by Bob Zmuda
Somehow, Wes managed to find the tiny airport and get us back onto terra firma. I later found that Wes had precisely forty-six hours of flight time, including the two with us, and that the FAA required forty to receive a license. Wes had also just purchased the plane and needed all the paying customers he could get to make the payments. Andy later said it was meditation that kept us in the air. Perhaps. As soon as I could find a phone I called George and bitched him out, screaming, “Never again!” After I calmed down a bit I firmly stipulated that neither Kaufman nor I would ever fly on an aircraft without a center aisle or fewer than two engines.
Our show went off without a hitch and, as a matter of fact, was one of the best we’d done to that point, probably as a result of the euphoria brought on by the “I’m alive” thrill of dodging a bullet.
Afterward, we had a pleasant surprise awaiting us at the hotel. It seems the Hilton chain had received some inside info regarding a freeway that was to pass through this little town. Following the business axiom “Build in the path of progress,” Hilton jumped in and erected a lavish multimillion-dollar facility. Once complete, they flung open their doors and waited for that concrete ribbon to deliver multitudes of road-weary customers. It never happened. Somebody had gotten some bad 411 and Hilton was stuck with a white elephant. With no choice but to minimize their losses, the hotel management began offering a “fantasy weekend” to the locals (read: college students) and cut their overhead by employing but one co-ed to work the front desk.
When Andy and I arrived to check in, we were dropped into the middle of something the likes of which we had never seen. We heard a commotion, so after we schlepped our bags to the rooms, we went to the pool area to investigate. To our extreme delight, we found upward of a hundred college students, all naked. It was as if a nudist colony had convened safely within the walls of a respectable three-star hotel. What made it even better was that most of the students had just been to the only entertainment in town that night, our show, so Kaufman was like a pig in shit.
After he disrobed poolside, everyone cheered as a buck-naked Andy strutted back and forth before diving in. There’s something quite primal about communal nudity, and soon we were at one with everyone present. Booze and joints passed between nude bathers, and soon the aquatic partyers were all pleasantly hammered. Normally, given the presence of dope, Andy would have fled, but this time he stayed, likely due to the influence of the dozen or so lovely ladies lavishing attention on him, making sure he went nowhere.
We were scheduled to depart the next morning to return to Chicago, but we broke plans and stayed on, unable to tear ourselves from the mass of naked college girls. Can you blame us? That night Andy finally settled on four young ladies with whom he retired to his room and had his way a number of times (that TM discipline at work). Meanwhile, I hit it off with the solitary desk clerk, Julie. Moving me to a room closer to the lobby, Julie joined me over the next days in the ingestion of blotter acid and explorations of the Kama Sutra, all deftly handled between her responsibilities at the front desk.
After two days of all-you-can-eat co-eds, leaving was one of the hardest things Andy and I ever did. But duty called and we had to get back for a big show at the Park West in Chicago. Years later I returned to that place to relive the shadow memories of those extraordinary two days, but alas, the Hilton had gone condo and no trace remained of that shining moment of heaven on earth. Farewell, Shangri-la!!
One of my strongest bonds with Andy was forged as I told him stories of numerous hoaxes I’d perpetrated as a kid and young actor in my college and guerrilla theater days. He loved that I was as willing as him to fabricate elaborate deceptions, and that I’d been practicing them for years before I met him. To him, that made us comedic soul mates — I was one of the very few he allowed in close. Andy was, despite his public persona and uncounted sexual liaisons, a deeply private person. You could meet him physically, but the real Andy Kaufman was a genius jokester operating his body from the bridge of his mind. The scant few who were allowed into the Captain’s quarters were privileged.
Andy had a strong sense of history, a reverence for the very ground on which important events occurred and where the great had trodden — it’s just that his ideas of important and great were sometimes considerably different from others’. Just as he had had to see the hallowed haunts of Elvis, when we went to Chicago he insisted we visit and revisit the locations of the tales of my childhood. Andy and I created a culture between us wherein the spoken word was elevated to almost a religion. We revered each other’s stories and delighted in teaming up to create new stories that we would co-own in the future, retelling them as if they were favorite movies you watch over and over. As Andy is now gone I am sharing our stories with you.
