Andy Kaufman Revealed!

by Bob Zmuda

  “I want Tony Clifton to be bodily removed from every major motion-picture studio in Hollywood,” was his proud answer.

  Ed shrugged. “Okay, I’ll have security throw you out.”

  Andy nodded. “Great!”

  The next morning we arrived at the gate with our female escorts from the previous day. Tony bullied his way in, and we went over to the set. They already had a new actor to replace Tony. Within five minutes Tony was in a shouting match with Judd Hirsch. Security arrived just in the nick of time. A guard on either side of Tony Clifton grabbed him by the arms and, amid a stream of foul-mouthed invective, hauled him back to the gate and threw him off the lot.

  Of course we had an L.A. Times writer named Bill Knoedelseder present and his story ended up in the paper the next day accompanied by a photo. Andy was outraged the Times had been naming him as the éminence grise behind Tony Clifton. He fired off an indignant letter to set them straight, claiming he merely did an impression of Tony Clifton, who was a real person, just as he did an impression of another real person, Elvis, but he was, quite obviously, neither Tony nor Elvis. They published that letter as well as the one sent by Tony Clifton claiming that he was most definitely not Andy Kaufman and that in fact Kaufman was just riding his coattails by using his good name to try to get places. The circus continued.

  Unfortunately for our hooker-actresses, they were not mentioned in the article. Norman Mailer once said, “If a hooker can’t fall in love with her customer, what chance has she?” With Andy the reverse was true. Andy rarely met a woman he didn’t fall for, and women generally loved Andy. But Andy began dating one of the two hookers from the Taxi stunt, which included dinners and various outings. But when they didn’t have sex he didn’t feel the need to pay her. After a while she tired of his unpaid attentions and changed her phone number.

  Tony Clifton was Andy’s new ticket out of town, his next major leap in reshuffling the showbiz deck. Andy was working to reinvent the rules of engagement for performers: the audience doesn’t have to like you, and you don’t have to be funny … just interesting. With Clifton, that conceit went even further: you could be downright bad.

  Failure and perceived mediocrity were concepts Andy toyed with his entire career. Andy’s anchor character, Foreign Man, was a lovable schlemiel, a failure. Now came Clifton like an evil superhero, energized with the red kryptonite of excess and ego and over-the-top bravado that Andy as Andy could never summon. Clifton’s style was not to entertain but to provoke, and his goal was not to be applauded off the stage but physically removed. Andy was getting into deeper waters by pushing audiences to reject him, but in some ways it was almost a compulsion, sort of like the murderer who cries, Stop me before I kill again!

  Foreign Man had become too familiar and too acceptable, so Tony was reborn to carry on the tradition of dereliction of talent. In Tony, Andy had contrived the foolproof act. He would no longer be constrained by the faint tugs of concern about success on Stage. Now his act was that in failure he would achieve success. No audience or critic could second guess him; he had just figured out how to beat the house at their own game.

  Though I’m sure my role in the Clifton fiasco on the set of Taxi had nothing to do with it, after a few months had passed, George Shapiro got a call. He called Andy.

  “They don’t want Bob on the set anymore,” said George.

  “Why not?” asked Andy. “He’s my friend, he can come if I want.”

  “They seem to think he’s a distraction,” replied George. “It wasn’t really a request.”

  My being 86ed from Taxi hit Andy a lot harder than it did me. I knew my presence had worn thin with the producers. It was actually a relief for me and gave me a lot more time to pursue other activities and jobs. For Andy it meant he had to face his job sans his playmate, and that wiped out most of what little joy he derived from doing the show. Andy was really an outsider on the set. On Fridays when the cast and crew wrapped the show, they would party until all hours. That occurred every week and Andy never joined in, preferring to drive the fifteen minutes home to meditate or entertain a female acquaintance. When the occasion once arose that one of those young ladies was my ex-wife, it afforded me the perfect opportunity to pull off a prank on Kaufman.

