Andy Kaufman Revealed! (31 page)

Rodney was an old hipster who ran with Lenny Bruce and got what Andy was all about. Rodney’s stage persona was not unlike Foreign Man’s, in that neither got any respect. In real life, Rodney is the antithesis of his stage persona; he is extremely articulate and very, very cool. But Rodney had created a golden cage for himself over the years, and that tension between who he really was and who people thought he was tugged at him. Though Rodney often wanted to tell audiences to go fuck themselves, he couldn’t because his character was, by design, powerless. So, like hiring a hit-man, he could live vicariously through Mr. Clifton, who was guaranteed to assault anyone who dared think he was there to please.

Dangerfield’s stamp of approval on Clifton emboldened Andy’s management team, who had begun to wonder whether Tony Clifton wasn’t becoming a terrible mistake for Andy. Dangerfield’s career was undergoing a sort of rebirth with his popularity from the Miller Lite commercials, and he was finding acceptance among a younger audience. With such an endorsement, suddenly Tony Clifton — at least among the industry insiders — was seen as not only dangerous but
bookable.

Andy knew he was headed into the lions’ den. The Fillmore is a very large venue and would be full of screaming kids who were there to see Rodney, not some hack lounge singer. They’d certainly be indifferent if not downright hostile. Andy couldn’t wait. Over the years, I’ve worked with most of the top comedians, and none have exhibited the sheer confidence of Andy Kaufman. If he ever had self-doubts, they were never even remotely apparent. He always plunged ahead full steam with the unwavering conviction that he was right. It wasn’t ego or bravado, but rather the confidence of genius.

As usual, Tony Clifton’s billing made no mention of Andy. Before the show, as the place was filling, Bill Graham, impresario extraordinaire and owner of the Fillmore, stopped by to say hello. Though Graham had helped launch the careers of Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and the Grateful Dead, Andy as Tony couldn’t have cared less, and when Graham approached Tony he was soundly rebuffed by the brazen lounge indigene. Later, a spiteful Bill Graham would proclaim Tony Clifton the worst act he ever saw, worse even than the Sex Pistols, who pissed on his stage. Bill Graham may have been viewing Tony through the filter of negative emotions, because I’m surprised a guy so apparently hip could miss the point of Tony Clifton.

Finally it was show time. As the house lights dimmed I picked up a microphone offstage and announced, “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, the Fillmore is proud to present Rodney Dangerfield!” The place exploded in applause. “But first,” I continued, “before we bring out Rodney, I want to bring out our opening act!”

Now boos replaced the clapping. This was great — Tony hadn’t even stepped out on stage and they were ready to kill the opening act,
any
opening act. Tony usually had to do a lot of work to get a crowd this hostile, and here he was,
starting
with blind hatred. It was perfect.

As I stood in the wings next to Tony and George Shapiro and watched the seething mass, Rodney stepped up in his shirt and boxers (Rodney never puts on his pants until he goes onstage). He was beaming. “Go get ‘em, Tone!” he yelled. Rodney’s comment stemmed from feelings from all those years he himself wanted to squash the audience, tell them he was no loser but a real ladies’ man, a suave, sophisticated man of the world. That night, Rodney thrilled to the possibility that Tony was there to even the score for both of them.

I held the microphone close to my mouth to overwhelm the noise. “Ladies and gentlemen, please, our opening act, Tony Clifton, will not come out until all of you are silent.” The crowd answered with a chorus of boos and scattered “fuck yous” and began to chant, “Rodney! Rodney! Rodney!” Tony took the microphone from my hand and stepped out on the edge of the stage. “You may want Rodney,” he rasped, “but you’re gettin’ Tony.” The boos and hisses notched up a few levels. “Rodney’s not coming out until I perform for you first.” He waited a second, then assumed a relaxed stance. “Believe me, people, I got all night.”

The audience went insane as fights broke out between people arguing with one another about keeping quiet so they could get rid of this opening act. Tony, Rodney, George, and I thought it was hilarious — if any crowd was a Clifton crowd, this was it. Tony decided the people were “warmed up” and ready, so he hit the stage singing “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” No other song could have riled them more, particularly the way he sang it.

