by Bob Zmuda
As I strolled around the set I saw that Henson had built a warm and friendly creative environment outside the hubbub of Hollywood, and I admired him for it. The set buzzed with busy teenagers, all assistants and interns in Henson’s dream factory, building scenery and making molds for various Muppet characters. I had heard that Jim Henson’s only formal agreement with his manager of twenty years, Bernie Brillstein, was a handshake. One afternoon while Andy meditated, Jim and I struck up a conversation.
“So I understand you worked with Howdy Doody,” began Jim. “How was he?”
As I started in on the story of Howdy’s visit to Hollywood and Jim asked questions, he referred to Howdy, as Andy would have, as if he were another actor, a real person. Jim’s sense of open wonderment and lack of guile endeared him to me immediately, just as it had to another guy, named Kaufman. As I detailed Andy’s encounter with Howdy — first Andy’s sense of betrayal, then his unqualified acceptance—Jim’s eyes misted a bit. “I know exactly how he felt,” he said.
A few years ago I was saddened to hear of Jim’s passing. Like Andy, that gentle man left us all too early. I couldn’t help but wonder if men like them, children at heart, weren’t destined to grow old.
If I had to pick a favorite Kaufman/Zmuda routine, at the top of my list would have to be our performance at Rick Newman’s “Catch a Rising Star Tenth Anniversary HBO Special.” Andy could be very cryptic about business matters, and one day as we prepared to board a plane (right foot first) after a college gig, I saw we were not going back to L.A. but on to New York.
“What gives, Kaufman?”
“We’re going to New York. I have some HBO special or something like that.”
Back then HBO didn’t mean what it does today.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, “but I’ve gotta do something, I’m supposed to do a whole set.”
“You haven’t even planned it yet?”
“No. Maybe I’ll do Elvis.”
For Andy, pulling out Elvis was like most people putting on their socks. As we got on the plane and sat down, Andy turned to me. “Hey, what if we do something different? Something fun. I’ll do my standard set, and you can be in the audience. You be a plant and we’ll do something.”
“How ‘bout I heckle you?”
Andy’s eyes lit up. “Oh, yeah, that’s good! Really criticize me.”
“I’ll jump on you with all that bad shit the critics say.”
Andy nodded gleefully. “Great! I love it!”
So as we winged our way to the Big Apple, we worked out the beats of our scam. As his attacker, I would be believed, because only insiders in the business knew who I really was. My assault would focus on the repetitiveness of Andy’s routines, so he girded his loins for my onslaught. I decided to hold back a few items during our airliner conference — I figured it might be interesting to see him really sweat.
On the bill that night were Billy Crystal, our old buddy Robin Williams, Richard Belzer, who was also a friend, and rocker Pat Benatar. This was sort of a homecoming for Benatar, who had been discovered some years earlier by Rick Newman. Consequently, she invited her aunt and uncle to attend the show. Residents of nearby New Jersey, her aunt and uncle had never seen her perform live because they feared the dangers of the rock element drawn to such shows. Though somewhat provincial, Pat’s relatives felt since the show was to be televised, what harm could come to them? Another inducement was that the uncle loved Billy Crystal, so once it was decided they’d saddle up and ride into the big city, Pat’s uncle slipped a modest revolver into his boot for protection, and off they went. Rick Newman gave them a wonderful table in the center of the room and the show commenced.
Belzer introduced Andy, who came out and began his standard Foreign Man set. He wasn’t a minute into it when I started walking on his jokes, repeating them about a half second after he said them. Then I started getting ahead of him, nailing his lines a second or two before he said them. This seemed to rattle him, and he paused several times as I coldly let each joke out of the bag before he could finish. Finally, when I wouldn’t let him complete any of his Archie Bunker bit, he stopped and leaned past the microphone. “Sir, you got a problem?”
“The only problem is I’m doin’ your act for you,” I said from my table about six feet from the stage.
“Is there a problem?” he repeated, as rivulets of sweat started to streak down his temples.
“No,” I said, “there’s no problem. If you did some new material I wouldn’t know what you were gonna do next.”
