by Bob Zmuda
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.
4
Go West, Young Man
You just never knew what Andy Kaufman was going to do.
RICK NEWMAN
In the back of my mind I knew that the road west would eventually take us to California, but Shelly and I stopped off in Chicago before moving on. This was home, and we needed a little grounding before jumping into the next frying pan. While staying at the apartment of my good friend Joe Troiani, Shelly and I gathered a little more money and prepared for the road ahead. Joe was heading out to San Diego for military training and invited us to join him there. After resting up for a few months (we needed it after being pummeled in the Big Apple for four years), we jumped in the beater and pointed the hood ornament toward the Golden State. California, here we come …
For me, trucking across the face of America is one of the great experiences of life. It awakens in me a sense of what the pioneers encountered as well as a feeling of patriotism, a feeling of country. Three weeks after departing Chicago, we looped over the north end of the Bay Area and headed down into the heart of San Francisco to that wellspring of free love, the Haight-Ashbury district. When we arrived at the intersection of those namesake streets, I got out of the Rambler and just stood and stared at the crossed street markers. Far more than just two street signs that had spawned the name of a community, it represented a way of life that was now gone but had altered, in however small a way, the course of human culture. Though the evidence of madras plaids and love beads and patchouli wafting on the air was fading, we had been out of Vietnam more than a year, and the notion that love could conquer hate had made its impression on more than a few. The free-love movement had served its purpose, and society had moved on, the better for it, one hopes.
Shelly and I spent just a few days in Haight-Ashbury. I had been headed to Hollywood all along, I just didn’t know it. I had rolled Andy’s words around in my head about a million times, but, given his increasing visibility on television and my decreasing finances, I kept hearing the little devil on my shoulder whispering in my ear, Give it up, he’ll never call. I didn’t want to believe it, so we struck out on Highway I, down the coast to Sodom.
Since our money was running low, we pitched our tent along the ocean and took our time getting to Los Angeles. The coastline was stunning to a Midwest boy who had never seen such magnificence. When we finally rolled into La La Land, we made the requisite detour from the coast highway and headed the twenty miles over to Hollywood. The actual section of Los Angeles called Hollywood can come as a bit of a shock to anyone who has never been there. It covers a very large area, and the unsuspecting find that it is not glamorous but rather aging and somewhat run-down. Even in 1976 it was shabby. Today crews are working to gentrify Hollywood, but it is still frayed around the edges.
Still, as we passed through those streets, every time I’d glimpse one of the famous Hollywood soundstages looming in the distance I’d get depressed because I wasn’t a part of it. I didn’t even drop down to Melrose to visit the Improv, for fear of running into someone I knew who would see how down on my luck I was. As we made our way back to the freeway, Shelly sensed my despair.
“You should call him,” she said.
“Call who?” I replied, playing dumb.
“Andy. Who did you think?”
“Why?” I said, wanting to hear her rationale; maybe it was more hopeful than what I was imagining.
“Because he’s your friend and he said he wanted you as his writer,” she said simply. But it was too easy. Andy hadn’t called me. It was his move, he was the big star. “Call him,” she said. “It’s about your career, it’s important.”
“He’s forgotten all about that by now,” I said bitterly.
“No, he hasn’t, he’s just busy. He’s not like that.”
She was so naive, I thought. What did she know?
“Fuck Hollywood!” I said, my voice rising in rage. “Fuck my career! Fuck the phoniness!”
We drove in silence for a while, and as we left Hollywood I had a deep sense of dread. I hadn’t been there an hour and I hated the place. It was ugly and cruel and run-down and I so desperately wanted to be part of it I could taste it. I pointed the car south to San Diego.
“They said Californy is the place you oughtta be, so we loaded up our truck and we moved to … Diego. San Diego, that is …”
We settled into a well-known hippie enclave called Ocean Beach, or O.B. to locals. It was a funky, eclectic community that ran the social gamut from people on welfare to those whose second car was a Bentley, but our particular area featured a well-insulated collective of free spirits. Many of our group were into crystals and auras way before most people knew dick about their chakras. O.B. was a laid-back but partying little place on the southwest corner of Mission Bay and the Pacific Ocean. Shelly and I rented a small bungalow two blocks from the beach and settled into Bohemianism. Shelly got a job at the People’s Food Co-op, which, in keeping with the anticapitalistic credo of our adopted class, didn’t pay a salary. But they did offer her carte blanche on all the organic fruits and vegetables we could eat, so out of necessity we became vegetarians.
On weekends I would go over to Balboa Park, by the zoo, and work as a street performer, doing the same magic act I’d done as a kid. Eventually I took a job as a short-order cook at one of the nearby hotel restaurants. After a few weeks an accounting indicated I was averaging precisely ninety dollars a week. This reality caused me to up my consumption of marijuana to carry me away from thoughts of a career that had never gotten going and the broken promises of a former friend that could have changed my life. The more dope I smoked the less I worried about my station in life, which was one of slinging hotcakes and eggs to people who could buy or sell me with the spare change in their pockets.
