3

A Guy Named Tony

Andy was strangely psychological. He liked to lead you one way, then suddenly turn the tables around and make you angry.

DICK VAN DYKE

My exploits with Mr. X got around the Improv. It turns out I have Mr. X to thank for my relationship with Andy Kaufman. Though Andy was a huge hit at the Improv, he was so painfully shy offstage that he had become a loner, speaking only to Budd and sometimes the waitresses. He generally spoke to no one else, not patrons, not fellow stand-ups, no one. But since Mr. X was a regular at the club, stories of his exploits had gotten around. If Andy wasn’t outside, sitting in his dad’s car and meditating, he would sometimes sit alone at the end of the bar and eavesdrop as people told Mr. X stories. The stories were all generally secondhand or thirdhand unless I was talking.

Andy became increasingly fascinated by the tales of this strange man and would pump the waitresses for tidbits. They all told him to talk to me, because having survived Mr. X for three weeks, I had become a sort of club legend. One night he approached me.

“Hey,” he said. “Wanna do me a favor?”

“No. My back hurts,” I deadpanned.

He laughed. “Sorry about that. No, I need to go over to Jersey to a club. I’m trying out a new character, and I need an audience plant.”

We hopped in Andy’s car. It became clear five minutes after we left that he asked me along because he wanted to hear all about Mr. X. It had been a few months since I’d quit, and as my fear of death by Mr. X had slightly diminished, I was starting to relish telling stories of my deranged former employer. Andy was transfixed, so much so that he missed his exit off the Jersey turnpike. He didn’t care. We kept going. He had found his new role model: Mr. X.

Andy had experimented with controlling an audience through offbeat and even unpleasant routines, but for Andy, Mr. X took psychodrama to a new level, risking injury, even death. Andy was enthralled that such a man existed. And survived. Constantly pushing the envelope, always striving to break new ground, Andy’s childhood fears had given way to the adult Andy’s mastery of those trepidations. He had preserved the child, but he had taken his fears, which could hold him back, and corralled them, yet he kept the best of what that child had been. In many ways, Andy never grew up.

That night as we roamed Jersey looking for that club, Andy learned a lot about who I was, my guerrilla theater experiences, my days as a radical, even my flight from Pikeville, Kentucky, after proclaiming the demise of Santa. And with that, Andy began to understand how I’d managed to survive three weeks with Mr. X.

“What’s your best Mr. X story?” he asked.

“I dunno, I think they’re all good,” I said.

“Well, yeah, I mean the story that really sums him up. But you’ve probably told me all of ‘em, haven’t you?” I could tell Andy had gotten hooked on the Mr. X stories. I also saw he was trying to understand Mr. X, to figure out what made him tick, so that maybe he could invest some of Mr. X in his own characters.

“I got one you haven’t heard,” I offered.

“What? What?” he said, sounding just like a little kid.

“The glazed-donut story. I tell you that one?”

“The glazed-donut story? No, no, tell me, I want to hear it.”

“How close are we to this club?”

Andy shook his head. “Doesn’t matter, we can be late. Besides, it’s better to keep an audience waiting. Go on, tell me the glazed-donut story.”

I sat back and looked out the window at the lights flitting by and pictured that day: sunny, a few puffy clouds, a generally nice day. Mr. X and I had picked up our cash that morning, nearly fifty grand. It was afternoon, and, as we hadn’t even spent a dime yet, X was getting restless.

“We rolled over to Jersey one afternoon, midday maybe,” I began.

“Like here? Somewhere around here?” Andy asked, trying to place the story.

“No, I think it was like North Bergen, Seacaucus maybe,” I answered.

At this point in my story, Kaufman did something that was very unusual. Over the years I would see him do it hundreds of times, but this was the first. He was recording me, not on tape like Mr. X did, but in his mind. Possessing a truly photographic memory, his eyes would take on a wide, distant look, and then the tips of his fingers would twitch lightly as if he were typing on an invisible keyboard. Years later I would witness him memorizing entire Taxi scripts at one sitting using this technique. Not only committing his own lines to memory, but all the other characters’ lines along with stage directions and page numbers. It was just like Dustin Hoffman’s character, Raymond, in Rain Man. Oddly, Andy was somewhat embarrassed by this extraordinary ability and never flaunted it. I asked him once how he did it, thinking it was something he had learned in a TM course. Slightly flustered, he admitted that the ability came to him suddenly one day after a particularly bad LSD trip. He told me that he had also seen the future on that same trip. When I commented that that was great, he objected strongly, saying we’re not supposed to see the future.

