been used in the ad campaigns.” Cheeky bastard even added a theme song:
(ADAPTED FROM “THE PATTY DUKE SHOW”):
Meet Annie who flips her long blonde hair
She makes no sense; she doesn’t care.
But Debbie wants to be her clone,
Spew lurid piffle of her own –
What a crazy pair!
Because they’re pundits,
Identical pundits, and you’ll find
They look alike, they think alike,
They like to Kool-Aid drink alike.
You will lose your mind
When pundits are two of a kind!
Had this been a real game show, I probably would’ve gone home empty-handed. Five of my answers were incorrect. Who knew distinguishing between the two “venomous blondes” could be so difficult?! Ebert, apparently.
In case you’re wondering, here’s a brief excerpt from frau Schlusselmeister’s analysis of Watchmen:
“…I haven’t seen a more violent, depraved movie in years (not to mention a longer, more boring movie with a more preposterous and silly plot.) This movie makes the graphic bloodshed of the recently released “Friday the 13th” look like “Cinderella.”’
She later says the 10 year-old son of a “white single mother” “is going to grow up to be messed up” from watching this movie. (She rarely mentions non-whites she doesn’t have issues with.)
Are you starting to see why Andy Kaufman’s involvement is a realistic possibility?
Ebert, on the other hand, called Watchmen: “…another bold exercise in the liberation of the superhero movie…a compelling visceral film – sound, images and characters combined into a decidedly odd visual experience that evokes the feel of a graphic novel. It seems charged from within by its power as a fable; we sense it’s not interested in a plot so much as with the dilemma of functioning in a world losing hope.”
Unlike Schlussel, Ebert’s not a borderline psychotic bent on turning the US (and/or globe) into an Israeli satellite. Where Ebert sees films as a form of art and self-expression, Schlussel sees only tools for spreading ideology and misinformation. Ebert gets paid to write reviews, Schlussel, as far as I know, doesn’t. But for how long? Her Watchmen rant garnered hundreds of comments and an exponentially greater number of page views. Some struggling newspaper will almost surely enlist both her popularity and her blondeness in a last-ditch campaign to boost subscription numbers. And that’s not even our worst-case scenario.
Best case? She removes her face, Mission Impossible-style, revealing a slightly older, more insidious Andy Kaufman. Until then, I’ll keep my fingers crossed.
Nice work! I’ll have to do a cross post on this one
Wonderfull…