by Bob Zmuda
Andy was totally mesmerized. “He’s a genius,” he pronounced finally, without irony.
In a very strange, upside-down universe, Andy might have been exactly right. Andy quietly started the car and pulled back out onto the road, still absorbing the impact of Mr. X’s hostile takeover of the donut shop. It was Mr. X’s totally sociopathic behavior that transfixed him. Andy was fascinated by darkness, and Mr. X qualified to be if not the Prince, then at least the Duke of Darkness. He asked a few questions as we drove, but I could see that he had been deeply affected by the depth of depravity and the will it took to make such a commitment on the volition of one delayed donut. But we both understood that it wasn’t the donut itself, it was the randomness of Mr. X’s attack, touched off, like a drive-by shooting, by a wrong glance or a misunderstood gesture; spawned from inconsequence, it became epic because Mr. X willed it that way. We were like two Hamas terrorists who had never done anything bigger than a mailbox bombing discussing a guy who took down city blocks with hardly a thought.
We finally found the joint, and Andy parked about a block away.
“Why did you park so far off?” I asked.
Instead of answering he reached in the back seat and pulled forward a bag. “Look the other way,” he said.
I turned and heard him assembling a costume. After a few minutes he spoke again. “Okay,” he said, “you can turn around.”
I looked at him, and Andy was gone. In his place was an apparition from the worst lounge on the lowest level of hell: he wore a really bad wig, sunglasses, and a mustache that Pancho Villa would have approved of. “What’s your name?” the character asked sternly. The voice that came forth was most definitely not Andy Kaufman’s.
“Bob,” I answered, playing along, but impressed with the transformation.
“Bob? Bob? Bob, what’s your last name?”
“Zmuda.”
“Zmu-what?”
“Zmuda,” I said patiently.
“Zmuda? What the hell kind of name is that?”
“Polish.”
“Polish? Polish? Well, just ‘cause you’re Polish, don’t think you’re funny.”
Still in character, he gave me instructions. “Go in the club and don’t let on you know me. Understand, you stupid Polack? By the way, your name’s Gorsky.”
“Yeah, I understand. What about after the show? We meet back here?”
“Andy’ll drive you home. You don’t know me, understand?”
“Yeah, okay. So if Andy’ll drive me home, who are you?”
He got out of the car and tossed me the keys. “I’m Tony Clifton, ass-wipe.”
And with that, he walked off toward the club.
To my surprise, the club was not a comedy venue but rather a cozy Italian eatery with a small stage where a combo of middle-aged musicians played soft standards. I ordered a glass of Chianti and some garlic bread and prepared to wait. It didn’t take long. No sooner had my bread arrived than a voice from offstage announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, tonight we are lucky to have the international singing sensation Tony Clifton in our midst.” The voice was Andy, doing his best impression of a bad MC. “Folks, put your hands together and give Mr. Tony Clifton a warm welcome!”
The patrons set down their forks, wine glasses, and pizza slices and applauded softly. Tony Clifton took the stage. I had never seen Andy smoke cigarettes, yet Tony Clifton didn’t have that inhibition. Lit butt in one hand, microphone in the other, Tony swaggered out, took a pull off the cigarette, then broke into an enthusiastic and marginally credible rendition of “Volare.” Every once in a while he’d stop to take a drag and lose his place. I looked around and could see people starting to look up at him, and not in a good way. Finally, he lost track of the song completely, and his musical accompanists petered out.
“The hell with it,” he said, taking a long pull off his smoke. “How you people doin’?”
