Andy Kaufman Revealed! (11 page)

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 accepted 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.

Andy had his own form of beta-testing material: like Mr. X, Andy and I would draw from real life, or manipulate real life, then adapt the material for his use on stage. We would draw on various events, examining their value and how Andy might use them onstage. Once, years before I met him, Andy was accosted on the streets of New York by toughs who demanded his money. Foreign Man was instantly invented as a fast-thinking Andy haltingly pleaded ignorance and poverty with a thick accent, causing the thugs to abandon the pathetic little immigrant for more worthy prey. On another occasion, Andy witnessed the worst act in Las Vegas and Tony Clifton was born.

Often Andy tested material live and, occasionally, even on national television audiences. This was, to most professional entertainers, insane. When most comedians, even brilliant “extemporaneous” comics such as Robin Williams, are riffing, it is usually very carefully planned — it just looks brilliantly improvised. Going out on stage with a “concept” was terrifying at best, but that was how Andy often sought to discover what was behind the curtain, what the mystery was all about, by pushing that envelope far past his comfort level. To walk out in front of a large group of people with a carefully mapped game plan, then change it, was potential professional suicide, but Andy loved the danger and fluidity of the situation. He was not unlike a sort of behavioral scientist who would step out on stage and begin pushing buttons just to see what would happen. Though Andy was supposed to be the performer, the audience didn’t know it but Andy was really watching
them
from the stage.

As a new arrival in Hollywood Andy wanted to remain as grounded as possible and not be subject to the glittering temptations that he’d heard so much about. He rented a room in a Hollywood Mills home owned by a man named Richard and his girlfriend, who were fellow practitioners of TM. Richard was a pleasant guy who dabbled in his basement creating works of art — sculptures and whatnot. One day while Richard was out I commented to Andy about one of his pieces, a sculpture of a plastic baby, bleeding as it popped through the shattered screen of a derelict television. Andy’s off-the-cuff comment, “Oh, that’s probably just a metaphor for his life,” didn’t mean anything to me and I didn’t pursue it, but it would come to have a lot of meaning soon enough.

Andy’s obsession with studying failure — its progression, its mechanics, even its chemistry — caused him to begin formulating what he dubbed the “Has-Been Corner.” Inspired by what he saw as the caprices of fame and inevitable decline as he got the lay of Hollywood, Andy felt bringing a has-been on stage with him would be an interesting element to incorporate into his act, a subversive thought given most performers’ desperate need to keep the limelight to themselves. In what he pictured as a showcase for the once-famous, the has-beens would be sent out to flounder in front of an audience like fish in the bottom of a boat, in an attempt to regain some of their vanished fame.

Andy saw the Has-Been Corner as celebrating the entropics of a showbiz career, a decay that intrigued him more and more as he flew closer to stardom. He was fascinated by the
ideatum
of the inevitable divestment of dignity one must accept after thrusting oneself in the public eye and accepting that praise and adulation. He wanted to re-create the moment when the big karmic wheel spun around and, on the bottom of its arc, squashed the former famous person just as he or she tried to relight that torch of celebrity. Andy wanted to observe that moment. He was beginning to see the mean-spiritedness that came with fame, the quick investiture and equally quick dethronement, and he wanted, like a little kid screwing around with his chemistry set, to watch what happened when certain ingredients were mixed together. He was gripped by the state of being a has-been because, as he put it, “If it could happen to others it can happen to me.”

While we were discussing the more nihilistic aspects of the Has-Been Corner, Andy remarked offhandedly, “You know Richard’s a has-been.”

I pictured his roommate, the artist. “From what?” I inquired.

“Remember
West Side Story
?” he asked.

“Yeah …”

“He played Tony.”

“What? Like on Broadway? Or some high school production?” I said.

“No, no, he was Tony in the movie, the major motion picture with Natalie Wood.”

My face fell. I was stunned. I’d seen the movie, more than once as a matter of fact, and I hadn’t recognized Richard as Richard
Beymer.

