Andy Kaufman Revealed! (20 page)

The second Ed disappeared, Tony ushered his “new friends” into the back bedroom of the motor home. In no time the Winnebago began to rock back and forth. I went outside where a small crowd of P.A.’s and various crew members had assembled out of curiosity. Drawn by rumors, the assemblage was rewarded as the huge vehicle now bobbed up and down, and given the noises from within, the reasons why were obvious.

“Is that Andy in there?” a fresh-faced kid asked.

“No,” I snapped, cloaked in my disguise, “that’s Tony Clifton, ass-wipe, and don’t you forget it!” As I walked away I thought,
Oh my god, it’s catching… I’m getting Cliftonitis.
Andy had gotten both girls to strip to their panties, and the rocking was actually caused by their energetic wrestling. The winner of the contest would, of course, get to have sex with Tony and would also receive an extra C-note for her efforts.

After I returned to the motor home, I sat down in its main room with a bottle of juice and waited for something to happen … something, that is, other than the moans of pleasure coming from the bedroom. The knocks on the outside door were drowned out by the animal screams of sexual gratification, and when I finally heard them I leaped to answer the door. I was gazing down at a very different Ed Weinberger. He looked stricken.

“I need Andy, uh, Tony on the set right away.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Ed stepped up into the unit. “Some of the cast are upset. A couple of them walked by and were appalled at what was going on in here.”

I would have given a million bucks for a tape recorder at that moment, because that last sentence would have been a highlight of Andy’s career, possibly his life. Ed, his sparkle gone, scurried away after reiterating his request that I rouse Tony ASAP. I tapped lightly on the door, but Tony, like a dog in the act, would have none of my interruptions, and I certainly understood his position (or positions). Here he was, at high noon on another perfect day in L.A., nailin’ two gorgeous bimbos, all on the nickel of Paramount Pictures’ television division, and there wasn’t a goddamn thing anyone could do to stop him. Man,
this
was the golden age of Hollywood.

Meanwhile, everyone on the set cooled their heels as Tony Clifton finished his “staff meeting.” When Tony finally walked onto the set, his flossy arm pieces caused nearly as much shock as did his total lack of resemblance to Andy. It turns out I was wrong about the girls, whom I thought were simply prostitutes. In reality, they were prostitutes but also aspiring actresses. Silly me. They were only hooking until they got their big breaks as actresses, so of course Tony had sweetened the deal with them by offering them speaking parts in the episode. So enthusiastic were they at the opportunity to be in such an important production, they momentarily lost their heads and reverted to their hooker roles, offering to service Tony Danza for free while they were at it. Tony Clifton never passed on that offer to Danza, saying, “You dames are all mine, and don’t you forget it!”

Ed Weinberger, gentleman that he is, introduced Tony, as well as “Buffy” and “Candy,” to the cast. Tony had the girls pass out little mechanical toys, windup dogs that went
woof, woof
when activated. The cast had been forced to wait an hour while Clifton got his rocks off, and you could feel the anger boiling up in Judd Hirsch and Jeff Conaway as the Clifton circus strengthened its hold over the set of
Taxi.

Judd and Andy had a rivalry stemming from the initial contracts regarding the show, when each was told separately that he was to be the primary star of the show. Andy didn’t give a rat’s ass who got the billing, but it gnawed at Judd Hirsch. Danny De-Vito, on the other hand, was one of the coolest members of the cast and loved every minute of Kaufman’s antics.

The script read-through didn’t go well, with Tony either fumbling his lines or stopping to ad-lib dialogue. When he began inventing lines for his two protégées, who were by then seated on each of his knees, the situation came to a head. As the girls uttered such Clifton improvisations as “Tony, you’re the greatest,” and the equally trenchant “Tony puts other men to shame,” the mood of the room cut to black. But Tony had not found his way to the powder keg with his lit match — that is, until he began to change Judd Hirsch’s dialogue. It was just the button Tony had been looking for.

Judd Hirsch leaped up and yelled, “Okay, that’s it, this is bull-shit!” Stepping away from the table, Judd leveled his considerable gaze at Ed and Jim Brooks. “Either he leaves or I do!” and with that he walked away. Tony Danza ran off to get his super-8 camera, convinced a melee was about to occur. Wisely, Ed suggested the rehearsal be canceled. The cast stood up, looking slightly shell-shocked. As Jeff Conaway stormed off in a rage, he hurled his woofing dog into the wall.