I continued with my tale. “Anyway, so we’re in Jersey, drivin’ along in the limo, and Mr. X sees this bakery, says, ‘Driver, stop over here, I want a glazed donut.’ So the driver pulls over, and we go inside for a glazed donut. Okay, so inside, it’s midday and there’s a few people in line, so X just blurts out, ‘I want a glazed donut.’ Well, everybody turns, there’s some ladies shopping, and they look at him and then ignore him, so he goes, ‘I want a glazed donut,’ real loud, like they’re all just hard of hearing, and this woman behind the counter, her name badge said ‘Flo’…”

“You’re joking …” said Andy.

“No shit, ‘Flo.’ Anyway, Flo is matronly, an older woman, you know, kind of stern … so she says, ‘Sir, you’ll have to take a number like everyone else.’”

“You don’t talk to him like that,” added Andy, knowing enough about Mr. X.

“Exactly,” I concurred. “But oddly, X doesn’t say a word. He takes a ticket and quietly goes to the back of the line.”

“Uh-oh,” said Andy as he pulled the car over, readying for the story to go into overdrive.

“Yeah, ‘uh-oh,’” I agreed and then continued. “So Mr. X waits, and finally he gets to Flo, and she says, ‘Okay, now you want a glazed donut?’ and X shakes his head. ‘No, I’ve changed my mind. I want this here. And I want those, and that. And those over there, and all of that. Oh, and while you’re at it I want those racks of bread back there. All of them.’ And Flo narrows her eyes and says, ‘Sir, please don’t joke around. We’re a business here.’ And Mr. X yells, ‘Zmuda? The case!’ and I step forward and pop it open …”

“Like usual,” Andy added, having heard Mr. X’s “Zmuda, the case” line in other stories.

“Yeah, so I say, ‘Madam, this man is Mr. X, a famous writer, he’s written a number of major motion pictures, and he’s a millionaire, he’s very eccentric, and I can assure you he’s completely serious. This case?’ I point into the case, which is open showing all the cash. ‘It has over fifty thousand dollars in it, and Mr. X is ready to pay for anything he wants, so please help him.’ Well, Flo realizes this is probably for real, so even though she already hates him she starts ringing stuff up, and now the manager comes out of the back to see what the hell’s going on. So Mr. X introduces himself while I’m lugging boxes of rolls and bread and shit out to the limo. We fill the limo, so X goes, ‘Get on the phone and get a truck over here to pick up my baked goods.’”

“You hired a truck?” Andy said, his face going slack in amazement. “What? You just called a trucking company and said, ‘Come over and pick up our donuts’?”

“Exactly. And they came, a full-size fucking delivery truck. Meanwhile, Mr. X’s bought so much stuff we have to send for another truck. It’s the Marx Brothers. We’ve hung out the Closed Sign and cleaned out the whole front of the store. Now Mr. X goes into the back room. He starts buying all their back stock as well as shit coming out of the oven — it’s still hot — not to mention all their butter and flour and salt and sugar, everything. Meanwhile, the owner, he’s at his calculator, and he’s in fuckin’ hog heaven, he can’t believe this guy, buying his place to the walls, damn near.

“So now Mr. X goes to work on the employees. First the bakers, there’s like three older guys in white outfits, and he says to one of them, ‘You must be pretty hot in that, it’s hot back here. I’ll tell you what, take off your clothes down to your underwear and I’ll give you five hundred bucks. Zmuda, the case!’ So I hand over the cash and the old guy strips down to his skivvies. Mr. X checks him out and says, ‘Listen, for another five hundred, take off your underwear.’ So the old guy drops his boxers, and he’s bare-ass naked. So Mr. X turns to the others and says, ‘I’ll give you each a thousand if you do the same,’ so two minutes later the bakers are nude, and X turns to the ladies who were working the counter and are now watching the old guys strut around naked but a thousand bucks richer. X says to them, ‘Take off your clothes, only down to your underwear, and I’ll give you a thousand each.’ Well, they’re in their underwear, bras and girdles, in about three seconds, and I’m handing them money. All of them except Flo, she’s the holdout. Mr. X can’t break her. She hates him. A test of wills. Flo versus Mr. X.

