Tony and Me
Andy was traveling at the speed of life. It’s amazing stuff.
ROBIN WILLIAMS
We decided we needed to get Tony out in public and stir up some ink on him. The Improv seemed like the natural place to begin. One night Tony made an unexpected appearance, and though he was warmly received, halfway through his act the crowd began shouting “Andy! Andy!” Furious, he stormed off the stage, and we left. It was bad enough that Foreign Man had been “bought out” and repackaged as Latka, and that both were automatically related to Andy, but now Tony Clifton was suffering the same fate.
Andy was pissed because fame was beginning to get in the way of having fun. It was similar to what happened to Allen Funt, the creator of Candid Camera. Before his show became an institution, Funt would go out and participate in the stunts himself, but his massive exposure eventually ruined his anonymity. The same was happening with Andy.
As we drove home to Andy’s we decided a new strategy was in order, one that would once again turn the tables on the audiences.
“What if Clifton and I appear simultaneously?” he offered.
“Get somebody to play Clifton?”
“Exactly. Wouldn’t that be hilarious? Tony’s on stage, they’re thinking it’s me, and I show up.”
“Yeah, okay, I like it, but who?” I wondered.
Andy looked over at me. “Oh, no!” I protested. “Forget it! No way.”
From the moment I saw Clifton, I’d been doing his accent and mannerisms, and as we developed material as well as a persona for him, I had worked on getting him down. It was the quickest way for me to write a character: just become that character. I admittedly did a damn good Clifton, and many of the lines Andy uttered as Tony were my invention. I knew he was right about who should be the other Clifton, but I was scared.
Andy’s voice was calm but firm. “Why not? It makes complete sense. You’ve got Tony down perfectly, his voice, the mannerisms. You are Tony.”
It was a huge compliment from the man who was very proprietary about his characters, but Andy had given me, as his writer and best friend, a membership in a club so exclusive it had but one member, me. He trusted me completely, but knew I had to overcome one problem, a problem that was so foreign to Andy I didn’t think he could possibly understand.
“You’re afraid,” he said quietly. “That’s natural. We can work on that.”
As the other half of “Albrecht & Zmuda, Comedy from A to Z,” when we sucked I could blame Albrecht, and vice versa. And appearing on the SNL wrestling sketches, or at colleges in a background role, or even onstage at the Park West in a mask, well, that was a whole lot different from taking the stage all alone, figuratively naked, with no one to play off of. And on top of that, this character was not only front and center, he was one of the most balls-to-the-walls entertainers to stalk a stage, a guy who seized an audience by the throat and made them scream uncle! Tony Clifton was no shrinking violet. I didn’t know how I could walk on stage and do what Andy did.
“You don’t have a fearful bone in your body,” I said. “Doing Clifton is …”
“Doing Clifton is no different in front of me or onstage,” he said firmly. “It’s all in your head. You know the character, right?”
“Yeah …”
“Well, we just have to convince you there’s nothing to be afraid of. Would Tony he afraid?”
I laughed at the thought of Tony Clifton being afraid of anything. “No.”
“Okay, then you will become Tony. Just like I do.”
I pictured Andy Kaufman, the nonsmoking vegetarian, consuming steaks and chain-smoking as the polar-reversed Tony Clifton and worried about my own commitment to the character. Could I go there?
“I told you,” he said, “when I was a little kid doing those shows? I was really scared, terrified even. I practiced in my basement for years before I could go in front of anybody, and then when I did, it was the neighbor kids, always younger than me. I never let the adults in because I was afraid they’d judge me.”
We pulled up to his house and went inside. He continued. “What I’ve never told you, or anyone else for that matter, is that I’m still afraid. But that’s why I meditate. So I won’t be scared.”
He had a meditation clause in all his contracts, allowing him time to release his tensions before going onstage or onto a set — it was de rigueur if you wanted to hire Andy Kaufman. He never told me it was because he was afraid — I figured he might now be telling me that to make me feel better. “You? Afraid?” I laughed. “That’ll be the day.”
“No, it’s true. When I discovered transcendental meditation I learned to make those fears go away, to see they were nothing. And once I let go of that, that fear of being judged? Then I was safe.”
“I think you’re just saying that.”
“No,” he insisted, “I get scared, too, I just don’t let anyone know it, you included. And when I do get scared, the meditation takes it away. Once I focus, I can do anything. So can you.”
Andy was persuasive not only in his words but also in his eyes and his body language, which told me to be calm, everything would be fine. I believed him because he was by nature a scrupulously honest man and I trusted he wasn’t saying those things just to get me to play Tony Clifton. There was an unspoken agreement between us to push each other not only to improve creatively but also to grow personally. We needed someone in our lives to whom we looked for guidance at times, someone whose opinion or judgment we held above even our own — we played that role for each Other.
