“Yeah,” I said.
“What’s your name?”
“Bob.”
“Bob what?”
It was the routine from the car.
“Gorsky.”
“Gorsky? Gorsky? What’s that? Chinese? Russian? What?”
“Polish.”
“Polish?”
he roared, then sized me up. “Polish, huh? You think ‘cause you’re Polish you’re funny?”
“I don’t know,” I said, trying to sound browbeaten.
“Well, are you funny?” he demanded.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Well, mister funny Polack, you think this is funny?”
And with that he poured my full glass of Chianti over my head. I looked as shocked as Sissy Spacek did in
Carrie
when Travolta dropped the blood on her. After my initial shock I burst into tears, leaped up, and ran into the men’s room. Of course, my “tears” resulted from trying to contain my laughter. A big bruiser followed me into the can and offered to kick Clifton’s ass. I pleaded with him to not do it, as I was a “pacifist,” a technical label people were well aware of back then. I excused myself and went quickly to the car to wait for Kaufman. About two minutes later Andy came running at full tilt down the road toward me. Out of breath, he tossed his bag in, jumped behind the wheel, and, laughing hysterically, yelled, “Give me the keys! Let’s get the hell out of here!”
I gave him a puzzled look and held up my hands. “Keys? I don’t have ‘em. You have ‘em.”
For about one and a half seconds, the look on Andy’s face revealed as much shock as he’d ever showed in his life. It was priceless. Then I handed him the keys. “Gotcha.”
He fired up the engine, slammed it into gear, and we dug out. Safely down the road he looked over. “You’re as crazy as me, aren’t you?”
I nodded. “Yup.”
That night, Tony Clifton was born, and our lifetime friendship was cemented. Andy was my new best buddy from that point on. I was impressed with his total originality, and he saw that I had a deep subversive streak much like his own. Having a close friend was a new experience for Andy since he’d always been a confirmed loner.
Chris got me a job bartending at the Improv, and when Andy went on stage I’d break away to catch his act. I got to see much of his experimental stuff and finally discovered the purpose of that heavy 16-millimeter projector. Andy would come on stage in an uncharacteristically serious demeanor and announce that he had rare footage of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. He would explain that filmmaking was in its infancy back then, but it just so happened that a man named Frederick Astor had one of the first experimental cameras set up at Ford’s Theatre to record the play the very night that John Wilkes Booth changed the course of history. How Kaufman got his hands on such a rare artifact was beyond me. The footage is quite shocking and sad. When Andy would conclude the screening by offering up, in a breaking voice, a group prayer to Lincoln, there were few dry eyes in the house.
Years later, Andy admitted that movies did not exist in 1865 and that he had lifted the footage from D. W. Griffith’s 1915
Birth of a Nation
, also known as
The Clansman
. The whole thing was a hoax, but he presented it with such commitment and solemnity that everyone believed it. One never questioned its authenticity, for who would lie about such a sacred event? As the audience was crying their eyes out over the film and the prayer, Andy was offstage laughing.
After his performances we’d get together, and he’d invariably ask what I thought. He appreciated my always being straight with him. He often used my suggestions, and I was gratified when they worked.
Brenda and I had been in touch, but our marriage was strained by our separation as well as by different life paths. She finally came to visit, claiming she would give New York a shot and see if she could live there with me. We didn’t last long. Within a week she decided that the city was far too big and chaotic, and we parted, now with the understanding that, despite being married, we could go our separate ways since our lives weren’t exactly going to remain tightly joined. I was sorry to see her go back to Pittsburgh, but I knew that she wouldn’t be happy in my town and I wouldn’t be happy in hers.
Most nights after Andy’s sets, we’d get together and I’d tell him his favorite Mr. X stories, and we’d talk about how we could create some chaos of our own. Andy was mesmerized by Mr. X’s commitment to anarchy and professional sociopathy. He became so obsessed with Mr. X’s methodology and dedication to creating and then channeling mayhem that Andy persuaded me to help manufacture incidents on the street while he recorded them with his little handheld tape recorder. Later we’d listen to the results, which would provide the jumping-off point for dialing in his material.
