But lets let Braverman tell the story.
Vogue: How would you describe Andy Kaufman to someone who hasnt seen his work?
He was trying to do things to get himself written about in magazines.
Photo: Getty Images
We see this in the film, but what kind of things do you mean?
A good example would be when hes playing a character he invented called Tony Clifton.
But he also knows that journalists are going to be in the crowd that day.
When did you first become aware of his work?
I just thought: This guy is cool, this guys weird; hes interesting, hes pushing boundaries.
So much of the success of a documentary seems to revolve around source material.
I started making the film before I knew what Bob had, because he was a littlewhats the word?
He was beingplayfully coyabout giving us access to a lot of the material.
Bob had boxes and boxes of material that we didnt even know existed.
Which is just amazingI was wondering how you got that.
It was so powerful.
It was really beautiful.
And so they told him that he didn’t die.
And when Andy eventually found outIm sorry, spoiler alertit seems to have really disrupted his world.
Everyone, of course, experiences lossits not a unique experience to have one of your grandparents die.
How did you learn about Andy’s work with Laurie Anderson?
One day, one of the producers just said, Ohwhat about this Laurie Anderson song?
And so we reached out to her.
As it turns out, they didnt have a long friendshipjust this kind of kinship.
We announced the film inDeadlineorVarietyor something like that.
It was just amazing.
When you put the energy out into the world, you find out all sorts of interesting things.
I also had no idea about Andys very major involvement with Transcendental Meditation.
Andy predates all of this.
Yeahit’s very comfortable for us to play the role that were expected to play.
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