After some hours of his quiet persistence and counseling I Started warming up to the idea of becoming Clifton. With Andy’s help I began to visualize myself on stage, singing, smoking, strutting, and, best of all, berating unsuspecting audience members. I came to see it as a wonderful opportunity, with the payoff being the looks on the faces of everyone in the house when they began screaming to Tony for Andy … and got him! I visualized the shock wave as Andy entered from the darkness at the edge of the stage and stood side by side with Tony, and that clinched it.
“Okay, let’s do it. I’ll be Clifton,” I agreed, not sure what I was getting into but excited by the promise of the unknown.
Andy smiled slightly. “You’ll be good.”
As we sat up late and planned what we’d do with our new creation, I came to realize what Andy had just done. Though his motivation was certainly “the big put-on,” he also exhibited extraordinary generosity by gifting one of his signature characters to me. Though he and I had worked to hone Tony, Tony was, until that moment, Andy’s. Now we would share Tony. That would be no small thing for any entertainer, because brilliant creations such as Tony Clifton are almost always zealously guarded, like secrets of state or family recipes. But Andy made the bestowal of Tony Clifton seem less like a business decision than one friend handing down a treasured heirloom to another.
Like his contemporaries Robin Williams and Steve Martin, when away from the footlights Andy was quiet and reserved, almost shy. What were often interpreted as Andy’s offstage antics were merely a continuation of his act. To be alone with Andy and to be a member of his “club” was to spend time with a man whom some would consider boring. Andy himself felt he was boring when the mask came off, but he needed time to be “off” as opposed to “on,” which required a phenomenal output of energy. Andy saw what he did as a calling, and his life was devoted to his art. His sacrifice was that the time afforded him to be just Andy was limited.
To pull off the illusion of a consistent Tony Clifton being played by two people of different heights and body types, great preparations were taken. Though I had been modestly successful in creating Tony’s face with my limited knowledge of makeup, for the latest incarnation of Mr. Clifton I turned to the pros. Among those I interviewed were visual effects giants such as Rick Baker (King Kong), Stan Winston (who would go on to do the special effects for Aliens, The Terminator, Terminator 2, and Furassic Park), and Wally Westmore (Vertigo). After careful consideration, I chose Ken Chase. Not only was Ken a certified effects heavy-weight, but also I felt he could keep the secret of both Andy and me being Tony (a favor he has done me for the past fifteen years).
Ken made molds of our faces, hands, even teeth. The finished product had to fit us both and be consistent with the version of Tony that had been out there and that people were familiar with — no mean feat. Essentially, Tony’s exterior would be the same regardless of who wore it, but the inner fit would be adjusted for our physical peculiarities. For instance, the bridge of Andy’s nose was wider than mine, so I was fitted with a prosthetic piece. On the other hand, I was not as tall as Andy, therefore special lifts were devised to give me the trademark “towering Clifton” effect.
That Tony was a big son of a bitch merely enhanced his menace, and for that reason we made him slightly more heavyset than he had been. For consistency, there also was only one Clifton costume — if a button fell off, we’d still match. Our concern about the congruity of Tony’s likeness stemmed from the knowledge that a fair amount of video already existed, and with the advent of the first portable video cameras, more and more footage would be generated, thus giving skeptics more of Clifton to compare. We required that my Tony be indistinguishable from Andy’s.
Which brings me to another point of departure for our respective Tonys — we had diametrically differing goals as performers. Andy as Tony was a kamikaze pilot ready to die for the cause, so antagonizing an audience that they couldn’t help but hate and reject him. I was the pilot ready to fly the dangerous mission, but I sure as hell wanted to come home — I needed acceptance. I soon rationalized we could each play our Cliftons: on one night he’d get dragged off the stage, on another night he’d almost get dragged off.
You’d think we were testing a new spacesuit for NASA given the countless tests, run-throughs, and adjustments we made dialing in the new and improved Clifton. But finally we were done. And he was magnificent. I had been channeling Clifton in preparation for my first big moment in the spotlight, and when we tried him out on some people we knew, and they thought I was Andy, we knew we were ready. Now our goal was one of despicable subversion: not only fool the public, but perpetrate our sleight on the hand that fed us, the industry.
Much of the credit for what happened next must go to George Shapiro. Putting his reputation on the line, he had the guts to book Clifton as Clifton, not as a manifestation of Andy Kaufman. Seeming to pull off the impossible, George secured contracts that called for Tony Clifton as a separate entity — making no mention of Andy — therefore technically allowing me to appear as the raffish International Singing Sensation. The clubs thought they were getting Andy in disguise, but George covered himself legally by insisting it was Tony Clifton, not Andy Kaufman. Everyone signed the contract as they winked accordingly, believing they were all in on the joke. It was a joke all right, but they sure as hell weren’t in on it.
