As we drew close to air, and Andy conveniently sequestered himself in his meditation mode with the standard “Don’t bother me” warning, Lorne called me into his office to lay down the law.
“I’m cutting Rogers,” he said. “My back’s against the wall for time and I feel his contribution is not that strong. Please coordinate this with Andy.”
“I’ll tell Andy, but I won’t make any guarantees. The man is Andy’s idol,” I countered.
“Bob, believe me when I tell you this is not negotiable. Cut Rogers.”
I left his office with the sound of a ticking bomb in my head. Lorne Michaels had not yet learned that no one tells Andy Kaufman what to do. I also knew that Andy had worked closely with Buddy on the lines we’d written him and would not take kindly to last minute meddling — even from the executive producer. Andy had a deep desire to provide Buddy a few moments of nationally televised glory as partial payback for all the years of pleasure and instruction Buddy had given Andy as a kid. And Buddy not only had been Andy’s spiritual advisor for years before they met, but also had coached another athlete, by the name of Muhammad Ali. Both Andy and Ali had borrowed the famous gesture — when they would point at their heads and say, “I got the brains” — from Mr. Rogers.
Moments before our sketch, I relayed Lorne’s demand to Andy, who heard my words but proceeded to stare right through me. Whether he was still in a transcendent state or was going into a stubborn mode I’m not sure, but he said nothing to Buddy. Andy’s friend and now coach was a VIP and was going to get the respect he deserved whether Lorne liked it or not.
When the prelim for the match began, with Andy and Buddy speaking on camera, I watched Lorne in the wings, arms folded, eyes narrowed. As Buddy droned on and on, I could as much as see the steam venting from Lorne’s ears. As soon as the Mr. Bill window slammed shut from Buddy’s inexhaustible verbiage, Lorne stormed out. Then the fun began.
As I helped Andy in his corner while his foe warmed up, he leaned close and whispered, indicating the barber, “Whatever happens, that man ain’t shavin’ me bald!” It may have been too late for that sentiment because, in the interest of further showmanship, I had brazenly announced that two large security guards would be retained to prevent Kaufman from beating a hasty exit should he lose.
I eyed the burly men who eyed Andy. “Just don’t lose,” I said.
Then the match commenced. As the ref, I circled the ring with the two and could see Andy was in no mood to try to pick this girl up, as she had a good chance of winning. With his hair at stake, Andy locked horns with the young woman with a vengeance and they fell to the mat, the crowd screaming for his blood. Andy had gone out of his way to get the studio audience against him and had been very successful in that.
After a few flips that didn’t look good for Andy, suddenly he reversed on her, got her on her back, and
boom, boom, boom,
I slapped the mat. Andy leaped to his feet, the winner. The looks of astonishment on the girl and her Olympic-coach father were priceless. Buddy was grinning like the cat who ate the canary, for his pupil had listened well. It was then that I realized the match had been not between Andy and the girl, but between Buddy and the dad: real wrestling versus lake wrestling. The girl’s dad held people like Buddy Rogers in contempt, but the truth was, Buddy, despite the theatrics, was actually an amazing athlete, just as Andy was a credible wrestler who always beat his opponents fair and square.
But the fireworks were just beginning. As I walked down the hall, Lorne descended on me like a hawk on a field mouse. “What did I tell you?” he screamed. “You fucked up Mr. Bill! I had to eat that, thanks to you and Kaufman!”
I was in no mood to hear Lorne’s rants. After all, I was paid by Andy, not him. I had also made the effort to warn Andy, but it had fallen on deaf ears. As Lorne raged on and on, pursuing me as I walked, I finally turned and faced him down. “Hey, fuck off!”
“What?” he screamed, incredulous anyone would speak to him that way. “Nobody tells me to fuck off! I’m going to have you thrown out of here!”
“Yeah? You and what army?” With that, I spun on my heels and strode to the dressing room, where I related the ugly incident to Andy. He just laughed.
Many years later Lorne and I ran into each other while attending a barbecue at Danny De Vito’s home, and I took the opportunity to remind him of that moment. He remembered and apologized profusely, saying he was wrong and shouldn’t have acted with such anger. I copped to being wrong as well, and we finally buried the hatchet and had a very pleasant conversation.
