Andy Kaufman Revealed! (16 page)
He also considered the sitcom one of the most ignoble forms of entertainment perpetrated upon modern society. Taking a job on a sitcom and cashing the paychecks was not hypocritical of him because he did acknowledge the impact sitcoms seemed to have — personally, he was just uninterested in them. He valued
Taxi
because it allowed him to explore other more interesting forms of artistic expression. As far as I know, Andy never watched one episode of
Taxi.
Neither did I. He didn’t hate sitcoms, he just felt they were unimportant. That
Taxi
earned enormous popular and critical acclaim was moot to him, mainly because it wasn’t his baby.
Cindy Williams told Andy about the time she stormed into
Laverne and Shirley
producer Garry Marshall’s office and exploded into a distraught tirade about how the scripts were silly and didn’t deal with “real issues.” The estimable Mr. Marshall, whose sister Penny played Laverne, was calmly practicing his putting. He patiently waited until she ran out of steam and then gently looked her in the eye.
“Cindy, it’s
Laverne and Shirley.
Just take the money.” Then he quietly went back to honing his green game as Cindy left, having recognized the elemental truth in his words.
It’s just a sitcom.
Cindy’s career trajectory was a constant reminder to Andy of what might await him if the siren song of television took him away from his spiritual roots. Before the debut of
Laverne and Shirley
in January 1976, Cindy had been on her way toward establishing a substantial film career. She had performed in George Cukor’s
Travels with My Aunt
in 1972, George Lucas’s block-buster
American Graffiti
in 1973, and Francis Ford Coppola’s brilliant drama
The Conversation
in 1974, where she received billing over Robert Duvall
and
Harrison Ford. Clearly she had been headed for serious stuff, but the pull of a regular gig and the larger and larger paychecks kept her imprisoned in living rooms everywhere. She hired me and another writer to flesh out an idea that she hoped would get her back into films.
Occasionally she and I would head over to Musso & Frank, Hollywood’s oldest restaurant, located right in the heart of the city, a ‘40s steak joint with brusque older waiters and generous, hand-rubbed wooden booths where you’d expect to see the ghosts of Raymond Chandler or Errol Flynn lounging. Cindy always insisted on taking my storm-tossed Rambler Rebel. She got the biggest kick out of cruising Hollywood Boulevard in that rattletrap. Her fame as Shirley caused her to be recognized everywhere, and yet she reveled in the incongruity of being seen in a fifty-dollar car. Cindy squealed with glee when people would see her, do a double take at the car, then look back at her and dismiss her as a look-alike nobody.
Like Andy, Cindy understood how fickle the public was and kept her feet firmly on the ground, holding few illusions about celebrity. That she could be so easily dismissed because her context was wrong —
that couldn’t be Cindy Williams in that piece-of-shit car
— intrigued her. I was learning that celebrity had its downside, primarily limiting one’s freedom. Celebs have far less flexibility than “civilians.” I remembered a bluntly funny quote from Dustin Hoffman in
Time
magazine back in the ‘60s when asked what he saw as some of the drawbacks of being a celebrity. His answer: “It makes it tougher to pick up hookers on Fifth Avenue.”
Unlike Mr. Hoffman, Mr. Kaufman found celebrity to be an enhancement to his sexual life by affording him hitherto unavailable opportunities to meet and date girls. Lots of girls. And as the number of his appearances on television increased, so did the number of people who recognized him and, in turn, so did the number of women who wanted to have sex with him. Once Andy had dinner with the great songwriter Sammy Cahn. Andy asked about Sammy’s illustrious career, one filled with hits and Grammys and countless accolades and, of course, lots and lots of money. “Isn’t that what it’s all about?” Andy asked. “The work? Creating all the things you have, the accomplishments?”
“The career? It’s good for one thing,” said Sammy. “You know what it all gets down to? What the notoriety and the fame are all about?”
Andy leaned in to get the meaning of life from this Yoda of twentieth-century pop music. “What?” he asked.
“Pussy!” he exclaimed. “Fame gets you better pussy, kid!”