We made trial runs at “street comedy” by going to Coney Island on off nights, enjoying the rides and the roller coasters. One of our favorite gags was to ride the “Rotor,” a huge spinning wheel attached to a hydraulic lift. A couple dozen riders would stand inside with then backs against the inner wall of the huge hoop; the device would start to spin, and soon the floor would drop out, but the riders would be held in place by centrifugal force. The thing spun pretty fast, and sometimes people would get nauseous. For our bit, one of us would fill his mouth with water before the ride started, while the other — once we got going — would begin to feign sounds of impending vomitus. When the “sound-effects” man let go, the “water bearer” would spit the water, sending a spray over our fellow riders. Of course, no one could see the puker, and the effect was nauseating on its own.
Another act of fakery occurred on the roller coaster. We’d board the machine, and at the end of the ride one of us would pretend to be crying like crazy, scared shitless, just like a little kid. Then we’d pay again and swap roles. During one of the circuits, Andy turned to me. “Someday I’m going to be famous, and when I am, I’m going to make you my writer.”
As the coaster plunged to the bottom, my eyes teared up, not because of the wind, but because someone, Andy Kaufman, believed in me.
During this time something happened to me that was so embarrassing I told only Andy. To this day, he is one of but a handful of people to whom I ever revealed this ugly secret. Andy always thought I had done it as a prank, despite my swearing I didn’t. He proclaimed it wildly subversive and later cited it as an inspiration for our particular form of lunacy. After he’d told others the story many times, I eventually gave up trying to disabuse him of the notion that it had been accidental.
A friend named Barbara worked as an usher at a big theater on Broadway. Barbara would call from time to time with an offer to sneak me in. It was an opportunity for me to see a ridiculously expensive Broadway show for free. Despite the usually packed houses, she always tried to give me at least an hour’s notice before show time. One Saturday morning a little before noon, I got a call from her. “Can you get down here around two?”
Unfortunately, I had been up all night and felt like warmed-over dogshit. “Richard Burton is doing
Equus
,” she continued. “It’s a great show I can get you in if you get here a little before two. Whaddya think?”
Fuck it
, I thought,
it’s Richard Burton in the hottest show in town. The man hasn’t done Broadway since
Hamlet. “Thanks. I’ll be there,” I said, excited I could participate in a little bit of history.
At the theater, Barbara met me at a back door and cautiously spirited me in, showing me to a seat right in front. I was thrilled by my unequaled view of the stage.
Equus
is staged as a courtroom drama, and to fill the jury, audience members are selected. The seat I occupied happened to be one of those seats, so just before the play began I was ushered onto the stage and my terrific seat suddenly became a whole lot better. Then Richard Burton took the stage. It was very impressive to see him working at that range. I was in the first row of the jury box, so I was about as front row as you could get. Unfortunately.
The toll of probably thirty or more hours without sleep began to overtake me, and after about an hour of listening to the marvelously lilting voice of the Welsh artist, it began to have a tragically relaxing effect on me — I completely zonked out.
Now, the only thing worse than falling asleep on stage was awakening myself with my own snoring. And the only thing worse than awakening myself by snoring in the middle of Richard Burton’s performance was to open my eyes to find Richard Burton inches from my face, his own countenance fire-engine red in nearly uncontrolled fury.
I had single-handedly (or single-nosedly) stopped Richard Burton dead in his tracks on a Broadway stage. Unbelievably disturbing as this was, I arose in abject mortification and looked to the master thespian for his forgiveness. “Sorry, Mr. Burton, I haven’t slept in two days.”
As Burton’s eyes flared angrily, I turned to the audience and, raising my voice, inadvertently took control of the house. “Sorry, I haven’t slept in a couple of days. Sorry.”
I then walked off the stage, down the center aisle past a stunned audience, and out the front door. So shaken, I went home and couldn’t sleep.
One evening Andy dropped by my place. “Wanna see a show?” he asked.
“A movie?” I assumed.
“No. Theater. Live stuff.”
“What, like a musical?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Great drama. Classical Greek.”