I had heard many stories about Lorne over the years, and I think his sophistication is often misinterpreted as arrogance. His apology was unnecessary, yet very big of him and hardly in keeping with the rumors of a huge ego that have been circulated on his behalf. I’ve often thought it must be odd being Lorne Michaels, given the illustrious list of talents who owe their careers to him, including Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Chris Rock, and Adam Sandler, as well as the late John Belushi, Phil Hartman, Chris Farley, and Gilda Radner, to name but a few.
On returning to L.A. as 1980 dawned, Andy and I kept audiences (and ourselves) entertained with occasional late-night experiments at the Improv. One night I had a refrigerator crate brought on stage and announced to the audience that for one dollar they could look into the box and view the star of
Taxi,
Andy Kaufman. They thought I must have been joking, for surely a big star wouldn’t allow himself to be crated up like a pooch in an airline carrier.
To get things going I picked a young lady in the front row and told her she could look for free and tell the audience what she saw. I opened a small side panel and she peeked in. “My god! I can’t believe it! It’s really Andy Kaufman!” she shrieked.
I smiled confidently. “Tell ’em what he’s doing.”
She concentrated. “Uh, he’s sitting on a chair in his underwear, and he’s holding a flashlight … and he’s balancing his checkbook.”
I nodded. “Correct,” I said, and the exhibit was officially open. We made eighty bucks that night. A few years later we did a variation where the audience was given an opportunity to touch a cyst on Andy’s neck. Charging them each a dollar, we had a real nurse disinfect the person’s fingers before they touched it. We called that “Celebrity Cyst.”
Any chance to ridicule fame or stardom Andy seized with zeal. Though he used his celebrity as a career stepping stone, underneath he found the blind worship of fame silly at best and destructive at its worst. Over the years I’ve worked with countless so-called stars, and I have witnessed many who wallow in it. Andy didn’t and would have dispensed with stardom had he been able to accomplish his career goals without it.
His loathing of the elevation by society of entertainers was often a subject of his routines. Tony Clifton, for instance, was an anticelebrity. On the theme of the abuse of celebrity power, Andy would sometimes go into a restaurant, spot an attractive young couple, and make sure he was seated next to them. Of course everyone in the place knew who he was. He’d chitchat with the thrilled couple and then focus on the girl, subtly coming on to her. When the boyfriend left for the men’s room, he’d make his move.
“Would you go out with me?”
The stunned and flattered young lady would usually say, “What?”
“GO out with me,” Andy persisted. “Your boyfriend …”
“Fiancé …”
“Fiancé. Okay, your fiancé, who is he? He’s a nobody, I’m a star, I’m famous. I can do more for you than he ever could. Right?”
With stars in her eyes she saw the logic. “Well, yes, that’s true.”
“Of course it’s true.” Then came his only request in his inane bid for power over the girl’s life, but it was a big one: “If you want to go out with me, you have to leave with me, right now. C’mon, let’s go.”
“What? I can’t!”
“Sure you can, c’mon,” he said holding out his hand, “we’re leaving. Tell him you’re leaving with me.”
Dazzled by the brilliance of stardom, she’d stand hesitantly. By now the people at the surrounding tables were aghast at the cruelty demonstrated by the big celeb. Just then her swain would return, having drained the lizard. “What’s going on?” he would ask innocently.
“I, uh, I’m leaving with Andy. I’m sorry, Tom.”
“What?” he’d say, totally flabbergasted. “But you can’t do that, I love you!”
“Love?” Andy would snort. “I can offer her something you can’t. I’m a star, you’re nothing!”
Then Andy and the girl would exit, hand in hand, leaving the poor shattered shlub to weep uncontrollably at the table just as their salads arrived. Andy, to his credit, would always pay their tab on the way out. The wounded man, blinded by his tears, would finally find the strength to shuffle to the door as the restaurant patrons buzzed about the power-mad TV star and how he’d destroyed the sweet young man’s world. Outside, the “distraught” fellow would join Andy and our female accomplice, whereupon we’d often head to another bistro to perpetrate the fraud once more. I thank that Carnegie-Mellon training for my skill at being able to cry on cue.
Why did we do it? Simple: it was fun. But in retrospect, as I analyze our little psychodramas, they give great insights into Andy’s own belief system. Did he feel celebrity was a necessary ingredient to meeting women? Absolutely. Was he suspect of such women? To some extent, yes. He understood that
everyone
would defer to him because of his status, so it was the divination of that shading, the motives behind the actions, that intrigued him, and often left him distant and wary.