“Mr. X takes the challenge, he says, ‘C’mon, Flo, just take off your blouse, leave your bra and girdle on, but take off the blouse. I’ll give you two thousand dollars.’ She says, ‘I can’t do that,’ and X says, ‘I’ll make it three thousand,’ and the other ladies are saying, ‘Flo, do it, it’s fine, it’s just your blouse, it’s okay,’ ‘cause they’re standing in their girdles and bras and they’re one grand richer. Mr. X ups the ante to four, then five. Now Flo’s sweatin’, the manager is yelling at her to drop her top, and her girlfriends are saying she’s nuts. Mr. X keeps going until he finally says, ‘Flo, lemme ask you this, what does your husband make in a year?’ Flo won’t answer, but one of the other ladies says Flo’s husband, Alex, drives a delivery truck and makes about nineteen grand. So Mr. X says, ‘Flo, take off your top only, leave your bra and girdle on, and I will give you nineteen thousand dollars. It’s as much as Alex, your beloved husband, makes in a year. Think of his face when you bring home that cash.’

“Well, the scene is now insane. Here’s the truck drivers loading our bread, the manager’s delirious, looking for anything else to sell, here’s three old men, nude, three or four older ladies in their underwear, and everyone is yelling at Flo to do it. Flo is in tears, but she stands firm. So Mr. X gets bored trying to break her and heads into the cooler, where he finds a wedding cake. ‘I want this,’ he says, and the manager goes white and says, ‘Sorry, Mr. X, but that’s a wedding cake, it’s custom made, and I have to deliver it in a few hours, and they’re a lovely couple.’ And X says, ‘I don’t give a fuck, I want it. Zmuda? The case!’ and I count out another three thousand, and it’s ours now. Meanwhile, the bakers are still nude, and they’re partying with the counter ladies on some beer we had delivered, and the manager is now about thirty thousand bucks heavier in the wallet, and he’s on the phone to the wedding couple to tell them about the tragic accident on the freeway where their cake got ruined. And speaking of ruined, Flo is destroyed, her life could have changed, but she wouldn’t cave in to the will of Mr. X. I say to him, ‘What are we going to do with all the food?’ and he says, ‘Fuck it, let it rot,’ so I get on the phone before we leave and have the truckers take it over to a food bank. So now we’re done. X goes out and gets in the limo, and I make a final pass to survey the wreckage, the party is going full swing, and the place looks like it was looted by rats, not an edible thing left in sight, like it was never a working bakery. So I walk out the front, and as I do … that’s when I see it. All by itself in the front display case, not even a crumb to keep it company, sits one … solitary … glazed donut.”

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. Wrestling 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.

One time Andy showed me his high school yearbook. Under his photo, next to the legend “career goal,” was written “kids’ performer.” That was how he saw himself; that the kids had grown up was of no consequence to him whatsoever. Andy was always playing, no matter what his character or routine: The first time you saw Andy, you didn’t know what to make of him. After that, you knew he was playing with you. Sometimes even seasoned Kaufman audiences got a surprise: Andy would make them think they knew what was coming, then purposely self-destruct in front of them just to show them who was in control.

During those early years Andy developed what he called his bombing routine. This was Andy at his darkest, when he would go onstage and cause to happen what every comic who’s ever lived fears most: the complete failure to get a laugh. There is an unwritten rule between comedians and audiences: the comedian is supposed to make the audience laugh. Andy had been mislabeled a comedian because he got his start in comedy clubs, so audiences were often perplexed and even irritated when he did not come through with the laughs. But Andy would thrive on that conflict he created, feeling the tension rise in a room and feeding off it like some comic-book superhero who ate negative energy. This was payback for calling him a comic. You think I’m funny? I’ll show you …

Andy’s fame had spread, and he got a gig opening for Sonny and Cher, superstars even then, at a club called Bachelors Three. The club manager was an asshole and immediately rubbed Andy the wrong way. I don’t even remember what the altercation was about, but when the guy walked away, Andy muttered, “Okay, if that’s how you want it …”

That evening, Andy went on before a packed house and started in with his usual Foreign Man routine. At the turning point in the act, when he’d become Elvis, Andy kept going — as Foreign Man. The bad impressions and jokes eventually got the audience mumbling angrily, and finally, because he wouldn’t change direction to please the house, they brought the curtain down right in the middle of his act.

