The two of us were laughing so loud we woke up the mother, who opened the door at the top of the stairs and shouted down, “What’s going on down there?”
“Nothing, Mom,” said the Irish girl.
The mother walked down a couple of steps and looked at the wall.
“Who the fuck wrote on my wall?” she screamed as she spotted me standing next to her daughter. “And who the fuck is he?”
“It’s Joey Travolta, John’s brother.”
“I don’t give a shit who you are,” she said. “Get the fuck outta my house.”
I ran out. But the next day I was back. The mother was gone, and the daughter was happy to see me. Now sober, she didn’t care that I was only Andrew and not John. We went for a walk and ended up in the stairwell in my building, where she gave me a masterful blow job. Later that same week, when I fucked her in my parents’ bed, she might have been fantasizing that I was Travolta. But I didn’t care, ’cause I had fantasies of my own. When it comes to sex, I never run out of fantasies.
THE ACT
WHEN GREASE CAME out in the summer of 1978, I ran to see it with my pal Neil at the Oceana movie theater in Brighton Beach. I loved every scene.
Driving home, I had a vision.
“I got it!” I yelled.
“Got what?” asked Neil.
“Something I can actually perform.”
“What are you talking about, Andrew?”
“You know how I can do Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor? You know how I can imitate him as a nerd before he turns into the lizard lounge singer Buddy Love?”
“You do him perfectly.”
“Well, what happens if after drinking the magic potion, the professor doesn’t turn into Buddy Love but into John Travolta? But I gotta do more than that. I can’t just talk like him and look like him. I gotta sing like him and dance like him.”
• • •
Practice became my obsession. I became a man on a mission, a man who finally saw his future staring him in the face. If this act worked, the world was mine. But first I had to find a way to get it down so good that everyone would have to love it. I needed a place to practice.
I booked rehearsal time at the Fly Studios, Brooklyn’s finest, on Kings Highway, run by two recording nerds named Skinny Neal and Four-Eyes Bob.
“You got a band?” asked Bob.
“No.”
“Then why do you need a studio?” asked Neal.
“You’ll see. One day you’ll be putting up a historical marker that says, ‘It all started here.’ ”
Before my first day at the studio, though, I went back to see Grease, this time taking careful notes. I decided that the scene I wanted to do was Travolta’s sexiest moment—when he breaks into “Greased Lightning.” I had to figure out names and descriptions for all Travolta’s dance moves—the windmill, the finger point, the bump and grind. In those ancient days before YouTube, I had to sit through three showings of the film to get all my markings straight.
If I did the act right, every girl in the audience would feel like Travolta was her date. That meant I had to look just like him. Before that, though, I had to look like Jerry as the nutty prof.
So I ran over to Kings Plaza and found the biggest ruffled shirt in the tuxedo store. The thing came down to my knees. Then I was off to JC Penney, where I bought a fake leather jacket that was really made out of vinyl for twenty bucks. I already had the polyester pants that I had been wearing to the discos.
With my props in hand, I locked myself in a room at the studio, where no one—not even Skinny Neal or his partner, Bob—could see me. I had my boom box with the music, I had my costumes, I had my hair grease, I had everything I needed.
After spending two long weeks in my rehearsal cave, I was ready to give a limited audience a taste of my genius. I decided to start out with the Fly boys. Having watched me disappear into their back room for countless hours on end, Skinny Neal and Four-Eyes Bob were dying of curiosity. I invited them, along with Natalie and her friend Nancy, to watch my act in the band room of the Fly Studios. They were all behind the glass in the control room. Neal and Bob were gonna work the music.
I came out onto the studio floor dressed as the nutty prof, my hair pushed forward, those little glasses on the tip of my nose, the giant tuxedo shirt hanging off me down to my bare knees. My pants were rolled up so all you could see were black boots. Natalie and the guys were laughing even before I opened my mouth.