I accompanied Tony and the girls back to the Winnebago. Soon, Ed arrived at the door of the motor home and asked to speak with Tony alone.

“Girls,” Tony motioned, “take a hike for a minute. But Zmuda stays.”

The fact that he called me Zmuda indicated that Andy was back. Tony would have called me Bugsy. As the girls closed the door, Andy dropped the Clifton persona.

“Are they freaking out?” he asked Ed.

“Judd is calling his manager,” he answered.

Andy guffawed. “Oh, this is great! I’m surprised they put up with Clifton as long as they did.”

“Andy,” said Ed gravely, “I gotta pull the plug on this. I’ve got to fire Tony.”

Andy held up his hand in accord. “Don’t worry, I agree, but just do me one last favor. Announce you’ve fired me, but I’ll come back tomorrow, and I want you to have security throw me out, bodily.”

Ed was confused, trying to follow his star’s perverse request. “Why?”

“I want Tony Clifton to be bodily removed from every major motion-picture studio in Hollywood,” was his proud answer.

Ed shrugged. “Okay, I’ll have security throw you out.”

Andy nodded. “Great!”

The next morning we arrived at the gate with our female escorts from the previous day. Tony bullied his way in, and we went over to the set. They already had a new actor to replace Tony. Within five minutes Tony was in a shouting match with Judd Hirsch. Security arrived just in the nick of time. A guard on either side of Tony Clifton grabbed him by the arms and, amid a stream of foul-mouthed invective, hauled him back to the gate and threw him off the lot.

Of course we had an
L.A. Times
writer named Bill Knoedelseder present and his story ended up in the paper the next day accompanied by a photo. Andy was outraged the
Times
had been naming him as the éminence grise behind Tony Clifton. He fired off an indignant letter to set them straight, claiming he merely did an
impression
of Tony Clifton, who was a real person, just as he did an impression of another real person, Elvis, but he was, quite obviously, neither Tony nor Elvis. They published that letter as well as the one sent by Tony Clifton claiming that he was most definitely
not
Andy Kaufman and that in fact Kaufman was just riding his coattails by using his good name to try to get places. The circus continued.

Unfortunately for our hooker-actresses, they were not mentioned in the article. Norman Mailer once said, “If a hooker can’t fall in love with her customer, what chance has she?” With Andy the reverse was true. Andy rarely met a woman he didn’t fall for, and women generally loved Andy. But Andy began dating one of the two hookers from the
Taxi
stunt, which included dinners and various outings. But when they didn’t have sex he didn’t feel the need to pay her. After a while she tired of his unpaid attentions and changed her phone number.

Tony Clifton was Andy’s new ticket out of town, his next major leap in reshuffling the showbiz deck. Andy was working to reinvent the rules of engagement for performers: the audience doesn’t have to like you, and you don’t have to be funny … just interesting. With Clifton, that conceit went even further: you could be downright
bad.

Failure and perceived mediocrity were concepts Andy toyed with his entire career. Andy’s anchor character, Foreign Man, was a lovable schlemiel, a failure. Now came Clifton like an evil superhero, energized with the red kryptonite of excess and ego and over-the-top bravado that Andy as Andy could never summon. Clifton’s style was not to entertain but to provoke, and his goal was not to be applauded off the stage but physically removed. Andy was getting into deeper waters by pushing audiences to reject him, but in some ways it was almost a compulsion, sort of like the murderer who cries,
Stop me before I kill again!

Foreign Man had become too familiar and too acceptable, so Tony was reborn to carry on the tradition of dereliction of talent. In Tony, Andy had contrived the foolproof act. He would no longer be constrained by the faint tugs of concern about success on Stage. Now his act was that in failure he would achieve success. No audience or critic could second guess him; he had just figured out how to beat the house at their own game.

Though I’m sure my role in the Clifton fiasco on the set of
Taxi
had nothing to do with it, after a few months had passed, George Shapiro got a call. He called Andy.

“They don’t want Bob on the set anymore,” said George.

“Why not?” asked Andy. “He’s my friend, he can come if I want.”

“They seem to think he’s a distraction,” replied George. “It wasn’t really a request.”