Andy said nothing, he just walked over and began gathering his props. I knew it was a very good booking for him, and to blow it out of the water took either insanity or real courage. Andy’s two homes were the Improv and (Catch, and venturing outside them took him beyond his familiar bounds. That he had settled into those two clubs was comforting to him, but at the same time he knew if he was to grow as a performer he needed to leave the nest. He may have seen the Bachelors Three gig as a warm-up to that severing of ties. He also may have felt the early tugs of rebellion that grew almost exponentially as his career blossomed. Catch and the Improv not only were home turf but also allowed him great flexibility as Andy Kaufman the artist. Bachelors Three was just a job and made him feel like Andy Kaufman, the assembly-line comedian. His reaction that night was probably twofold: one, You can’t talk to me like that so take this job and shove it; and two, You think I’m funny? Well, I’ll show you.

In the early months of 1975, two men, NBC’s director of late-night television, Dick Ebersol, and Lome Michaels, a twenty-nine-year-old Canadian who had been producing shows for Lily Tomlin, were charged with the task of filling the network’s void on Saturday evenings while seizing that potentially lucrative youth market. Saturday Night Live was their solution to the problem. They assembled a cast of talented unknowns, such as John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, Dan Aykroyd, and Chevy Chase. The show’s sketch format was subversive, but only in comparison with the safe shows of the time. In reality it seemed radical only because it was fresh, with the first season exuding an edgy sensibility that was funnier than it was risky. The National Lampoon Radio Hour, one of the progenitors of SNL, was far more vicious and acid than SNL ever was. But SNL was television, not radio, and offered something no one had ever seen. It soon found a berth in the viewing habits of that new, young demographic. And Andy figured prominently in its early success.

In the summer before SNL went on the air, Dick Ebersol caught Andy’s act. Ironically, though Andy had cut his teeth at New York’s Improv, where Ebersol’s show was going to be produced, Andy came to Ebersol’s attention at the Los Angeles version of Budd’s club. Budd had recently opened the Improv on Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood and needed some horsepower on stage, so he brought Andy out — one of his top acts from New York — to help build a following.

Ebersol went back to NBC’s headquarters at Thirty Rockefeller Plaza and told Lorne Michaels about this strange and wonderful talent he had seen, and soon Andy was invited to appear on the debut episode of NBC’s new late-night, youth-oriented variety show. As the “live” aspect of the name implied, the show was to hark back to the early days of television with a live broadcast (at least to the eastern time zone) and was to offer hip, cutting-edge comedy, a hot guest host, and musical guests at the forefront of their industry.

On October 11, 1975, at 11:30 P.M., eastern standard time, from the ninth-floor studio at Thirty Rock, Saturday Night Live went out over the airwaves helmed by guest host George Carlin, a slyly sharp observational comedian who had elevated drug humor to thought-provoking existential musings. Following the opening sketches, Andy stepped out into a lone spotlight, smiled, set the tone arm of a small phonograph onto a record, and a scratchy rendition of the theme song from the Mighty Mouse cartoon series began. Saying nothing, he bobbed along to the music until the refrain “Here I come to save the day!” which, while flourishing his hands, he lip-synched. He then fell mute until it appeared again. When the song finished, he removed the tone arm and bowed. ‘Nuff said. It brought down the house.

It was by no accident that Andy selected “Mighty Mouse” as a way to introduce himself to Saturday Night Live’s audience. After all, “Mighty Mouse” had been Andy’s opener for years in his nightclub act. It worked on so many levels. It was highly original, yet at the same time childlike. But more important, it told us absolutely nothing about the person performing it, as Andy didn’t utter one sound, but merely lip-synched to a child’s record.