  My ex-wife, Brenda, came out to L.A. in late 1978. Shelly and I were moving, so she took over our old place. During this time I noticed Andy had developed an eye for Brenda. I knew by his hints that he was attracted to her and wanted to ask her out but feared I might disapprove of the courtship. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Over the years as Brenda and I grew apart we occasionally set each other up with dates. But that was something Andy was never aware of, for he and I never discussed it.

  One day he approached me and, after figuratively digging his toe in the dirt, finally asked, “Do you mind if I asked Brenda out?”

  “No, of course not,” I said, playing the courtly former spouse. “I think that’s a good idea, Brenda’s a great girl, you two would get along great.”

  I made it a point not to discuss any son of sexual development that might occur nor did Andy intimate such a possibility. But I knew Andy. That night they went out and the next day I spoke with Brenda by phone. After the niceties I bottom-lined it. “So, did you sleep with him?”

  There was a slight pause, as Brenda, a proper lady, mulled her answer. But there was just too much between us to be coy. “Yeah,” she said slowly, “yeah we did. Why?”

  “Uh, no reason, just thought I might mess with him. Don’t let him know I know just yet.”

  I figured Andy’s guilt would eventually get to him and I’d be able to read it all over his face or in his voice. It wasn’t long before he called. I answered the phone in an almost overly chipper voice — all the better for contrast.

  “Hello!” I said.

  “Hey, Zmuda.”

  My cheery inflection crashed. “Oh … hi.” I’d plummeted from top-of-the-mornin’ to sullen and withdrawn in two words. I could hear his heart stop. “Listen,” I said curtly, “I gotta go, I got something going here. I’ll talk to you later.”

  I might as well have told him I hated him. His voice dropped to a frightened whisper. “Uh, okay, I’ll talk to you later.”

  I hung up without saying good-bye. He was mortified as well as terrified our friendship was over because of a woman. I immediately called Brenda and told her to play along and that she could now tell Andy she “admitted” to me what had happened between them and that I hadn’t taken it well. Andy called her not long after, and she did her part. Now I had him by the balls.

  My phone began ringing every ten minutes, and to heighten Andy’s distress, I carefully avoided answering it. He didn’t want to come over and confront me for fear of what I might do. I loved that he was sweating bullets — the prince of jokers was now unknowingly the butt of one. Finally, when I guessed he was ready to crack I picked up the phone.

  “You’re there,” he said, taken aback that I answered. “I, uh, wanted to talk to you about something.”

  “Yeah,” I said darkly, “I’d like to talk to you, too, Kaufman.”

  “How ‘bout Cantor’s?” he said, suggesting one of our favorite late-night eateries.

  “No,” I said. “It’d be better outside, a place near you,” I said mysteriously. “Let’s go to that park on Franklin, just before Highland. Half an hour.”

  Though he agreed because he was the one sucking up, I knew his suspicions were rampant as to why I wanted to meet in a dark, deserted park around midnight. I made sure I arrived at the park before he did. Dressed forebodingly in a long trench coat, leather gloves, and a stocking cap pulled down around my ears, I found a big tree to hide behind. Then I waited.

  Andy showed up. I kept out of sight as I watched him wander warily around, looking for me. As he glanced nervously at his watch I pulled back and bit my tongue to stifle a laugh. The moment was beautiful: here was Andy Kaufman in a very rare moment of total vulnerability. After I felt he’d sweat
ed long enough, I stepped out from behind the tree.

  He saw me and as he automatically started to move toward me he looked into my eyes and they were cold as ice, a stare one gives a soon-to-be-dead man. His eyes bounced to the menacing bulge in the pocket of my coat where my hand was … a gun barrel!

  “You filthy, wife-stealing son of a, bitch!” I screamed as I pulled the gun from my coat and his hands went up hopelessly to shield himself from the blast…

  “Bang!” I said, as my “finger” gun pointed at him. “You’re dead,” I said with a smirk.

  For a brief moment he honestly believed I was gunning him down. When he looked through his outstretched hands and saw my finger, I burst into hysterics and had to sit on the damp grass, I was laughing so heartily. It took him a few moments to comprehend he’d been had, having bought my story hook, line, and sinker. Once the shock washed away he joined me, and we laughed long and hard. It was a good reminder for both of us, as put-on artists, how guilt can leave you completely unguarded.

