Was This Man a Genius?

Andy, in 1978: “How can you write this? You don’t know anything about me. You don’t know about the craziness, the insanity.”Photograph by Elizabeth Wolynski

One night in 1975, I was tying up the garbage when my husband called me to come and see something he was watching on TV. “You have to see this!” he called. I couldn’t believe there was anything on television that I had to see, but he sounded as if he had found something exciting and wonderful.

There was a tall, dark, and almost handsome man, dressed in a black turtleneck sweater, with a button-down shirt and a checked sports jacket over it. He was standing on a stage, with a small record-player next to him, and when he put the needle on, it played the Mighty Mouse theme song. The man appeared to have no idea what he was doing until the singing began. Then he knew just what he was doing, and suddenly he turned into a baritone star from a nineteen-fifties musical as he started to lip-synch the words. It wasn’t funny the way other things are funny. It just made you laugh.

The mysterious man was Andy Kaufman, on “Saturday Night Live.” During the next couple of years, I tried to watch the show whenever he was on as a guest. In 1978, I read that he would be performing in New York, at Town Hall. I got the idea that I would meet him, talk to him, and find out how he came to do what he was doing, and I would write about it.

At the end of a year of meeting with Andy—and hanging out and taping whatever happened—I went to my typewriter, and soon had a long manuscript, which was thought to be too strange to be published at the time. Most people didn’t know who Andy was. He had made a special for a television network, but no network would show it. Then Andy was advised by his manager to take a part on the sitcom “Taxi” so that he could become well known. This worked, and the special was televised at last.

A cough that Andy had for a while turned out to be lung cancer, and he died in 1984. He was thirty-five years old.

Now a movie has been made about him, and I thought it would be a good idea to show how he talked about his own life.

NOT FUNNY

“I want the audience to have a wonderful happy feeling inside them and leave with big smiles on their faces,” Andy said with a blank stare when I met him for the first time. When he saw reviews calling him a comedian, he looked unhappy. “I wouldn’t mind being compared to Charlie Chaplin or W. C. Fields,” he said sadly. “But I don’t find most comedy funny.”

“What’s it for, some kinda movie magazine, or what?” Andy’s manager, George Shapiro, had asked me over the phone from Beverly Hills. “Yeah, well, Andy doesn’t like to do these things, and he’s going to be very busy when he’s in New York. But, listen, he’s also going to perform at his high school, in Great Neck, and this is a great triumph for him because he was so shy in high school. You can go out there and talk to him after the concert.”

Andy’s mother was at home in Great Neck, and sounded surprised to hear that her son was a genius. She said that Andy’s father was in the costume-jewelry business, and that she was a homemaker and mother. If Andy was from a regular family, the question of how he got to be the way he was seemed even more mysterious. I wanted to come right out and ask her, but it was too soon for that.

Andy himself, on the phone from Los Angeles, said he was rushing out to perform at the Comedy Store. Every few minutes, he’d say, “I’m late, I haven’t meditated yet, I don’t have time for this.” When he called back after his performance, he had a list of questions: “How tall are you? When is your birthday? What color hair do you have? I just want to know whether I’d be interested in having a love affair with you. Wouldn’t that be fun? You could get me to give away all my secrets and then you could use them in your story.”

“Couldn’t you tell the secrets any other way?”

“Yeah, probably, but with my pants up I’d give away less than with my pants down.”

“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea,” I said.

“I’m just kidding. But wouldn’t it be great if you were my dream girl, a girl from my fantasies?”

GREAT NECK

When the concert didn’t begin on time the unruly mob of kids in the auditorium began screaming for Andy. Soon he danced onto the stage holding a microphone and singing “Oklahoma.” He skipped around as he sang in an unprofessional voice. Then he began to speak with an unknown foreign accent. The foreign man started to tell some jokes in a meek and nervous way, and when the audience wouldn’t laugh he began to laugh himself. Then the audience began to boo and the foreign man started to apologize and cry. When he recovered he said he’d like to do some impressions, but they were so bad they weren’t impressions at all. Finally, he said he’d like to do Elvis Presley. He turned around and changed into a costume and then did an unbelievably perfect imitation. He even had Elvis Presley’s voice. The audience of kids went crazy with happiness. Then Andy stepped forward and, in the foreign accent again, said, “Tenk you vedy much.”

