To sharpen the documentary’s focus, Braverman limited its scope to the years of Kaufman’s life, and decided to interview only people who knew him. He wove in rare archival interviews with Kaufman’s father, Lorne Michaels, Garry Shandling and Robin Williams, and conducted new ones with Zmuda and Margulies, Steve Martin and Danny DeVito, and artists like Laurie Simmons, a childhood pal, and Laurie Anderson, whom Kaufman befriended and enlisted as a plant in clubs.
In a coup for Kaufmanologists, the film also introduces an Iranian man named Bijan Kimiachi: Kaufman’s college roommate, and the heretofore unknown inspiration for the totemic “Foreign Man” character that became Latka Gravas. Kimiachi speaks in what sounds like an extremely good Latka impression, to the point that I wondered if Braverman invented this man and hired an actor to play him.
I wasn’t the only one. “When Bob Zmuda saw a cut, he told me, ‘That guy’s bullshit,’” Braverman said. But he assured me that Kimiachi was genuine, that he verified his identity in Kaufman’s yearbook. I 99.9 percent believe this, and the lingering spore of doubt only deepens the documentary’s spell.
As Jeffrey, Omar, O’Toule, Gracie, Heishi, Gogo, Presley, Willow and six other cats whose names I didn’t catch emerged mewling at Margulies’s house, we gathered in the living room to watch a rare piece of Kaufman footage that had entranced Braverman.
It was shot in Los Angeles in the 1970s by the actor Richard Beymer, who played Tony in the film version of “West Side Story” and, later, Benjamin Horne in “Twin Peaks.” At the time, he was Kaufman’s housemate, and in the clip they’re hanging out. Kaufman’s face fills the screen as he extemporizes about a movie he wants to make: It will start with a climax, followed by false end credits, then another climax, then more false end credits, in a pattern that repeats itself eight — no, seven — no, five times.