One thing Tony Clifton demanded from the get-go was respect. When only a few polite murmurs were heard in response, he narrowed his eyes belligerently and bellowed in his thick, streetwise Brooklyn accent, “I said, ‘How the hell you all doin’?’ “
This approach brought slightly louder responses. There were probably sixty people in the house, and all eyes were suddenly riveted on Tony. He flipped cigarette ashes onto the floor and sized up the joint. “Let’s get one thing straight, people. I don’t need this. You know why? You wanna know why? ‘Cause I’m used to playin’ the big room in Vegas, not shitholes like this, you hear me? So here’s the deal. You can be one of two things, a good audience or a bad audience. If you’re a good audience, I’ll work my tail off for you. If you’re a bad audience, I’ll walk right out of here, and you can have a strip show, for all I care.”
Sixty-some pairs of eyes, including the owner’s, his wife’s, and their entire staff’s, were wide open in shock. This was a nice little family place, and everyone had expected a pleasant, not-half-bad has-been to sing a few standards while they enjoyed their meals and discussed their humdrum little lives. What they got was a wolf in lizard’s clothing — they got Tony Clifton.
He singled out an older man sitting within striking distance with his wife and another couple. “Whatsamatter?” he sneered. “You ain’t never seen a real entertainer? Close your mouth, pal, you’re attracting flies. Better yet, keep it open, there’s so many they need somewhere to go.”
He moved down the line, summarily executing diners with his words. I had never seen Andy like this. His Foreign Man was so sweet and gentle, a magical creation, yet Tony Clifton’s unre-deeming cruelty had a power all its own. Suddenly it hit me: Tony was the bastard son of Mr. X. But make no mistake, this was pure Andy. He had only borrowed elements of Mr. X to create Tony, kind of like using a corpse’s arms and legs to craft a Frankenstein monster. The heart — the dark heart — was pure Andy.
He went on for a while and I felt the crowd turning against him. What the hell kind of an act was this? He blew smoke in people’s faces and verbally abused them. It was inspiring. The place was now murmuring, and it wasn’t because the diners were having a good time. Then Tony reached me.
“You. You havin’ a good time?” he asked, innocently enough.
“Yeah,” I said.
“What’s your name?”
“Bob.”
“Bob what?”
It was the routine from the car.
“Gorsky.”
“Gorsky? Gorsky? What’s that? Chinese? Russian? What?”
“Polish.”
“Polish?” he roared, then sized me up. “Polish, huh? You think ‘cause you’re Polish you’re funny?”
“I don’t know,” I said, trying to sound browbeaten.
“Well, are you funny?” he demanded.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Well, mister funny Polack, you think this is funny?”
And with that he poured my full glass of Chianti over my head. I looked as shocked as Sissy Spacek did in Carrie when Travolta dropped the blood on her. After my initial shock I burst into tears, leaped up, and ran into the men’s room. Of course, my “tears” resulted from trying to contain my laughter. A big bruiser followed me into the can and offered to kick Clifton’s ass. I pleaded with him to not do it, as I was a “pacifist,” a technical label people were well aware of back then. I excused myself and went quickly to the car to wait for Kaufman. About two minutes later Andy came running at full tilt down the road toward me. Out of breath, he tossed his bag in, jumped behind the wheel, and, laughing hysterically, yelled, “Give me the keys! Let’s get the hell out of here!”
I gave him a puzzled look and held up my hands. “Keys? I don’t have ‘em. You have ‘em.”
For about one and a half seconds, the look on Andy’s face revealed as much shock as he’d ever showed in his life. It was priceless. Then I handed him the keys. “Gotcha.”
He fired up the engine, slammed it into gear, and we dug out. Safely down the road he looked over. “You’re as crazy as me, aren
’t you?”
I nodded. “Yup.”
That night, Tony Clifton was born, and our lifetime friendship was cemented. Andy was my new best buddy from that point on. I was impressed with his total originality, and he saw that I had a deep subversive streak much like his own. Having a close friend was a new experience for Andy since he’d always been a confirmed loner.