“Actually I’m a human pity,” I said in my perfectly attuned Jerry Lewis super-nerd voice. “In this glass I’ve concocted a magic formula that can turn me into the kind of man I want to be.”
I took a sip and started to shudder. I cued Neal and Bob to shut off the lights, and in the dark I threw off my shirt, rolled down my pants, slicked my hair back in DA style with the big curl in front, and threw on my vinyl jacket. As the lights came up and the music kicked in, I picked up the collar on my jacket and turned to face my audience like Danny Zuko turned to face his buddies in the “Greased Lightning” dance sequence.
I gave that famous Travolta-ish laugh and said, “So you thought it couldn’t be done, huh?”
I looked up and saw that Skinny Neal and Four-Eyes Bob had invited some girls into the control booth. I couldn’t hear them, but I saw they were laughing. Natalie and Nancy were all smiles. Everyone was digging me.
As Travolta, I said, “Let me tell ya what happened that day in the garage.” I paused, nodded for the music to start up, and, right on time, broke into it:
“This car could be systematic, hydromatic, ultramatic. Why, it could be . . . greased lightning!”
I did the singing, I did the dancing, I did the moves, I did the leaping and loving, I did everything perfectly. I was not imitating Travolta. I was Travolta, just the way Travolta wasn’t imitating Elvis. He was Elvis, Elvis as born-again Jersey-born Travolta, who was born again as Brooklyn-born Andrew Clay, my new name and new lease on life.
“What do you think, Natalie?” I asked my sister.
“I think it’s terrific, Andrew. I really do. I think you’re about to turn your dream into a reality.”
Hers was an opinion I took seriously. Natalie was a serious person. She also knew comedy. She’d been to all the edgy clubs in New York, like the Improv and Catch A Rising Star. She knew what was lame and what was hip, what was fake and what was real.
“You have real talent,” she said. “Wait till Mom and Dad see what you’ve put together,” she added.
“I don’t want them to see it. Not yet.”
“Why not? You can do it for them tonight in the living room.”
“I’ve been doing shtick in the living room since I was a little kid,” I said. “I don’t want them to see it in the living room. I want them to see me perform it in a club.”
PIPS
SEPTEMBER 13, 1978
LEAVE IT TO me to pick the toughest comedy room in the country. But what choice did I have? It was the one nearest to where I lived. Pips held no more than a hundred. If the customers didn’t think you were funny, they’d drown you out by screaming, “Get the fuck off the stage before we fuckin’ throw you off!” It was the place where comics like David Brenner and Rodney Dangerfield blew up. In fact, it was George Schultz, Pips’s owner, who gave Rodney his signature line, “I don’t get no respect.”
Two weeks before I got up onstage at Pips I went to check out the comedy clubs in Manhattan. I’d arrive at nine P.M. and not leave till three in the morning. I would just sit there, watching comic after comic. Most were awful, some were great. And then there was Joe Piscopo from Saturday Night Live, who impressed the hell out of me. But nobody had an act nearly as impressive as the one I was preparing to unleash on an audience.
Because I’d be appearing at Pips on a Wednesday Amateur Night, I went there the week before with my friend Neil to see what the other amateurs looked like. A couple had a few funny lines, but mostly they were lame.
• • •
Every day
leading up to the big night I was rehearsing and honing the act to a fine point. I was training like Rocky. Pumped up, I was about to get in the ring and do some serious damage.
On September 13, I arrived at Pips early to make sure there were reserved seats for my family. Then I stood on line to get one of the audition numbers given out by Seth Schultz. He and his brother Marty, both sons of George, were now running the place.
Seth looked at me and said, “Hey, you look a little like Travolta. What’s your act?”
“It can’t miss,” is all I said.
I went into the kitchen, where I changed into my nutty prof outfit and waited my turn while the cook grilled burgers and fried fries. I listened to the other comics who went on ahead of me. None of them were funny. It was a tough audience, and no one was laughing. I could feel the crowd’s impatience. The crowd wanted something good.