Of that performance, Lorne Michaels observed, years later, “It wasn’t that he was lip-synching to ‘Mighty Mouse.’ It was that he was only doing one part in it. It was the standing and waiting beside the record player for his cue that was such an original move. There was something so … confident …in the comedy.”

Andy was invited to return to the show, so two weeks later, on October 25, he did a reprise of his lip-synching routine, this time with “Pop Goes the Weasel.” It was the same act he’d done as a twelve year-old, the same act he’d been doing at Catch and at the Improv, and it killed on national television. People were now talking about Saturday Night Live, but many were saying’, “And did you see the guy who sang ‘Mighty Mouse’? What was that all about?” Andy Kaufman was becoming a television star.

Though I was not on the writing staff of the show, I was Andy’s writer and frequently hung out with him at SNL. One day, a few months into the first season, while passing through the nearly deserted ninth-floor lobby, Andy and I ran into Gilda Radner. She looked like a fragile little China doll in pigtails, and she shared with Andy a childlike sense of wonderment. She had taken a liking to him and rushed over and gave him a big hug. Then softly, so only he could hear (though I overheard), like an eight-year-old girl on a playground talking to one of her playmates, she said, “Can you believe it? We’re becoming famous.” They reveled in that awe for a moment, as only they could experience it and begin to understand it. It was a precious moment, for indeed they were becoming famous, yet they were still very sweetly naive.

As Andy’s star began ascending, I continued schlepping at the Improv. I needed to eat, and though Andy was a guest on SNL every few weeks, he was still doing his club act and neither needed new material nor made enough money to justify paying me. So when he told me in early 1976 that he was moving to Hollywood, I was both excited and terrified. I knew Hollywood offered unfathomable opportunities to him and that he’d be an idiot not to explore them. But I feared his ship pulling out of the harbor and never coming back to pluck me off the island of my dismal existence.

“Look, you’re still going to be my writer,” he reiterated. “But I just need to go out and get settled in. Once I’ve got the place figured out, you’ll come out.”

“How long?” I wondered out loud.

Andy shrugged. “I don’t know. A few weeks, a month or two maybe. I’m not sure.”

This open-ended situation left me uneasy, but I had no choice. Andy was the point man, the guy who was taking the chance, and I was the rear guard.

“Well, then, knock ‘em dead, Kaufman,” I said cheerfully.

Andy’s move to Hollywood was long overdue, as was his recent stardom. He had been a hit for years on the New York nightclub stage, and the who’s who of New York’s chic artistic community knew him well, even if middle America was just learning his name. In Andy’s head, this new interest in him only magnified the fact that he had been passed over for so long. That his act was so far above those of his peers, and that most of his compatriots were already on the West Coast doing their second or third Carson shots, only pushed him harder to make the move. Besides, patience was never one of Andy’s virtues. Hadn’t he told Elvis years before that he was going to be famous? What was taking so long?

I always had the feeling that he was reliving his career, as if it were some extended déjà vu. Andy had taught me a meditation technique of projecting one’s wants into the future. While in a relaxed state, one visualizes something one wants to achieve and then locks it in as if it has already happened. The fact that Andy practiced this technique religiously for more than twelve years could account for much of his frustration with the concept of time as we know it. His predictions of what was to come were often uncanny.

My relationship with him, both personal and professional, mirrored this technique. Andy and I were very seldom in the moment. Our times together were often lived in sheer fantasy. Together we played out hundreds of television and movie scenarios, casting ourselves as various characters and then performing the roles. Andy was no longer alone in his room with an imaginary friend — that imaginary friend was now real. The only problem was that Andy was moving his room to the West Coast without me. And just when I was really getting to know him.

Once out in Hollywood, Andy quickly got attention through the efforts of his managers, George Shapiro and Howard West of Shapiro/West and Associates. They were admired within the industry not only as top handlers of talent but also for their rebelliousness. George and Howard, with their exodus from the William Morris Agency, had spawned the defections of Michael Ovitz and some other young agents who left to found the legendary Creative Artists Agency, or CAA. George and Howard’s function was to advise their clients, make introductions, and weigh all career (and sometimes personal) decisions performers must make to obtain and secure their position.

