Andy Kaufman

by Bob Zmuda

  The only relief for him came in the form of … (what else?) … hookers. In this case, a lot of hookers. An executive at Universal (who shall remain nameless) came up with the idea that if you can’t beat them, join them, and devised a “deal” with Andy that if he arrived at the set two days in a row on time, a young prostitute would be waiting for him in his Winnebago. Actually the idea had merit, and George at first supported the Universal exec’s plan. The idea died, however, when the line producer said “money for call girls” wasn’t coming out of his budget. And then studio executive Thom Mount got wind of the plan. He exploded and said, “No way. If anyone found out, the studio would have a major scandal on their hands,” and nixed the whole thing. Meanwhile, for the first time Andy was on time two days running, until they had to tell him the deal was a no-go. After that, he went back to being late.

  The film finally wrapped and everyone was anxiously waiting for it to come out. Would Andy be a movie star and then finally we could get the Clifton movie made? I had an uneasy feeling about it all. Soon it was confirmed. They screened a rough cut for studio executives. They hated it! Perhaps they were wrong. Maybe the public would like it. The film opened on December 18, 1981. It received some of the worst reviews in film history. And just like that—poof! Andy Kaufman’s film career was over before it began. Andy, not to miss a golden opportunity to air his dirty laundry and embarrassment on national TV, went on Letterman and offered a refund to anyone who paid to see Heartbeeps.

  The Clifton picture was off and we were asked to vacate our bungalow on the Universal lot posthaste. No other movie studio would touch him. George tried to save face by telling us that ratings for Taxi were at an all time low and that’s the reason Universal didn’t want to do Clifton any more. Bullshit! Everyone knew Heartbeeps was the reason.

  Eventually, Andy’s concerts dried up totally. I needed work. Luckily, the guys at Universal who liked me and my writing abilities soon hired me back (without Andy) to write another project for them, The P.T. Barnum Story, that would star John Belushi and be directed by John Landis.

  Now the plan to fake his death became Andy’s main occupation. There was nothing else to live for. Once he found his “body double,” the clock started counting down. Now it was simply a question of pretending to die at the same time the body double really did.

  In the days of the golden age of wrestling, most of its audience believed it to be real. Wrestling stars of the time would cut their foreheads with hidden razor blades, unbeknownst to the audience, and bleed profusely, with the blood flowing down over their entire faces. Kaufman needed to do the same. In his case, instead of blood, it would be the “cough.” He would significantly place it on the right TV show at the right time. It sounded phony as all hell to me, but then again, I saw it coming. He kept doing it, every time more frequently, until his friends would all say to him, “Andy, you should really look into that.” He’d say, “I hope it isn’t cancer!”

  I would get mad at him when he would tell people that. “Jesus, Andy, you can’t tell people you have cancer before you’re even diagnosed with it.” And then when he supposedly did have it, he’d forget at times to act like he did. He almost blew it with his own brother, Michael. When Michael heard that Andy was very sick, he flew out to the West Coast to see him. Michael was shocked at how bad off Andy looked. His weight had dropped significantly and he couldn’t talk or walk. Miraculously, the very next day Andy was back to his old self. In fact, a few days after that he was once again driving himself around in his own car. When Michael asked, “How can this be? Just yesterday he couldn’t even move,” he was told it was the “medication.” Michael bought the answer hook, line, and sinker. I kept telling Andy, “You better stay in character or somebody is going to call you on the phony baloney.” After my warning, he became more conscious of how to act. Still, every once in a while he slipped. But as time went on, as the consummate actor, he was impeccable and totally convincing as the “dying man.”

  I don’t believe he paid off any doctor to go along with the deception. He didn’t have enough money to do that. Besides, doctors do have ethics. At least I want to believe so. He did pay off the secondary people, the working stiffs in the back rooms who didn’t get paid diddly-squat, some people who could easily switch a different X-ray to a different file and make themselves a grand. He had successfully pulled the same thing off at a well-known hospital years before, when he faked hurting his neck. He substituted someone else’s X-ray with severely compacted vertebrae for his own. He figured it worked before and it would work again.

