James L. Brooks recently got candid and admitted that he knew Andy Kaufman would be an amazing fit for his sitcom Taxi.
In a talk with PEOPLE magazine, the 85-year-old opened up about the moment he saw the stand-up routine of the late comedian, performing as two different people on the same night in one club.
Referring to Kaufman’s famous Foreign Man act, Brooks said, "I saw him do this 'Foreign Man' [character]. And I saw him in a club, and then a comic came out [named] Vince."
He went on to state that "Vince" was "the worst, lowest comic you ever saw" and the Saturday Night Live star was "shouting" back and forth for him to "come off the stage."
"And his manager, Andy's manager, came over to me while I was watching this guy, and he said, 'That's Andy,'" the Terms of Endearment star recounted, which shocked him because he did not know the mysterious man on stage was the same person who made the audience laugh earlier that night.
"Andy was creating that other character that got booed off the stage after scoring as Andy as the foreign man," Brooks shared.
Before concluding, it is pertinent to mention that Andy Kaufman succumbed to large-cell lung carcinoma, a rare form of lung cancer, at the age of 35 on May 16, 1984.
