Andy Kaufman Revealed! (15 page)

Taxi
was scheduled to begin production on July 5, 1978. Andy saw that date as equivalent to the date the draft board had given Elvis twenty-some years prior. Andy’s recent proximity to the Elvis iconography had him fishing for parallels, and this was one that seemed to scream in similarity. He sensed the impending dissolution of his purity as an artist and decided something must be done in advance of the systemic poison called television sitcoms. Andy decided he would figuratively and literally rise above the coming onslaught. One day he made an announcement to me.

“You’re what?” I said, assuming it was a typical Kaufman put-on.

“You heard me. I’m going to levitate,” he said in all seriousness.

“As in ‘fly’?”

“No. Levitate. It’s different,” he assured me. “Here, look.”

He thrust a
Time
magazine article at me that reported on the recent phenomenon wherein devout practitioners of transcendental meditation were flocking to a retreat in Switzerland to become adept at the “ancient” art of levitation. The article featured a photo of several TM devotees pretzeled into lotus positions and floating two feet off their carpets.

“That’s total bullshit,” I said. “No way anyone can float. C’mon, Andy, there’s just no way anyone can do this. These photos are doctored.”

“No, they’re not,” he said defensively, flipping the magazine shut. “It’s true.” He spoke with the same defiant conviction a little kid would use in defending the existence of Santa.

“You’re gonna learn to fly?”

“No, Zmuda,
levitate.
I will,” he insisted. “I’ve talked to other TMers who’ve been to Switzerland. They’ve taken the course, it’s eight weeks, and they can do it — they can levitate.”

My eyes betrayed my complete skepticism.

“Listen,” he continued, “that these photos were leaked to
Time
really upset everyone in the movement because now it’s only a matter of time before the CIA gets hold of that ability and misuses it.”

I heard an echo of Mr. X. “CIA?” I asked.

“Yeah. Of course. Don’t you see? They’ll close us down soon and steal the process, so I have to go before
Taxi
starts. I’ll be back in two months.”

“Andy?” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder. “This I gotta see.”

He truly believed that he would be able to levitate when he returned from Switzerland. They say that con men themselves are the biggest saps for a con, and that was a quality that really endeared Andy to me: wickedly smart yet wildly gullible. Later I took another look at the
Time
article and had to ask myself,
Could this be true?
After all, I really did hear those voices in San Diego. The story out of Switzerland soon became the talk of the fad-embracing entertainment industry, and as time went by my mind expanded to the possibilities. As I drove Andy to the airport, I casually noted, “You know, you could have saved yourself some money on that plane ticket.”

Andy looked over naively. “Yeah? How’s that?”

“Well,” I continued, trying to keep a straight face, “you really only needed a one-way ticket. I figured you could levitate home.”

Patiently, as if instructing a child, Andy said, “Look, I know you don’t believe this, but it’s true, I’ll be able to levitate when I get back. You’ll eat your words, Zmuda. I’m serious, I guarantee it.” He continued, “I’m going to ask the Maharishi for permission to use levitation at the Huntington show.”

We were planning a big show late in the fall at the Huntington Hartford Theater in Hollywood. We expected a house of a few thousand people. “You’re going to levitate? What, over the audience?” I asked.

“Yeah, exactly. That is, if the Maharishi lets me. It would he the first commercial application of levitation ever. It would be great for the TM movement.”

Bidding Kaufman good-bye was a relief. As much as I cared for him, baby-sitting Andy had become a full-time occupation. I was beginning to see why George Shapiro had been so relieved when I came to town. As his plane taxied away from the terminal the producer in me began to fantasize over the theatrical potential of a transcendent Andy Kaufman in concert, scrunched into a lotus position, an air of total bliss over his face as he drifted like a leaf in the wind over our open-mouthed audience. I pictured the headlines in the
Los Angeles Times, Newsweek,
and
Variety,
then the interviews Andy would do with David Frost and Barbara Walters. I visualized a pay-per-view deal that would leave Don King jealous. I started figuring the legal exigencies of lifting the pitch line from the Superman movies:
“You will believe a man can fly.”
The whole thing was a done deal in my mind before I reached the airport parking lot. Now if only the Maharishi would buy the pitch. I crossed my fingers. Then I pinched myself.
Wait a second, people can’t levitate!
I realized I was hanging around Kaufman too much. Then I flashed back to my psychic “summons” in San Diego and thought,
But I’ll be damned if I can explain that voice.

