by Bob Zmuda
Telling George to make it clear to Kutscher’s that he wasn’t going to do his standard show because it was a holiday and he’d be with his family, Andy set the date. When we arrived, the place was hopping, a classic Catskills resort with innumerable activities, from classes to friendly card games to nonstop eating. The band members, all guys over seventy, suspiciously eyed long-haired Sutton as he rehearsed them, probably thinking he was some degenerate druggie.
When it was show time, six hundred paying customers sat back and watched Andy Kaufman introduce his family one by one, who then crossed to center stage and performed. It was exactly what the Kaufman tribe had been doing around the dinner table for twenty-five years, and, like all family entertainment, it seemed killer to the participants. But for paying strangers, it was worse than watching paint dry. After the first few “acts” the crowd Started rustling around in their chairs and within a few minutes quietly chatting among themselves. Their buzzing drowned out the real Grandma Pearl as she carefully related the tale of the rabbi and his dog.
At any second, Andy could have come to the rescue with Elvis or any of ten other bits, but he chose not to, rather he let his family quietly die one at a time. Since Andy was mesmerized by failure, he wanted his loved ones to experience it, to flop in front of a big crowd — a big crowd of strangers. As much as they loved and admired Andy, his family really didn’t understand what he did or had gone through to get where he was, so by sacrificing them on stage he could give them all the gift of understanding of that initial elation of stepping out in front of an audience, followed by the agony of bombing. It was his little lesson for them, a small toll he exacted for their having enjoyed the fruits of his success for so long.
Foreign Man and Tony Clifton were magnificent failures, and now so too was the Kaufman Family, the unwitting stars of Andy Kaufman’s gripping production of “My Family Dies On Stage.” Andy even protracted the death scenes by gently prompting the singer or storyteller to warble another verse or chronicle another shaggy dog story, all to the audience’s extreme discomfort. He was using his family as if they were a version of his Great Gatsby routine from the Improv.
At some point one of the older musicians took Greg aside. “If he doesn’t stop this, we’re walking off the stage.” Civility prevented the crowd from throwing their dinners, but when it was finally over we felt the hostility and sought shelter in our rooms. In all my years in show business I have never seen such a mass bombing as I saw on the stage at Kutscher’s that night. It was so catastrophic that when we got back to the rooms Andy’s door displayed a note from the management demanding we vacate the premises at once. The failure was complete — another triumph for Andy.
As we exited like Russian refugees, clutching our bags and fleeing the onrushing Cossacks, some of the guests took the opportunity to cast some figurative stones. “That was awful!” yelled one man to Stanley Kaufman. “Your son should get out of show business!”
Stanley stopped and stared down the assailant. “You people are idiots! He’s a genius. Someday you’ll be telling your kids you saw him ‘live.’”
We crowded into the limo, and as an assembled crowd readied to boo us off, Andy made sure he got the last word as he stepped to the waiting door and looked them over with mock contempt. “It’s people like you who give Jews a bad name!” And with that he jumped in and we sped away.
Why would anyone want to self-destruct on stage, let alone allow their own family to do so? Perhaps it was his pure rebellion against the ethos that informs the lives of most, that conformity and acceptance are immutable foundations of our daily society. Iconoclasm and revolution, on the other hand, though noble behavior for historical figures, are merely disruptive and antisocial when exhibited by contemporaries.
On Saturday, December 22, 1979, Andy and I walked into Thirty Rock late in the afternoon to begin preparations for our segment on that evening’s SNL. The powers at SNL had gotten behind Andy’s wrestling matches, and a few weeks earlier, announcer Don Pardo had asked female viewers to send photos with a letter explaining why they thought they could beat Andy in the ring. Unlike our other matches, SNL was to pick the challenger. And therein lay the rub.
