Sam Simon, executive producer on Taxi, revealed in a 2013 interview with Marc Maron for the WTF Podcast that the portrayal of Andy on the show was "a complete fiction" largely created by Bob Zmuda, who he maintained has a "vested interest" in creating stories about Kaufman.
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Zmuda created the "Tony Clifton" makeup for the film, and made a brief appearance portraying comedian Jack Burns, one of the producers, who gets into a brawl on stage during one of Kaufman's appearances on the 1980-82 ABC Fridays.
In the book Andy Kaufman Revealed, Bob Zmuda, Kaufman's friend and writer, relates his experiences working as an assistant for an extremely eccentric, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, prone to pulling stunts that ranged from the bizarre to the profane.
Bob Dylan | Bob Hope | Bob Marley | Bob Hawke | Bob Geldof | Billy Bob Thornton | Bob Dole | Bob Seger | Bob the Builder | Bob Saget | Bob Hoskins | Bob Berg | Bob Knight | Bob Graham | Bob Brookmeyer | Bob Monkhouse | Bob Gibson | Bob Fosse | Bob Brady | Bob Feller | Bob Casey, Jr. | Bob Barker | The Bob Newhart Show | Bob Weir | Bob Harris | Bob Ezrin | Bob Balaban | Bob | Bob Woodward | Bob McDonnell |
Norman Wexler, American screenwriter, in Bob Zmuda's Andy Kaufman Revealed