Andy was excruciatingly shy. He just wasn’t equipped to make the small talk necessary to meet women on a normal basis. After briefly dating Cindy Williams, Andy concluded that spending time with another celebrity wasn’t going to work because he, and he alone, had to be the center of attention. Over the years I saw a host of girlfriends come and go (if you’ll forgive the pun), and generally, the most successful relationships he had were with primarily submissive women.
When Andy was around eleven or twelve his parents owned a liquor decanter in the form of a scantily clad woman striking a sexy pose. Late at night when his brother and sister and parents were asleep, Andy would remove it from its shelf and spirit it to his room, where he would slip under the bedcovers and begin furiously polishing the container with his groin. The act of sexual stimulation by rubbing against something, called frottage, was Andy’s introduction to masturbation.
Years later Andy still retained a fondness for that procedure. Various women with whom Andy was intimate told me his favorite practice was to have them lie naked and completely still in bed next to him while he ground against them. One of his better-read lovers referred to the process as exhibiting all the earmarks of mild necrophilia. Also, Andy was repulsed by any form of oral sex, both giving and receiving, which was particularly odd given alter ego Tony Clifton’s almost morbid fascination with it.
My reasons for encouraging his sexual achievements were twofold. On a practical level, because Andy required a great deal of attention from me, my own relationships suffered. I felt that if he was off somewhere ticking off his hours with a woman, then I would have more time for my own relationships. The other reason I promoted his sexual buffet was out of sheer voyeurism: I was continually dazzled by the number and quality of women who attached themselves to him. As Henry Kissinger once observed, “Power is the great aphrodisiac.”
Women who never would have given Andy Kaufman, were he a Kinko’s counterman, a second look, literally threw themselves at Andy Kaufman the celebrity. Being a hopeless romantic myself, the phenomenon often left a sour taste in my mouth and considerably reduced my respect for those ladies, but despite that, I never tired of observing the mesmerizing, ongoing socio-cultural study. Andy fully understood their motives, that they were raining their affections upon him for who he was, not what he was, so he reciprocated the exploitation. If they wanted to dabble in starfucking, Andy would give them all the help they needed — he acknowledged and respected goal orientation. As a matter of fact, Andy decided to set up an assembly line procedure to make it easier for them.
Even before the first few episodes of
Taxi
began to create a fan base for Latka Gravas, Andy had developed his own following. Andy would comb through his fan letters, discard any sent by males, and sort those sent by female admirers. If they contained photos, the images were evaluated and categorized for desirability. If the letter bore no visual evidence, Andy would send an eight-by-ten with the request, “I’m sending you a picture, perhaps you could send me one of yourself.” He also casually requested their telephone numbers.
The photos poured in, and although the bowwows went into the circular file, the more promising talents got a phone call from their hero. During the call — which all were absolutely thrilled to receive — Andy would, like any good detective or insurance investigator, ask probing questions regarding their marital or boyfriend status and their availability. Wildly flattered, all would offer him a standing invitation to visit — whether they were attached or not. The pictures became sort of a “little black book” for Andy, which he would sift through for friendly local talent when he had booked an out-of-town gig.
Hijinks
I’ve seen him be booed, I’ve seen him, with standing ovations, I’ve seen people hysterical, I’ve seen people in awe, I’ve seen people repulsed. I mean, he was incredible.
RICHARD BELZER
Not only was Andy’s stage act on the edge, but so was his personal life, I realized as we became closer. Andy was one of the most incorrigible behavioral scientists around and it was fascinating to watch as he applied his knowledge of human motivations to his own life and relationships. For one thing, he was a freethinker who never became a prisoner of love. None of his relationships with women (with the exception of Lynne Margulies) lasted long or went very deep. With his newfound fame he discovered an access to women he once only dreamed of. Living a life that would have made Hugh Hefner proud, Andy Kaufman was a cocksman of the first order. To merely say he was oversexed would do him a disservice. A lover of life, he thoroughly enjoyed every minute, and if it hadn’t been for his TM discipline I believe he would have become a total hedonist.
