Andy Kaufman Revealed!

by Bob Zmuda

  For me, the movement demanded a rigid observance that didn’t fit my philosophy or lifestyle. But it did fit Andy’s. Despite his antics and seemingly freewheeling ways, Andy was actually a nut for absolute structure. Andy dealt with (or suffered from, depending on how you look at it) obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD. Like Jack Nicholson’s character in Jim Brooks’s As Good As It Gets, Andy manifested some fairly quirky behavior.

  First, his classic acts rarely varied. Watch his Foreign-Man-Becomes-Elvis routine and it is just that, a beat-for-beat pattern, every utterance and gesture duplicated time and again with unerring precision. Notwithstanding the myriad performances while pushing the creative envelope, left to his own choices Andy was comfortable with an almost assembly-line regularity. One of my primary functions was to shove him out of that creative rut he would slip comfortably into. Tony Clifton also gave him license to leave his self-imposed discipline and run rampant, but in general Andy’s life consisted of evenness and special procedures that bordered on the bizarre.

  He compulsively washed his hands, often dozens of times a day, and frequently inconvenienced many others as they wailed for him. Many of his girlfriends complained to me about how much time he spent in the bathroom. He had a different toothbrush for every day of the week, except Sunday when he carefully skipped brushing. Andy was always compelled to say good-bye to a room as he left it. After exiting his car and locking it, he walked around it exactly three times to make sure the doors were in fact locked. On visiting his home you were required to remove your shoes before entering. A creature of restrictive habits, when Andy dined out it was usually at one of a few known places — he didn’t like taking chances on new eateries.

  Though Andy’s obsession with germs might not have been as dramatic as Michael Jackson’s or Howard Hughes’s famed phobias, there certainly were comparisons. Andy carefully washed his silverware at restaurants before using it. Into his drinking water he dunked each implement one at a time, then took it out and dried it with his napkin. He also had a fear of sleeping with germs picked up in daily life. He made sure that no clothing, with the exception of night clothes, ever came in contact with his bedding.

  Since Andy was so compulsive when it came to his personal sanitation, he went to extreme lengths to purge his body after wallowing in that cesspool of excess called Tony Clifton. After all, Tony drank, smoked, ate meat, and picked up hookers right off the street corner — things Andy would never do. After a few days as Clifton, Andy’s system demanded a total hygienic delousing. For this cleansing, Kaufman would call upon his hatha yoga skills, in particular, an extreme method employed by Swami Satchidananda.

  The technique is not for the squeamish. After soaking fifteen feet of cheesecloth in warm water, the practitioner swallows it slowly and, through controlled peristalsis, threads the cloth through the alimentary canal. A more delicate way to describe it would be internal flossing.

  That Andy had performed this bizarre ritual many times was not lost on the cast and crew of Man on the Moon. Director Milos Forman regarded the practice as so depraved that he quickly nixed the idea of portraying it in its technicolor glory. Nevertheless, this didn’t prevent jokester Elton John from dropping by the set and presenting Jim Carrey (who plays Andy in the film) with sixty yards of cheesecloth. Lynne Margulies still has the canister containing Andy’s original cheesecloth. Has that cheesecloth been used, or not? Don’t even ask.

  One of his oddest eccentricities related to air travel. Whenever Andy boarded a plane, he did so with his right foot first — and as his traveling companion you were required to follow suit.

  Just going somewhere on foot with Andy required vigilance. If you were walking down the street and passed a light pole or some other hazard, it was mandatory you both did so on the same side. If you split up and walked on either side, Andy made you return so you could both run through it again and get it right.

  Andy was aware of his peculiarities and would make light of them with others as if pulling a prank, but I knew they were rituals he could not let go of. Often, the most mundane tasks took far more time than for anyone else because of his eccentric observances. If you didn’t really know Andy, as most didn’t, his behavior could be construed as manipulative. Many saw his strict customs as just the controlling behavior of a big star. The truth was, he had no control over it.