George’s first miracle was getting Tony booked into the main room at Harrah’s Casino in Lake Tahoe. Though Harrah’s was forbidden to use Andy’s name relative to Clifton in the advertising, the press, under no such restrictions, seized on it and widely reported “Andy’s” appearance, much to our delight. The gig was for two weeks, so I suddenly had to create a slick Vegas-style show, with the requisite orchestra, charts, patter, and massive logistics. It was a little weird (and frightening) to know that this time it was I, not Kaufman, walking into the fire.
Another consideration was Clifton’s voice. Two weeks of two shows a night were going to play havoc on my throat, given the vocal gymnastics Clifton required of me. Also, Tahoe’s six-thousand-foot elevation worried me, as it was daunting even for experienced singers — a few minutes into the act and they’re panting from lack of air. That Andy’s voice was pitched slightly higher, more tenor than mine, and Clifton’s voice was nasal and somewhat pinched initially drained me even in short bursts. I hired a vocal coach and worked closely with him to be able to deliver Clifton over the long haul and at altitude without blowing out my throat.
My first trial run as Clifton came when Shapiro booked him on both Letterman and Merv Griffin to give Tony a push for his Tahoe show. Waiting in the wings of the Letterman show, I was nervous until I got the cue to go on and remembered Andy’s question — Would Tony be scared? — and suddenly I was Clifton. I went out and wowed ‘em. As we went to a commercial, Dave leaned over and whispered, “Andy, that makeup is so good, if I didn’t know you I’d swear it was someone else.” Years later, Dave’s longtime producer, Robert Morton, cornered me and asked about my appearances as Tony Clifton. Acknowledging that Clifton had been on Letterman three times, Morty asked, “How many times did you do the Letterman show as Tony?”
“Every time,” I replied.
“You mean you were doing the show and Andy was home sleeping?” he asked.
“Yup.”
I had passed the Letterman test and was ready for Harrah’s. As Late Night was beamed out to the West Coast, Andy sat in his living room watching Tony Clifton pull the wool over the eyes of Dave and the nation, and he laughed till he cried. With makeup whiz Ken Chase sworn to secrecy, no one else but Andy, Shapiro/West, and I knew the truth.
As I was settling in at Harrah’s (after making excuses to management that Andy was on his way), a masquerading Andy flew in to Reno and got a room at a place nearby called the Hormsby House, in Carson City. I mean nearby to the whorehouses, not so much to Harrah’s. He was ten minutes from the physical pleasures we’d found two years before and thirty minutes from Harrah’s, and he would occasionally drive in — cloaked in heavy disguise — and enjoy the show. It was surreal, because probably everyone in the audience thought they were watching him, and he got a huge kick out of that fact. He also derived great pleasure from taunting me from time to time with shouts from the middle of the crowd, like, “We know you’re really Andy Kaufman. What do you think, we’re stupid?” At one point he heckled me so much that I had him removed by security. If he couldn’t be thrown out as Clifton, he had still managed to find a way.
A few times during the two weeks, he drove over and, as Andy Kaufman, did a walk-through of the Casino, glad-handing fans and saying hellos to various Harrah’s staff, thus establishing his presence. Then, when no one was looking, he’d head out the back door and back to the Mustang Ranch or the Hormsby House to order in “dinner,” usually three or four of his “professional” acquaintances. Once he realized I was going to be fine, he even flew back to L.A. a few times.
Meanwhile, I was wallowing in the excessive world of Tony Clifton. As the first week passed I was like a kid in a candy store. Now I was the star and not Andy’s sideman Bugsy — and it was a life really easy to get used to. One night after I’d finished my second show I was puttering in my dressing room when a lovely young showgirl knocked on my door. She claimed she was a big fan of Andy’s, so I decided to stay in character, and within a few minutes was suggesting we go out that evening. Not one to miss an opportunity, very soon we were having sex (picture me still fully dressed as Clifton), and at that point, despite my pleasure, I realized it was the height of absurdity: she was blowing Andy, not me. I was now Tony Clifton, comic incubus.
She became suspicious after a while when I wouldn’t remove my facial pieces or drop out of character, but by then the fat was in the fire and I dared not. I gave her some lame excuse that I had only the single set of latex appliances because the rest had been lost, and once removed they were useless. To shore up my argument I also pointed out I was an artist, therefore staying in character was essential and she should always address me as Tony. She bought it hook, line, and sinker, and we had no further problems. Sure, she was a starfucker, but she was a very sweet star-fucker. My mind reeled over what her reaction might be if she found out her “star” was the other Tony Clifton. We dated for the rest of the run, and it was exciting, if not dangerous as hell. Not once did I remove the disguise.