While I waited outside Andy’s dressing room, his father came over and sat down. “Andy was the first in our neighborhood to entertain at children’s birthday parties,” he said. “Lily Tomlin heckled him in Los Angeles, but then she apologized and explained that she thought he was a real artist.”

“When I grow up, I want to be rediscovered.”

A guy named Bob came along and said he was Andy’s road manager. I believed him, because he had long blond hair and was wearing a cap with a visor. “The first time I saw Andy talk to Johnny Carson, I figured that he was from Brooklyn or Long Island and came from a regular family,” I told Bob as I tried to explain my project.

“Oh, you thought that was the real Andy?” Bob said. “That’s just a character he does—Andy Kaufman—nice, normal, sweet boy. That’s not really Andy.”

Andy sat down at a desk in a classroom and drank from two large bottles of juice. Some students stood around and asked him questions like “Who are your influences?” He told them that his parents had taken him to a night club when he was a child and that he saw a singer there and he presumed the singer was Elvis Presley. Around that time, he began to imitate the singer. Years later, he realized that the singer was an imitator of Elvis Presley and that he had been imitating the imitator all along.

“How did you feel when you realized you were imitating the wrong person?” one of the students asked.

“Pretty bad. But nobody knew I was imitating the imitator. So it wasn’t that bad.”

When Bob came in, Andy said, “Where have you been? You’re supposed to come and tell me our time is up. What kind of a road manager are you?” Andy promised the students one more question but stayed for another hour.

Bob followed Andy out of the room carrying four big suitcases.

“Take my juice, too,” Andy said.

“How can I take the juice with all this?” Bob asked.

“You will take the juice. I need my juice.”

“I can take the juice,” I said.

“No, Bob must take the juice,” Andy said in a zombie voice. “He must carry everything. Do not interfere. He will manage.”

PARTY

“If you made me late for my mother’s party, I’ll be really angry,” Andy told Bob in the car. “It’ll be all your fault, all the blame on you.”

“Me? Why me?” Bob said.

“You were supposed to come for me! It was all arranged!”

“Come on! You mean you can’t get away from high-school kids? What is it, the New York Times?

“I ought to fire you on the spot!”

“This must be a joke,” I said.

“You were there. You witnessed the whole thing,” Andy said.

A crowd of mink coats was emerging from the house as we drove up. Some of the minks embraced and kissed Andy, and one said, “You were so funny, I died laughing.”

“Why is everyone leaving already?” Andy asked his mother.

“Andy, darling, they’ve been waiting here for two hours,” Mrs. Kaufman said. “Where were you?”

“Bob made me late,” Andy said. “It’s all his fault. See, Bob? You made me miss my mother’s party. She baked cakes and everything. It was in my honor and I wasn’t even there.”

Once inside a spick-and-span split-level house, Bob and I were shown to a giant table filled with food—cakes, fruit, bread, cheese, and puddings. There were still a few guests milling around, and I noticed that Andy had a small tape recorder in his hand and pushed buttons on it as he ran from room to room.

“Why does he want to tape these people?” I asked Bob.

“He tapes all kinds of things. That’s what he does.”

“Andy, come eat,” his mother called. “Bob, will you have some chicken soup? This has vegetables—carrots, celery, and onions. And I put in two chickens. Andy, are you having soup?”

“In my mother’s house I eat whatever I’m served,” he told me as he sat down at the table. While he waited for his dinner, he tucked a linen napkin into his shirt. Everything on his plate was white—creamed chicken, white rice, and a noodle pudding with sour cream. When he was finished eating, he got up and put some chocolate and coffee ice cream into a bowl and took it back to the table, where he sat down and began to stir. The stirring went on and on.

“Will Tony Clifton be at Town Hall?” Bob asked.