  It was not uncommon for us to change hotels two or three times if the establishment did not lend itself to Andy’s very particular requirements. One of those was privacy. Despite my warnings to innkeepers, invariably a mistimed phone call from the operator or a knocking maid who had ignored the Do Not Disturb sign would drive him bonkers and usually send us fleeing to another hotel. I took to carrying a screwdriver so that I could disconnect the phone in his room (this was before clip-in phone jacks).

  One of my strangest functions was to patrol the hall outside Andy’s room, just after checking in, while striking a small saucepan with a mallet, like the medieval undertaker during the plague yelling, “Bring out yer dead.” My task was to check sound levels. If Andy could hear the pan resonating at a certain range we’d immediately change rooms or hotels. More than once I was spotted late at night in my bathrobe, wandering the halls of a hotel banging my pan, hoping we wouldn’t have to repack and run.

  Andy’s other aberrations would surface in his dressing room before he went onstage. He’d check his props over and over, ad nauseam, often keeping the audience waiting forty or fifty minutes beyond his scheduled show time. That practice made me extremely anxious until I realized it was part of the act. I finally understood that Act One began in the dressing room, before the audience ever saw him, and consisted of him pissing them off. It was pure Kaufman brinkmanship: work them up, get them angry, stomping their feet — almost like foreplay — then boom, make his entrance and reel it back from the edge. It was the kid with the chemistry set again and again, taking the crowd to its limit — How far can I push until you hate me? — then saving it at the last second, a comedic Michael Jordan, shooting the game winner at the buzzer.

  Over the years I’ve searched my memories for some key that would unlock this enigma named Andy Kaufman. I might be straying too far afield into some Freudian morass from which I might not be able to extricate myself, but I keep coming back to one incident in his life.

  The closest relationship Andy had as a very small child was with one of his grandfathers, the one he lovingly called Papu. Andy and his granddad played games and sang songs together and were the best of pals. Andy so idolized the old man that on the day his parents, Janice and Stanley, told their son his grandfather had “taken a trip and gone very far away,” the puzzled little boy began sitting in the window for hours on end, patiently awaiting the return of his best friend.

  When the weeks became years and no postcard or letter ever came detailing how or where Papu was, Andy’s folks realized the error they’d made in not coming clean and telling Andy his grandfather had died. By then, a melancholy had come over the boy and in many ways stayed with him his entire life. Because of that incident, I believe the die was cast for Andy to assume the philosophy “Never give yourself over totally to anyone else, you’ll only be hurt.” I also submit that, aside from the trauma directly related to his loss, the incident also taught Andy that reality could be altered, adjusted to deceive the beholder. That the element of reality that had been faked on his behalf was no less than death was not lost on him.

  During April and May of 1982, a drama was playing out between the producers of Taxi, Paramount, and ABC. Though the ratings had faltered somewhat, the show still had a loyal following, and the producers felt their baby was a very viable program. ABC felt differently and on May 4, 1982, canceled Taxi. After a hue and cry in the media orchestrated by the producers and picked up by television critic Tom Shales, HBO made some overtures to acquire the property, but on May 21 Taxi went to NBC. Andy had a love/hate relationship with the show. He loathed the daily grind but was accustomed to the sizable paycheck
that subsidized his TM classes and his love of prostitutes.

  Despite his complaints, there were a few times he had fun on Taxi, with Latka and Vic Ferrari and even the occasional dead-on mimicry of fellow actor Judd Hirsch. Andy showed his gift for impressions in an episode a few weeks into the fourth season. Called “Mr. Personalities,” it had first aired on October 22, 1981, and featured Latka assuming Alex’s traits in a manifestation of the multiple personality disorder that had overcome him. Latka’s Alex seemed to improve on the already generous, warm-hearted Alex Reiger. In the final scene, set in a psychiatrist’s office with Alex, Latka, and the doctor, just as the extemely insightful Latka-as-Alex is about to figure out the secret of Alex’s life, he’s cured, reverts back to Latka, and leaves contented — while the real Alex is left hanging over the all-important answer that never comes. There was no love lost between Andy and Hirsch, and the episode gave Andy an officially sanctioned chance to take shots at Hirsch. When the show got picked up by NBC, Andy secretly breathed a slight sigh of relief.