The night of the last show I drove up to the Hormsby House, where Andy and I had agreed we needed to unwind with a prank. Since I was still wearing Clifton’s facial appliances (each set lasted only one wearing, and we had plenty more in L.A.), I slashed the latex and then covered myself in fake blood. Looking like Jason Voorhees had been working me over with his ax for a good ten minutes, I lay down in front of the elevator and Andy stood in his doorway a few yards away to watch what happened. It was very late and people were coming back from various shows in the area. We didn’t wait long before the elevator opened and an older couple in splendid evening attire prepared to step out. What they saw was Tony Clifton on the carpet at their feet, lacerated and bleeding to death.
“Get outta here! They’re killin’ people up here! Run away! Save yourselves!” Tony screamed, a frothy pink foam rimming his mouth. “Get away! Live!”
The horrified looks on their faces was worth a fortune. As soon as the elevator closed we darted into Andy’s room and waited for the fun. It didn’t take long before the place was crawling with security guards and police. They knocked on the door and Andy innocently told them he hadn’t heard a thing.
Back in L.A., a few months passed, and Andy got a phone call — from my Harrah’s showgirl. I had forgotten I’d given her Andy’s phone number. When she’d asked for it, what was I to do? We’d been having sex for ten days, so I felt I had to comply and give her Andy’s actual number, but I didn’t think she’d really use it. She did, and Andy called me in a panic.
“She’s flying in tomorrow. What should I do?” he asked.
“Pick her up,” I said, loving that my move had backfired on Kaufman.
“What? I don’t even know her. How will I do that?”
I described her again and pointed out her best selling point. “She’ll expect to have sex with you.”
Andy mulled that over for about one second. “Okay,” he said. “But I may have to call you for information. This might be tough to pull off.”
“You can do it.”
And he did. The next day he picked her up at the airport, and she stayed with him three days. Of course, he called me every hour or so to find out things I knew that he was supposed to know, but he managed to fake his way through it. What baffled both of us after she left was that she didn’t seem to know the difference between us, which was particularly odd given Kaufman was Jewish, I was Catholic, and only one of us was circumcised. I guess it’s true that love is blind.
Our scam at Harrah’s worked on several levels. When George Shapiro booked Clifton there, he never expected Tony to last two nights, let alone two weeks. That bastard Kaufman told me afterward (in spite of his pep talk) that he had figured I would survive no longer than ten minutes. I surprised them all. Actually, Andy felt Tony Clifton couldn’t last longer than ten minutes, given his propensity for crowd antagonism. I pointed out that although his Clifton begged rejection, mine gingerly courted acceptance. Whereas Andy’s Tony was a form of vicious catharsis for him, my Tony was just an act. And as an act I instinctively worked to keep most of the audience in their seats. (I say “most” as I could never forget that I was, after all, Tony Clifton.)
Prior to my debut at Harrah’s, Andy warned me, “Clifton can get to you. You have to fight with him sometimes, he’s pretty intense, hard to shake.” During the filming of Man on the Moon I passed that warning on to Jim Carrey. A consummate artist, Jim discovered the wisdom of my words: Tony, once you fell under his spell, was a very tough demon to exorcize. Jim also had a choice over how to play Clifton: my version or Andy’s. He chose mine because it was a more “accessible” direction for the way he wanted to portray Tony.
Much has been written on the Andy-as-Tony phenomenon, and some have suggested that Andy exhibited classic multiple personality disorder, or MPD. One expert felt Andy might have been demonstrating a rare case of “controlled” MPD in that, unlike most other sufferers of MPD, Andy could actually regulate his disorder, calling it up almost like a channeler.
One fact that seems to support the notion of MPD concerns a particular sexual preference over which Andy and Tony differed utterly: oral sex. According to experts, one cannot change hard-and-fast sexual proclivities, and though Andy was absolutely repulsed by oral sex, Tony Clifton lived for it. My friend psychologist Joe Troiani says that one cannot change such an orientation unless multiple personalities are involved.
But whoever Tony Clifton or Andy Kaufman or Bob Zmuda really were at that moment wasn’t as important as that we achieved our two goals, getting Tony more press and proving you could book him and he wouldn’t necessarily self-destruct. Now we had two Cliftons in Our arsenal, had Tony and worse Tony, so I went back to work on The Tony Clifton Story and Andy returned to Taxi, as we awaited the impending premier of Heart-beeps.