  By now, the media were reporting on all Andy’s antics. People had heard about the campus wrestling matches and Tony Clifton’s bizarre appearances and the rumors that Clifton was really Andy Kaufman who was also that “cute little foreign guy” on Taxi. Suddenly the public was demanding Andy’s presence, and we were eager to give it to them.

  Because Andy was growing in fame and stature as a performer, we decided to mount a big show. Hollywood was our natural choice because it was home turf. Of course Andy played the Improv and the Comedy Store all the time but those venues limited the scope of what we wanted to do. The Park West had been a fun show, but we decided it was time to pull out all the stops and produce a big show, the show to end all shows, something that would have people talking for years. Like a couple of bargain-basement Selznicks, we sat down and started laying out our Gone With the Wind.

  We booked the twenty-three-hundred-seat Huntington Hart-ford in Hollywood for two shows, December 15 and 16, 1978. No sooner had tickets gone on sale than they sold out. For some time, we had been flirting with the notion of a large show somewhere in New York, and we decided the Huntington Hartford shows would be the trial run. If they went well, then Hello, Big Apple.

  On the night of our first show, Andy had done some extra meditation, and the only thing that kept me from worrying too much was the pressure of five thousand details before we opened. Then the time came, and we brought down the house lights.

  After a moment of anticipation, Tony Clifton took the stage. I had set up a 35-millimeter projector, and as he began the first strains of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” I played images of the Blue Angels precision aerial stunt team executing intricate maneuvers as their aircraft spewed great plumes of red, white, and blue smoke. The audience stood, hands over their hearts, and sang along with Tony as I unfurled Old Glory. It was the largest flag I could find and had to be trucked in from Texas. It was stirring, and the crowd suddenly felt more as if they were at an event, like the Olympics or World Cup, than at a comedy show. Then Tony went to work.

  Drinking in the standing ovation, Tony took a number of bows before the crowd settled. This was a hip, showbiz crowd, and most everyone knew that eight weeks earlier Tony Clifton had been unceremoniously tossed off the Paramount lot. Now he had returned in triumph, and the who’s who of Tinsel Town applauded the sheer courage of this legend, this god even (albeit tin-plated), for he had done something almost all in attendance had wanted to do but lacked the courage: tell Hollywood to go fuck itself.

  Tony sang for a while (backed up by his band, the Cliftones) and, in between verses, berated various proximate audience members, but he was not as vicious as usual, and the crowd was still with him. After a while, Tony signaled his band and the music stopped. He then took the microphone and strolled somberly across the stage as he related a very personal story of profound pain and unbounded joy.

  “My wife, Ruth, was the best thing in my life, and when we had our baby, Susie, I was overjoyed. They were the two most precious pearls of my life,” said Tony in a rare moment of vulnerability. “And a few years back, when Ruth passed on after an untimely illness, I didn’t know what I was going to do, I didn’t know if I could go on, but every time I looked into that little girl’s big brown eyes and she’d say, ‘Daddy, it’s going to be all right,’ well, I knew she was right,” he related, his voice nearly breaking. “Folks, I wanna bring out the light of my life, my twelve-year-old angel, Susie. Honey, come on out and meet these nice people!”

  As the little girl parted the curtains and shyly shuffled over to Tony, most were on the edges of their seats, some even wiping their eyes, as Tony stood to embrace his beloved child and then sat her on his knee to sing a sentimental duet.

  Certainly this guy wasn’t as awful as they had heard; in fact, the big lug apparently had a heart of gold. And even if this blustering lounge denizen wasn’t really Andy Kaufman, he had them in the palm of his hand. The band struck up a soft old show tune, and father and daughter began to sing. It was a wonderful, heart-touching moment, at least until the kid made a mistake by singing over Tony’s part.

  Suddenly his hand shot up, and the loud smack it made against her cheek couldn’t have stunned the audience more had it been a gunshot.

  “What are you, a fucking idiot?” screeched Tony. The stunned child began to cry.

  “Shut the fuck up or I’ll give you another one.” Some of the horrified onlookers stood and booed.