Seth wandered into the kitchen and jumped back the second he saw me in my costume.
“Who the hell are you?”
“The guy you said looked like Travolta.”
“So why in hell did you put on this getup?”
“You’ll see. Just make sure you don’t mess up my music cues.”
When I walked to the stage, my heart was beating fast. I could see my entire extended family sitting at four tables close to the stage. I started in with my Jerry Lewis nasal-voice thing. The crowd wasn’t impressed. They started heckling and booing. I could see that my parents were puzzled. They had been watching me do this bit for the past ten years. It was not so special. It was old hat. As I rattled on, the crowd was getting angrier, and I could feel my family freaking. I was making a fool of myself. But that was the point. I needed to establish the fool. The nutty prof was the fool. I welcomed these boos, because booing the nerd was part of the setup. It was the fuckin’ foreplay. I was ready to stick it in.
After going through the bit about drinking the magic potion, the music came up—the Trammps’ “Disco Inferno” from Saturday Night Fever—the room went dark, and a taped announcement said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to someone new, someone exciting, someone guaranteed to blow your mind—Andrew Clay!”
The lights came up and there I was, posed as Danny Zuko in Grease. I was combing my hair back just like Travolta did in the movie. I stuck a cigarette in my mouth, pushed up my collar, gave that little Travolta chuckle, and said, “And you thought it couldn’t be done.”
I went into some Vinnie Barbarino patter, then boom! I broke out into “Greased Lightning,” and the place went fuckin’ nuts. The joint exploded. They were shouting and hollering. They were turning over tables. They loved me so much they didn’t know what to do. I saw my parents beaming. I saw Grandma Shirley cheering me on. Natalie had tears running down her cheeks. It was absolute bedlam. As I finally finished the number, I fell to one knee, and with my right arm outstretched, I embraced the crowd, taking in the love. The standing ovation went on for five full fuckin’ minutes.
On the way out, Seth Schultz and his brother Marty grabbed me.
“Where else are you performing?” Seth asked.
The answer was nowhere, but I was too excited to say a word.
“We wanna book you for the weekend,” said Marty. “We want you to headline.”
“Well, I really don’t have that much material,” I said. “All I got is what you saw tonight.”
“That’s enough,” said Seth. “So, it’s fifty bucks . . . for the whole weekend.”
I didn’t hesitate. “I don’t care how much it is. I just wanna get back up on that stage.”
After that first performance, women came up to me, willing women eager to go off with me right then and there. Some were my age, some younger, some older. This was my first encounter with groupies. Naturally I was flattered. I wanted to go off with all of them. But that isn’t what I did. On that night of nights I wanted to be with my family. So after the show we all went to the Sheepshead Bay Diner, where we got a big table in the back.
At first no one knew what to say. My relatives just sat there, reading the menu, ordering cheesecake and Danish and sweet noodle kugel. They were still stunned by the frenzy in the club. Before that evening, I was just Andrew, a good drummer but a guy without a future. There was always the question—what the hell’s gonna become of Andrew? Now we had the answer.
That night I couldn’t fall asleep. In my mind, I kept running one riff after another: Rocky telling Adrian that he isn’t just another bum from the neighborhood, Tony Manero fighting to become more than a guy working in a paint store, Danny Zuko and his dream girl Sandy flying off in the Greased Lightning car, me taking over the world.
ROYAL PROCESS AGENCY
AS SOON AS I got my start at Pips, I realized I’d need a job that would give me time to pursue my show business career. The best gig I could think of—the one with the most understanding boss—was with my dad. He’d built up his business of serving summonses to where he could afford to hire me part-time. The office was at 16 Court Street in downtown Brooklyn, right by the big courthouse and law offices.
I wasn’t the best employee. I was supposed to get up early and open the office, but that usually didn’t happen. When I would finally arrive, Dad would already be there.
“Where you been, big shot?”