On the weekend that Heartbeeps debuted, we held our breath, knowing Tony’s movie future probably hung in the balance. Cut down to seventy-nine minutes, it was one of the shortest films Universal ever released. I was told by an eyewitness that when studio head Ned Tanen saw it in an early screening, he went ballistic. The picture opened and the word “bomb” was tied to it before the first reel unwound.
On the Monday after it opened, Universal conveyed a brief message to us that contained two statements: one, no way in hell would they ever make The Tony Clifton Story; and two, leave immediately. By comparison, the people on the Titanic had all day. When I fled to my Rambler Rebel I was stunned to see they had already stenciled my name out. I wanted to call David Steinberg and tell him I now understood. Suddenly the existential nature of the lyric “When you’re hot you’re hot, when you’re not you’re not” made a lot of sense to me.
That train wreck called Heartbeeps rolled over Andy as fingers began pointing in all directions. “Well, he kept us waiting with all that meditation” was one reason some of the perpetrators of the film claimed it bombed. Andy’s meditation had been contractually approved by the studio, but in the aftermath of a disaster people play fast and loose with the facts. The bottom line was Andy’s film career was dead, and with it our chances of making The Tony Clifton Story.
Adding salt to the wound of our loss of Tony’s cinematic chance was the fact that the writers of Taxi had become so enamored of Tony Clifton’s brazen demeanor, not only on their set but also in the trades, that they created a paler, more acceptable imitation called Vic Ferrari. When I heard of the Ferrari character I thought, Quit stealing our material — write your own. You might have bought Foreign Man’s soul, but not Tony Clifton’s. They had Latka, who was feeling inadequate about meeting girls, devise his own Mr. Hyde, the supercool Vic Ferrari, not unlike Jerry Lewis’s Buddy Love from The Nutty Professor. The swaggering Vic Ferrari was so popular the show ran with him for a number of episodes. Though Andy used none of the Clifton features or props, you could still see glimpses of Clifton — as a younger man — in Ferrari.
Then (probably because in Hollywood nothing fails like failure) ABC announced that they were passing on Andy’s basement comedy “Uncle Andy’s Funhouse.” It was another stake through the heart. Not long after, a similar project got mounted. It was called Pee-wee’s Playhouse, and instead of Uncle Andy hosting a kid’s show for adults, the host was Pee-wee Herman (aka Paul Reubens).
Despite Reubens being a fan of Andy’s he more or less commandeered Andy’s idea. I know that because Andy told me Reubens paid him a visit to break the news and ask for his blessing. What else could Andy do but be magnanimous about it? Legally, Andy couldn’t claim ownership to a Howdy Doody–type show, but it bothered him that someone else pulled off his dream project. Yet in a town like Hollywood, where ideas are openly stolen on a daily basis, it’s to Paul Reubens’s credit that he sought Andy’s permission. Andy considered Reubens a fellow artist and did nothing to stand in his way. That Pee-wee’s Playhouse went on to become a major success was in some small way a validation of Andy’s original concept. Though Andy never told anyone else, he once confided to me that it deeply bothered him that Reubens got the shot and we didn’t.
Two other instances where Andy felt his ideas had been commandeered by others both revolved around Tony Clifton. The first occurred when Andy befriended one of the SNL writers in hopes the writer could persuade Lorne Michaels to allow Tony Clifton on the show. One day the writer called and gave Andy good and bad news: Lorne liked the idea of a sleazy lounge-lizard character; unfortunately he didn’t see Andy in the role. Consequently, the recurring part went to Bill Murray. Always magnanimous, Andy gave the writer his blessing as Murray’s Nick, the lounge singer, went on to become a signature character for the actor.
Kaufman also felt that Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi’s creations, Jake and Elwood, the Blues Brothers, were influenced by the Clifton persona. One of the most powerful elements of the Blues Brothers’ mystique was that from the moment they entered a venue to the time they left, they never broke character.
At that time, no act other than Kaufman was doing anything even remotely similar.
Going back home to SNL took our minds off the debacles of late. It was fun being a fly on the wall of the set. One day, during a dress rehearsal, I noticed Eddie Murphy walking around in a preposterous Gumby outfit. Dick Ebersol, who had recently been brought back to run the show after Jean Doumanian’s short reign, was telling Murphy he wanted to cut the piece.
“Nobody remembers Gumby,” he insisted.
Andy and I were happening by and overheard. “Oh, no,” countered Andy. “Gumby’s great! You should leave him in.” And we walked away.
Ebersol must have listened, because a cigar-chomping Murphy as Gumby, railing, “I’m Gumby, damn it!” turned out to be one of Murphy’s (and the show’s) most popular characters.