“Look,” he said defensively, “they asked me to do this.”
He started explaining he had a lot of new material.
“Oh, yeah?” I said. “Well, I’ve followed your career for a long time, Kaufman, and I haven’t seen anything new in years. Wrestling women? That’s not entertaining.”
A few in the crowd applauded at that, and Andy winced. “I was on Fridays,” insisted Andy, “and I did something that got a lot of people talking.”
“What?” I asked. “You pushed some other actors around and call that real? That was a put-on, Kaufman, everybody knows that. It’s not original, it’s not comedy.”
I was hitting nerves, and Andy’s streams of sweat were not all products of the conscious effort of a trained yogi. I was really getting to him. We went back and forth for a while, then Benatar’s aunt said something, and I turned around and said, “Fuck you.” Well, that didn’t sit well with her husband, and suddenly he was threatening to come over and straighten me out. Rick Newman, who knew nothing of the gun, was at that moment crawling on the floor toward the uncle — trying to stay off-camera — to inform him I was but a harmless plant.
As Rick was talking the uncle out of murder, I was pointing out to Andy that he was on his way down, indicated by the certain failure of his film career. “Heartbeeps?” I said. “What a piece of shit.”
“That wasn’t my fault, it was the writers, the director …”
“You got any other offers?”
Andy looked furtively about. “No …”
“You can’t even do Elvis anymore,” I said, and then looked around at the audience. “He’s gotta wear a wig ‘cause he’s losin’ his hair!” I declared.
Andy was very sensitive about his spreading hair loss. The look on his face when I proclaimed his secret to all was one of honest shock. In a world before Rogaine or Propecia, Andy had lathered all manner of creams and potions on his head in an effort to halt the recession of his hairline. That I had made his fear public staggered him slightly, mainly because there were several young ladies in the audience who had caught his eye. He took the gunshot and moved on but didn’t talk to me for a while after the show. Finally I busted him on his withdrawal. “What’s a matter, Kaufman? Sensitive about the hair? So you can dish it out but can’t take it, huh? Is that how it works?”
Irritated with me at first, he finally caved in and we laughed about it, agreeing the below-the-belt shots at him helped create believability.
After the show Pat Benatar approached me. “You don’t know how lucky you are.”
“How’s that?” I asked.
“Those people you were insulting? He’s my uncle, and that was my aunt with him.”
“Oh, sorry,” I said.
“No, that’s okay,” she said, “it’s just part of the act, I know that. But he didn’t, and he always carries a gun in his boot when he has to come over to the city. He almost shot you.”
I wilted. If you watch the tape closely you will clearly see him reaching for his boot just as Rick approached the gun-toting Jerseyite before he could wreak havoc. That was the chance I took with that type of act. Working without a net had its dangers but it was almost always wildly rewarding.
On Saturday, September 23, 1982, we were scheduled to board a bus for a nine-day trip with one of the oddest collections of people you’d ever hope to assemble. A political Magical Mystery Tour, the Jerry Bro
wn tour was a mission of goodwill designed to stir up votes among a populace apparently more motivated by various celebrities than by exercising their rights as Americans. Jerry Brown wanted to be governor of California again, and it was time to hit the stump. Rather than assemble a group of tired politicos, Jerry sought to look hip.
Thus, the tour gathered an eclectic mix guaranteed to hit the spot with just about anyone’s taste in artists. First, there was folk/rock icon Stephen Stills; our friend Kris Kristofferson; composer and Kris’s guitar player, Billy Swan; actress Diane Ladd; the manly Nancy Culp (Miss Jane Hathaway) of The Beverly Hillbillies; and of course the urbane candidate along with his dad, former governor Edmund “Pat” Brown.
Aside from me and Andy, last but by no means least was little Patty McCormack. I say “little” because Patty’s claim to fame was the 1956 film The Bad Seed, wherein she played an eight-year-old indeed gone bad, all while stealing the picture. Having received an Oscar nomination for her role, Patty never quite reached those heights again in her subsequent appearances in such epics as 1988’s Saturday the 14th Strikes Back and 1995’s Mommy’s Day. But in 1982 she was hell on wheels, and with her rounding out our band of gypsies we took to the road.