Their winner was a pro. After laying eyes on this sinewy Greek goddess as she warmed up, then discovering that her cornerman was not only her father, but also an ex-Olympic coach, I knew Kaufman was in trouble. To make matters worse, to sweeten the pot we’d brashly announced that Andy would allow his head to be shaved if he lost. The barber was setting up at ringside, and I cringed at the thought that the man was going to get to use those clippers and at the implications of it. Andy was the star of a national sitcom and his hair was of mild importance. If a cue-ball bald Kaufman arrived for work the next week, the resulting shitstorm would make the Tony Clifton appearance seem like a high tea. I sized up his statuesque opponent, and my stomach churned with the certainty that she was the real McCoy and was simply going to kill him.
As I took care of various details, Andy holed up in his dressing room consorting with his own cornerman, the redoubtable “Nature Boy” Buddy Rogers, a platinum-locked grappler from the Golden Age of wrestling. Andy had grown up watching Rogers defeat the forces of evil during numerous televised matches in the ‘50s and absolutely revered him. Lorne Michaels, on the other hand, was not as enamored of Mr. Rogers and in fact had decided, based on Buddy’s lackluster run-throughs, that his appearance was merely “dead air” and needed to be cut to the absolute basics.
Lorne’s motivation to chop Buddy resulted from a scheduling problem with another performer, Mr. Bill, the hapless, rudimentary clay puppet who often met a violent end at the hands of his nemesis, Mr. Sluggo. Mr. Bill was scheduled to appear in his pre-produced “Mr. Bill’s Christmas Special,” and, because some other sketches were already going long, Lorne was nervous that the time slotted for Mr. Bill was diminishing. Since the Mr. Bill sketch was date-specific, and since considerable effort had been expended on its production, Lorne viewed Buddy Rogers’s questionable contribution as wholly expendable.
As we drew close to air, and Andy conveniently sequestered himself in his meditation mode with the standard “Don’t bother me” warning, Lorne called me into his office to lay down the law.
“I’m cutting Rogers,” he said. “My back’s against the wall for time and I feel his contribution is not that strong. Please coordinate this with Andy.”
“I’ll tell Andy, but I won’t make any guarantees. The man is Andy’s idol,” I countered.
“Bob, believe me when I tell you this is not negotiable. Cut Rogers.”
I left his office with the sound of a ticking bomb in my head. Lorne Michaels had not yet learned that no one tells Andy Kaufman what to do. I also knew that Andy had worked closely with Buddy on the lines we’d written him and would not take kindly to last minute meddling — even from the executive producer. Andy had a deep desire to provide Buddy a few moments of nationally televised glory as partial payback for all the years of pleasure and instruction Buddy had given Andy as a kid. And Buddy not only had been Andy’s spiritual advisor for years before they met, but also had coached another athlete, by the name of Muhammad Ali. Both Andy and Ali had borrowed the famous gesture — when they would point at their heads and say, “I got the brains” — from Mr. Rogers.
Moments before our sketch, I relayed Lorne’s demand to Andy, who heard my words but proceeded to stare right through me. Whether he was still in a transcendent state or was going into a stubborn mode I’m not sure, but he said nothing to Buddy. Andy’s friend and now coach was a VIP and was going to get the respect he deserved whether Lorne liked it or not.
When the prelim for the match began, with Andy and Buddy speaking on camera, I watched Lorne in the wings, arms folded, eyes narrowed. As Buddy droned on and on, I could as much as see the steam venting from Lorne’s ears. As soon as the Mr. Bill window slammed shut from Buddy’s inexhaustible verbiage, Lorne stormed out. Then the fun began.
As I helped Andy
in his corner while his foe warmed up, he leaned close and whispered, indicating the barber, “Whatever happens, that man ain’t shavin’ me bald!” It may have been too late for that sentiment because, in the interest of further showmanship, I had brazenly announced that two large security guards would be retained to prevent Kaufman from beating a hasty exit should he lose.
I eyed the burly men who eyed Andy. “Just don’t lose,” I said.
Then the match commenced. As the ref, I circled the ring with the two and could see Andy was in no mood to try to pick this girl up, as she had a good chance of winning. With his hair at stake, Andy locked horns with the young woman with a vengeance and they fell to the mat, the crowd screaming for his blood. Andy had gone out of his way to get the studio audience against him and had been very successful in that.