“He had a good career going out here in Hollywood,” Andy continued, “then the bottom fell out.
West Side Story
was this huge Broadway hit, and when they decided to do the movie, instead of using the Broadway stars they cast the leads with two movie actors, Natalie Wood and Richard. When they shot the movie they lip-synched the singing, and because of that they took a rash of unkind press, especially back east. Anyway, when the dust settled, Natalie Wood survived, Richard didn’t.”

It was a sad, ugly story but Richard was not bitter, though he would caution Andy from time to time with advice like, “Watch out, Andy. Once they have no use for you they’ll discard you like an old washrag. I know. It happened to me.” Years later Richard would be cast in David Lynch’s gothic soap opera
Twin Peaks,
but until that happened his acting career was effectively over. Andy convinced Richard that he should be the first participant in the Has-Been Corner. He may have been a has-been, but Richard was also a good sport.

The West Coast Improv became Andy’s new home, and just like back in New York, Budd gave Andy free rein to experiment with an audience anytime he chose. And we did, often. Any wacky idea we had, Budd let us do it. As a run-through before working the Has-Been Corner into our television special, Andy booked Richard some stage time at the Improv. Andy came out and told a packed house he wanted to give a former star another chance, then Richard took the stage. Describing his early successes, then his last big gig as Tony in
West Side Story,
Richard held the crowd rapt as he detailed his fall from grace. “If I’d only been allowed to sing ‘Maria’ in my own voice, I would have been a star even today,” he said, wistfully.

“Richard,” prompted Andy gently from the side of the stage, “why don’t you sing it for us? Sing ‘Maria.’”

Richard seemed to demur and the crowd erupted into polite but encouraging applause. Finally acquiescing, Richard wrested the microphone from its stand as the lights went down and a single spot illuminated his face. A hush fell over the house as the familiar Leonard Bernstein/Stephen Sondheim musical strains began. “The most beautiful sound I ever heard …” Richard sang, “Mah-ree-ah …” Then it happened. Richard hit a clinker note, but continued gamely. “I just met a girl named Mah-reeah!” and another clinker. And another. The audience cringed. Richard sensed their discomfort but plunged on. Now he was dying and it was only getting worse. The crowd sat in horrified silence as the has-been proved why he was just that. Now they all knew why he’d been overdubbed in
West Side Story.

Suddenly, Richard stopped in mid-refrain. The music ground to a halt. “You’re right, Andy,” said Richard shakily through his tears, “you’re right. I am a has-been!” And with that he dropped the microphone and rushed offstage and out the door, faster than if he’d just insulted Richard Burton. The audience was stunned and embarrassed for him. Andy quietly thanked them and exited.

Outside, Andy
and
Richard shared a good laugh: the put-on had worked. Richard had died on purpose. In fact, Richard had a pretty fair singing voice and could have impressed if not wowed the club. But that wouldn’t have been fitting for a has-been. Andy was so impressed with the disturbing dynamic of Richard’s Has-Been Corner presentation that he enthusiastically pressed Richard to take the act on national television, a feat Andy could arrange through his special. In spite of his good nature, Richard could not be persuaded. A few hundred people at the Improv was one thing, but proclaiming your lameness in front of the entire country? That stretched even Richard’s sense of humor. He declined.

By July of 1977 we were ready to begin taping the special. Despite the opening joke about blowing the entire budget, there was sufficient money for Andy to fulfill two of his childhood dreams. The first was to hire Bill Bellew, Elvis Presley’s favorite costume designer, (Elvis was still with us at that point, He didn’t turn up dead in his bathroom until August 16, 1977.) Bellew crafted two Elvis outfits for Andy, identical copies of those worn by the King. Bellew even had a jarful of buttons he used on Andy’s costumes that had once been on E’s outfits but had popped off. Andy was constantly hounding Bill about what it was like to work for Elvis and one day Bill told us the secret of how he’d managed to stay costumer to a vain man whose weight varied like an overseas cargo container.