by Bob Zmuda
Andy refused to own the disease for a long time and sought, along with a few confidantes, to keep it quiet. Andy’s brother, Michael, was told with the caveat that he not tell anyone else, particularly their parents, at least for a while. George called and asked if I knew who else knew, because he feared the news could further damage Andy’s already ailing career. Like those involved in the Manhattan Project, we were sworn to keep this dark secret to ourselves. George’s motivation was not commercial in the sense of receiving personal gain; he just didn’t want any more harm to come to Andy, whom he loved like a son. Letting such information out into the already skittish Hollywood community would draw sympathy, and with sympathy comes a price: everyone loves you, but no one will hire you. George knew Andy’s first love was his work, and therefore, he needed to keep Andy working, keep him busy and feeling vital while he fought the battle of his life.
On January 26, 1984, Andy appeared on a television program called The Top, a showbiz euphemism for finally making it. It was fitting, for it was Andy’s last appearance on the medium he loved so and had dreamed of conquering since that little kid played to the imaginary camera in the wall of his basement so many years before.
Typical of Andy, he dismissed the dire prognosis given him by the purveyors of Western medicine and looked to heal himself by his own methods. Practitioners of Eastern holistic philosophies, where symptoms are merely the body’s signs that it is attempting to heal itself, use the judicious application of natural herbs and remedies, along with mental and physical harmonics, to rid the body of the invading disease. Though he knew something was wrong with him. Andy did not believe what the doctors said, choosing to follow his own path toward healing, at least for a while.
Always careful what he ate (again, when Tony Clifton wasn’t around), Andy stepped up his regimen to a full-blown macrobiotic diet, a holistic approach that incorporates grains, beans, and vegetables, with moderate seafood and fruit, to create a harmony with nature — what the body really needs, not what we like to eat. Then he contacted a counselor, a man he’d met in the TM movement who, despite Andy’s banishment, offered to help. His name was John Gray and he would go on to author the wildly successful series of books beginning with Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus.
Andy hoped to expose via John Gray’s counseling sessions some deep-rooted, unresolved psychological malaise stemming from conflicts in the primary relationships of his life. His theory was that if he identified that problem or problems, and dealt with them, he might shut off the poison that was infiltrating his system.
When I heard that he’d called in his family and George, I was frightened I’d get the same summons. He had baggage with his family as well as with George, having fought with him for years over much of his “avant garde” work. I feared a confrontation with Andy over something I may have done to let him down. One day, after stewing over that scenario, I was with him and mustered the courage to ask about the counseling sessions and my possible role in them.
He smiled and shook his head. “You? I have no bones to pick with you at all. You’re my best friend.”
Despite his commitment to holistic healing, Andy covered his bet with a course of radiation and chemo. But as the months went by, it didn’t seem to be working: not even holding his own, he seemed to be slowly slipping away. Finally, when his “Western” physicians solemnly told him, “There is no hope,” he didn’t accept it and turned to another means of salvation. Having recently seen a documentary about “psychic surgery” in the Philippines, narrated by Burt Lancaster, Andy made some inquiries and decided to go. He would leave the United States a sick man and come back whole and completely healed: it would be his greatest trick ever.
As I said before, I was in a state of shock or denial about all of this, and when I got the news, I blocked much of what happened from my mind. As I was preparing to write this book, Lynne and I agreed the trauma had erased much of those sad times from our memories, so it was with great excitement that I told her I had uncovered a series of diary entries I had made during that time.
Contained in three large boxes of Kaufman memorabilia I had collected over the years were papers, clippings, mementos, and, incredibly, those valuable pages chronicling my pain and observations during Andy’s last months. Though I had been through the boxes in the past, I had forgotten about the diary until I discovered it just as I was about to begin this book. Providence? Maybe, but I prefer to think someone I know had a hand in my finding it.
I’ve decided to incorporate some of the passages into the next chapter. The excerpts are exactly what I wrote fifteen years ago and contain none of the cheery revisionism that writing can undergo when time has softened the pain, anger, and incredulity that one endures at difficult times. The diary entries helped rekindle my memories of the worst time of my life, and I hope they serve to honestly convey the profound hurt of losing your best friend.
14
Closing Act
He did these fringe reality things where you didn’t know where his reality was.
ROBERT KLEIN
It was a Thursday, March 15, 1984, and I was particularly worried about Andy because I hadn’t spoken to him all day. I kept calling well into the evening and getting the answering machine. Finally, out of frustration and fear, I drove over to the house he and Lynne had rented in Pacific Palisades. On the way I spun all sorts of horrors in my mind — that I’d find him, dead. His treatments were not really helping, and for the past few weeks I could see he was deteriorating quickly. Holed up in his house, he had taken to screening all but a few of his calls. He always took mine, and that’s why I was worried.