The routine was pretty undemanding — tool up the California coast, stop in small towns, put on our brief dog-and-pony show for stalwart Jerry Brown campaign workers, then move on. Up the coast a ways we cut inland and headed for the likes of Oakland, Fresno, Redding, and Eureka. The schedule was a cakewalk, and being on the road was, as always, fun for us. I realized that that was precisely why we had come: the lure of the road. Andy never voted, we weren’t getting paid, and with all due respect to Jerry, Andy didn’t give a shit who was governor. But he did love the road.
Once we reached our final destination for the day, the bus would roll up to modest lodging, such as a Holiday Inn or sometimes a Hilton. While we were unloading I would notice some number of cars all populated with attractive women. This intrigued me, so I stopped Billy Swan and asked him, “What’s the deal with the girls in the cars?”
Billy smiled. “They’re waitin’ for Kris. Happens every place we go.”
And it did. Everywhere we went, women showed up on cue, motoring up to our places of rest as if summoned by that “da da da tuh daaa” tune from Close Encounters. Despite his appearance — the previous year — in what was considered the biggest box office bomb in history, Heavens’ Gate, Kris’s popularity didn’t seem to have diminished. I wondered about that as we pulled into a town like Ventura at two in the A.M. and saw the hopefuls in their cars, faces pressed to the glass like puppies in the pet store. Well, a girl can dream, can’t she?
One evening as we were about to board the bus and head for our base for the night, we did a head count. No Kaufman. We waited and waited, and finally it was decided the bus could go on, because Patty was driving her own car and offered to take us. Patty had planned on being with the tour only a few days, so she’d been following the bus in her fast little roadster. The hotel was about an hour away, so with our tourmates now gone, we sat down to wait for Andy, thinking he’d be but a few moments. He showed up forty-five minutes later. By that point Patty was fuming as she slid behind the wheel of her overpowered sports car.
“Where’ve you been?” I asked, since he didn’t offer an explanation and I felt Patty was too infuriated to inquire. Given her demeanor and the fact she was about to spirit us into the night in her hot car I was hoping Andy’s excuse would help calm her down.
“Oh, I don’t know, I just sorta lost track of the time.”
Patty’s foot crushed the accelerator and our heads snapped as the ragtop fishtailed onto the freeway. As the speedometer climbed past ninety I looked over in the dim lights of the instruments and saw Patty’s jaw clenched in anger. Suddenly I flashed on the parking lot with all the women, and a lightbulb winked on: Patty herself was intent on bedding down with Kris.
As we hurtled down that dark road at better than a hundred I looked back into the jump seat, and sure enough, Kaufman’s face was plastered with that really annoying shit-eating grin. I flashed back to our nearly disastrous small-plane experience and had a sickening déjà vu, but this time I saw a slightly different headline: “Taxi Star, Bad Seed Actress, Other, Perish in Car Crash.”
Miraculously, we arrived intact. Early the next morning Patty’s car was gone, and I wondered if she’d been successful with Kris. By 8 A.M. as we shuffled out to board the bus, there were still several cars in the parking lot containing a handful of unrequited lovelies waiting for that chance with the unattainable Mr. Kristofferson. None of those women-in-waiting were the least bit interested in Andy, and it infuriated him. “Latka is such a dork,” he grated. “If I keep doing him, I’ll never get laid.” An interesting statement from a man who, by any standards, was wildly successful with women. I guess it’s true that you can never get enough.
The idea of voting for a candidate was of interest to Andy not from a political standpoint, but from one of onstage performance. Fresh from the Jerry Brown tour, and inspired by an event that would occur on SNL, Andy decided it was time to pull off his greatest feat of audience participation yet. Andy’s plan was to give the national audience of SNL a chance to decide his fate: should he live … or die? Figuratively, of course.