Andy enjoyed a small circle of close friends, but they had generally signed on years before fame came to him and were therefore proven commodities. Our restaurant “presentations” not only were amusing diversions, but also served as outlets for Andy’s welling disgust over the nature of fame and the nearly mindless permission people would heap on someone just because they had seen the person on television or in the movies. He hated such unqualified acceptance and sought to hammer the point home to unsuspecting diners during our histrionics. Would a girl shitcan her faithful lover just because some “star” wagged his finger? Sure, and we showed them how it would happen, in all its disturbing ceremony.
As a technical note, we took great care to keep the airlines and restaurants, as well as the other “stages” for our psychodramas, in the dark as to our purposes. We made separate reservations and always worked it so we sat either across the aisle or at adjoining tables, but always within earshot of others — as many others as we could reach. The “street pranks” were endless and we pulled them almost every time we ate or flew. Pulling pranks kept us sharp, and aside from being a lot of fun, it was our job.
On a Roll
People would say to me, “Why don’t you have someone who picks the audience up?” I said, “No, I love him, he’s too much. He’s a genius. Let him open the show and do whatever he wants and that’s it.”
RODNEY DANGERFIELD
It was now January 1980, Andy had just celebrated his thirty-first birthday, and we were on a roll. Suddenly, in a very short period, two amazing projects were offered to us, one in television and the other in film.
Happy with the results of our special that had finally aired in August, ABC called and asked us to come up with a concept for a weekly vehicle for Andy. That was music to our ears, especially given the fact we’d already fleshed out an idea that Andy had been waiting years to produce. We called it “Uncle Andy’s Fun-house,” a kids’ show for adults. Picture
Howdy Doody,
but instead of Buffalo Bob, Uncle Andy would host. There would be cartoons and puppets and even a “peanut gallery” where the kids would be on camera too, only in this case the kids would be adults. Yet to maintain the illusion that it was a show for children, albeit adult children, Andy would speak to them as if they were kids. That was a way to embrace one’s “inner child” long before the phrase was added to popular culture.
As we planned the pilot, I felt the action should be set in the place it all started, the basement of Andy’s childhood home. I had been hearing stories for years about how Andy would eschew outdoor activities with the other kids to linger in the basement and stage his shows, playing to an imaginary camera in the wall. According to Andy, that behavior constantly irritated Stanley Kaufman, who felt his son was solidly on track to becoming a misfit. Andy proudly acknowledged his dad had been right.
We decided, as an homage to the disdainful parents of that seemingly autistic oddball who secreted himself in their basement, that we’d cast Stanley and Janice Kaufman as themselves. Occasionally Stanley would open the basement door and yell down for Andy to quit farting around and come upstairs because his “lunch was getting cold.” Of course Andy’s parents never went downstairs to discover that his “imaginary” TV show was in fact real. Though Andy dearly loved and respected his folks, this was a gentle zinger for all those years they didn’t “get” him.
We re-created the Kaufman household in the studio in painstaking detail. I even shot an exterior that looked like their home for the opening establishing shot, wherein the camera flew up to the house and made a trick dissolve through the basement window into our studio “basement.” I was in my glory as the writer and producer — this was what I’d been dreaming of doing all my life. I gave Andy a dog to use on the show, my own dog Lazarus. We called him Laz, and Andy loved him as if he were his own.
As great a show as “Uncle Andy’s Funhouse” was, we had a big problem: it couldn’t be longer than ten minutes. ABC had commissioned the work to be part of a half-hour special called “Buckshot,” which would consist of ours as well as two other ten-minute segments to be produced by other talent. As Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say, “It’s always somethin’.”
ABC’s chopped-up format was ill-conceived, as ten minutes wasn’t enough time to establish a feeling for the segment, particularly ours. In our pilot, Andy used up nearly two minutes with a film of his Grandma Pearl sleeping on her sofa. Thus, with such a slow pace set, the remaining six and one-half minutes (after leaving a minute-and-a-half hole for commercials) went by in a flash without giving us room to deliver a true taste of what our show could be. But, regardless of its length, we were happy that ABC had footed the bill to let us put the concept on tape, if only for ten minutes. “Buckshot” aired, and no one took notice.