I drove by the house and the lights were out. I drove around the neighborhood for a while to kill time and gather my thoughts. Later, around midnight, I passed the house and saw him through the window. I was afraid to stop, maybe because this man was changing and wasn’t the old Andy — perhaps I was afraid to see him that way. I reminded myself that he was my best friend and needed me. I put aside my fears and parked the car. He answered the door and was heartened to see me. The radiation treatments had taken their toll by stripping off a lot of pounds he didn’t have to spare. His hair had fallen out in large clumps, so he’d fashioned it into a Mohawk. Andy and Lynne and I sat around chatting for a bit, and when the mood lightened, Lynne seemed to relax slightly and got up and went to bed.
“I look like that guy in The Hills Have Eyes,” he joked, referring to a scary-looking bald character from a recent horror film. I laughed with him. Now that we were alone, I decided to hit him point blank. “So what do you think caused the cancer?”
“I talked to this girl I know about a year ago,” he started out, seemingly in a non sequitur. “We talked about suicide. She said she’d toyed with the idea.”
“You thinking about it now?” I asked, trying to keep my calm.
“No. Not really,” he answered softly. “You know, I think I peaked with Taxi. That’s what people will remember me for,” he said with a touch of sadness. “All the stuff I did, and you and I did, all the important things, I don’t think will be remembered. Maybe me dying will make people see they blew it with me. Maybe they’ll realize what I really did.” I sensed a slight bitterness coupled with resignation.
Then he started in on the potential reasons for his illness. He’d read a book called Sugar Blues five years ago and told me he should never have read it and strongly advised me never to do so. It planted the idea in his head that sugar was killing him. He felt there might be some mind-over-matter connection, that his belief in the book may have contributed to his getting sick. And since he was addicted to sugar and there was no stopping, the only cure would be for him to go on a strict macrobiotic diet. He said he felt for the last five years that every time he indulged in sugar he was poisoning himself. He said he was almost relieved when the doctor told him he had the cancer because now he could quit worrying when it would actually happen. Now he could finally go macrobiotic and save himself. I thought, Just
like the old bombing routine: bring it to the point of disaster and then turn it around.
Then he launched into a dissection of the problems with his parents as well as his own strange childhood. “I never joined in with the other kids,” he finally observed. “I stayed by myself all the time. I was aloof and got lost in my own world. I’m not so sure if that was such a good choice. Maybe it was unnatural.”
“What would you have done different?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
We sat for a moment, pondering. It seemed Andy’s fate may have been Set many years before. Andy joining in with the other kids? Organizing a kick-the-can game or hide-and-seek? Impossible.
“You know,” he said, “I would have loved to re-create the Howdy Doody show. This time, no Peanut Gallery, just me and Howdy and the other puppets.”
I felt like just letting him talk. He talked about the wrestling days and how much fun we’d had. He also admitted his last attempt to wrestle in the South the previous year had been met with “lack of interest at the gate,” and the two weeks he’d scheduled had been canceled. That hurt him, though he never showed it until now.
“Heartbeeps,” he said simply. “I really screwed up with that one. You warned me.”
“It doesn’t matter now,” I said, fearing this might degenerate into a session where Andy might start to beat himself up — a quality very unlike him. He was self-critical but not self-loathing. Avoiding that trap, he brushed it off and laughed. “You know, I’d always dreamed of being in the movies.”
“You were,” I said, acknowledging he’d been in some films.
He smiled and shook his head. “No, not really.” Then he changed direction. “The whole thing with Dick Ebersol was hard to take. I really wanted to stay on Saturday Night.” He sighed, letting go of any hard feelings. “It doesn’t do me any good to get into that. It’s against my therapy to lay blame,” he said. He paused. “But I can’t help but think every dog will have its day.”
“When do you go?” I asked, referring to his trip to the Philippines.
He brightened. “Less than a week.”
“Have you got a guy picked out?” I asked, regarding his surgeon.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “His name is Jun Roxas, and he’s supposed to be the best. I noticed in the documentary he carried a Bible. I wanted to fit in, so I got one, too.” He reached to a table to show me his new Bible. I thought, Andy Kaufman with a Bible, how weird is that?
He thumbed through the book absentmindedly. “Nobody believes I’m sick.”
He wasn’t wrong about that. I even harbored some tiny doubts, and there I was sitting five feet from him. “I know,” I said. “Does that bother you?”
“Sometimes, I guess so,” he said. “I just think it’s funny that if I really do die no one will believe it.”
“You won’t die,” I said, not so sure.
Andy came back, “If I did it might make me a legend.”
I joked. “That’s all you think about — career, career, career.”
He laughed at this, then switched gears. “Hey, maybe you should write a book. If I die, then you’ve got to do it.”
“Tell the stories,” I said.
“Yes,” he answered. “Tell it all. You know, it’s too bad Universal never did The Tony Clifton Story. He was our best creation … brilliant. George and Howard never really got Tony, they weren’t as supportive as they could have been. Well, maybe George was.”
We talked for quite a while, then Andy paused and looked out the window, even though there was nothing but blackness. He truly believed his cure awaited him in the Philippines. I hoped with him. His energy was high and strong and I felt for the first time since accepting the news that he might be okay after all. When we parted and I walked out to my car, I had the reassuring feeling that he might pull it off. Andy had controlled most everything in his life to now, so why was this different? I laughed to myself that he was going to cheat me out of my book about him.