Tony occasionally stopped singing long enough to scream “Shut up!” After each interruption he would go back to the beginning of the song. If the audience members had been insanely mad
before
Tony sang, they were now much worse. A hail of bottles — beer, liquor, and soda — poured down on the stage and Tony had to bob and weave to avoid a beaning. “I want RESPECT!” he screamed, in a tribute to his headliner. Rodney was next to me, doubled over with laughter.

Suddenly an old man climbed onto the stage and went after Tony with a pocket knife. Security hauled him away before he could puncture Clifton. George turned to me, smiling with glee. “Great idea. When did you hire that plant?”

I looked over at George. “Never seen him before. He was for real.” George blanched. Though the knife-wielding assassin failed, the crowd still posed a threat to Tony’s well-being with the continuous storm of glass containers. Bill Graham finally ordered the curtain down fearing a direct hit might kill Tony. He ran over to Tony and apologized profusely, offering to pay in full despite Tony’s having done only three minutes of his act. George and I and Rodney laughed our heads off, and Graham walked over, completely perplexed.

“What’s so funny?” he asked. “The guy could get hurt. They hate him.”

“Bill,” I said, “that’s the point. They’re supposed to hate him, that’s his act!”

Graham looked at us like we were nuts and walked away.

The next day we heeded Graham’s concerns and went down to Fisherman’s Wharf and rented a fishing net large enough to cover the stage. It was a little insurance for Tony against the night’s bottles. By then, radio stations had gotten into the act and spread the word, so on the way to the show, many people stopped off at fruit and vegetable stands and stocked up on ammo.

That night Tony Clifton took the stage, but to the surprise of many of his hecklers he was clad head to toe in full SFPD riot gear, with a helmet protecting his noggin and his microphone attached to the full face shield. As he began to sing, produce and bottles cascaded down, so we lowered the net. That kept most projectiles from reaching Tony, although a few got through, to the delight of the audience.

When it was all over, the stage was littered with broken glass and the muck of smashed fruit and vegetables. It was a triumph for Tony Clifton. The audience had been assigned an interactive role, and they’d accepted it with zeal. Tony had come away more hated and reviled than any act either of us had ever seen — it was a stunning success. Our out-of-town opening had worked, and now we went back to Hollywood to continue our campaign to make Tony a household word, albeit a four-letter one.
Rolling Stone
helped when they ran a photo of Clifton dressed in full SFPD riot gear, singing his heart out while being pelted with debris. Taking that as a cue, I worked the Fillmore show into the Tony Clifton script for Universal.

The question most asked of me regarding Andy has been, Was he really as weird as he seemed? It sounds odd, but my knee-jerk reaction is always, “No, he was a regular guy.” At times when I’d be falling apart at the seams from one problem or another, Andy’s sound and sage advice would instantly straighten me out. But every so often, after I had concluded he was crazy like a fox, he’d do something so bizarre I would temporarily drop the fox qualification. After I had worked hard in Hollywood for a few years, and had had some good breaks, I’d accumulated enough savings to consider an investment, something to fall back on in my old age. I approached Andy, my best buddy, to see if he wanted to go in on it with me.

“I’ve found a great piece of property up in Santa Barbara. I’m thinking it’s perfect for a restaurant. I’m just thinking ahead, since I probably can’t be in this business forever.”

That statement hit Andy like a two-by-four across the face. “My god, Bob, I just realized I don’t know anything about any other business than show business.”

“Well, that’s not true,” I said, surprised at how stunned he seemed. “You’re a very smart guy, you could do anything.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know anything but performing. I’ve got no other trade.”

I felt this was a very odd thing to say, particularly for a man making a decent yearly salary
every week
in his current trade, but I humored him. “Okay, so be a restaurateur with me. We’ll have fun.”

“But I don’t know anything about the restaurant business,” he said.

“So start from the bottom up,” I countered. Then I added jokingly, “Get a job somewhere as a busboy.”

He looked at me, eyes wild and intense. “Hey, that’s not a bad idea!”

The next morning I got an excited call from him, and in the background I heard the clinking of dishes and glasses and silver-ware. I figured he was at a restaurant drinking in the vibes, pondering our foray into the business.

“I’m at the Posh Bagel,” he said. It was a place we frequented, and my girlfriend, Shelly (we got back together), worked there.
Okay,
I thought,
it’s not the type of place I had in mind for Santa Barbara, but at least he’s thinking about the investment.
Wrong.