  12

  Is This for Real?

  I would scream at my television sometimes, “Is that a joke or not?”

  JAKE JOHANNSEN

  On April Fools’ Day, 1982, Andy went on David Letterman’s show and told viewers he had decided to wrestle a man. He wasn’t joking. Also, it was not just any man Andy was planning to take on, but a formidable opponent, a real wrestler, pro champion Jerry “The King” Lawler. No weak suck, Lawler was a burly man, probably around our age, sporting a goatee, a sort of modified Caesar haircut, and arms damn near as big as Andy’s legs. Andy announced the match would be held in Lawler’s home turf, the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis. Dave patiently let Andy rattle on about the match, probably believing the veracity of Andy’s statements no more than any of his viewers did.

  Though I made a pact with Andy never to reveal the truth behind that ill-fated evening and the events leading to it, I have decided to break that vow and come clean. The reason I am doing it only now is that Universal Studios, the entity behind the film Man on the Moon, has chosen to be truthful about Kaufman’s antics and disclose in the movie what really happened. I feel it is my duty to take their lead and expand on their revelations accurately and in detail.

  Andy’s childhood dream had been to be a professional wrestler. Had he had the chance to walk into a room featuring Marlon Brando and “Nature Boy” Buddy Rogers and be required to choose a conversation partner, he would have made a beeline to Buddy. We knew from the first day Andy began wrestling women that he would one day have to face a man in the ring. We always tried to take our lead, our direction, from the audiences, and every time Andy took to the mat with a female we heard catcalls like “Why don’t you wrestle a man, Kaufman?”

  In fact, during the Carnegie and Huntington shows Andy did just that. During both shows, a man came out of the audience to wrestle Kaufman and subsequently beat the shit out of him. As the ref, I was also maimed by the brute, and in retaliation I managed to crawl back into the ring and, to the prerecorded strains of “Popeye the Sailor Man,” pass a can brimming with spinach to my friend Andy. Quickly consuming the strength-giving leaves, the now superhuman Andy rebounded to give the blackguard what for, all to the delight of the crowd. Of course, it was all done comedically and with a plant, but we knew the time would come when circumstances forced Andy to meet a man, and that man might not be in a joking mood.

  That day came when Andy got a call from a local Memphis promoter offering Andy a chance to wrestle a real sportsman, Jerry “The King” Lawler. A few days earlier, Andy had wrestled some women in Memphis. Right after the match, Jerry Lawler, standing just outside the ring, shoved Andy onto his ass. Andy was furious. When Andy went back to L.A., he began talking about his feud with Jerry Lawler. As I’ve explained, Andy understood that the basis of pro wrestling was theater, so when he calmed down he felt that if he accepted the offer to wrestle Jerry Lawler, the match would be all in jest, and he and Lawler would have a chance to vamp. He decided to allow Jerry Lawler a membership into Uncle Andy’s Funhouse.

  Several weeks before the match, the promoter got in touch with Andy and gave him the bad news: ticket sales were dismal. “We need to create some heat here,” he said. “You got any ideas?” Well, being idea guys, Andy and I sat down and came up with a series of videos designed to exploit the strongest aspect of pro wrestling: the good guy versus the bad guy. Lawler was the hometown favorite, so we cast Andy as the malefactor. Required to be the sweet, adorable Latka every week, Andy was dying to play a heavy.

  Using the backdrop of a palatial (but rented) home in Beverly Hills, Andy approached the camera, clutching a piña colada adorned with a tiny umbrella, and started in. “I’m from Hollywood, I’m smart, I make movies and television shows … I’m not a hick like you people from Myemm-phisss Tenn-uh-seeee …” He really hammed up the enunciation when he named their city and state, hoping to inflame people just by mocking their speech patterns. Then he introduced his lawyer, a guy with slicked-back hair and dark glasses, wearing a brown suit any ambulance chaser would be proud of: “This is my lawyer, Bob Zmuda, and he’ll tell you, Mr. Lawler, what kind of trouble you’re in.”

