MPAA Rating: NR
Director: Linda Lautrec and Johnny Legend
Starring: Andy Kaufman, Freddie Blassie, Bob Zmuda
"My Breakfast With Blassie" Video
"Mister Fred Blassie in a breakfast mess . . ." Legendary performance artist Andy Kaufman sits down with legendary professional wrestler and manager "Classy" Freddie Blassie ("ya pencil-neck geek") for breakfast at a Sambo's restaurant in downtown Hollywood in this irreverent spoof of the highbrow art-house classic My Dinner With Andre. Andy, the self-proclaimed "Intergender Wrestling Champion," sports a neck brace after being body slammed by Southern Heavyweight Champion Jerry Lawler in Nashville the month before. Andy has invited Blassie (the self-proclaimed "King of Men") to breakfast, hoping to get some advice on how to resurrect his flagging wrestling career. Here's play by play of the action that follows: Blassie, who sports his signature Hawaiian shirt and gold chains, rubs the pregnant waitress' belly ("the Buddha") for good luck. "Don't have to tip her so much after we leave now," explains Blassie. For the record, Andy orders a large orange juice, two scrambled eggs and a waffle with a lot of butter on the side, along with a cup of coffee. Blassie orders sausage and eggs, cottage cheese, whole-wheat toast and a glass of milk. The conversation soon turns to a number of offbeat subjects such as typhoons in Japan, dunking toast into egg yolk and Blassie filing his teeth to intimidate the other wrestlers during his first Japan tour in 1962. Blassie continues to entertain Andy with some of his other wrestling exploits, such as the time he lost vision in his right eye after he was hit with a hard-boiled egg as he entered the ring and how he introduced "biting" to the wrestling world. A female autograph seeker at an adjacent table gets Andy to sign her napkin; Blassie refuses to sign any autographs for the ladies. They get abrasive and Andy starts insulting them ("Do you know who I am? I am Andy Kaufman from 'Taxi.' TV star . . ."). The ladies make a quick exit. Andy convinces Blassie to order dessert with their breakfast. For the record, Andy orders chocolate layer cake, while Blassie orders one scoop of vanilla ice cream. Andy invites one of the more seedy patrons of the restaurant over to the table. The man proceeds to pull straws out of his nose and wipe his boogers on the table. He then walks away. Andy tells Blassie that the man's actions remind him of the fake boogers he recently bought at a magic shop. What a coincidence! Andy pulls the fake boogers out of a case and shows them to Blassie. He then convinces Blassie to buy one of the fake boogers for $1. The seedy-looking man returns, starts vomiting on the table and then walks away snickering. Andy thinks it's hysterical. Blassie reacts by spitting on the table in disgust, wondering what the hell happened to the human race. Blaming Andy for inviting the asshole over to the table in the first place, Blassie demands that Kaufman pay the bill. Andy says goodbye to Blassie and boards the bus: "As I rode home the streets of the city were alive with memories. Like the first time I saw a bum puking his guts out on the sidewalk."
The tagline on the My Breakfast With Blassie video box reads, "It's Comedy Meets Wrestling With a Side Order of Bacon!" Look for Andy's buddy, Bob Zmuda, as the fan who pulls straws out his nose and ends up vomiting on the table. According to at least one source, Andy met his future girlfriend, Lynne Margulies, on the set of this film. If you want a copy of this 68-minute masterpiece, try Rhino Home Video. My copy includes bonus footage of the movie's Los Angeles premiere. Bottom line: If you hate Andy Kaufman or professional wrestling, STAY THE HELL AWAY! So what happened to the two stars of My Breakfast With Blassie? Andy Kaufman died of lung cancer in 1984 at the age of 35. He is buried in Beth David Cemetery in Elmont, New York. In 1994, Freddie Blassie was inducted into the World Wrestling Federation Hall of Fame along with Buddy "Nature Boy" Rogers, Gorilla Monsoon and Chief Jay Strongbow. Blassie died of heart and kidney failure in 2003 at the age of 85.
Note: Since we could not find any footage of My Breakfast With Blassie, we settled for the next best thing, a clip from Kaufman and Blassie appearing on the "David Letterman Show."
Dr. Jay - 2010-01-13 01:45:08
Very entertaining video. Made me chuckle a few times seeing the reactions of Blassie to Andy's antics.
Ernie - 2010-05-18 10:28:22
Always wanted to see a sequel called "My Dinner With Andre . . . The Giant." Blassie was amazing in the ring in that, while he wasn't quite as athletic as other wrestlers, was certainly much more vicious (he's considered the innovator of biting opponents' foreheads open during matches). After Blassie started biting his opponents, then you began to see the original Sheik switch from being a more traditional heel type to the more "hardcore" style he was better known for. Kaufman is very misunderstood as a comic in that he never really was a comic as such; he was more of a "performance artist" in that a lot of what he did was intended to shock viewers and elicit a response from them. He loved to perpetrate hoaxes on people, such as the infamous incident on ABC's "Fridays" where he began ad-libbing his own dialogue which had nothing at all to do with the script. Michael Richards, who was in the sketch with him, had no idea what Kaufman was really doing so he breaks character and in the middle of the sketch grabs the cue cards for Kaufman's lines and hands them to him to embarrass Andy. From there, all hell breaks loose and a scuffle ensues. The only people who knew what was going on were Andy, show producer Jack Burns, and Andy's friend Bob Zmuda. Due to Andy's love of hoaxes, to this day, a lot of people question whether Andy is really dead or if he is merely living in anonymity somewhere, still enjoying his little prank. Seeing that it has been over a quarter century since his death, I tend to believe that Andy is really dead (although at the time I wasn't so sure).