View Full Version : Anyone know how Andy Kaufman got on with Christopher Lloyd?


Sharop
06-27-2006, 06:55 PM
I've read that Andy Kaufman never particularly enjoyed doing Taxi and that he had a few arguments with some of the actors on the show - Tony Danza and Jeff Conaway, I think - and that the cast would sometimes get annoyed if he showed up late, or something.

I wondered how he got along with Christopher Lloyd. From what I've read, and from what people have said about Lloyd, it seems he's very, very shy and quiet. (That's one of the reasons he rarely does interviews; he apparently doesn't feel comfortable talking to people he doesn't know about himself. When he has done interviews, he's always been extremely soft-spoken.) Bob Gale, one of the producers of Back to the Future, said that Christopher Lloyd is so shy that he didn't have a proper conversation with Bob until they were almost done shooting the movie.

Going by this, I'd like to believe that Kaufman and Lloyd would have got along relatively well as, since Lloyd is apparently a shy, timid man, even if he was annoyed by anything that Andy did, he may not be the kind to actually come out and say so, or complain about it. It's just something I was wondering; does anyone have any idea of how they got along? Whether Andy liked Chris, Chris liked Andy, etc?

Brian Damage
06-27-2006, 07:46 PM
Good question, I never heard of any problems. I know Andy was not the easiest person to get along with. He was a bit of a basket case.

ghd
07-12-2006, 11:17 PM
I don't think anybody on the show liked him because I read that none of the cast members attended his funeral

Skywalker
07-13-2006, 12:40 AM
I don't think anybody on the show liked him because I read that none of the cast members attended his funeral

Carol Kane was the only cast member who attended his funeral. I don't think Andy and Jeff Conaway got along very well. One time, Andy and Jeff were at a party with the rest of the Taxi cast and Jeff got upset at Andy about something and knocked him out. Andy never went to another Taxi cast party again. I'm not sure how the others felt about Andy, but Judd Hirsch wrote a tribute to him in Rolling Stone shortly after Andy died.

Sharop
07-13-2006, 06:38 AM
I don't think Andy and Jeff Conaway got along very well. One time, Andy and Jeff were at a party with the rest of the Taxi cast and Jeff got upset at Andy about something and knocked him out.

Yeah I heard about that. It's quite a shame, in a way. I did hear that he became quite friendly with Marilu Henner, though.

When they mention Andy's relations with the other cast members, they don't mention Lloyd; due to his (Lloyd's) quiet and shy personality, I'd assume that there wouldn't really have been any problems between the two. I like how Lloyd is so shy in real life, but can play loud, crazy characters like Doc Brown.

Skywalker
07-13-2006, 09:09 PM
I did hear that he became quite friendly with Marilu Henner, though.

When they mention Andy's relations with the other cast members, they don't mention Lloyd; due to his (Lloyd's) quiet and shy personality, I'd assume that there wouldn't really have been any problems between the two. I like how Lloyd is so shy in real life, but can play loud, crazy characters like Doc Brown.

Oh, I didn't know that.

I've never heard anything about Lloyd's relations with the rest of the cast and I was surprised to learn that he was so shy. I loved him in Back to the Future. One of my all time favorite movie lines is when Doc Brown says to Marty "If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits 88 mph, you're gonna see some serious ****". :lol: That line cracks me up everytime I hear it.

Mr. Television
07-13-2006, 09:13 PM
Most of them must have come to grips with Andy because all of them except Tony Danza appeared in the Andy Kaufman biopic The Man On The Moon.

The Flying Dutchmans
07-23-2006, 09:21 AM
Most of them must have come to grips with Andy because all of them except Tony Danza appeared in the Andy Kaufman biopic The Man On The Moon.

But then again they were getting paid to be in man on the moon and they were working with jim carry not andy, so there may be something to that.

Mr. Television
07-23-2006, 10:18 AM
But then again they were getting paid to be in man on the moon and they were working with jim carry not andy, so there may be something to that.
They're already rich. If they still had problems with Andy I don't think they would appear. The one person I know has nothing against him is Danny DeVito because I saw him in interviews when that movie was coming out and he kept referring to Andy as his friend.

Brian Damage
07-23-2006, 12:26 PM
They're already rich. If they still had problems with Andy I don't think they would appear. The one person I know has nothing against him is Danny DeVito because I saw him in interviews when that movie was coming out and he kept referring to Andy as his friend.