I had tried to become a radical, a social commando bent on changing the system by becoming an important part of it, but now I was at the lowest rung of the ladder, powerless, and my dreams went up in sweet smoke every night. Shelly and I had no phone or television, lest they bring tidings of someone we had known in our previous lives, “good” news that someone else had “made it.” I was terrified of television, for it promised at every turn of the dial to slap me in the face with the success of my former associates at the Improv.
I slipped into my routine of rising at five-thirty to be at work at six to dish up fried animal products to the ruling class. Shelly and I were living a marginal yet pleasant existence, so finally, like an emergency-room doctor who’s been beating a dying patient’s chest too long, I just gave up. Why didn’t I pick up the phone and call Andy? I guess my pride wouldn’t allow it. He was in the driver’s seat. If he didn’t call me, then calling him wouldn’t
make any difference. Feeling a lot of self-pity, I figured the parade had not only passed me by but also run me over.
I have never been a believer in psychic phenomena, but something happened to me during this time that deeply rattled my skepticism. I still have a hard time accepting what transpired because I absolutely cannot explain it, but I have a number of friends who witnessed it and will verify its occurrence.
One morning around eight, I was at work dishing up breakfasts from my griddle when I heard a voice. It wasn’t like someone speaking next to me, but more like one in my head. (I warned you.) It was unsettling because it was so clear, so arresting. “Take off your apron, immediately, walk off this job, go home, and wait for further instructions … for your life is about to change,” said the voice. The voice was so strong, so compelling, that I set down my spatula, undid my apron, and handed it to my stunned boss on the way out.
“Where you going?” he asked.
“I just quit. Nothing personal. See ya,” I said, and walked out.
I went out and climbed into my rusted Rambler Rebel and drove home, where Shelly was getting ready for work.
“What’s wrong? What are you doing home so early?” she asked.
I told her the story and she was cosmic enough to accept its possibility, so she kissed me good-bye, wished me luck, and left. I sat down, fired up a joint, and awaited my instructions from the other world. The day passed and I waited patiently, knowing something was going to happen.
That night Shelly asked to hear the story again. As I retold it, her enthusiasm renewed mine. We went to bed with the certainty that the next day would bring me my new destiny. The day came and went, and by the end of the third day I was beginning to doubt my sanity. Shelly and our friends were becoming concerned about my mental state, and I discussed with them the possibility of seeing a psychologist at the local free clinic.
The next day I got up, still jobless, kissed Shelly as she exited the door for her job, and sat down to mope about my fragile mental and financial condition. Sometime around midafternoon there was a knock at the door. I thought it was a well-meaning neighbor coming over to “counsel” me, but to my surprise it was a delivery man.
“You Bob Zmuda?”
“Yeah,” I said warily, as if my bad luck had manifested some forgotten misstep from my previous life.
“I gotta telegram. Sign here,” he said, thrusting his clipboard at me. I signed, and he handed me a sealed telegram. I went inside and looked at it for a moment, scared that it might be bad news, but also filled with excitement from the promise of my “voice.” I opened it.
BOB — CALL MY MANAGER GEORGE SHAPIRO IMMEDIATELY. SIGNED, ANDY
I stared at the message in my hand for a moment or two, almost disbelieving it. Andy was becoming a big star, he wanted me, and the “voice” had told the truth. The phone number was in Los Angeles. Hollywood. It was two-thirty on a Wednesday afternoon, and I ran in my bathrobe, screaming in glee, to a phone booth down the block. I got an operator who instructed me to drop some coins in. I was still dropping in coins when George Shapiro’s assistant, Diane, answered.
“Good afternoon, Shapiro/West,” she said.
“Uh, yes, may I speak to Mr. Shapiro?”
The sounds of the coins coupled with the naïveté in my voice caused her to shortstop me. “Mr. Shapiro is not in. May I take a message?” she said with the slightest touch of derision. I was crushed.
“Well, when will he be back?” I asked, still hopeful, but taken down a notch.
“Later. May I take a number?”
“Sir, you’ll have to insert another seventy-five cents,” said the operator.
Now Diane was really wondering, and when I said, “Sorry, I don’t have a number,” she dismissed me.
“I’ll tell him you called. Your name?”
“Bob Zmuda,” I said as I shoved my last three quarters in the slot, trying to keep the connection. Suddenly all hell broke loose.
“Bob Zmuda!?” she screeched. “You’re Bob Zmuda? George, George! It’s him,” she screamed to Shapiro. “It’s Bob Zmuda! We found him!”
The quality of life in Hollywood is determined by who takes your calls. I’d arrived. George Shapiro got on the phone, out of breath at the prospect of talking to the elusive Bob Zmuda.
“Zmuda? Bob Zmuda?” he asked, almost shrieking.
“Yeah, I’m Bob Zmuda. I got Andy’s telegram.”