“I hope so. I hope we can get him,” Andy said.

“Who is Tony Clifton?” I asked.

“Oh, he’s this Las Vegas night-club singer, kind of a lowlife. But Andy gets Tony to open his act for him. I can’t stand him myself. What do you think of him, Mrs. Kaufman?”

“Who? Tony Clifton?” she asked, from her place at the kitchen sink. “I don’t like him.”

“Hey, smooda,” Andy said to Bob. “Did you meditate yet?”

“Why does he call you smooda?” I asked Bob.

“That’s my name. Z-M-U-D-A.”

“Do you expect me to believe that?” I said.

“What is this? I ought to be insulted. She thinks my name is a joke. Mrs. Kaufman, what’s my last name?”

“Zmuda.”

“You both got everyone to go along with it,” I said.

“Are you cracking up already?” Bob said. “Usually it takes them a little longer.”

HIGHWAY

I didn’t see how someone like Andy could drive on a highway. “Don’t worry, I’ll drive,” Bob said. As soon as we were in the car, I noticed that Andy was the driver and he was on the wrong side of the road. Then he turned on the radio, took his hands off the wheel, and started to clap to the music.

“I don’t think this is funny,” I said.

“I keep telling you I’m not trying to be funny.”

“He can’t help himself,” Bob said. “When he hears his music he has to do it.”

“Let’s turn off the radio then,” I said.

“O.K., but I’ll still hear it in my head,” Andy said and continued singing and dancing as he swerved the car around on the icy roads.

“Oh God, wait’ll he gets onto the highway!” Bob said. “Then he’ll be speeding, too!”

“I know you two planned this and it just isn’t funny. I’m going to get out if you don’t stop.”

“You can’t get out,” Andy said. “There’s no place for you to go.”

“You can be killed, too, you know. ‘Unknown comedians,’ the obituary will say.”

“Comedians?” Bob said.

“I don’t see anything wrong with the way I’m driving,” Andy said.

“C’mon, Kawfman,” Bob said. One of their fun things to do was to pronounce Andy’s last name wrong. “Cut it out. Let me just drive back to the city.”

“Absolutely not! I’m getting angry now.”

“I’m getting out,” I said.

“Look, I’ll drive you to a diner I know.

You can call a cab from there. Then we can have some coffee while we’re waiting.”

“Have some coffee?

“We’re still friends, aren’t we?” Andy said.

“I’ll tell you when I see the diner.”

“What about your story? What will you do?”

“I’ll see you another time.”

“There is no other time! This is it! I don’t have any more time for you!”

“Then why did you screw it up like this?”

You screwed it up! I was driving you all the way back to the city! We could have had fun! But you had to get afraid!”

“You’re really crazy. We can’t discuss this.”

“Look, here we are. Didn’t I say I’d take you to a nice diner?”

I was surprised to see that we were in front of a diner.

“Come on,” Andy said. “I’ll buy you some coffee or tea, or anything you want. Zmuda, you haven’t meditated yet!”

“Hey, you’re right. I know! I’ll do it now, in the car, while you go in for coffee.”

“Good idea,” Andy said. “Let me talk to the cab company,” he said as we walked to the diner. “If I tell them we’re over the city line it will be cheaper.”

Andy had a forlorn look as we stood at the phone making arrangements for the cab. His white skin, his long black eyelashes, and his turquoise-blue eyes gave him the look of an otherworldly creature.

DINER

“Two large orange juices,” Andy ordered. “Both for me. And the young lady will have tea.”

“It’s probably canned juice,” I said.

“In California I make fresh juice in my own juicer,” Andy said.

“Here comes Bob,” I said.

“Sh-h-h. Don’t say anything.”

Bob ignored us and sat down at the counter. A big, white-haired man came over to him and said, “You’re in my seat, bub.”

“Who says!” Bob yelled.

“I says! That’s my seat you’re in!”