“I was up late,” I’d say. “Went to Pips.”
“That’s good, just keep going up onstage, and just like with the drums, you’re only going to get better.”
I explained to my father how I was studying all the other comics, like Paul Reiser and Larry Miller, who for my money turned out to be one the funniest comics of his generation. (Years later he was hilarious as a salesman in Pretty Woman and the principal in Eddie Murphy’s remake of The Nutty Professor.)
“Every time I go and see a new comic,” I told Dad, “I learn something new.”
Dad was quick to forgive me and quick to ask whether I was hungry. Always. The two of us would go downstairs to the little deli-diner in the building, where I would have my usual—a bagel with butter and bacon. A good Jewish breakfast. For the next hour, we’d discuss my career. Dad had great ideas about booking me in places other than comedy clubs, like discos.
By late morning, I’d be ready to work. I would be running around Court Street, making friends with the guy without legs who rolled around downtown Brooklyn on a board with wheels and flirting with all the secretaries.
My job was picking up summonses from different attorneys to bring back to the office. One attorney was a former city marshal, a guy in his seventies. The marshal was tall and skinny with a face like the caved-in side of a mountain, all creases and crevices. Not a pretty sight. His personality was no better than his looks. He was short-tempered and cranky. But being the charmer that I was, I had to get on his good side. When I noticed his suit, I put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Swedish knit. Very nice, very impressive.”
“How do you know it’s Swedish wool, kid?” he asked.
“I know my way around fine suits,” I said. “I’ve worked in clothing stores.”
“How long you been working for Silverstein?”
“I’m his son.”
“Well, if you’re Freddie’s kid, you better tell the old man to pull his head out of his ass.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He fucked up two of my summonses last week.”
“My father doesn’t fuck up anything.”
“That’s what you think. You tell your old man if he fucks up again, I’m putting him out of business.”
When I heard my father being threatened, I lost it. I started yelling at the marshal, “Who are you to threaten my dad? We don’t need your fuckin’ business!”
I turned around and stormed out.
By the time I got back to 16 Court Street, the marshal had called my father to complain. Dad was furious.
“What the hell did you tell the marshal?” he asked.
“He was screaming and threatening to put you out o
f business. I put him in his place.”
“You did, huh?” He gave me a half smile. I could tell he was annoyed but impressed that I stuck up for him. “That guy screams and threatens everyone. As long as he pays his bills, let him scream and threaten all he wants. All right. Now get back to work, sonny boy.”
WELCOME TO THE FUNHOUSE
AFTER MY DEBUT at Pips, I was building a local rep and drawing big crowds. One night a couple of older women called me over to their table. When I say older, maybe they were thirty-five. I was twenty-one. I quickly got the idea that they were into me. I was certainly into them, especially the brunette wearing a blouse two sizes too small for her big tits. Her tits were barely being held back by the kind of thin bra that let me see the outline of her nipples. I had no doubt that her tits wanted to be touched. This brunette wasn’t much of a talker, but the blonde, who was not as sexy and wearing too much eye shadow, was Chatty Cathy.
“We’re both married,” she said. “My husband, he works at the navy yard, and April’s husband is a bookkeeper at a bank. He’s boring. April’s bored with her husband, aren’t you, April?”
“Very,” said April.
“But you aren’t boring,” the blonde said to me. “You’re exciting, you’re really something, the way you do those imitations and all. I think you’re very talented, and I think April thinks you’re very talented, and I think April wouldn’t mind going to the Windjammer Motel with you. It’s right down the street. Do you know the Windjammer?”
“I know the Windjammer,” I said, “but I’m wondering why April wants to go to a motel with me when she’s married.”
“I told you,” said the blonde. “Her husband’s a creep. He’s Jerry Lewis before Jerry drinks the formula and becomes Travolta.”
“And besides,” added April, “I can do things with you I can’t do with my husband.”
Filthy Truth (9781476734750) Page 6