  At the time of his death, about 85 percent of the public’s first response was “bullshit.” It’s like the neck injury with the wrestling. It’s a prank. Now remember what made the neck injury believable was the fact that he wore the stupid neck brace for six months. Then people thought, “Well, he must have been injured. Who would wear a neck brace for that long?” Same was true about faking his death. The longer he could stay out of sight, the more believable it would become. The only reason people believe he is dead is that he hasn’t been seen for thirty years.

  No matter how thorough Andy was in pulling off his death, he did make critical mistakes. Luckily nobody picked up on them. First, he never ever acted as if he was really going to die. Ever. I’ve lost a lot of loved ones. When someone is going to die, there’s either fear or defiance in his or her eyes. Andy’s eyes possessed neither. In fact, there was almost a comfortable nonchalance. Talk to anyone who knew him at the time, and they’ll all tell you the same thing: “He never acted like a guy who was about to meet his maker.” Lynne has always stated that at no time did Andy believe he was dying. Why is that, Lynne? The answer is obvious: because he knew he wasn’t.

  Second, what about that daughter of his, Maria, whom he never met? Even though he was supposedly dying, he never once tried to seek her out. Who wouldn’t want to see his own child before he died? Most people do. But Andy couldn’t care less. Why? Because he knew he really wasn’t dying and therefore didn’t do the things that normal dying people would do, like seeing their long-lost child for the first and last time.

  Still, he got away with both of these mistakes. As for his close friends who said that he wasn’t taking his dying seriously, they would only scratch their heads and think, “Andy’s always been crazy. So why shouldn’t he also be crazy about his own death?” Andy was crazy … crazy as a fox!

  Let me repeat this because it’s very important: The only reason people believe Andy is dead is because of time. It’s been thirty years now. Thirty years. Who could possibly pull a prank off that would take thirty years? No one. Therefore, he must be dead. The answer is no, he isn’t dead. He just took thirty years to get you to believe he’s dead. Remember what he did with The Great Gatsby? He just didn’t read fifteen minutes of the book to the audience. He read the whole damn book. Three hours later, there would be five people left in the theater. In the case of faking his death, it’s not three hours but thirty years. Beyond brilliant! He was building a cathedral. Cathedrals don’t take six years. In some cases they take 600 years to build. He’s spent thirty-four years planning and pulling off his faked death and over that time I’ve kept my mouth shut about it. Why? It was my job. But no more. He said thirty years, and I’m going to hold him to that. It’s time for him to come back home and embrace his friends and family. He’s pulled off the impossible. He’s put in the years and built his own cathedral to himself. Andy, it’s standing-ovation time.

  ***

  This is one of the final discussions Andy and I had on faking his death, which by now we jokingly referred to as “the dying routine.” I knew that liftoff would happen soon, as his tone by now had become quite serious and introspective.

  B: THIRTY YEARS?! That’s a lifetime.

  A: I know.

  B: So I’m going to be out of work for thirty years?

  A: I can leave you some money?

  B: No, don’t do that. They’ll trace it to you and I’ll probably en
d up going to jail as a conspirator to insurance fraud. Besides, Sean and Bruce at Universal are big supporters.

  A: How’s that Belushi script coming along?

  B: P.T. Barnum? I’m researching the hell out of it. You know he’s the original prankster and John Belushi is the spitting image of him. John Landis is off in London shooting some werewolf movie. [This would be An American Werewolf in London.] When he returns, I’ll give him a first draft and then we’ll see where things stand.

  A: They hate me at Universal. You were right. I never should have done Heartbeeps. It killed The Tony Clifton Story.

  B: Hey, no use crying over spilled milk and cookies. So what are you going to do about Lynne?

  A: She’s an artist. She understands me as much as you do.

  B: Understand? Andy, the woman’s in love with you. You’re just going to leave for thirty years?

  A: I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and it’s probably better if she really thinks I’m dead. Then she can go on with her life. Or maybe I should get her to hate me. That might be the kindest way to go.