No sooner had Andy left than a struggling young comedian named Steve Lubetkin planned some levitation of his own. What Steve Lubetkin did one night in West Hollywood inspired a change in the comedy business that would affect all working co-medians, including Andy. Steve motored to the Hyatt on Sunset, parked his car, and rode the elevator to the fourteenth floor. From there he took the stairs to the next level, the roof, and sized up his target below. Taking a run at it, he leaped and tried to will himself to land in front of the Comedy Store. Sadly, Steve missed by a few yards, landing unceremoniously in the parking lot, but his futile gesture did not go unnoticed. A note pinned to his shattered, bloody body read: “My name is Steve Lubetkin. I used to work at the Comedy Store.” That said it all.

What Steve was protesting in his stylish but rather final way became the genesis of a debate that marked the darkest days in American humor, a rising of bad blood that would come to be known as the comedy wars. The martyrdom of Steve Lubetkin served as both a rallying incident and a metaphor for the ills of working comedians everywhere. Though they were paid for television and most other appearances, up to that point comedians had never been paid for their bread-and-butter performances, those at the clubs. That 98 percent of working comics never saw a television studio or paid venue meant that most plied their trade for free. Thus the two most important clubs in the business, the Improv and the Comedy Store, became the enemy to many young comics. In no time, lines of conflict were drawn that would rival those of the Civil War in acrimony.

The top comedians of the time were involved: Robin Williams, Elayne Boosler, David Letterman, Garry Shandling, and Tom Dreesen. A young Jay Leno headed the strike committee and, to show he meant business, sported a Fidel Castro beard and menacing military fatigues. As a battle cry, “Remember Steve Lubetkin!” didn’t have quite the pith of “Remember the Maine!” or “Give me liberty or give me death!” but the sentiment was the same. And when comedians chose sides Andy fell onto the side of the club owners.

Andy didn’t want to get paid by either the Improv or the Comedy Store or any other club. His rationale was simple: as soon as they pay they can expect every set to be a killer. Andy loved to experiment with such esoteric routines as eating a bowl of potatoes on stage or curling up into a sleeping bag for a twenty-minute siesta while a perplexed audience looked on. If he started taking money his employers would in turn demand conventional entertainment, which could severely inhibit his style. Andy’s point was valid, for getting paid would have affected his freedom to investigate the bounds of comedy (and frequently audience tolerance), which was an essential part of his career tactics. But there were uncounted struggling comedians who did not have the benefit of numerous paid bookings and the promise of a television job that would yield hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

Fortunately, Andy never suffered retribution for his position; he was considered an anomaly, even in a business populated by so many free-spirited rationalists. Since Andy’s point of view was unique — he was seen as existing within his own bubble and not really as a working-class comic — his position allowed him tacit dispensation from the body politic of the cause. Deep inside, many comics realized they were just that,
comics
, whereas Andy was in his own league, a Copernicus of comedy who arrived on the scene spouting the outrageous concepts that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the solar system and that as a comedian one does not always need to be funny. Interesting, yes, but funny? … not necessarily.

The comedy-club owners eventually caved and started paying their comics, but the comedy wars ended the careers of many aspiring and worthy jokesters before they really got started. It was the intrusion of the hardest aspects of serious
business
that killed an innocence and spontaneity that had existed until then. Some of the old animosities survive to this day.

By the early ‘80s comedy had become a legitimate career path. The next generation of comics sprouted, bloomed, and thrived from the mulch of the Steve Lubetkins — most of them unknowingly.

Eventually Andy would begin exploration of another seditious notion, that whether or not the audience liked you was unimportant. If one were to transmute the old shopkeeper’s saw, “The customer is always right,” to showbiz terms and then Kaufmanize it, Andy’s new apothegm would be “Fuck the customer.” It’s not that Andy disliked his audiences; on the contrary, he loved them, but he sought to redefine the relationship between a performer and the crowd before whom he or she stood. Andy’s goal was to foster an environment where neither the audience nor the performer had any expectations from one another. That sounds impractical, if not ridiculous — entertainers
entertain
— but on many occasions I saw Andy take the stage to face a happily expectant group only to leave them irritated, confused, angry, even infuriated. But never, ever bored. Even after he broomed the Improv with the full Gatsby routine, people returned to see what Kaufman was going to do next.