And besides, Danny Devito had a really big role in that movie. If he really hated him, I doubt he would've done it. JMO

studd911
10-06-2006, 02:17 PM
Hi i grew up watching taxi it was a cool shows but i have a question how come in certain tv or movies roles whenver tony danza gets roles he always wants the characters names that he plays to remain tony i am just curious because i notice that when he was in who's the boss his characters name was tony even in cannonball his name was tony, i guess he likes to keep his name in whatever role he playes

EmpressDR
01-11-2007, 02:44 AM
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AndyKaufman_tribute/

I think Andy was damn foolish to have an attitude toward working on Taxi. He also made such a ruckus, and was odd. Studios and inverstors didn't trust him. You BUILD trust by being trustworthy, showing up, etc. NOT by being dedicated to being eccentric.
His part in the show was embarrassingly too small. I recall the ep where Elaine has a fantasy, and all Andy got to do was to walk by holding two sparklers.
Such rich ground to work with, and because he refused to work with the cast, and didn't even care, he was barely in the show, until later. All I ever read at the time was from the producers saying that they were going to keep Latka as a special character, so as not to wear him out :barf:
Guess what? In Marvel's Star Wars comics they said the same about Darth Vader, which was utterly idiotic. After Return of the Jedi, they had to kill him off, then they couldn't use Vader at all, so they wasted him! Idiots! :angryfire:

Andy's eccentricity:
THAT was what ruined his chances of doing movies, and work, NOT his role in that cute film, Heartbeeps.

I have read criticism of the film -"too slow" "too boring."

Actually, it's a shame that too many younger people today find all sorts of older films "slow." --but that was the style of editing and writing in the old days.
Could Heartbeeps have been better?
Of course.
But it failed due to lack of promotion. There weren't even trailers for the film, that I saw, no advertising, no promotion at Star Trek sci-fi conventions, and that would have cost so little, to have even a few slides form the film, or some PR to give away buttons and posters.
The soundtrack is by John Williams, and very nice.
There was two Starlog magazines, and a free giveaway mag, but that wasn't enough.

Chocolate Moose
01-24-2007, 06:03 PM
Not to speak ill of the dead, but Andy didn't give them a chance to like him. He wasn't even at rehearsals.

catlover79
04-14-2007, 10:49 AM
Marilu Henner spoke fondly of Andy in her autobiography, and she mentioned she was unable to attend the funeral (I don't remember the reason why). She wrote she was in the lowest, darkest period of her life in 1984 already when she heard about Andy's passing. Needless to say, the news did nothing to help her frame of mind.

MrRetro_08
12-08-2008, 03:11 PM
If you buy Taxi: The Offical Fan's Guide, the cast said positive things about him. Jeff Conaway said eventhough they didn't get along in the first season, they made up and became friends, and Marilu Henner said "I loved Andy. I got to be so close to Andy, towards the end especially. I got to know him better then than I did when we worked together on the show".

Amanda Woodward
05-14-2009, 10:09 PM
"the cast would sometimes get annoyed if he showed up late, or something"

LOL , they say the same thing about Burghoff on MASH :p

Maybe Kaufman had asberger.

Dovetripct
04-11-2012, 11:14 AM
Andy was one of the kings of practical jokes, therefore a lot of his frineds adn co-workers didn't believe he was actually dying. They all thought the "cancer thing" was another one of his hoaxes. They didn't attend his funeral because they didn't believe him until it was too late. I've also read that a lot of the people at his funeral expected him to pop up out of the coffin at any time, then it never happened. THat moment is when it hit them that Andy was really gone.

ParadiseKendra
01-13-2018, 07:52 PM
This is really interesting info. I think we all want to know more about Andy and his relationships with the cast. Latka is such a sweet guy with those little boy eyes that just make you want to give him a hug, that I think we want to believe there's a part of Andy that is Latka. And maybe there was, but I'm not sure even Andy knew who he was.

So yeah, it would've been hard for the cast to even know if they'd get along with him. Although it is nice to know that Carol Kane attended his funeral. If an And that Jeff Conaway made up with him and came to like him. That's a lot.

I did not know Christopher was so shy! He's so good at being such a crazy guy, lol.

TMC
05-04-2022, 08:48 PM
Most of them must have come to grips with Andy because all of them except Tony Danza appeared in the Andy Kaufman biopic The Man On The Moon.

Tony Danza discusses (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZWDB5rUWEg) Andy Kaufman and Tony Clifton on "Taxi" (https://www.quora.com/Did-Andy-Kaufman-get-along-with-the-cast-of-the-sitcom-Taxi) - EMMYTVLEGENDS.ORG

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Yong Fang
06-24-2022, 08:24 AM
Chris Lloyd was VERY DIFFERENT from the eccentric, crazy roles he played. I saw a video of him as his true self and he is soft spoken, erudite and very intelligent.

I think most of the cast disliked Kaufman and supposedly Tony Danza hated him.