Around that time, during a broadcast of Saturday Night Live, Eddie Murphy grasped a live lobster from the hands of a chef during a cooking sketch (seconds from the lobster’s demise in a pot of boiling water) and warned that the fate of the crustacean was now in the hands of the audience. Murphy then invited viewers to phone in to one of the two 900 numbers on the screen, depending on whether you wanted Larry to survive or become dinner.
During the broadcast, updates were given on the voting, and seventeen minutes before the polls closed, Brian Doyle-Murray announced the tally: 116,207 “he crawls away” versus 123,074 “start melting that butter.” It didn’t look good for Larry, but when the next commercial aired, the save-Larry contingent had pulled ahead, and things looked promising for the decapod. A short background On the highlights of Larry’s life was aired, including his childhood on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, that he’d been captain of the swimming team, devoted time to disadvantaged youngsters, and was a member of Crustaceans for Christ.
That did it, and in the end the kind-hearted demographic outweighed their cold counterparts 239,096 to 227,452. Larry lived, and the little drama dazzled Andy with its impact and potential. With an upcoming appearance on SNL scheduled, Andy fixed on the idea for a little conflict of his own.
On October 23, 1982, Andy arrived at Thirty Rock for SNL, and something went wrong. Andy and producer Dick Ebersol got into a screaming match that was heard by cast and crew alike. Ebersol assumed the role of Dr. Frankenstein and reminded his monster of the pecking order. Asked to leave the premises, Andy did so, never making his appearance that night. A few weeks passed, and on November 13, 1982, Ebersol read a statement on the show:
Hi. I’m Dick Ebersol, the executive producer of Saturday Night Live. In recent weeks we have received inquiries front many of you, including even the editors of TV Guide, as to why, prior to our last two telecasts, we heavily promoted Andy Kaufman and then failed to present him as advertised. So tonight, let me set the record straight by saying, in my opinion, that in both cases Andy misled us into thinking, right up until airtime, that his material would be up to the show’s standards. It was not. It was not even funny, and in my opinion Andy Kaufman is not funny anymore, (audience applause) And I believe you, the audience here, agrees with me. (more applause) So thank you, and I hope this sets the record straight. Good night.
After the Ebersol statement I phoned Andy in his hotel room and was alarmed at how distraught he sounded, so I went over. He met me at the door, obviously glad to see me, but there was also a fire in his eyes. “So, they think I’m washed up, huh? I’ll show them!” Before I could console him he grabbed the phone and dialed Shapiro in L.A. “George? Andy. I want you
to book me on Letterman — now!” George called back and had Andy set for November 17. Andy was on the comeback trail. Though failure intrigued him, he figured a fun, noncontroversial appearance might help him with the vote. He may have been Andy Kaufman, Master Investigator of Failure, but he was also human.
We stayed up all night and wrote his Letterman piece. Needing something different, something he’d never done before, we decided Andy would come out dressed only in a large sort of diaper and a turban and emulate the abilities of a Hindu fakir. Dancing to some exotic music, Andy would stand on his head and then roll his belly muscles in a demonstration of body control. (Being an accomplished yogi came in handy.) Soon a butler (me) would come out and hand him a sword, which he would proceed to “swallow.”
Andy and I went over to Late Night that Wednesday, November 17, and his set went exactly as we’d planned. At the end of the act he strapped on a guitar, slapped on a fake mustache, and did a wonderful impression of Slim Whitman singing “Rose Marie.” The song was one of Andy’s favorites and invariably moved him to tears every time he sang it.
On November 20, 1982, one week after Ebersol’s stinging rebuke and three days after Andy’s appearance on Letterman, it was announced on SNL that a vote would be taken that night to determine whether Andy Kaufman lived or died … at SNL. Andy was the new Larry the Lobster. The stakes were all future appearances on the show. If the vote went to him, he stayed; against him, he’d walk away and never come back. Given Andy’s reputation for a pugnacious attitude (based in part upon Ebersol’s statement as well as the Fridays incident) no one took the vote too seriously, and when the results came in 195,544 to 169,186, against Andy, it wasn’t any big surprise. People knew Andy begged rejection and were all too eager to give it to him.