I figured it was another Andy put-on and that we’d end up seeing a movie, probably
Night of the Living Dead
, which he loved, and which we’d seen six times. But he seemed serious. Then again, that’s when he was really setting you up. We caught a cab across town, and when we arrived in front of the huge marquee, I knew I’d been had — it read:
TONIGHT: PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING
. The card listed Bruno Sammartino versus some Indian chief. I looked at Andy. “Classical Greek drama, my ass.”
He was indignant. “You’re wrong. Wrestling is the basis of all drama. It dates back to the ancient Greeks.”
He said it with such conviction that I knew he wasn’t kidding. Years later, I would realize wrestling so appealed to Andy because of the black-and-white nature of its conflict: it was good versus bad, pure and simple. This would emerge as a theme of Andy’s: righteousness versus evil, Andy versus Tony, pure versus profane, star versus has-been, Andy versus women, success versus failure, and, finally, life versus death. Though the conflict that night occurred in the ring, Andy saw it as both a metaphor and as its most powerful, basest term: winner versus loser.
Watching that rowdy crowd cheer on their heroes, I didn’t realize what he was actually seeing. Andy saw the future, his own career, his destiny as an artist. He had been going in that direction for some time, but I know now that the energy in that room thrilled him with the possibilities. The wrestling was actually a show, with preselected winners and losers, and in a way, the audience was in on it. No one could watch and truly believe that men that big and strong could pummel each other that long and hard and survive, let alone thrive. Andy studied the dynamic between the crowd and the wrestlers and saw a childhood game:
You be the cowboy, I’ll be the Indian, and I’ll shoot you. Next time, you be the cowboy.
It was a mutually agreed-upon fantasy between the participants and the viewers: we’ll pretend to hurt each other, and you’ll pretend to believe it.
One time Andy showed me his high school yearbook. Under his photo, next to the legend “career goal,” was written “kids’ performer.” That was how he saw himself; that the kids had grown up was of no consequence to him whatsoever. Andy was always playing, no matter what his character or routine: The first time you saw Andy, you didn’t know what to make of him. After that, you knew he was playing with you. Sometimes even seasoned Kaufman audiences got a surprise: Andy would make them think they knew what was coming, then purposely self-destruct in front of them just to show them who was in control.
During those early years Andy developed what he called his bombing routine. This was Andy at his darkest, when he would go onstage and cause to happen what every comic who’s ever lived fears most: the complete failure to get a laugh. There is an unwritten rule between comedians and audiences: the comedian is supposed to make the audience laugh. Andy had been mislabeled a comedian because he got his start in comedy clubs, so audiences were often perplexed and even irritated when he did not come through with the laughs. But Andy would thrive on that conflict he created, feeling the tension rise in a room and feeding off it like some comic-book superhero who ate negative energy. This was payback for calling him a comic.
You think I’m funny? I’ll show you
…
Andy’s fame had spread, and he got a gig opening for Sonny and Cher, superstars even then, at a club called Bachelors Three. The club manager was an asshole and immediately rubbed Andy the wrong way. I don’t even remember what the altercation was about, but when the guy walked away, Andy muttered, “Okay, if that’s how you want it …”
That evening, Andy went on before a packed house and started in with his usual Foreign Man routine. At the turning point in the act, when he’d become Elvis, Andy kept going — as Foreign Man. The bad impressions and jokes eventually got the audience mumbling angrily, and finally, because he wouldn’t change direction to please the house, they brought the curtain down right in the middle of his act.
Andy said nothing, he just walked over and began gathering his props. I knew it was a very good booking for him, and to blow it out of the water took either insanity or real courage. Andy’s two homes were the Improv and (Catch, and venturing outside them took him beyond his familiar bounds. That he had settled into those two clubs was comforting to him, but at the same time he knew if he was to grow as a performer he needed to leave the nest. He may have seen the Bachelors Three gig as a warm-up to that severing of ties. He also may have felt the early tugs of rebellion that grew almost exponentially as his career blossomed. Catch and the Improv not only were home turf but also allowed him great flexibility as Andy Kaufman
the artist.
Bachelors Three was just a job and made him feel like Andy Kaufman, the assembly-line comedian. His reaction that night was probably twofold: one,
You can’t talk to me like that so take this job and shove it;
and two,
You think I’m funny? Well, I’ll show you.