“Where the hell are you? Andy’s been looking for you for weeks! What are you doing?”
“I’m in San Diego, working as a short-order cook.”
Shapiro turned to whoever was in the room. “He’s in San Diego! He’s a dishwasher!”
I don’t know how Shapiro got dishwasher from short-order cook, but to this day that’s my occupation when he tells the story. George, repeat after me: short-order cook. Shapiro returned to me and said, “Well, kid, your ship just came in. Andy told me you’re the greatest writer in the world and he wants you to fly to Hollywood to write his next show, a ninety-minute special he’s doing for ABC. I guess you’ll just drive up, huh?”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The “voice” had been dead-on. “Yeah, I’ll drive. When do you want me there?”
“How about yesterday,” cracked Shapiro.
“I’m already there,” I said.
That telegram would change my life forever. But what about the voice? How did it know and whose voice was it? Back in Los Angeles, Andy’s phone was ringing. George was calling to let him know that they had found me. Andy, in a deep meditative trance, was oblivious to the noisy phone. Besides, he already knew.
Shelly and I packed up the Rambler and headed north. This time the squalid streets of Hollywood looked like they were paved with gold. That evening I saw Andy for the first time in months.
The first thing out of his mouth was, “I’ll bet you thought I forgot about you.”
I lied through my teeth. “I knew you’d call.”
Andy and I enthusiastically went back to work and were soon writing his special. One of the guests on the show, Cindy Williams, was also starring in Laverne and Shirley. Cindy loved the way Andy and I worked together and approached me one day. “You want to write for me?” she asked. “I mean keep writing for Andy of course, but I need some ideas for a movie I want to do.”
I was taken aback. “Yeah, I’d love to, but you’ll have to ask Andy if it’s okay.”
“Oh sure, absolutely,” she said. “I’ll ask him this afternoon.”
Cindy asked Andy, who thought it was a great opportunity for me, so suddenly I was writing for Andy and Cindy Williams. During that time Andy introduced me to Rodney Dangerfield, a supporter since Andy’s early days. One day Andy came in the door of our office. “Want to work for Rodney Dangerfield?” he asked. “He needs some help on his special. I said you’d love to. You got the time … whaddya think?”
I was stunned. I took it. In the course of about a month I had gone from fry cook at ninety bucks a week to Hollywood writer making five thousand a week. At the end of the day I thought perhaps I had judged Hollywood too harshly. We started eating meat again, a choice brought on by our financial bounty, and possibly also a metaphor for our new existence. Radicalism was for saps; I was now a pillar of the system and I loved it.
George Shapiro couldn’t have been happier that I was in town, for now there was someone else to hold Andy’s hand. And Andy Kaufman needed a lot of hand-holding. Eccentric to the point of compulsion, Andy was a slave to routine. He would rise around 11 A.M. and do his bathroom routine, which would take an exceedingly long time. (Andy had a bizarre habit of using a different toothbrush for every day of the week except Sunday, when he skipped brushing altogether.) By twelve-thirty he’d begin his ninety minutes of yoga and meditation. By two o’clock Andy would be ready for breakfast. When we’d finished eating and returned to the office it would be three-thirty, maybe four o’clock before we wrote word one.
Writing with Andy was never dull. Andy acc
epted adult responsibilities, but whenever those duties required the drudgery of what appeared to be work he would shut down. Don’t get me wrong, Andy was one of the hardest-working human beings I’ve ever seen, constantly in motion, but if it seemed like work, not play, then he resisted. So we didn’t work when we wrote, we played. Andy was a staunch believer that creativity wasn’t summoned like a quivering servant, but rather was spawned from the muse; when pressures on the mind and body were suspended, creativity then just bubbled to the surface from the deepest recesses of the subconscious.
Our “writing” sessions consisted of sitting down with legal pads and pens in front of us and then talking about everything but the special we were to write for ABC. We spent days just jabbering away, but once in a while, when we least expected it, we’d be hit by inspiration and an idea would be committed to paper. Typically we would sit around for hours, and the ideas came almost like afterthoughts. Andy hated pressure, and when we were feeling pressured — that the weight of the entire special was on our shoulders — Andy would get on the phone and order in some strippers. When the strippers arrived we would forget our task and spend the rest of the afternoon and evening entertaining and being entertained by our “guests.” After one of the stripper sessions we were driving home in my Rambler, laughing about how we’d blown the whole day without writing a word and had partied with two strippers. Then it hit us: that was how we’d open the special.
When we got over to Andy’s place we really went to work, this time thinking solely about the show. We decided to have him confess to having blown all of ABC’s money on strippers instead of sets and costumes. Then we decided Foreign Man should not only open but host, but because the strippers wouldn’t work with Foreign Man’s naive mystique we cut them out and had him just confess to blowing all the money. That’s how the special eventually opened: Foreign Man, all alone with one camera, telling on himself. It was hilarious.