Bob and the man began to argue as other customers and diner employees looked on. All of a sudden, Bob started to cry. “So I accidentally took a guy’s seat!” he said in between sobs. “How was I supposed to know?” The counterman and the other diner patrons came over and tried to comfort him. I was alarmed to hear Andy yell in a deep zombie voice, “Imagine that, a grown man crying! I’m disgusted.”

“Who asked you?” called the white-haired customer, who was now standing over Bob in a sympathetic way. Andy looked ahead with a blank stare and said, even louder, “A grown man crying! I’m ashamed for the human race, I’m ashamed to be part of mankind!”

“You don’t wanna be part of it, leave it!” yelled the customer.

“Could we get out of here?” I said.

“He thinks he’s a big man just because he’s got a girl with him,” Bob sobbed as Andy and I got up to leave.

“Anyone’s more of a man than a grown man who cries!” Andy said.

“Leave him alone already,” called the customer.

Bob got up and on his way to the door he said, “Oh, I forgot my check.”

“It’s O.K. Forget it,” said the counterman. Bob went out and did a wild dance to the parking lot. “Just ‘cause he’s got a girl with him!” he yelled. “I’d like to see him without a girl. Then we’d see. How big a man will he be then?”

Andy and I walked to the car while the restaurant people watched through the door. When we were out of view, Bob got into the car with us, and he and Andy began congratulating each other.

“I bet you planned the whole thing,” I said.

“How could we plan it? You saw the guy tell me I was in his seat,” Bob said.

“You probably took his seat on purpose. You must have a plot for every occasion.”

“Come on, it was brilliant improvisation!” Andy said.

“What if the man had had a heart attack?” I said.

“Those are the risks you take,” Bob explained.

“Don’t you think it’s cruel to manipulate innocent bystanders that way?” I said.

“What’s cruel? You didn’t like that?” Andy asked.

“I’d like it in a play or a movie.”

“If you don’t like that,” Andy said, “I don’t know what to tell you. Because doing that is my most favorite hobby in the world.”

CABDRIVER

The cabdriver was wearing an unrealistic black wig and he said his name was Anthony Imbecilli. He was obviously part of the act.

“We could have had a really good time,” Andy told me as we said goodbye. “Going in and out of different restaurants all night on the way to the city. It was your opportunity to be with me.”

“We just wasted about five hours,” I said.

“I know, and it’s all your fault,” Andy said.

“Would you two stop bickering?” Bob said. “You just met and you’re always arguing.”

“It’s all her fault,” Andy said. Then he gave me a hug and a kiss goodbye. “We’re still friends, aren’t we?” he said.

“I love you, but you’re really insane,” I said.

“Let’s go,” Bob said, rolling his eyes. “Kawfman, go back to Great Neck and get some sleep.”

When we were safely in the cab, Bob said, “He taped you saying you loved him. He’ll get you to bring your husband to meet him at Town Hall and he’ll play the tape onstage. He’ll splice it out of context. He’s a maniac. I was trying to warn you, but now it’s too late. He has everything on tape.”

“What for?”

“To torture people. He has a sadistic streak. He can’t have a real girlfriend, because he’ll tape the most intimate moments and play it at a party. No girl will have anything to do with him. You’ll see. Wait till your husband hears those ‘I love you’ tapes and the sounds of the hugs and the kisses.”

“It says here that you gave a lot of money to both parties and neither expected nor received anything in return. Very nice, but we’ll have to put you in the crazy section.”

“He loves Andy, too. He’ll know what it was.”

“Can you count on that? He better be a pretty understanding guy.”

TOWN HALL

Andy danced onto the stage as he sang “Oklahoma.” I asked him why he chose his last song—“In this friendly, friendly world with each day so full of joy, why should any heart be lonely?” “It’s an old Fabian hit,” he explained.

After the show, I asked Mrs. Kaufman if she’d have some time to talk about Andy. “Of course,” she said. “We’ll meet for lunch.”

“Oh, good, because I don’t know whether he’ll talk to me again. He says I missed my chance because I didn’t like the way he was driving us back to New York last week.”