During his tenth appearance on SNL, on January 30, 1982, Andy was slated to play Elvis in a sketch. Albert Goldman’s tell-all bio, Elvis, was just out and had stirred up great controversy in its depiction of the King, particularly the sexual peccadilloes he allegedly exhibited, such as his fondness for girls wrestling each other while clad only in white cotton panties. That revelation was a stunner for Andy, who burst with pride that he and his idol shared such a fetish (women wrestling, not the white cotton panties).
Using the Goldman book for inspiration, Andy and I concocted a scene that played on the wrestling allegation. After a concert, Elvis (Andy) repairs to his dressing room where his bodyguard Red West (me) brings in two young girls to meet Elvis. Elvis dismisses Red and then asks the two (clothed) girls to wrestle. Just as they take a wrestling stance, Elvis stops them and says, “Hold it! Take off your clothes first — but leave on them white cotton panties.”
The moment he uttered that line, Andy suddenly broke character, removed the Elvis wig, and turned to the camera. “I do not agree with this scene,” he said angrily, “and I do not agree with Albert Goldman’s book.” He then walked out.
A few weeks later, on February 17, 1982, Andy appeared on Late Night. Dave gave him a forum to challenge Albert Goldman to a wrestling match. If Goldman lost, as Andy swore he would, he would he required to take back all those terrible things he said about Elvis in his book.
Goldman never accepted the challenge. Did Andy mean what he said? Was he really offended by Goldman’s claims? Not at all. Andy wasn’t really the kind of person to be offended by much of anything and in fact secretly enjoyed the book.
By March of ’82 we were back in sweet home Chicago, playing the Park West again. We scheduled a few extra days in town just to hang out. Andy wanted me to take him to the locations of two of my greatest pranks. Like a little kid, he wanted to go to the exact locale and hear the stories all over again. As we drove down North Avenue, the scene of my first “psychodrama,” I thought about my days with the guerrilla theater company, forty budding actors committed to complete lunacy.
“One evening, all forty of us spread out to various bus stops along here, probably over a mile or so,” I began. “As the bus came along and picked us up, pretty soon everybody was on the same bus, all of us. So then at the appointed time, a fellow who was more or less the director of our little group of merry pranksters starts coughing. Pretty quick we all join in, all forty of us, hacking away.”
“Of course, there was nothing to cough about,” noted Andy.
“Nothing,” I concurred.
“And there were other people on the bus, right?” asked Andy.
“Oh yeah, yeah, the thing was packed. Us and probably fifteen, twenty other people. Anyway, one of us starts it with, ‘Hey, do you smell those gas fumes?’ and the rest of us jump in, ‘Oh, yeah, there’re gas fumes coming from somewhere,’ and immediately the others — the unsuspecting passengers — they’re coughing too.”
Andy grinned. “The power of suggestion …”
“Big time. So they’re all coughin’, and pretty soon so’s the driver, he’s coughin’ his head off. He pulls over, everybody’s eyes are watering. The driver radios in, ‘We need another bus, and send medics!’ That night we made the local news and the whole troupe died of laughter.”
While we drove Wound, I told him my famous Escaped Lions incident. That time the troupe went to the zoo and took up positions at specific locations. Suddenly all of us began screaming that we’d seen the lions get loose and they were after everyone. In no time our forty became four hundred, as everyone, even the hot-dog vendors — fearing the big cats would be drawn by their steamed tube steaks — fled for their lives. I told Andy that even after all those years, not one of the forty conspirators had spilled the beans.
“That’s amazing. That many people, for that long,” he said.
“Yeah, but it’s necessary to keep secrets. We’ve sure got a few we don’t want anybody to know, don’t we?” I offered.
He paused. “Yeah, we do.” After a moment he spoke again.
“I’ve got a secret, something only my family knows, maybe one or two other people.”
“Yeah? What’s that?” I asked, feeling a setup.
“I have a daughter.”
“Oh, Kaufman, what total bullshit!” I roared.
He was quiet for a moment. “No, Bob, it’s true. I do have a daughter.”
At that point in time, I’d known him going on ten years, and I could recognize the truth in his eyes. When you’re someone like Andy Kaufman, you need at least one person with whom you can once in a while drop all pretenses, all the masks, and just be yourself, be vulnerable. We had that sort of relationship, so I realized he was dead serious.
As I mentioned earlier, the young lady Andy impregnated while living in Great Neck decided to forgo an abortion and keep the child. Although Andy had offered to “do the right thing” and marry her, both her parents and Andy’s thought it prudent he not do so. When the child was born she was put up for adoption. Now, years later, as we spoke of her, this daughter whom he’d never seen was probably just about to enter her teens. Andy seemed slightly wistful as he talked of her, but soon we moved on to another subject, and he never again spoke of her.