Yet psychologically Andy was one of the more sound people I ever met. He carried himself with a sense of great knowledge — those near him often felt that he harbored some great truth. He may well have been what Abraham Maslow referred to as the self-actualized individual. I don’t want to give the impression that he was constantly at peace, for he could erupt anytime into an uncontrollable rage at even the smallest thing. But he thoroughly enjoyed himself during those eruptions. As a matter of fact, he felt tantrums were something one should experience more of, and he encouraged others to engage in them. He could have been the poster boy for primal-scream therapy.
And if Andy couldn’t get an entire audience to walk out on him, he certainly could get a girlfriend to walk out, and on many occasions did, but not before he would provoke a screaming match between them. Screaming match or wrestling match, he loved them both and would have a hearty laugh when the fighting stopped. Andy thrived on confrontation. For a while, Andy dated a girl named Jennifer. He really knew how to push her buttons, which he did with relish. They had a number of fights that were monumental, a few of which ended in Andy calling the police to have Jennifer removed from his premises. He took great glee in recording those battles on audiotape and playing them back for others. More lessons from Mr. X?
Andy was a paradox. He could be the quintessential in-your-face guy one moment, then flip the switch and become the ultimate gentleman a moment later. He believed that to excel at the art of living a person should experience all aspects of behavior, good and bad. Once he got into a hypothetical but graphic discussion with me about what it would feel like to kill someone with your own hands. Not that Andy would have been capable of such a thing, even in self-defense, but he loved to imagine.
Andy couldn’t wait to get out of Los Angeles because the town was beginning to remind him of one thing: his growing responsibilities, which directly translated to the insidious word “work.” Just like Maynard G. Krebs from the old sitcom
The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,
Andy’s philosophy was akin to my own, that the true job in life was to have fun, and to do so required perpetual vigilance. To both of us, showbiz was nothing more than a hobby that paid well. Andy was on a sitcom that hadn’t even aired yet, but all its demanding job requirements made him feel that he might as well have been actually driving a taxi. Andy barely tolerated being the star of a sitcom, and that stemmed from a combination of many things.
First of all, the idea that someone else would put words in his mouth was foreign and uncomfortable to him. To that point, I was one of a tiny group of people ever allowed that privilege. Additionally, Foreign Man’s co-option began to stick in Andy’s craw, as if you had sold your baby into white slavery and were suddenly having second thoughts. Though Andy loved regularity, the schedule imposed on him by
Taxi
— by other people — cramped his style.
Creating the college tours was a break from the grind of churning out a sitcom every week. Andy could go to new towns, have sex with new girls, and do his act without the pressures of directors and producers and managers and the rest of the hovering horde who were now making his life their business. To Andy it was a vacation, but for me as the writer, and now producer, it turned into a hell of a lot of work.
As the producer of our road shows I had myriad duties. Aside from getting Andy to the airport on time, which was often a full-time job itself, I checked us into hotels, organized rehearsals, dicked with props (that again), went over lighting cues, planned scene and costume changes, rehearsed the band, and then conducted any last-minute radio or television interviews if we needed to enhance ticket sales. On top of that I often had to hold the promoter’s hand, and then made sure we got our check when it was all over.
Though Andy’s TM regimentation strictly forbade the use of alcohol, drugs, or even coffee, he did have one major vice: the ladies. All shapes and all sizes, all the time. As his producer, I had the job of producing them too, which I did happily. Making sure Andy had fun was my paramount consideration. I can confidently guess that in Andy’s short life he bedded at least a hundred times more women than the average male who lives to be seventy-five, thanks largely to the wrestling portion of the show.
The wrestling segments were advertised in advance with the offer “Win $500 if you can pin Andy Kaufman.” The posters or ads always stated in bold italics that all contestants must wear loose clothing. When the time for the wrestling portion of Andy’s show arrived, the band would clear the stage and the stage crew would haul out a huge wrestling mat (usually borrowed from the school’s athletic department). Next, I would come out on stage dressed as a referee, holding five crisp one-hundred-dollar bills in my hand, fanned out. I wouldn’t have to explain much as the prepublicity had always done its job. On average, fifteen to twenty girls would volunteer and come up on stage. To prove that the chosen girl wasn’t a plant, I would have the audience select the winner by applauding loudly for their favorite. Nine times out of ten they would select both the biggest and the sexiest, one as the winner and one as the runner-up.