My being 86ed from
Taxi
hit Andy a lot harder than it did me. I knew my presence had worn thin with the producers. It was actually a relief for me and gave me a lot more time to pursue other activities and jobs. For Andy it meant he had to face his job sans his playmate, and that wiped out most of what little joy he derived from doing the show. Andy was really an outsider on the set. On Fridays when the cast and crew wrapped the show, they would party until all hours. That occurred every week and Andy never joined in, preferring to drive the fifteen minutes home to meditate or entertain a female acquaintance. When the occasion once arose that one of those young ladies was my ex-wife, it afforded me the perfect opportunity to pull off a prank on Kaufman.

My ex-wife, Brenda, came out to L.A. in late 1978. Shelly and I were moving, so she took over our old place. During this time I noticed Andy had developed an eye for Brenda. I knew by his hints that he was attracted to her and wanted to ask her out but feared I might disapprove of the courtship. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Over the years as Brenda and I grew apart we occasionally set each other up with dates. But that was something Andy was never aware of, for he and I never discussed it.

One day he approached me and, after figuratively digging his toe in the dirt, finally asked, “Do you mind if I asked Brenda out?”

“No, of course not,” I said, playing the courtly former spouse. “I think that’s a good idea, Brenda’s a great girl, you two would get along great.”

I made it a point not to discuss any son of sexual development that might occur nor did Andy intimate such a possibility. But I knew Andy. That night they went out and the next day I spoke with Brenda by phone. After the niceties I bottom-lined it. “So, did you sleep with him?”

There was a slight pause, as Brenda, a proper lady, mulled her answer. But there was just too much between us to be coy. “Yeah,” she said slowly, “yeah we did. Why?”

“Uh, no reason, just thought I might mess with him. Don’t let him know I know just yet.”

I figured Andy’s guilt would eventually get to him and I’d be able to read it all over his face or in his voice. It wasn’t long before he called. I answered the phone in an
almost
overly chipper voice — all the better for contrast.

“Hello!” I said.

“Hey, Zmuda.”

My cheery inflection crashed. “Oh … hi.” I’d plummeted from top-of-the-mornin’ to sullen and withdrawn in two words. I could hear his heart stop. “Listen,” I said curtly, “I gotta go, I got something going here. I’ll talk to you later.”

I might as well have told him I hated him. His voice dropped to a frightened whisper. “Uh, okay, I’ll talk to you later.”

I hung up without saying good-bye. He was mortified as well as terrified our friendship was over because of a woman. I immediately called Brenda and told her to play along and that she could now tell Andy she “admitted” to me what had happened between them and that I hadn’t taken it well. Andy called her not long after, and she did her part. Now I had him by the balls.

My phone began ringing every ten minutes, and to heighten Andy’s distress, I carefully avoided answering it. He didn’t want to come over and confront me for fear of what I might do. I loved that he was sweating bullets — the prince of jokers was now unknowingly the butt of one. Finally, when I guessed he was ready to crack I picked up the phone.

“You’re there,” he said, taken aback that I answered. “I, uh, wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Yeah,” I said darkly, “I’d like to talk to you, too, Kaufman.”

“How ‘bout Cantor’s?” he said, suggesting one of our favorite late-night eateries.

“No,” I said. “It’d be better outside, a place near you,” I said mysteriously. “Let’s go to that park on Franklin, just before Highland. Half an hour.”

Though he agreed because he was the one sucking up, I knew his suspicions were rampant as to why I wanted to meet in a dark, deserted park around midnight. I made sure I arrived at the park before he did. Dressed forebodingly in a long trench coat, leather gloves, and a stocking cap pulled down around my ears, I found a big tree to hide behind. Then I waited.

Andy showed up. I kept out of sight as I watched him wander warily around, looking for me. As he glanced nervously at his watch I pulled back and bit my tongue to stifle a laugh. The moment was beautiful: here was Andy Kaufman in a very rare moment of total vulnerability. After I felt he’d sweated long enough, I stepped out from behind the tree.

He saw me and as he automatically started to move toward me he looked into my eyes and they were cold as ice, a stare one gives a soon-to-be-dead man. His eyes bounced to the menacing bulge in the pocket of my coat where my hand was … a
gun barrel!