  “Hey,” cautioned Tony, “don’t boo. She’s only a child and doesn’t know any better. She’ll think you don’t like her.”

  He continued to sing as the little girl whimpered and tried to sing along. She fumbled her next verse and burst into full-blown tears.

  “I said shut up, kid!” yelled Tony. “I’m tryin’ to entertain da folks!”

  With that, the pitiful, browbeaten youngster jumped down and ran from the stage, bawling her head off. Two security guards swiftly emerged from the wings and removed Tony, to the cheers of the crowd. I announced a short intermission as Andy got out of his Tony getup. And Tony’s little girl? She was back-stage having a soda, laughing with the crew. Nowhere near twelve (she just looked it from a distance), she was one helluva good actress. A few minutes later Andy took the stage to wild applause and began his act, which encompassed everything from lip-synching to his sing-along gibberish harvest song from Caspiar, to his Yiddish “MacArthur Park,” and finally to his killer Elvis. It was two spectacular hours.

  Just as the crowd gave Andy his standing O and was preparing to exit after a wonderful show, Andy threw a surprise at them: the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes suddenly took the stage, all 34 of them, high-kicking over their heads. Next, the back door opened and 350 robed members of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir marched up the aisle singing “Hallelujah” from Handel’s Messiah.

  Then, just when they thought nothing could top that, Andy introduced Santa Claus, who flew (on a special rigging I found) down to the stage, where he was greeted by Andy. It began to snow. Now the audience was delirious with joy, buzzing in delight. Andy took the microphone and stepped to the lip of the stage.

  “Everyone, I have a very special treat for you. If you will all proceed outside in a very orderly manner, there are twenty-five buses waiting to take you to milk and cookies.”

  Of course everyone thought it was another Kaufman smoke job until they went outside and saw he wasn’t kidding. There were twenty five school buses, doors open, waiting to take the twenty-three hundred guests to their treats. Andy came out and routed people into the buses, then they all caravanned twelve blocks down Sunset to the Olde Spaghetti Factory where, inside, the audience was welcomed by fifty volunteers wearing Uncle Andy T-shirts.

  Each audience member was handed a milk carton and a package of Famous Amos cookies. Wally “Famous” Amos wasn’t that famous back then, but he was on his way. Wally generously gave me twenty-five hundred bags of cookies to hand out to our guests. A little more than two years later, in February
1981, Andy would return the favor, and “Famous Amos” would star in a dream sequence on Taxi wherein he gives cookie-making Latka the comically cynical advice that family and friends are great, but success and cash are better.

  The cookie-munching group was so thrilled it was as if they’d died and gone to Andy’s version of heaven. We’d turned the tough, jaded Hollywood “insiders” into kids again. People came up to me to shake my hand, and men and women mobbed Andy so they could hug him and tell him it was one of the most magical experiences of their lives.

  Every time Andy looked at me that night, it was with total admiration, for only he and I knew the truth, that his success that night was the direct result of my writing and producing the show. The Rockettes, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Santa Claus, the snow, and the buses were my ideas. Andy truly appreciated that I kept my mouth shut about it and let him take the credit. It was not just a matter of who was buttering my bread; after all, I owed everything to Andy and was content giving him back whatever I could.

  I secretly enjoyed every time Andy did a talk show such as Tom Snyder’s or Letterman’s and the host would praise him for his brilliance in taking the audience out in buses for milk and cookies. It was almost as if the milk and cookies episode had become his new trademark. I was content to stay behind the scenes and pull the strings. In most print interviews, Andy readily admitted to having a writer. But talk shows were different. On those he had to maintain the mystique of being out there all alone and quite mad.

  The day after the second show, Andy was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Hospital with debilitating hepatitis. Andy had performed his act while suffering from a 104-degree temperature. He took a few days to recuperate despite loathing downtime. Meanwhile, news of the amazing show spread. Soon we were in talks with the management at Carnegie Hall to stage our Huntington show there. We rolled up our sleeves and added a few surprises. This was a dream come true for Andy as he’d always visualized the apex of career success as playing Carnegie Hall.