In the old sitcom Taxi Andy Kaufman plays Latka Gravas, a mechanic, an immigrant with a funny high-pitched voice. And then at one point Latka starts to transform himself into someone else — into Latka’s idea of a cool guy, a successful guy. He gradually loses his eastern European accent, and his voice drops an octave. To the people he works with he sounds like a lounge lizard, or a parody of a lounge lizard: a guy who reads the articles in Playboy as a guide for self-improvement. He says that his name isn’t Latka Gravas. His name is Vic Ferrari.

It doesn’t go well. Vic scornfully repudiates Alex and the rest of the crew. He says that everybody liked him when he was the foreign guy with the funny voice, when he was shy, silly, dopey Latka, a figure of fun, a clown. Nobody respected him then. Of course they want that guy back, someone they can all laugh at. Of course that’s who they’d prefer him to be.

Alex, being the mensch that he is, takes all this in, and acknowledges that there is truth in it. People did laugh at Latka, they did treat him as the comical foreigner, and they shouldn’t have done that. All that (ruefully) acknowledged, Alex still wants to make a point. “I liked Latka,” he says. “But I don’t like you.”