With his heat as a talent building, Andy acquired an agent, the Agency for the Performing Arts, or APA. Now with his team of spirit guides in place, he was ready to take on the exceptionally complex task of becoming a star. In addition to his performances at the Improv and junkets to New York for an occasional SNL stint, Andy’s managers and agents started getting him more television time in Hollywood. He made appearances on Monty Hall’s Variety Hour and did whatever could get him exposure.

Andy got his first series, a role on comedian Dick Van Dyke’s show, a variety/comedy show that first aired on NBC on September 20, 1976. He did about ten shows. On December 30, 1976, Van Dyke and Company aired for the last time. But by then Andy had made an impression not only with the youth market of SNL but also with the mainstream.

Andy made acquaintances in his new town. One of them was Steve Allen. Andy did his first Tonight Show in late ‘76 with guest host Allen, who took a liking to the young entertainer. Andy had always appreciated Steve Allen, a multifaceted talent who had carved a niche for himself as a sort of Renaissance Man of Hollywood. Andy admired Steve for his many accomplishments, which included being the original host of The Tonight Show as well as the first guy in television to take a camera out on the street to pull pranks. So when Steve invited Andy to his home for dinner one night, Andy leaped at the opportunity. Upon arriving at the Allen residence, Andy was met at the door by Steve, who whisked him inside, then promptly lowered his voice.

“Jayne,” he said, referring to his wife, actress Jayne Meadows, “has had a long day and got home and didn’t know you were coming.”

Andy was confused. “Should I leave?”

“No, no,” said Steve, “it’s just that she took off her makeup, and she doesn’t ever let anyone see her without it.”

Now Andy was really confused. “And …?”

“And so when we eat,” Steve continued, “I’m going to seal you so you can’t see her. She’ll be sitting sort of behind you. Okay?”

Andy nodded. “Sure, okay.” This was quite weird, even for Andy Kaufman.

Steve and Andy chatted before dinner, and when the time finally came, sure enough, Andy was positioned at the table so he couldn’t see Jayne, who was sitting somewhere behind him. Like the warning to Lot’s wife, Steve’s instruction to Andy was not to look back. During dinner Andy and Jayne conversed, but Andy had to fight the urge to turn, and Steve’s eyes would occasionally widen to remind Andy of the warning. Andy was uncomfortable the entire evening. As time wore on, he began to fear the consequences of looking at Jayne/Medusa. When he finally left, he drove quickly away and never returned.

Two weeks before the Van Dyke show tanked, Andy as Foreign Man (though introduced as Andy Kaufman) performed on Dinah Shore’s daytime variety show. On the bill that day were Marvin Hamlisch, Bob Hope, and Sammy Davis Jr. The camera kept cutting to the old pros, who were perplexed and obviously struggling to understand how this yokel had gotten on the show. But when Andy metamorphosed into Elvis, he brought down the house and received instant respect from the legends watching him from one side of the stage.

Another big break came with a second invitation to The Tonight Show, this time for a meeting with the King of Late-Night Television, Johnny Carson. Though Andy had done The Tonight Show with Steve Allen, it wasn’t quite the same as having Johnny laughing at you. On January 21, 1977, Andy was introduced by Johnny himself and proceeded to charm people with his stories of his native “Caspiar,” a country “somewhere” in the Mediterranean. Though some knew Foreign Man by now, after a little more than a year of SNL, even those who did not still loved this googly-eyed little immigrant and his silly “emetations.”

Andy read from Dick and Jane to demonstrate his facility with English, and Johnny “helped” him through the tough parts. Carson was clearly charmed by Andy, despite knowing the act was a put-on. Then Andy sang a harvest song from Caspiar in his native tongue — carefully contrived gibberish — that had the audience dazzled and in stitches, with most probably thinking he was for real. The other guest, Florence Henderson, didn’t seem so sure. Johnny loved Andy because Andy stayed in character, which gave Carson myriad opportunities to make his trademark mugging asides to the camera. Andy’s pop-eyed, innocent Foreign Man was a hit, not only with Johnny but also with the audience. From New York, I watched my friend steal The Tonight Show and thought about his promise to take me along on the ride.