Chris got me a job bartending at the Improv, and when Andy went on stage I’d break away to catch his act. I got to see much of his experimental stuff and finally discovered the purpose of that heavy 16-millimeter projector. Andy would come on stage in an uncharacteristically serious demeanor and announce that he had rare footage of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. He would explain that filmmaking was in its infancy back then, but it just so happened that a man named Frederick Astor had one of the first experimental cameras set up at Ford’s Theatre to record the play the very night that John Wilkes Booth changed the course of history. How Kaufman got his hands on such a rare artifact was beyond me. The footage is quite shocking and sad. When Andy would conclude the screening by offering up, in a breaking voice, a group prayer to Lincoln, there were few dry eyes in the house.
Years later, Andy admitted that movies did not exist in 1865 and that he had lifted the footage from D. W. Griffith’s 1915 Birth of a Nation, also known as The Clansman. The whole thing was a hoax, but he presented it with such commitment and solemnity that everyone believed it. One never questioned its authenticity, for who would lie about such a sacred event? As the audience was crying their eyes out over the film and the prayer, Andy was offstage laughing.
After his performances we’d get together, and he’d invariably ask what I thought. He appreciated my always being straight with him. He often used my suggestions, and I was gratified when they worked.
Brenda and I had been in touch, but our marriage was strained by our separation as well as by different life paths. She finally came to visit, claiming she would give New York a shot and see if she could live there with me. We didn’t last long. Within a week she decided that the city was far too big and chaotic, and we parted, now with the understanding that, despite being married, we could go our separate ways since our lives weren’t exactly going to remain tightly joined. I was sorry to see her go back to Pittsburgh, but I knew that she wouldn’t be happy in my town and I wouldn’t be happy in hers.
Most nights after Andy’s sets, we’d get together and I’d tell him his favorite Mr. X stories, and we’d talk about how we could create some chaos of our own. Andy was mesmerized by Mr. X’s commitment to anarchy and professional sociopathy. He became so obsessed with Mr. X’s methodology and dedication to creating and then channeling mayhem that Andy persuaded me to help manufacture incidents on the street while he recorded them with his little handheld tape recorder. Later we’d listen to the results, which would provide the jumping-off point for dialing in his material.
We made trial runs at “street comedy” by going to Coney Island on off nights, enjoying the rides and the roller coasters. One of our favorite gags was to ride the “Rotor,” a huge spinning wheel attached to a hydraulic lift. A couple dozen riders would stand inside with then backs against the inner wall of the huge hoop; the device would start to spin, and soon the floor would drop out, but the riders would be held in place by centrifugal force. The thing spun pretty fast, and sometimes people would get nauseous. For our bit, one of us would fill his mouth with water before the ride started, while the other — once we got going — would begin to feign sounds of impending vomitus. When the “sound-effects” man let go, the “water bearer” would spit the water, sending a spray over our fellow riders. Of course, no one could see the puker, and the effect was nauseating on its own.
Another act of fakery occurred on the roller coaster. We’d board the machine, and at the end of the ride one of us would pretend to be crying like crazy, scared shitless, just like a little kid. Then we’d pay again and swap roles. During one of the circuits, Andy turned to me. “Someday I’m going to be famous, and when I am, I’m going to make you my writer.”
As the coaster plunged to the bottom, my eyes teared up, not because of the wind, but because someone, Andy Kaufman, believed in me.
During this time something happened to me that was so embarrassing I told only Andy. To this day, he is one of but a handful of people to whom I ever revealed this ugly secret. Andy always thought I had done it as a prank, despite my swearing I didn’t. He proclaimed it wildly subversive and later cited it as an inspiration for our particular form of lunacy. After he’d told others the story many times, I eventually gave up trying to disabuse him of the notion that it had been accidental.
A friend named Barbara worked as an usher at a big theater on Broadway. Barbara would call from time to time with an offer to sneak me in. It was an opportunity for me to see a ridiculously expensive Broadway show for free. Despite the usually packed houses, she always tried to give me at least an hour’s notice before show time. One Saturday morning a little before noon, I got a call from her. “Can you get down here around two?”
