Andy Kaufman Revealed! (22 page)

Authors: Bob Zmuda

Tags: #BIO005000

BOOK: Andy Kaufman Revealed!

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“When I was a young boy,” Andy began, as he addressed the Carnegie audience that night after the boffo opening, “I’d tell my Grandma Pearl, who I love more than anything, that someday her little Andy would be famous and he’d be here, at Carnegie Hall. And I told her when I was, I’d give her the best seat in the house. Well, here I am …,” and with that a little old lady walked out onstage, “and this is my Grandma Pearl.”

She and Andy had a heartwarming hug, and the audience went wild. “I said I’d make good on my promise, so I had her flown in from Florida. But you need a place to sit, don’t you, Grandma?”

The frail oldster nodded, whereupon Andy gestured and two Mayflower moving men leaped from the wings bearing a frilly couch. They set it at the edge of the stage. “I also had your sofa flown in and it is now the best seat in the house.”

It was a warm fuzzy moment and everyone in the place could see the pride on that little lady’s face as she gazed adoringly at her Andy. Grandma watched the entire show from her sofa, and in the end, as at the Huntington, we brought out the Rockettes and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. As the snow once again began falling, and just before he invited the audience out for milk and cookies, Andy coaxed Grandma Pearl to take a bow.

Her ancient, tortured joints forced her to rise ever so slowly, and then she ambled over to the footlights. Gingerly bending her sore old back she took a long bow, and as the audience’s warm applause encouraged her, suddenly, in one incredible, lightning gesture, she pulled off her wig and sent it flying into the front row. Then, peeling back her face, she revealed to all that she was really Robin Williams! This was Robin’s first rough sketch of what would eventually become his brilliant character in
Mrs. Doubtfire.

Once again, we did the milk-and-cookies run, only this time it required 35 buses and four months of clearing red tape with the city of New York to get a permit to do so. For this incarnation of “Milk & Cookies” we hired magicians, sword swallowers, midgets, and fire eaters. We tried to find Turko the Half Man from our childhoods, but to our great disappointment, he had apparently passed on to that great sideshow in the sky. I guess as a half man you only got a half life in the bargain.

During the cookie-and-milk festivities, Andy made an offer to wrestle any woman in the house. Women began lining up, and the party continued unabated until I finally looked at my watch and was alarmed to see we were just passing 1
A.M.
Fearing the awaiting bus drivers would soon be into some healthy overtime that could put the hurt on Andy’s checkbook, I plowed my way through the partyers and whispered my concerns to him.

“What should we do?” he asked, surrounded as we were by a revelry with no apparent end in sight.

“Tell them to go home and get some sleep because the show will continue tomorrow morning at eight-thirty on the Staten Island ferry.”

“Really?” said Andy innocently.

“Christ, Kaufman, I don’t know, just say something, we need to get out of here!”

Andy repeated exactly what I’d said, and in no time the obedient crowd dispersed. When I got back to the hotel and hit the sack after a week of day and night preparations for the show, the last thing I wanted to do was get up at 8
A.M.
Besides, I’d gotten lucky, and one of the Rockettes was slumbering next to me, having demonstrated into the wee hours how limber dancers really are.

At precisely eight o’clock my phone began ringing. I ignored three or four rings, and whoever it was gave up. I went back to sleep, and five minutes later there was a hard knocking at my door. I staggered out of bed and found Andy all bundled up and ready to go.

“Oh God, now what is it?” I said impatiently.

“Do you think anybody took us seriously?”

“About… ?” It was early and the notion anyone took us seriously about anything tasked my brain too much.

“About the ferry. Do you think anyone really went down to the Staten Island ferry?”

“No way,” I said, but doubt instantly began forming. “They all knew it was a joke. Sure. Go back to sleep.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah, absolutely, no one believed us.”

“I was just worried,” he said, then turned to leave. “Okay, you’re right.”

As he moved off down the hall I pictured the dock and that one lone, trusting fan standing there. I shook my head. “Shit…”

Andy turned. “What?”

“All right, let’s go.”

I left a note for the Rockette to stay put, and then Andy and I jumped in a cab.

“Staten Island ferry,” I ordered the driver.

As we arrived at the ferry dock on the south tip of Manhattan we were stunned to see a crowd of about three hundred milling around — all familiar faces from the night before. In an instant, Andy and I were close to tears because our audience had thought enough of Andy to pull one over on him. A cheer went up as we alighted from the hack. Andy waded to the front of the group and bought tickets for all, then once aboard, treated everyone to ice cream. On the trip to Staten Island, Andy again made his offer to wrestle any of the ladies, so right there on the deck he took on five going and four more coming back.

And the Rockette was still there when I returned.