After a few flips that didn’t look good for Andy, suddenly he reversed on her, got her on her back, and boom, boom, boom, I slapped the mat. Andy leaped to his feet, the winner. The looks of astonishment on the girl and her Olympic-coach father were priceless. Buddy was grinning like the cat who ate the canary, for his pupil had listened well. It was then that I realized the match had been not between Andy and the girl, but between Buddy and the dad: real wrestling versus lake wrestling. The girl’s dad held people like Buddy Rogers in contempt, but the truth was, Buddy, despite the theatrics, was actually an amazing athlete, just as Andy was a credible wrestler who always beat his opponents fair and square.
But the fireworks were just beginning. As I walked down the hall, Lorne descended on me like a hawk on a field mouse. “What did I tell you?” he screamed. “You fucked up Mr. Bill! I had to eat that, thanks to you and Kaufman!”
I was in no mood to hear Lorne’s rants. After all, I was paid by Andy, not him. I had also made the effort to warn Andy, but it had fallen on deaf ears. As Lorne raged on and on, pursuing me as I walked, I finally turned and faced him down. “Hey, fuck off!”
“What?” he screamed, incredulous anyone would speak to him that way. “Nobody tells me to fuck off! I’m going to have you thrown out of here!”
“Yeah? You and what army?” With that, I spun on my heels and strode to the dressing room, where I related the ugly incident to Andy. He just laughed.
Many years later Lorne and I ran into each other while attending a barbecue at Danny De Vito’s home, and I took the opportunity to remind him of that moment. He remembered and apologized profusely, saying he was wrong and shouldn’t have acted with such anger. I copped to being wrong as well, and we finally buried the hatchet and had a very pleasant conversation.
I had heard many stories about Lorne over the years, and I think his sophistication is often misinterpreted as arrogance. His apology was unnecessary, yet very big of him and hardly in keeping with the rumors of a huge ego that have been circulated on his behalf. I’ve often thought it must be odd being Lorne Michaels, given the illustrious list of talents who owe their careers to him, including Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Chris Rock, and Adam Sandler, as well as the late John Belushi, Phil Hartman, Chris Farley, and Gilda Radner, to name but a few.
On returning to L.A. as 1980 dawned, Andy and I kept audiences (and ourselves) entertained with occasional late-night experiments at the Improv. One night I had a refrigerator crate brought on stage and announced to the audience that for one dollar they could look into the box and view the star of Taxi, Andy Kaufman. They thought I must have been joking, for surely a big star wouldn’t allow himself to be crated up like a pooch in an airline carrier.
To get things going I picked a young lady in the front row and told her she could look for free and tell the audience what she saw. I opened a small side panel and she peeked in. “My god! I can’t believe it! It’s really Andy Kaufman!” she shrieked.
I smiled confidently. “Tell ’em what he’s doing.”
She concentrated. “Uh, he’s sitting on a chair in his underwear, and he’s holding a flashlight … and he’s balancing his checkbook.”
I nodded. “Correct,” I said, and the exhibit was officially open. We made eighty bucks that night. A few years later we did a variation where the audience was given an opportunity to touch a cyst on Andy’s neck. Charging them each a dollar, we had a real nurse disinfect the person’s fingers before they touched it. We called that “Celebrity Cyst.”
Any chance to ridicule fame or stardom Andy seized with zeal. Though he used his celebrity as a career stepping stone, underneath he found the blind worship of fame silly at best and destructive at its worst. Over the years I’ve worked with countless so-called stars, and I have witnessed many who wallow in it. Andy didn’t and would have dispensed with stardom had he been able to accomplish his career goals without it.
His loathing of the elevation by society of entertainers was often a subject of his routines. Tony Clifton, for instance, was an anticelebrity. On the theme of the abuse of celebrity power, Andy would sometimes go into a restaurant, spot an attractive young couple, and make sure he was seated next to them. Of course everyone in the place knew who he was. He’d chitchat with the thrilled couple and then focus on the girl, subtly coming on to her. When the boyfriend left for the men’s room, he’d make his move.
“Would you go out with me?”
The stunned and flattered young lady would usually say, “What?”