  B: Are you sure you want to do this? It’s beginning to sound pretty fucked up.

  A: Bob, it’s who I am and what I do. Nothing could ever top it. I’ve given it great thought. Besides, I’m getting psyched. I’m starting an entire new life.

  B: What about your family?

  A: There’s this guy in the TM movement. His name’s John Gray. He’s brilliant. He holds these therapy sessions for families. I’ve been thinking about signing me and my family up for some. I’ll do it when it’s looking like I don’t have long to live. I want to get a lot off my chest. I’m thinking I’ll invite George to them also. It’ll be therapeutic for everybody, myself included. It’ll help everybody get through my loss better. It’ll be closure. I’m not going to just leave everybody hanging.

  B: Aren’t you going to miss performing?

  A: I’m going to keep performing.

  B: How you going to do that when everyone knows how you look?

  A: I’ll do children’s parties. That’s how I started out. I’d love to go back to it. I’d wear clown makeup, like Clarabelle did on The Howdy Doody Show. Nobody would know it’s me. Maybe I’ll get one of those little clown cars to drive around in. I’ll call myself something stupid like “Zany Clowny.”

  B: Zany Clowny!

  [We laughed, and then I got serious.]

  B: Are you ever going to call me?

  [The phone went silent for the longest time and then he spoke.]

  A: I better not. They’ll probably be listening in … but things can change.

  Ever since he left us, no matter what city I’m in, I always check the local Yellow Pages under “Children’s Entertainment,” more out of routine than anything else, to see if there’s ever a “Zany Clowny” listed.

  It may be wishful thinking on my part, but I’d like to believe that he told his mother about faking his death and had her swear to secrecy not to tell any other family members. I say this because of something Michael Kaufman said his mom said to him a full year before Andy was ever diagnosed with cancer:

  “She said to me, ‘Poor Andy.’ At the time, I had no idea what she meant or why she said it … Years later, I just chalked it up to be a ‘mother’s instinct’ that she knew he didn’t have long to live.”

  Mother’s instinct? Déjà vu? One thing Janice Kaufman knew for certain, as only a mother could, was that once her son Andy made up his mind to do something, nothing or no one could talk him out of it, and he would follow it through, as Stanley Kaufman put it:

  … with the utmost precision. Audiences might think what he did was spontaneous—it wasn’t. Total control all the time. Premeditated, calculated, he rehearsed constantly. My wife and I were astonished one day when we opened up the neighborhood Penny Saver and there was an ad that Andy was running as a “Children’s Party Performer” at $25 an hour. We knew nothing about it. Andy had spent his own money taking it out and designed it himself. He was only nine years old … Nine! … Pretty entrepreneurial at that age.

  CHAPTER 9

  Andy Will Be Back

  Andy, as a child, was not only the performer on the shows in his room to the imaginary camera; he was also the network executive. Each show lasted either thirty minutes or an hour. They were completely different. They included comedy, music, drama, horror, cartoons, games, soap operas, etc. Andy would also select the products that would be sold during the commercial breaks. The program was daily, and young Andy would rush home from school every day, making sure his programming would begin promptly at 4:00 p.m. Stanley Kaufman could only stand outside his son’s room and listen through the door. To him, it had to be sheer madness. As Andy got older and the network in his head grew, he needed more studio space. By now the Kaufman family was forced to move upstairs to the second floor of the house, where they continued to live so Andy could use the entire downstairs for his imaginary telecasts. Greg Sutton, a close childhood friend of Andy’s, would say, “It was the strangest house to visit. Andy’s entire family would be sequestered on the second floor. We’d hang out on the first floor, where Andy had total run of the place.” Andy made it quite clear to Stanley that he needed his space or he threatened to move out of the home altogether. To prove that he was serious, he actually left home and lived in the city park for over a month, sleeping underneath a park bench in a sleeping bag. Stanley, who feared for Andy’s safety, acquiesced and gave Andy the bottom half of the family dwelling just to keep him at home. So like everything else in his life, when Andy made the decision to do something, there was no turning back. This time it would be his death, pulled off with “the utmost precision.”