Unfortunately, I had been up all night and felt like warmed-over dogshit. “Richard Burton is doing Equus,” she continued. “It’s a great show I can get you in if you get here a little before two. Whaddya think?”
Fuck it, I thought, it’s Richard Burton in the hottest show in town. The man hasn’t done Broadway since Hamlet. “Thanks. I’ll be there,” I said, excited I could participate in a little bit of history.
At the theater, Barbara met me at a back door and cautiously spirited me in, showing me to a seat right in front. I was thrilled by my unequaled view of the stage. Equus is staged as a courtroom drama, and to fill the jury, audience members are selected. The seat I occupied happened to be one of those seats, so just before the play began I was ushered onto the stage and my terrific seat suddenly became a whole lot better. Then Richard Burton took the stage. It was very impressive to see him working at that range. I was in the first row of the jury box, so I was about as front row as you could get. Unfortunately.
The toll of probably thirty or more hours without sleep began to overtake me, and after about an hour of listening to the marvelously lilting voice of the Welsh artist, it began to have a tragically relaxing effect on me — I completely zonked out.
Now, the only thing worse than falling asleep on stage was awakening myself with my own snoring. And the only thing worse than awakening myself by snoring in the middle of Richard Burton’s performance was to open my eyes to find Richard Burton inches from my face, his own countenance fire-engine red in nearly uncontrolled fury.
I had single-handedly (or single-nosedly) stopped Richard Burton dead in his tracks on a Broadway stage. Unbelievably disturbing as this was, I arose in abject mortification and looked to the master thespian for his forgiveness. “Sorry, Mr. Burton, I haven’t slept in two days.”
As Burton’s eyes flared angrily, I turned to the audience and, raising my voice, inadvertently took control of the house. “Sorry, I haven’t slept in a couple of days. Sorry.”
I then walked off the stage, down the center aisle past a stunned audience, and out the front door. So shaken, I went home and couldn’t sleep.
One evening Andy dropped by my place. “Wanna see a show?” he asked.
“A movie?” I assumed.
“No. Theater. Live stuff.”
“What, like a musical?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Great drama. Classical Greek.”
I figured it was another Andy put-on and that we’d end up seeing a movie, probably Night of the Living Dead, which he loved, and which we’d seen six times. But he seemed serious. Then again, that’s when he was really setting you up. We caught a cab across town, and when we arrived in front of the huge marquee, I knew I’d been had — it read: TONIGHT: PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING. The card listed Bruno Sammartino versus some Indian chief. I looked at Andy. “Classical Greek drama, my ass.”
He was indignant. “You’re wrong. Wr
estling is the basis of all drama. It dates back to the ancient Greeks.”
He said it with such conviction that I knew he wasn’t kidding. Years later, I would realize wrestling so appealed to Andy because of the black-and-white nature of its conflict: it was good versus bad, pure and simple. This would emerge as a theme of Andy’s: righteousness versus evil, Andy versus Tony, pure versus profane, star versus has-been, Andy versus women, success versus failure, and, finally, life versus death. Though the conflict that night occurred in the ring, Andy saw it as both a metaphor and as its most powerful, basest term: winner versus loser.
Watching that rowdy crowd cheer on their heroes, I didn’t realize what he was actually seeing. Andy saw the future, his own career, his destiny as an artist. He had been going in that direction for some time, but I know now that the energy in that room thrilled him with the possibilities. The wrestling was actually a show, with preselected winners and losers, and in a way, the audience was in on it. No one could watch and truly believe that men that big and strong could pummel each other that long and hard and survive, let alone thrive. Andy studied the dynamic between the crowd and the wrestlers and saw a childhood game: You be the cowboy, I’ll be the Indian, and I’ll shoot you. Next time, you be the cowboy. It was a mutually agreed-upon fantasy between the participants and the viewers: we’ll pretend to hurt each other, and you’ll pretend to believe it.