Mrs. Kaufman stared at me and smiled. I wanted to describe the incident without seeming to say anything bad about her son. It wasn’t possible. “Don’t you realize that with Andy it has to be fun?” she said. “He won’t do it if it’s not fun.”

HOTEL ROOM

Andy and I had made a plan to meet for dinner a few days later. By the time he answered the phone, it was 11 P.M. “When I get involved watching television, I can’t turn it off,” he explained. “Then I had to meditate. You come up here, because I can be finishing some things while you’re on your way.”

“But aren’t we going downtown?” I said. “That’s where they’ll be open late.”

“I want to go to a real restaurant. Will they be real restaurants?”

“What do you mean, ‘real’?”

“You know, the kind of place with real waiters. Waiters with foreign accents, waiters who carry a napkin over their arms. I want to go to the kind of place my parents would take me to.”

“There are real restaurants downtown.”

“Do they have lobster tails?”

“They have lobster.”

“But do they have lobster tails?”

“They’re all going to be closed if we keep talking about it.”

“I know a place that’s open late! My parents took me there. Joe’s Pier 52. They have lobster tails and everything.”

When I called Andy from the lobby of the Essex House, he answered in an English accent and said he wasn’t there. When I called back a few minutes later, he said, “Come up and wait for me while I finish my application to a meditation retreat. You can watch television.”

“You know I hate television,” I said.

“Hurry up, come in,” he said at the door. “I’m watching ‘The Twilight Zone.’ Look, this woman is really hundreds of years old. It’s the same actress, see, none of her family knows how old she is.”

“Don’t you think you should try to get ready? It’s almost midnight.”

“The restaurant stays open till one, I found out. O.K., I’ll do this thing while I listen to the show.”

He sat down at a table covered with papers and twenty or thirty bottles of vitamin pills.

“By the way, why do you meditate?” I asked.

“It keeps me calm,” he said while tapping his foot up and down and rapping his fingers on the table.

“I can’t believe you really like ‘The Twilight Zone,’ ” I said.

“Of course I do! I suppose you’re one of those people who think ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ is the greatest show on TV. O.K. now, just shut up while I do this. You know, you should be very flattered, I treat you like a member of my family, like a wife or mother or sister. I can yell at you and do whatever I want.”

“It doesn’t feel flattering.”

“That’s because you don’t appreciate it. Mostly with people I’m shy and quiet. Now, let me tell you how much I love ‘The Twilight Zone.’ ”

“You already told me.”

“O.K., and what’s my favorite movie?”

“‘American Graffiti.’ ”

“Right! And what are my favorite other movies that are foreign movies?”

“ ‘8 1/2’ and ‘Phantom of Liberty.’ ”

“And in what movie do I identify myself with the hero?”

“ ‘The Graduate.’ ”

“Wasn’t it just like ‘The Graduate’ the other night at my parents’ house?”

“No.”

“Why? How could you say no?”

“Because you’re not a graduate with a promising future.”

“But they think I might be a Hollywood star.”

“Yes, but I saw no resemblance between you and the graduate.”

“You’re too literal-minded. O.K., come here. I want to show you something. Come through here into the bedroom to the bathroom. Just trust me. It’ll be worth it.”

“I would never trust you.”

“Come on, into the bathroom. I’m going to turn out the light for a second and close the door.”

“I’m not going in there with the light out and the door closed. You’ll probably lock the door and check out of the hotel.”

“Why are you so suspicious of me? Come on! Your last chance! Get in there or you’ll be sorry.”

“Absolutely not,” I said.

“O.K.! You won’t go into the bathroom. Then you can leave! No bathroom, no trusting me to show you something worthwhile, then no hour alone with me! No dinner tonight. No story for you. Come on. Out! Get out! I mean it!”

“O.K., let me get my things.”

“No, no things, out without things!”

“I’m not leaving without my coat.”

“Coat! Come on! Out, out, out, before I get angry!”

I gathered up my coat and notebook and tape recorder. “Goodbye,” I said.

“Good riddance!” he yelled and slammed the door behind me.