Andy demonstrated an uncanny ability to obliterate any uncomfortable thoughts at will due to his TM training. As he had demonstrated on that tiny, wind-whipped airplane in the skies over Illinois, his years of meditation had given him the tools necessary to control his mind. Feeling such benefits of mind control were valuable, Andy not only had me promise to take a meditation course but also inserted that requisite into my contract and specified that I train for a minimum of one year, paid for by him.
I followed the TM methodology, accepting my mantra, a secret word each disciple is given to be used for the rest of his or her life. The word is repeated over and over during meditation, creating a sort of resonance in one’s psyche. It is somewhat like holding down one key on a computer so that the screen of the mind fills with that one letter or, in this case, word; ushering off all other thoughts and bringing harmony — because there isn’t room for anything else, just pure nothingness. That’s the gist of it.
I underwent the training, and one year to the day after I began, I quit. I felt the techniques were good and certainly valuable, and I occasionally use them to this day to still my thoughts and refocus, but I took issue with what I saw as the cultish aspects of that “movement.” But I respected Andy’s devotion to transcendental meditation and appreciated its role for him — it was truly his religion and a safe place to which he could retreat when the pressures of big-time showbiz, or life in general, tried to overwhelm him.
For me, the movement demanded a rigid observance that didn’t fit my philosophy or lifestyle. But it did fit Andy’s. Despite his antics and seemingly freewheeling ways, Andy was actually a nut for absolute structure. Andy dealt with (or suffered from, depending on how you look at it) obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD. Like Jack Nicholson’s character in Jim Brooks’s As Good As It Gets, Andy manifested some fairly quirky behavior.
First, his classic acts rarely varied. Watch his Foreign-Man-Becomes-Elvis routine and it is just that, a beat-for-beat pattern, every utterance and gesture duplicated time and again with unerring precision. Notwithstanding the myriad performances while pushing the creative envelope, left to his own choices Andy was comfortable with an almost assembly-line regularity. One of my primary functions was to shove him out of that creative rut he would slip comfortably into. Tony Clifton also gave him license to leave his self-imposed discipline and run rampant, but in general Andy’s life consisted of evenness and special procedures that bordered on the bizarre.
He compulsively washed his hands, often dozens of times a day, and frequently inconvenienced many others as they wailed for him. Many of his girlfriends complained to me about how much time he spent in the bathroom. He had a different toothbrush for every day of the week, except Sunday when he carefully skipped brushing. Andy was always compelled to say good-bye to a room as he left it. After exiting his car and locking it, he walked around it exactly three times to make sure the doors were in fact locked. On visiting his home you were required to remove your shoes before entering. A creature of restrictive habits, when Andy dined out it was usually at one of a few known places — he didn’t like taking chances on new eateries.
Though Andy’s obsession with germs might not have been as dramatic as Michael Jackson’s or Howard Hughes’s famed phobias, there certainly were comparisons. Andy carefully washed his silverware at restaurants before using it. Into his drinking water he dunked each implement one at a time, then took it out and dried it with his napkin. He also had a fear of sleeping with germs picked up in daily life. He made sure that no clothing, with the exception of night clothes, ever came in contact with his bedding.
Since Andy was so compulsive when it came to his personal sanitation, he went to extreme lengths to purge his body after wallowing in that cesspool of excess called Tony Clifton. After all, Tony drank, smoked, ate meat, and picked up hookers right off the street corner — things Andy would never do. After a few days as Clifton, Andy’s system demanded a total hygienic delousing. For this cleansing, Kaufman would call upon his hatha yoga skills, in particular, an extreme method employed by Swami Satchidananda.
The technique is not for the squeamish. After soaking fifteen feet of cheesecloth in warm water, the practitioner swallows it slowly and, through controlled peristalsis, threads the cloth through the alimentary canal. A more delicate way to describe it would be internal flossing.
That Andy had performed this bizarre ritual many times was not lost on the cast and crew of Man on the Moon. Director Milos Forman regarded the practice as so depraved that he quickly nixed the idea of portraying it in its technicolor glory. Nevertheless, this didn’t prevent jokester Elton John from dropping by the set and presenting Jim Carrey (who plays Andy in the film) with sixty yards of cheesecloth. Lynne Margulies still has the canister containing Andy’s original cheesecloth. Has that cheesecloth been used, or not? Don’t even ask.
One of his oddest eccentricities related to air travel. Whenever Andy boarded a plane, he did so with his right foot first — and as his traveling companion you were required to follow suit.
Just going somewhere on foot with Andy required vigilance. If you were walking down the street and passed a light pole or some other hazard, it was mandatory you both did so on the same side. If you split up and walked on either side, Andy made you return so you could both run through it again and get it right.