  ***

  Here now is a blow-by-blow account of how I believe Andy Kaufman faked his own death. Although his final methodology can only be conjecture on my part, it is based on numerous conversations I had with him over a period of three years on how to do it. I want to state for the record that I constantly reminded Andy that what he was planning on doing was illegal and that I could not help him, as I did not want to be implicated in criminal activity. At the same time, I told him that if he did pull it off, it would truly be one of the most remarkable events in show-business history. I also would remind him that to pull it off successfully, he would have to convince even me that he in fact had died.

  So how did he convince me? Time. For the first four, six, maybe seven years, I was convinced that he faked it. Then eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve years in, I started to doubt. Ten years after that, twenty-three years in, I figured I’d have to be insane to believe he was still alive. I thought he was dead. But not anymore. He faked his death and this is how he did it.

  To fake your death, you need to pull off an illusion, very much like a professional magician does. Getting the audiences to believe one thing while in fact something altogether different has happened. Andy had an easier job doing it than a magician because in the case of the magician, an entire audience is closely looking for the trick or gimmick involved to catch the magician. In Andy’s case, he only has to fool a handful of people into thinking he’s sick and then dying. And remember, unlike an entire audience, these few people are not even looking for a deception to take place, which makes Kaufman’s task a whole lot easier than, say, David Copperfield’s. Still, the fewer people around the better. This is why he was incensed with Lynne when she contacted his family behind his back to come out and see him in the hospital. Now he had four more pairs of eyes to deal with.

  Next, just like a magician, Andy needs an accomplice or accomplices to assist him in pulling his illusion off. In this case, he needs someone who is willing to die for him; i.e., someone who is going to die anyway. But for financial gain or to be a part of pulling off this incredible prank (it could be someone who is also a fan of his), someone agrees to act as Kaufman’s body double. This body double was found by scouring different cancer treatment facilities in San Francisco. Andy knew they had to be male and be close to his age, but hei
ght and eye color had to be exact. Facial structure could be corrected by prosthetic pieces, just like he and I did to make me look like his Clifton. Weight could be controlled by him losing weight to match his double. But most important, the body double had to be dying from something that would take his life in a relatively short amount of time (six months?) and something that could not be cured. God forbid Andy would invest so much time and money only to have the body double get better. Another accomplice would be the body double’s loved one or caregiver. He or she would be needed once the body double became too ill to maneuver around on his own, and crucial when the switch would take place. Once those individuals had been found and the financial arrangement had been agreed upon, they were off and running. Or I should say, “off and dying.”

  Now Andy had five months to get in shape, or more appropriately, get out of shape. He would meet with his body double occasionally, learning to mirror his appearance, speech patterns, gait and attitude as much as he could. Andy would put himself on a strict diet to do just that and copy the “radiation look” to match the double’s, which caused hair loss. Andy would either receive radiation himself—remember, he called me once asking, “How much radiation could a healthy body take?”—or simply cosmetically match how the double’s hair loss would look. I’m reminded how Jim Carrey quickly lost weight and shaved his entire head to achieve the “dying look” for the film. With a little skin-tone makeup (grayish), Jim was totally believable as a cancer patient with a short time to live. The use of a wheelchair in both cases (Andy’s and Jim’s) helped in pulling off the illusion. Now that the match up was close enough to fool the average person, and the body double’s days were quickly drawing to a close, this is when Andy went to the Philippines for “psychic surgery” as part of the plan to convince the American public that he was really dying. The gruesome photos were leaked to the National Enquirer for all to see. When Andy got word that the body double only had a short time to live, he flew back to the States and eventually checked himself into Cedars-Sinai Hospital, all the time monitoring the body double, who was coming closer to the end at some undisclosed location. The second accomplice would be used to stay in communication with Andy and transport the near-death body double to the hospital at just the right time. Another sick person being pushed around in a wheelchair at Cedars-Sinai would hardly be noticed.