"My Breakfast with Blassie" mini-review

[Guest MarvinisaLunatic]

Everyone around here probably knows that I am one of the biggest Andy Kaufman marks around.

Its kind of wierd though because he died almost 2 years to the day of my 2nd birthday, so obviously I never actually saw him in person. The first time I saw Andy was on "A Comedy Salute to Andy Kaufman" when it originally aired in 1995. Its the same special that runs along with "I'm From Hollywood" on Comedy Central every 36 days at like 2 in the morning. Anyway, I was watching the special, and I was laughing my head off at all the stuff Andy was doing, almost in tears in fact. I remember my mother saying "I don't know what you're laughing at..he's not funny, he's just annoying." Obviously my mother was not that impressed with the fact that he would wrestle women, and tell them to get back in the kitchen and wash the dishes.

 

After I saw that special, I went on a little Andy kick where I somehow managed to by just about every single piece of Andy Kaufman material I could find, which I was pretty much successful in doing. There are very few things I dont have (I don't have the 2 HBO comedy specials he was on and I only have a few of his SNL appearances, and after figuring out that Taxi would probably get a DVD release, I decided to wait for that instead) Other than that, I have everything, including the Box office bomb HEARTBEEPS. I couldn't pass up the chance to see Andy play a Robot, although admitedly the movie is horridly boring.

 

With the recent death of Fredie Blassie, I was brought back to the interesting little piece of work that was filmed on on August 9th, 1982 at Sambo's Restaurant in downtown Hollywood, CA.

Admittedly, "My Breakfast with Blassie" is probably not going to be of any great interest to anyone who 1) Doesn't like Andy 2) Doesn't like Fred Blassie 3) Doesn't like breakfast.

But hey, I like all 3!

 

The basic premise of "My Breakfast with Blassie" is that Andy Kaufman had a friend who met Blassie at the LA Sports Arena a few weeks prior, and they got to talking about Andy and what had happened on the Dave Letterman Show (where Andy got punched by Lawler on July 28th). Blassie agreeded to meet with Andy and have breakfast with him. On the day of the meeting, Andy (with neck brace on for full "I've got a broken neck" effect) rides the city bus (for 50 cents!) over to Sambos Restaurant. After waiting a while, and eventually getting worried that he had missed Freddie, he eventually arrived and they sat down and had breakfast. And this is what takes up most of the 60 minutes, them sitting and talking in a somewhat crowded restaurant over breakfast (Andy had a large orange juice, two eggs scrambled and a waffle with a lot of butter on the side; and then also some coffee, with a lot of cream and Blassie had sausage and eggs, no pancakes!!; cottage cheese, whole-wheat toast and a glass of milk).

 

I won't bore you (or perhaps ruin it for you) by going over every little thing they talk about and do. Needless to say Andy gets into his "Intergender Champion/I'm from Hollywood" personna a couple of times, Andy and Blassie talk about the Lawler situation and Blassie's career in wrestling (Im assuming that a few of the stories, and maybe the movie itself are discussed in his book) , and they also talk about a few odd things (too much bread is bad for you, a disccussion about hygiene). Not to mention there's a surprise appearance by Bob Zmuda (who Andy plays up as not knowing, but thats obviously for show), and some sort of disgusting "nose" stuff. I noticed that the recent movie Man on the Moon indirectly borrowed a few elements from this, mainly all durring the dinner scene (the wetnaps, the booger thing), but its ashame that they couldn't have recreated a scene from the movie for it.

 

The premiere for "My Breakfast with Blassie" was at the Nuart Theatre in LA on March 20, 1984. Footage of that is on the tape that I have. Its is considered Andy's last public appearance. As you might know, Andy had lung cancer, and at this point you could tell he was undergoing some serious chemo, as he was bald except for a stubble mohawk type thing down the middle of his head. Andy would eventually die on May 16th, 1984. I read that a good deal of people walked out or fell asleep during the premiere. I certainly didn't find it that boring, but its obviously not for everyone..

 

All in all, its not going to be the most exciting 60 minutes of your life, and its really not that funny (it has a few funny points, but even then they really arent laughing aloud moments) even for huge fans of Andy or Blassie. But its still quite interesting, even though two people talking over breakfast wouldn't really seem that interesting. Im pretty sure I could recomend it to anyone here, mainly on the fact that Freddie Blassie is in it. Thinking back on it, as different as Andy and Blassie are, this was probably one of the perfect pairs of people to do something like this. Andy loved to get people to hate him and Boo him when he was performing or on stage, and Blassie played up the wrestling villain part to a t, getting people to hate him and boo him as well.

 

If I ever get motivated enough, I'll probably do something on "I'm from Hollywood!", which is actually quite interesting. And if things ever get really interesting, I could bore you to death with a review of Heartbeeps!