Andy was aware of his peculiarities and would make light of them with others as if pulling a prank, but I knew they were rituals he could not let go of. Often, the most mundane tasks took far more time than for anyone else because of his eccentric observances. If you didn’t really know Andy, as most didn’t, his behavior could be construed as manipulative. Many saw his strict customs as just the controlling behavior of a big star. The truth was, he had no control over it.
It was not uncommon for us to change hotels two or three times if the establishment did not lend itself to Andy’s very particular requirements. One of those was privacy. Despite my warnings to innkeepers, invariably a mistimed phone call from the operator or a knocking maid who had ignored the Do Not Disturb sign would drive him bonkers and usually send us fleeing to another hotel. I took to carrying a screwdriver so that I could disconnect the phone in his room (this was before clip-in phone jacks).
One of my strangest functions was to patrol the hall outside Andy’s room, just after checking in, while striking a small saucepan with a mallet, like the medieval undertaker during the plague yelling, “Bring out yer dead.” My task was to check sound levels. If Andy could hear the pan resonating at a certain range we’d immediately change rooms or hotels. More than once I was spotted late at night in my bathrobe, wandering the halls of a hotel banging my pan, hoping we wouldn’t have to repack and run.
Andy’s other aberrations would surface in his dressing room before he went onstage. He’d check his props over and over, ad nauseam, often keeping the audience waiting forty or fifty minutes beyond his scheduled show time. That practice made me extremely anxious until I realized it was part of the act. I finally understood that Act One began in the dressing room, before the audience ever saw him, and consisted of him pissing them off. It was pure Kaufman brinkmanship: work them up, get them angry, stomping their feet — almost like foreplay — then boom, make his entrance and reel it back from the edge. It was the kid with the chemistry set again and again, taking the crowd to its limit — How far can I push until you hate me? — then saving it at the last second, a comedic Michael Jordan, shooting the game winner at the buzzer.
Over the years I’ve searched my memories for some key that would unlock this enigma named Andy Kaufman. I might be straying too far afield into some Freudian morass from which I might not be able to extricate myself, but I keep coming back to one incident in his life.
The closest relationship Andy had as a very small child was with one of his grandfathers, the one he lovingly called Papu. Andy and his granddad played games and sang songs together and were the best of pals. Andy so idolized the old man that on the day his parents, Janice and Stanley, told their son his grandfather had “taken a trip and gone very far away,” the puzzled little boy began sitting in the window for hours on end, patiently awaiting the return of his best friend.
When the weeks became years and no postcard or letter ever came detailing how or where Papu was, Andy’s folks realized the error they’d made in not coming clean and telling Andy his grandfather had died. By then, a melancholy had come over the boy and in many ways stayed with him his entire life. Because of that incident, I believe the die was cast for Andy to assume the philosophy “Never give yourself over totally to anyone else, you’ll only be hurt.” I also submit that, aside from the trauma directly related to his loss, the incident also taught Andy that reality could be altered, adjusted to deceive the beholder. That the element of reality that had been faked on his behalf was no less than death was not lost on him.
During April and May of 1982, a drama was playing out between the producers of Taxi, Paramount, and ABC. Though the ratings had faltered somewhat, the show still had a loyal following, and the producers felt their baby was a very viable program. ABC felt differently and on May 4, 1982, canceled Taxi. After a hue and cry in the media orchestrated by the producers and picked up by television critic Tom Shales, HBO made some overtures to acquire the property, but on May 21 Taxi went to NBC. Andy had a love/hate relationship with the show. He loathed the daily grind but was accustomed to the sizable paycheck that subsidized his TM classes and his love of prostitutes.
Despite his complaints, there were a few times he had fun on Taxi, with Latka and Vic Ferrari and even the occasional dead-on mimicry of fellow actor Judd Hirsch. Andy showed his gift for impressions in an episode a few weeks into the fourth season. Called “Mr. Personalities,” it had first aired on October 22, 1981, and featured Latka assuming Alex’s traits in a manifestation of the multiple personality disorder that had overcome him. Latka’s Alex seemed to improve on the already generous, warm-hearted Alex Reiger. In the final scene, set in a psychiatrist’s office with Alex, Latka, and the doctor, just as the extemely insightful Latka-as-Alex is about to figure out the secret of Alex’s life, he’s cured, reverts back to Latka, and leaves contented — while the real Alex is left hanging over the all-important answer that never comes. There was no love lost between Andy and Hirsch, and the episode gave Andy an officially sanctioned chance to take shots at Hirsch. When the show got picked up by NBC, Andy secretly breathed a slight sigh of relief.