For the next few days we hung out in the city, basking in the glow of having just blown the lid off the place. Overnight, Andy became the talk of the town after our Carnegie Hall show rippled out as the cause célèbre of Gotham’s trendy entertainment scene. People of all walks of life suddenly wanted to meet Andy.

One afternoon we were crossing Fifth Avenue, and a guy approached us and asked for Andy’s autograph. Andy was always obliging, almost too much so. Then the man made an odd request. “Listen, Mr. Kaufman, Andy, my wife is your biggest fan, she loves you, and, uh, well, we only live a few blocks away and I was wondering if you’d wait a minute until I went and got her? She’d kill me if I didn’t.”

I couldn’t believe my ears and looked to Kaufman to blow this clown off. I was even more stupefied when he said, “Sure, go get her. We’ll wait.”

As the guy ran off, I said, “What are you thinking? We’re just gonna stand here?”

“Zmuda, c’mon, this guy’s a fan,” he said instructively. “It’s my fans who’ve made me what I am. That’s the difference between me and other celebrities. See, I remember that.”

Okay,
I thought,
that Kaufman head is swelling again and I need to lower the air pressure inside.
I decided to bide my time. After forty interminable minutes the guy returned, this time with his starstruck wife in tow. Now, more than ever, I wanted to get even with Andy for making me wait. I saw my opportunity to pounce and very loudly announced, “You see, that’s the difference between Andy Kaufman and other celebrities. He knows it’s the fans who made him what he is today.”

Andy immediately realized where I was going and shot me a look, but the fuse was lit and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do. As a crowd gathered I continued, laying it on with a trowel. “That’s right. Kaufman knows it’s fans like yourselves that have made him a star!”

After a few moments doing my best sideshow barker, enough people had assembled that I felt it was time to sink the knife. “As a matter of fact,” I roared, pointing at the original couple, “I think you, Andy, should take this lovely couple out to dinner!”

Our small curbside audience registered their approval with whistles and applause, but the husband was reluctant. “Oh, you don’t have to do that, Andy.”

“Nonsense!” I said. “He wants to, believe me, he does! Don’t you, Andy?”

He was on the spot. I’d served him back his words as an hors d’oeuvre.

“Yeah, sure, I’d love to,” he said, giving me the glance of death. After politely declining the trio’s invitation to accompany them by saying it was best Andy commune with his public alone, I chuckled to myself as the big-shot celebrity and his new friends went off down the sidewalk in search of an eatery.

The next night we went out to dine in a fashionable restaurant and concluded it was time for a little bit of our patented mischief. When the waiter arrived at our table, he took one look at Andy and was instantly repulsed by the massive ball of snot hanging from his left nostril. Of course he was too embarrassed to say anything and averted his eyes as Andy ordered his salad. When I lowered my menu, the young aspiring actor nearly dropped his order pad when he zeroed in on the king-size booger cantilevered from my own snot locker. He blanched, then reflexively looked hack at Andy, who now had monumental green chunks of solidified mucus poised under
both
nose holes. Then the kid got it and started laughing, so we removed the bogus boogers and laughed with him. Andy never left home without fake snot in his pocket.

We returned to Hollywood, and Andy began working on his first feature film,
In God We Tru$t.
It was a small but flashy role, and best of all he was to act opposite Richard Pryor. British comedian Marty Feldman (another Shapiro/West client) had sent Andy a warm letter some months earlier asking him if he would do him the honor of appearing in a film he had written and was planning to direct. Andy was more than happy to oblige and was assigned the character of Armageddon T. Thunderbird, a bombastic televangelist.

The film debuted in 1980 and bombed, and poor Marty Feldman’s heart also failed, less than two years later. And though the lack of success of that film didn’t hurt Andy’s chances in Hollywood, his next picture would be critical. Hollywood has a frightening habit of branding one “not movie material” on a second strike that can kill or severely hinder a career. Despite his seemingly anti-Hollywood leanings, Andy did one day want to succeed in the movies. He would get another chance in two years.

Mustang Sally

I said, “This man is outta his mind.” But I dug it because I said, “This man shows there are no boundaries.”

SINBAD

After Andy’s ninety-minute special aired, on August 28, 1979, Andy was as hot as he’d ever been. As his writer, I was the beneficiary of his success. Outside the industry’s tight inner circle my abilities were unknown, but in the minds of the right people I was developing a rep as a very savvy and creative writer, the man behind the maniac. Of course, we had to keep my role semi-classified; after all, how could such a fluid talent, such an iconoclast, have a writer? That illusion was our carefully guarded secret. To the public, we worked hard to promulgate the notion that Andy Kaufman would never use a writer.
Writers? Writers? He don’t need no stinkin’ writers.

Sure, yeah, absolutely.