On March 3, 1977, Andy was invited back to The Tonight Show. This time he started out as Foreign Man and then did his centerpiece act, Elvis. The Foreign-Man-becomes-Elvis-becomes-Foreign-Man transformation was still his showstopper, but Andy knew he needed more material for the mainstream to consume. His childhood act was a hit, but he was secretly concerned he was going to become a one-note performer. Andy’s portfolio of material was pretty eclectic and wildly inventive, but the national television market wanted Foreign Man, and that was that. He could see his characters becoming co-opted and didn’t know how to stop it. Andy was a growing television presence, not yet a star but getting there, yet he knew that his television history and the gilded cage that had pigeonholed acts like Pat Harrington’s Guido Panzini and Bill Dana’s Jose Jimenez were closing on Foreign Man, and it worried him.

Five months later Andy returned to The Tonight Show, but on that night he did Foreign Man, told a story, did Elvis, and then took a step that killed his chances with Carson for the future — he dropped out of character. The real Andy Kaufman just chatted with Johnny, but it wasn’t as much fun for the master host. Andy did make another appearance on The Tonight Show, but it was with guest host Steve Martin, never again with Carson.

I was always excited to see Andy in his appearances, but each time I felt us getting further and further apart. I was still working the Improv, but my wages kept me trapped in New York, barely ahead of the wolves each month. I wanted to get out to Hollywood to be with Andy, to get in on some of what he had going, but I was stuck. Then one day the gods smiled upon me. I was living in the Village, and as I walked home I saw a guy sitting inside a car at a red light and throwing a complete fit — punching the visor and the ceiling, screaming, the whole nine yards. I honestly thought he was going to have a heart attack, so I walked over and lapped on the window. “You okay?” I asked.

“Okay? Okay?” he repeated rhetorically as he punched the dash repeatedly. “Am I okay? I’ve been trying for two fucking hours to find a fucking parking place for this piece of shit and I’ve fucking had it! I’d sell this shitheap for fifty bucks if I could!”

Half thinking he was kidding, I quickly looked the car over and said, “Sold!”

“I’m not kidding,” he said. “It’s yours. You got the fifty?”

I lived two blocks away. He drove me there, I got my money, paid him, and he climbed out. “It’s all yours.” He signed over the pink slip and shook my hand. “One last thing. Do you mind?” he asked, pointing at his enemy of late.

Seeing that I’d paid fifty bucks, I didn’t care. “Knock yourself out,” I offered.

For the next few minutes he proceeded to kick the car a few dozen times. When he’d finished, one side of the car featured a kind of accordion texture to the sheet metal, and most of the nameplate had fallen off. He took a deep breath. “Whew, thanks, I needed that!” And he walked away. My new prize was a ‘67 Rambler Rebel 550, a vehicle that was considered junk fresh off the assembly line, yet this one had significant body cancer through and through due to its road-salt intolerance.

I used the car to perform a magic trick for friends. I’d climb up on its top and lay a handkerchief on the roof. With the aid of a broom, I’d pass the handkerchief through the rotten metal, into the interior, and then down through the decayed floor-boards to the asphalt. “Handkerchief Through Car,” I’d proclaim. I parked the fifty-dollar car a half hour away and would go visit it from time to time and sometimes actually drive it. But now I had a car. I could escape.

I also had a girlfriend, a cute Jewish girl named Shelly, who also worked at the club. We began to plan our escape. Realizing we were too broke to leave New York at that time, we worked extra hours, pooled our savings, and soon had enough for our cross-country odyssey. I planned to heed the words of John Bab-sone Lane Soule that appeared in 1851 in the Terre Haute (Indiana) Express: “Go west, young man.” That’s where it was happening, the West. Shelly and I bade good-bye to our friends and hit the road with abandon. No jobs, no responsibilities, no plan, just a general direction and a lot of hope. I was truckin’ down Route 66 with my “old lady,” gettin’ high and crashing with friends along the way. It was right out of a song. I was absolutely certain the results, when we got wherever we were going, would be just as promising, just as romantic.

I had no idea of the patience that I was going to need.