I can’t recall a time when my folks didn’t pull practical jokes on us, so I come by the practice honestly. By the time my older sister Marilyn had reached puberty she had perfected the Zmuda tradition of “pulling one over” and began to experiment on me with more and more elaborate deceptions. By the time I was eight or ten, I too was an accomplished trickster. In retrospect, the jokes we all pulled on one another weren’t cruel; as a matter of fact, they gave me a strong sense of self-worth and balance as they led me to understand how important it is to one’s mental health to be able to laugh at oneself.
Andy particularly loved my childhood sham that I called the Séance, a fraud I honed to perfection as a kid and used at Halloween to terrify my friends — that is, at least until we all went to college. I studied Houdini’s work extensively, and by the age of fifteen I had a solid repertoire of magic. I used the Séance bit for many years after that, even making some money in college when I mounted the shows. Andy delighted in the Séance story, so I took him by the home where my greatest performance of it was staged. He acted as if we were visiting the Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor. I loved that innocence about him.
Andy also enjoyed my other tales of practical jokes played on friends and family over the years. Another of his favorites was the Ghost Tour, the butt of that joke being my own mother. A good friend named Richard Crowe had a nice little enterprise in Chicago. He rented a bus and then charged tourists to see various lurid locations in town, such as the site of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and John Wayne Gacy’s home, where dozens of young men had entered and never come out. He called it the Ghost Tour because the main hook was seeing places where lots of people died … or where there was the potential for death. One day, I took the tour.
Noticing we were in the neighborhood of my parents’ home, I seized on an idea for a put-on. My mother is a world-class pack rat, a character flaw that possibly stemmed from her childhood during the depression. That dear, sweet lady could not bring herself to discard anything. Bottles, sacks, rubber bands, tinfoil, you name it; it never saw the trash can in our house. As kids, my two older sisters and I were embarrassed to bring anyone home because we were ashamed of the detritus my mother had so carefully assembled over the decades. Well, now it was payback time, Mom.
I whispered to Crowe that I had a special place to visit. He introduced me as Dr. Bob Troiani, a “noted parapsychologist,” and handed over the microphone. (Our friend Joe Troiani was then establishing himself as a psychologist, so in his honor we appropriated his last name.)
“Ladies and gentlemen,” I said, standing at the front of the bus and solemnly addressing the thirty or so Japanese tourists. “Many years ago, a lady named Sophie Zmuda went to a séance that changed her life. During that séance, spirits contacted Sophie from beyond and told her as long as she never, ever threw anything away that came into her house — not a bag or a jar, bellybutton lint, nothing — she would stay alive. But the moment she threw something out she would meet an untimely demise.”
Our Nipponese visitors leaned forward on their seats, mesmerized. “Behold,” I said, pointing out the window, “that very house … the residence of Sophie Zmuda.”
Our bus stopped and the tourists piled out, cameras ready,
to see the accumulation of years of paralyzing fear as well as possibly to catch any noncorporeal emanations in this obviously haunted abode. I ran up and rang the doorbell. Mom answered, and to her surprise there I was with thirty Japanese standing behind me, trigger fingers poised on their Nikons and Canons. We went through the house, and as I opened closets and drawers and rooms, I did not disappoint, as bags and bottles and crap fell out everywhere. The Japanese were fascinated by the painful story of this pitiable woman, too terrified to discard even a plastic milk jug. On leaving the house, many wished Mom well and told me it was the highlight of their trip to the United States.
Andy was knocked out by that story, deeply impressed that I not only could think so fast on my feet but also had the strength of will to use my own mother as an unwitting device for a gag.