  I proceeded to go on and on in some fake legalese about how much trouble Lawler would be in and how we were filing a huge lawsuit for his unexpected shove. After my speech Andy repeated, “Mr. Lawler, I have the brains, I’m from Hollywood and you’re just a hick. If you want to wrestle, fine. I’ll mop the floor with you.”

  The reaction was exactly what we wanted. The people of Memphis were driven insane by the cocky television star, and suddenly tickets were vacuumed out of the drawers of ticket agents and into scalpers’ pockets. Almost overnight it became the hottest event in years. Enjoying the hype, the promoter encouraged us to send more tapes. Since it was so much fun we complied.

  We hired a very sizable young woman, and she and Andy stood on a small wrestling mat poolside at the rented house. “Okay, Mr. Lawler, you think you’re so tough?” taunted Andy. “I’ve wrestled women tougher than you … and bigger! Like her.” He turned to the hefty girl. “How tall are you?”

  “Six feet,” she said.

  “And what do you weigh?”

  “I weigh three twenty-seven.”

  “Three twenty-seven? You see, Mr. Lawler,” he said, addressing the camera, “that’s a lot bigger than you. And I can beat her.”

  They then proceeded to grapple, and Andy quickly slammed her to the mat and then got her on her stomach and began “bashing” her head into the ground. I, as the lawyer, raced out and stopped him, but it was too late — the poor, endomorphic young lady was “unconscious.” I leaped up and, before I could stop the camera, yelled, “Andy, I think you’ve really hurt her!”

  To which the callous kaufman snapped off, “So what? She’s poor, she doesn’t have any money, she can’t sue me.”

  And with that, the image of the prostrate whalelike victim and the strutting “bad guy,” the camera went to black. That video was a big hit.

  One of our favorite taunt tapes had Andy holding up a roll of toilet paper and instructing the poor benighted “bumpkins” of Memphis on its use. In others he showed them how to use soap and informed Memphis women on their personal grooming habits and the use of the safety razor. The reality was, he actually loved Memphis and found most of the citizens as sophisticated and charming as those in any other place he’d been. But Andy’s performances were so convincing that soon the promoter informed us there were numerous death threats circulating. Thinking it was a big joke, we couldn’t wait to get to Memphis.

  When Andy and I and George Shapiro and Andy’s latest squeeze arrived in Memphis, we realized how seriously the residents of that fair city had taken Andy’s taunts. At the hotel we were turned away, the reason being that management claimed more than half a dozen bomb threats. I checked Andy into another place just outside town, disguised and under an alias, and the rest of us found a place nearby.

  Twenty
-four hours before the match Andy complained to the promoter that he was getting anxious to speak with Lawler regarding their plans but that Lawler wasn’t returning his calls. The promoter smoothed things over, saying, “Jerry’s just no good ‘bout gettin’ back to people,” and said he would try and intercede. The promoter reminded Andy that he and Jerry were set to appear the next day on a local morning show to pitch that evening’s match. Andy got off the phone, looking slightly irritated.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Oh, the promoter wants me on some show with Lawler at eight in the morning. I have to be there early. I wanted to sleep in, get my energy up for the match.”

  Despite the intrusion on his sleep time, we were up early and got to the TV station a few minutes before eight. We were escorted to the green room, where Jerry Lawler sat with a few local media types. We walked over to Lawler and Andy extended his hand. “Hi, Jerry, I’m Andy, and this is Bob Zmuda.”

  Lawler stood slowly, sized us up, then hocked up a luger and spat a significant, juicy green oyster at our feet. “Share that among ya, you Yankee assholes.” As Lawler turned and strode from the room, Andy’s hand was still outstretched, his face a mask of complete surprise. The wags with Lawler smirked and retreated with him. A few minutes later, on the air, Jerry “The King” Lawler was just as rude and obnoxious. After the show Lawler quickly exited.

  As Kaufman and I prepared to leave, Andy began voicing his doubts, now unconcerned that the station personnel could overhear.

  “Do you think I’ve been set up?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t look good,” I said. “Lawler doesn’t seem to understand this is a joke.”