MY BREAKFAST WITH BLASSIE

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Original Title: My Breakfast With Blassie
Year: 1983
Director: Linda Lautrec, Johnny Legend, Mark Shepard
Writer: Linda Lautrec, Johnny Legend
IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085979/
Genre: Comedy

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Synopsis:
Comedian Andy Kaufman & professional wrestler Classy Freddie Blassie eat breakfast & discuss life.

There you have it again. A parody of an apparently popular art-house film My Dinner With Andre which gives the audience a look at two men discussing their life over dinner, My Breakfast With Blassie has Andy Kaufman and wrestling legend "Classy" Freddie Blassie discussing various random subjects over their diner breakfast.

In typical Kaufman fashion, this is an unusual, improvised bit that pushes against the edge of what the audience may be able to bear. Look no further than Kaufman going on stage in his standup and reading The Great Gatsby as his bit.

The interactions between the two are interesting, but go on a bit too long for my tastes. I think this would have worked better as a 30-minute movie instead of 60 as eventually it gets repetitive and falls apart a little by the end when they are trying to wrap things up.

The most interesting aspect of the performance piece was Blassie himself. First, I don't know why, but it's so bizarre to me that Kaufman and Blassie would be friends in real life. Given the personality that you see emerge during the taping here, Kaufman and his antics just don't seem like something that would mesh well with Blassie.

It seemed as though the intention was to show the conversation and show the two dealing with some nosy customers in the diner, the audience being the marks here, but there were times when the movie started to feel like an early form of a Sacha Baron Cohen sketch with Kaufman making Blassie himself the mark, getting him to ramble on and on and say some things that made him look a little silly given his profession.

Blassie seems to be a germophobe, carries wet wipes in a man purse, makes a shitty welfare joke about the pregnant Thai waitress whom he called Buddha and rubs her belly, brings up herpes, talks about diet, etc. He had some really interesting stories about his professional wrestling career, including a story about taking a metal file to his capped teeth while touring Japan in the early 1960s that really freaked fans out as he feuded with the legend Rikidozan. Blassie said people in the audience would have heart attacks as Blassie would bite Rikidozan with his filed teeth - people had never seen wrestlers bite one another before!

It was hard to tell how "in" on the bit Blassie actually was. He seemed OK with Kaufman's subject matter, but seemed really confused at others. The whole exchange is interesting, but just kind of lost steam for me eventually.

This is not really a wrestling film per-se, but it was filmed right in the middle of Kaufman's Memphis feud with Lawler (you'll see him in his neck brace he wore from his piledriver injury), and he is carrying over a bit of his sexist personality that made him so hated there.

Oh, and Blassie is a legend in the sport. That I suppose makes it wrasslin enough for me!

It's worth a look (and came as the flip-side of the "I'm From Hollywood" dvd), but it's not great.

Recommended to see Blassie in a non-wrestling manager role.

Score: 5.75 / 10