bowtiemoustache:

“Right now I’d like to do a comedy routine.”

With these words—far more on-the-nose than a comic doing an actual comedy routine would EVER lead with—Andy Kaufman gets a laugh, and kicks off one of his finest performances, in the HBO Young Comedians Special of 1977, collected here in four clips.

Never mind that this first clip opens with “Thank you very much, that was Gallagher” from host David Steinberg; we leave that crap behind, and what follows is a spectacle of showmanship. Most of Andy’s TV guest appearances are one five or ten-minute spot featuring one premise, but here he segues from one immersive conceit to the next—starting, uncharacteristically, with what appears to be straightforward standup.