When Andy arrived home from Switzerland I patiently awaited his proud phone call whereupon I planned to invite him over so he could levitate around my place. I fantasized him floating from room to room with me running behind screaming, “Holy shit, Kaufman, you did it! You’re flying!” and he’d be correcting me on the fly, “No, Zmuda, I’m
levitating.
” But his call never came. After a few days of his avoiding my calls with abrupt “
I can’t talk nows,
” I went over to his house and knocked on the door. When he opened it I didn’t even say hello, I just got to the point. “Can you or can you not levitate?”

He exhaled a deep sigh and stepped back, so I entered. “Well? Can you?” I persisted.

“No,” he said, avoiding eye contact.

“See,” I exploded, “it was a bunch of bullshit!”

“No, it really isn’t,” he said calmly.

“Andy, Andy, Andy, why the hell do you give those people your money?”

“Bob, listen, it’s not bullshit. It’s true, people can really levitate. I could levitate.” What he said next stunned me because of the complete conviction with which he said it. “I could levitate, really I could, but I choose not to. It’s that simple.”

“Wait a second, you’re telling me you now choose not to? Two months ago you flew halfway around the world to learn how to levitate and now you’re saying you don’t want to? I smell bullshit.”

“No, look,” he said, “the thing is, I could do it, but the process requires you to purify yourself for a year. I choose not to purify myself that way for a year. That’s all.”

“Purify yourself? How?”

“They told me that to purify myself I’d have to be celibate for more than a year.”

I broke into hysterics. “Celibate!?” When I caught my breath I said, “Kaufman, you are the most gullible son of a bitch I’ve ever met! Celibate for a year? I can’t believe that shit! That’s hilarious!”

Andy shrugged, not finding the humor. “Well, it’s true,” he said, like a hurt little kid who needed the last word. “I just choose not to.” The whole thing was pure Andy: one day he’s Tony Clifton, the next day Pinocchio.

Now back from his flirtation with levitation in Switzerland, Andy had to prepare for that new aspect of his career,
Taxi.
After his brush with wingless flight and our antics on
Bananaz,
the prospect of doing something as controlled as a sitcom was as boring to Andy as Dr. Zmudee’s theory of psychogenesis was to those kids. Despite his often childlike demeanor, Andy was almost overly purposeful and couldn’t stand sitting still for any period. Consequently he had George Shapiro negotiate what amounted to an anticontract — in Hollywood terms — for his part in
Taxi.
Andy demanded the unprecedented: less participation.

In a town where people cut others’ throats for an extra two minutes of screen time, Andy had George work out a deal with the
Taxi
producers, Jim Brooks and Ed Weinberger, that actually minimized his role. Andy was required to appear in only thirteen of the twenty-two episodes that first year, and he would be available only two days a week, instead of the typical five. In a business driven by egos, his behavior before the series even began was unheard of. Asking for a smaller role?
What the hell was with this Kaufman guy?
the rest of the cast wondered.

Andy was to play a sweet, naive immigrant from someplace similar to Caspiar. Foreign Man, having been acquired by the producers, was born again and rechristened Latka Gravas, now the house mechanic of the Sunshine Cab Company. But if you had gone to the set in those days, most of the time you would have seen a black man in Andy’s stead, a stand-in for camera blocking. The rest of the cast, Judd Hirsch, Tony Danza, Danny De Vito, Marilu Henner, Jeff Conaway, and Randy Carver, were required to be there. Andy contracted for and devoted to
Taxi
exactly what he felt it required of him — no more, no less.

Being excused from most of what was perceived as the normal workload created some friction between Andy and the rest of the cast. But if you ask any of them today they will tell you that only one actor in the cast
never
fluffed a line: Andy Kaufman. Though he was rarely there, and when he was he often meditated off set, the moment he stepped in front of the camera he was a consummate pro. It helped having a photographic memory, a quality most never knew Andy possessed. Andy’s diminished presence was not the behavior of a prima donna, but rather was based on the precise calculation of an extremely goal-driven man of how much of his time this particular project deserved. In retrospect, it’s almost as if Andy somehow knew his clock was ticking down and had a lot less digits left than did most others.