Back in Chicago again, still aglow from our sojourn to that college-town Elysium, Andy was in an even more playful mood than usual and hatched a plan for our show the next day that deviated quite a bit from his standard set. We were booked into Chicago’s Park West. As I listened to him lay out the crazy scheme, the dutiful producer in me was momentarily weighed down by my responsibilities. “I don’t know, Kaufman,” I said. “This isn’t some college show, the Park West is pretty legit. People aren’t paying to get jerked off. Just do your killer set.”
One thing about Andy: you never told him what to do without consequences. That’s one reason he so admired Mr. X: for his almost fatal stubbornness. “No, I’m bored with the ‘killer sets.’ We’re doing something different,” he said. “If I have to say ‘dank you veddy much’ one more time I’m gonna throw up.”
The Park West show the next night, September 17, 1978, was a departure. This was a big week in terms of Andy’s career, as five days earlier, on September 12, the first episode of Taxi went out over the nation’s airwaves. The stakes were getting higher and I was more concerned than ever about his image. But at the same time I was painfully aware that big-time showbiz was threatening to take the fun out of what we did.
I finally persuaded him to compromise: for the first half of the show he would do his standards like “Mighty Mouse” and “The Cow Goes Moo,” and Foreign Man and Elvis. The rest of the show we would allow to be, well, “interesting.” Once I accepted Andy’s notion of a bizarre second half, I became an eager coconspirator and began brainstorming plans.
That night on stage, at the beginning of the second stretch of the show, Andy walked out and took the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, last night I saw an amazing show, and I wanted to share it with you tonight. After witnessing this extraordinary act I went backstage and asked the performer if there was any limit to his abilities, and he said no, and then I said, ‘Is there any limit to what you can make someone do?’ and he said no. So I asked this person to come here tonight, and he agreed. So without further ado, I give you … the Masked Hypnotist!”
The crowd, thus intrigued, applauded loudly as a mysterious man, the Masked Hypnotist (a ski mask rendering him so) took the stage. Four volunteers, two men and two women, were selected from the audience, brought up, and the Masked Hypnotist began his magic, hypnotizing the four. Starting out innocently enough, the Masked Hypnotist induced one of the women to sing like Maurice Chevalier. It was silly, but not too embarrassing.
Then the heat was turned up. The next “hypnotee,” a middle-aged man, was asked by the Svengali to dig his finger deep into his nostril and strip-mine whatever congealed snot he could extract. When he put his findings into his mouth a few women screamed and one fled the auditorium. Now there was no turning back, the gauntlet of repugnance having been cast down.
Next, the Masked Hypnotist persuaded the other woman, a prototypical prim, young schoolteacher — hair in bun, glasses, blouse buttoned to her chin — to throw her inhibitions to the wind, and, accompanied by David Rose’s famous Stripper theme, she began to do just that. First the bun came down, then she lost the glasses and began strutting the stage like a real stripper. The transformation was incredible, and when she tossed her blouse into the audience they were simultaneously stunned and aroused. As she doffed her attire, the Masked Hypnotist told the nose picker to cease his antisocial practice and observe the denuding educator, strictly for the purpose of the nose picker’s becoming sexually stimulated.
As this was unfolding, Andy was at the edge of the stage watching, like the foreman in a slaughterhouse. The audience was taken by the power the hypnotist had over his subjects, and the Masked Hypnotist himself was beginning to wallow in his amazing influence.
The fourth and last victim was a man in his thirties, a very straight businessman-type. The Masked Hypnotist focused on him, while the nose picker rubbed his crotch and the school-teacher continued to bump and grind and doff garments in the background.
“You will piss in your pants, now!” commanded the hypnotist to the clean-cut executive. An uncomfortable murmur rose from the crowd. They could see this originally harmless demonstration now flirting with the edge of the cliff. Andy sensed that the audience was at their breaking point and stood. “Listen,” he said, “this has gone far enough. You can stop now.”
The hypnotist stared Andy straight in the eyes. “You will sit down!”
Andy promptly dropped back into his seat, clearly no longer in control of his own actions. “Don’t look into his eyes!” he exhorted the audience. “Don’t look at him!”