A little less than a week later, My Breakfast with Blassie was set to premier at the Nuart on Santa Monica Boulevard. I worried that the strain of it all would completely drain Andy, but the Blassie debut was something he wouldn’t have missed. It was also a chance for him to hold his head up amid the Hollywood community and show he was a fighter, despite many still thinking he was putting it all on. In an attempt to keep our “secret” under wraps, we had not made any announcement, so few knew of the grave nature of his illness.
Tuesday — March 20, 1984
Premiere Night of My Breakfast with Blassie. Nuart Theater.
I almost missed it. Coping with my depression. I tried to Oversleep, going to bed at 4:00 P.M. and waking up at 6:45. Usually waking up from a nap later in the day causes me to wake up “out of it.” Almost on the brink of terror. Somehow going to sleep when it’s light and waking up in the dark. Throws off an equilibrium, maybe because it’s the opposite of the correct way to do it.
Anyway, I woke up in terror, more so knowing it will be the last time I see him … seeing he was planning [on] going to the Philippines in search of a psychic surgeon the next day. The dread of seeing him in such an environment — the premiere, the crowd, the cameras — I loathe the thought of going but I went.
When I passed the theater my worst suspicions had come true. The place was a zoo. A group of young wrestling fans had gathered in the vestibule, gulping down toasted waffles that were served before the screening. A truly obnoxious wrestler dressed in a loose-fitting gold outfit, wearing a wrestling mask that concealed his identity, was apparently hired for the event. Perhaps if I didn’t know the horrible truth of the evening, I would have written it off as just harmless press or even fun. Tonight the juxtaposition was deadly, a party for a corpse with only a few of the inner circle knowing it.
I considered turning around and going back home and jumping back under the covers. Hoping that when I woke I would find that it had all been just a nightmare. I had already loathed myself for taking a nap and knew if I chickened out of this I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the mirror.
So I pulled the car into a restaurant parking lot a few blocks away. I walked back to the theater slowly. Hoping I would enter just as the lights would go down and the film started. Was I wrong.
I was a half block from the theater when the limo pulled up. Andy got out. A couple photographers started shooting away. He stood there with his Mohawk and leather jacket. (The Mohawk was to disguise the loss of the hair from the radiation treatments.) He was a pathetic sight — frail, punked out, dying. To the crowd, though, he had it all — money, fame, notoriety. They had come to see him on film and had the bonus of now seeing him in person.
Lynne gently held his left arm, protecting it from the crowd. The cancer had eaten the bone away. It dangled lifelessly at his side. Forever useless. Her holding it would give the impression it worked. All I could think was that he’ll never play the congas again —
no more ah-be-dah-bay-
ah-be-dah-bay-
dah-bay.
I found myself running up to him, like I had countless times in the past, perhaps out of habit. When I got near, I did my best impression of being normal. “Hey, Kaufman” — like I had done countless times in the past. He spotted me and said, “Hi,” just as normally.
Then I saw Estelle [Endler]. It was the first time we had seen each other since “The Top” taping. Back then she didn’t know about Andy; now she did. Our eyes studied each other for any telltale sign. Telltale of what, I’m not sure either one of us could ever explain. Neither of us spoke a word to the other. I doubt we ever would again.
We all entered the vestibule of the theater where the crowd, now seeing him, lit up their face and stood on their toes to get a better look.
By now, friends could be seen. George Shapiro and his secretary Diane, and Linda, Andy’s secretary. Before it became more of a nightmare, the wrestler in the mask announced that the film would be startin
g shortly, so everyone should take a seat.
As everyone hustled into the theater, Kaufman was swept away in an unknown entourage. I planned on possibly standing in the back of the theater, just in case I couldn’t take any more of this. Linda, Andy’s secretary, comes up to me and asks me where I’m sitting. I tell her nowhere in particular. She said, “Great!” ‘cause I’ve got to do her a favor. Would I sit between her and her boyfriend? At first, I couldn’t understand for what reason. But she explained another boyfriend of hers would be sitting on her other side and could I be sort of a “buffer.” I never did exactly figure it out, nor cared, for that matter. But the silliness of it all momentarily caused me to escape the pain that welled in my heart.
Just then, I could hear Andy’s voice behind me. I would be sitting directly in front of him. My heart once more sank. I even wondered if Linda planned it like this, even though I knew she didn’t. Kaufman spotted me and said, “Great!” referring to my close proximity to him. Next to him was Budd Friedman and his daughter and wife. We exchanged greetings, neither one of us letting on.
Also present was Marilu Henner and a few other celebrities. Their presence there to me seemed ridiculous and insulting. Some of them who had been so unsupportive in the past now came out to support the dying man. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs: “You hypocrites! How dare you show up now?! Where were you when he needed you?” But I kept silent and could see that their presence did much to lift his spirits.