“I’m doing what you said. I started this morning. I’m a bus-boy.”

I paused, then deadpanned, “Sure, Kaufman, that’s great. Something to fall back on, right?”

“Exactly. Listen, I gotta go, it’s my first day, and I want to make a good impression on my boss. Call you later.”

The phone went dead. I shook my head and laughed — typical Kaufman put-on. A little later Shelly called from work. “Did you know Andy was working here?”

Disbelieving it, I jumped in the stalwart Rambler Rebel — I hadn’t put a drop of oil in it in two years and it still ran like a Swiss watch — and showed up at the restaurant. Sure enough, there was Andy, cap pulled low, in glasses and an apron … busing tables. No one recognized him, and why would they? A major star cleaning up your slop? Unheard of. He spotted me and ran over, as excited as a little kid. “Thanks for the idea! I love this job!”

Though he couldn’t work a full-time schedule because of his
Taxi
duties, he did work a regular schedule of six-hour shifts. And he loved it. After Andy became established, the owner told me not only was he one of the best busboys he’d ever had, but also the rest of the staff was so pumped by his incredible work ethic that their demeanor and productivity had risen noticeably.

What prompted Andy Kaufman, television star, to take a minimum-wage schlepp job? First, Andy wasn’t joking when he told me he didn’t know what he’d do if he wasn’t in show business. And on learning there was something he could do, aside from entertain, he became almost giddy. Busing tables liberated him and yet at the same time secured his feet to the ground, for it was an experience completely antithetical to being a star. Here, on the lowest echelon of the Hollywood food chain, he could observe his world through the same eyes as when he had been delivering meat to Alan King and admiring his beer tap — yet now his view was tempered by considerable experience. By now, Andy didn’t care about beer taps; he was far past that, spiritually and politically.

Which brings me to the next reason he liked working at the Posh Bagel: Andy was a socialist. A staunch supporter of a class less society, he never looked down his nose at anyone, be they fellow busboy, street vendor, or prostitute. If the state would have subsidized his “art,” as they do in some socialist countries, he would have been completely happy. Though Andy was an exceptional intellect and no doubt had his contracts — and subsequently his earnings — explained by Shapiro/West, I really believe he didn’t have any idea how much money he had. Stanley Kaufman handled his son’s finances, essentially giving Andy an “allowance” and managing the rest. When Andy upgraded his life — a new place, a new car for Tony — Stanley released the dough to him.

Andy’s spare lifestyle could have made Gandhi look like Aristotle Onassis. His home, which he rented, was a modest, furnished two-bedroom. The place was isolated in the hills, but nothing special to look at. There weren’t many personal items in evidence, except for props from his stage show and numerous pictures of Guru Dev and the Maharishi, always with incense burning beneath them. One notable feature of his living quarters was the temperature. It was always freezing. He kept the temperature very cool, just like a TV studio … or maybe a meat locker.

Most of the times anyone visited Andy he’d be in his underwear. Of course, you always removed your shoes before entering Andy’s humble domain. You got the feeling that it wasn’t so much his home as a shrine to the Maharishi, almost as if he was trying to re-create the setting of one of his TM retreats. Occasionally, he would have a roommate, Kathy Uttman, living with him, a fellow TMer. Their relationship was nonsexual, and she contributed to the ambience of the place as a tribute to TM. Had you known nothing about Andy you might have surmised the place was the domicile of a monk, or an indoctrination center for some cosmic cult. And if you looked around you’d be further confused by the ever-present Kaufman paraphernalia: congas, wrestling mats, and, of course, Howdy Doody.

Andy owned only a few shirts, a couple pairs of pants, basic socks and underwear, a dress jacket, and a heavy coat for colder climes. Until he rented the house several years after “making it,” he had no washer and dryer and slogged down to the local Laundromat to wash his meager wardrobe. We certainly enjoyed limos and first-class seats and accommodations, but there were no personal drivers or butlers or cooks or security personnel for Andy Kaufman.

In many ways, he was an ascetic, a man who had simplified his surroundings just as he had complicated his position in the world, as well as the perceptions of most who knew his name. He feared co-option by Hollywood and in many ways went out of his way to prove he wasn’t part of it: he became a busboy, was ardently nonmaterialistic, and dated trailer trash — all designed to say,
I’m not part of Hollywood, I have not been sucked into that world!