“Sleep!” said the angry mind master, and Andy laid his head over and just winked out. The crowd was now becoming frightened. Their anxiety level increased a few notches as the poor executive, standing before them, arms at his sides, was commanded once more to wet himself.
“Piss your pants!” was the order. Suddenly his light khaki pants darkened around his crotch and urine began running down his legs to pool around his feet.
“That’s disgusting!” someone yelled.
“Silence!” barked the Masked Hypnotist, and his wish was obeyed.
By now, the formerly proper young pedagogue had lost all her clothing save her panties, and the middle-aged man was aggressively massaging his crotch as she danced. The Masked Hypnotist made eye contact with the schoolmarm and waved a finger, whereupon she dropped her underwear and was now completely nude. Then the bewitcher crossed completely over the line. “Fuck her!” he yelled to the groin grinder. “Fuck her!“
The audience was now beyond uneasy, and some members were rising, anticipating having to rush the stage. The former nose picker undressed and proceeded to mount the bare school-teacher. Meanwhile, the executive had off-loaded at least a quart of urine into his pants and onto the stage. It was a truly disgusting display.
And that is precisely when the outside stage door burst open and the police raided the party. Someone had apparently slipped out and alerted the authorities to the nascent perversity unfolding on the Park West stage. Applause filled the house as the officers covered the young lady and her zombied-out rapist and escorted them and the urinater offstage. Kaufman was awakened, and the Masked Hypnotist was cuffed and removed. Just as the police were about to arrest Andy, several audience members intervened, saying he had made an attempt to end the vile exhibition. Andy was allowed to leave, and the audience disassembled, shaken but buzzing like they’d just seen a flying saucer land in front of the White House.
Clearly, Andy had been right: this beat the shit out of “Pop Goes the Weasel.” What the audience did not know was that the young woman who did the Maurice Chevalier impression was Andy’s sister Carol. The man who ate his boogers and then participated in the “rape” was our close friend and psychology whiz Joe Troiani. And speaking of whiz, the man who wet himself was Andy’s future brother-in-law Rick Kerman. The “urine” was actually tap water, rigged to flow from a bag attached to his waist. The “innocent” little teacher was in fact a real stripper who could look sweet when necessary. And the cops were authentic Chicago police officers, but they were off duty and also happened to be good friends of mine.
Oh, and that scoun
drel, the Masked Hypnotist? Yours truly.
The Kaufmanization had been complete. To this day, there may be folks still talking about that show. Meanwhile, Andy and I went back to L.A., where he had to continue with his job on Taxi.
After so much fun on the road, that hamster wheel called television became more and more of a drag to Andy, a golden anchor that he needed to lighten for his own mental health. There was only one man who could save Andy from what he saw as spirit-killing drudgery: that purveyor of chaos, the one and only Tony Clifton.
Since Tony’s introduction to that unsuspecting audience at the Italian restaurant years before, he had survived occasional Stage appearances but had been neglected as Andy climbed the ladder of success. Now, more than ever, Andy needed Tony’s callousness and lit-dynamite persona to keep him renewed.
Since he came onto the scene six years earlier, Andy’s original shtick of seemingly walking in from the street with all his worldly possessions in his suitcase had evolved considerably, at least in the minds of the viewers. Back then he’d been that sweet, mixed-up émigré with a bad act that charmed, but by late 1978 he had become a very famous, sweet, mixed-up émigré with a bad act that was now seen for its brilliance. The evolution began to severely intrude upon Andy’s mien. The shy little Foreign Man was now being appropriated for a weekly television series, and audiences across the country clamored for his extraordinary (but far too well known for Andy’s comfort) Foreign-Man-to-Elvis-and-back transition.
When his peers trod on that sacred ground where Andy and Foreign Man came together, he reacted. Once Andy entered the Foreign Man character, he stayed there, no matter what. One night at the Improv, Jay Leno went over to Andy (while Andy was Foreign Man), and Andy wouldn’t drop out of character, even when the two of them were out of earshot of anyone else.