“GO out with me,” Andy persisted. “Your boyfriend …”
“Fiancé …”
“Fiancé. Okay, your fiancé, who is he? He’s a nobody, I’m a star, I’m famous. I can do more for you than he ever could. Right?”
With stars in her eyes she saw the logic. “Well, yes, that’s true.”
“Of course it’s true.” Then came his only request in his inane bid for power over the girl’s life, but it was a big one: “If you want to go out with me, you have to leave with me, right now. C’mon, let’s go.”
“What? I can’t!”
“Sure you can, c’mon,” he said holding out his hand, “we’re leaving. Tell him you’re leaving with me.”
Dazzled by the brilliance of stardom, she’d stand hesitantly. By now the people at the surrounding tables were aghast at the cruelty demonstrated by the big celeb. Just then her swain would return, having drained the lizard. “What’s going on?” he would ask innocently.
“I, uh, I’m leaving with Andy. I’m sorry, Tom.”
“What?” he’d say, totally flabbergasted. “But you can’t do that, I love you!”
“Love?” Andy would snort. “I can offer her something you can’t. I’m a star, you’re nothing!”
Then Andy and the girl would exit, hand in hand, leaving the poor shattered shlub to weep uncontrollably at the table just as their salads arrived. Andy, to his credit, would always pay their tab on the way out. The wounded man, blinded by his tears, would finally find the strength to shuffle to the door as the restaurant patrons buzzed about the power-mad TV star and how he’d destroyed the sweet young man’s world. Outside, the “distraught” fellow would join Andy and our female accomplice, whereupon we’d often head to another bistro to perpetrate the fraud once more. I thank that Carnegie-Mellon training for my skill at being able to cry on cue.
Why did we do it? Simple: it was fun. But in retrospect, as I analyze our little psychodramas, they give great insights into Andy’s own belief system. Did he feel celebrity was a necessary ingredient to meeting women? Absolutely. Was he suspect of such women? To some extent, yes. He understood that everyone would defer to him because of his status, so it was the divination of that shading, the motives behind the actions, that intrigued him, and often left him distant and wary.
Andy enjoyed a small circle of close friends, but they had generally signed on years before fame came to him and were therefore proven commodities. Our restaurant “presentations” not only were amusing diversions, but also served as outlets for Andy’s welling disgust over the nature of fame and the nearly mindless permission people would heap on someone jus
t because they had seen the person on television or in the movies. He hated such unqualified acceptance and sought to hammer the point home to unsuspecting diners during our histrionics. Would a girl shitcan her faithful lover just because some “star” wagged his finger? Sure, and we showed them how it would happen, in all its disturbing ceremony.
As a technical note, we took great care to keep the airlines and restaurants, as well as the other “stages” for our psychodramas, in the dark as to our purposes. We made separate reservations and always worked it so we sat either across the aisle or at adjoining tables, but always within earshot of others — as many others as we could reach. The “street pranks” were endless and we pulled them almost every time we ate or flew. Pulling pranks kept us sharp, and aside from being a lot of fun, it was our job.
10
On a Roll
People would say to me, “Why don’t you have someone who picks the audience up?” I said, “No, I love him, he’s too much. He’s a genius. Let him open the show and do whatever he wants and that’s it.”
RODNEY DANGERFIELD
It was now January 1980, Andy had just celebrated his thirty-first birthday, and we were on a roll. Suddenly, in a very short period, two amazing projects were offered to us, one in television and the other in film.
Happy with the results of our special that had finally aired in August, ABC called and asked us to come up with a concept for a weekly vehicle for Andy. That was music to our ears, especially given the fact we’d already fleshed out an idea that Andy had been waiting years to produce. We called it “Uncle Andy’s Fun-house,” a kids’ show for adults. Picture Howdy Doody, but instead of Buffalo Bob, Uncle Andy would host. There would be cartoons and puppets and even a “peanut gallery” where the kids would be on camera too, only in this case the kids would be adults. Yet to maintain the illusion that it was a show for children, albeit adult children, Andy would speak to them as if they were kids. That was a way to embrace one’s “inner child” long before the phrase was added to popular culture.