As I waited for the elevator and wondered how I might explain this episode to anyone, Andy’s door opened. He was smiling. “You believed that?” he asked. “Come on, come back in. Are you crying? Come here, let me comfort you.”

“I’m certainly not crying. I’m tired. I don’t usually stay up all night.”

“O.K., I’m not really mad at you. But the truth is you missed out on something great.”

“What was it?”

“You should have come if you wanted to see. But you didn’t trust me, so you missed it. Now you’ll never know.”

REAL RESTAURANT

“The kitchen just closed,” the maître d’ said when we arrived at five minutes to one.

“At least, we don’t have to sit through some big, prolonged trial.”

“I’m very sorry, but I just phoned and was told I would be served if I arrived before one,” Andy said in his English accent.

“It is almost one now,” said the maître d’.

“Almost, but not yet one, and I require that you serve us.”

Finally, the man agreed and took us to a table.

“Aren’t you going too far?” I said to Andy.

“What do you mean? You don’t believe I’m really angry?”

“If you’re angry, why are you talking in an English accent?”

“I can be angry in any accent. I have to stay in character,” Andy said. “Have whatever you like. I want to pay for dinner.”

“I’m paying for the dinner,” I said. “It’s part of the job.”

“I want to do something nice for you.”

“You are—the interview.”

“Wouldn’t it be funny if we fell in love?”

“Very funny.”

“You know why, because, little by little, I’m falling in love with you.”

“Not that funny.”

“O.K., I’m not really falling in love with you, but wouldn’t it be fun? What would we do? Would we go to the top of the Empire State Building and ride the Staten Island Ferry and walk in the streets eating ice cream, like couples in love are supposed to do?”

“Is that what people do?”

“Wouldn’t it be fun to do those things as a couple in love?”

“No.”

“Why, have you done them already?”

“I’ve never done any of them and I don’t want to.”

“Why not? I do. I want to do everything I missed when I was too shy.” Then he closed his eyes and said grace, or pretended to—I couldn’t be sure.

DRESSING ROOM

Andy’s plan for “Saturday Night Live” that March was to read from “The Great Gatsby.” He showed his costume to Bob and me. It was a black tuxedo and a dark-yellow polyester shirt with ruffles down the front. “This is my father’s shirt,” he explained. “I chose it because it’s the kind of shirt I think Gatsby would wear.”

“Maybe you should read over the description of his shirts,” I said.

“Why, what’s wrong with this shirt?”

For the dress rehearsal, Andy came out onto the stage and addressed the audience in the English accent. He said he had decided to come out as his real self and read from “The Great Gatsby.”

After a couple of minutes of the reading, the crew and the audience began to boo. Andy asked whether they’d like to hear him read more or play some music on a record-player he had next to him. All chose the music, and he put the record on. It was Andy’s voice reading what he’d just read.

“Am I blowing my whole career on this?” he asked Bob after the rehearsal. “Should I just go out there and play my drums?”

John Belushi came by and complimented Andy on the reading. Then he said, “I saw Tony Clifton. That was really great.”

“Oh, I don’t do Tony Clifton anymore,” Andy said. “Where’d you see him?”

“I just saw you do him recently.”

“That was really him. I used to do Tony Clifton, but now I get the real Tony Clifton to come and be himself.”

“What? You mean for religious reasons or something?”

“No, he got mad, he didn’t like me doing him, so I had to stop, and now I get him to appear at my shows whenever he can.”

“Oh,” John said. Then he gave Andy the look Humphrey Bogart had when he was told that the casino was being closed because gambling wasn’t allowed.

SITCOM

In June, Andy was away at his meditation retreat. When he got out he said he couldn’t come to New York, because of some great news. “I have a part in a new series done by the people who did ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ and all those shows. It’s going to be a big hit! I’m a mechanic who can’t speak any English.”

“I thought you hated those shows,” I said.

“But my manager says it’ll be good for my career. I’ll get well known and my special can get aired. I have to do it.”

ALBANY

In October, for some reason, Andy was performing at the state college in Albany. At noon, Bob and I met him in his room at the Thruway House motel. “How do I look?” he asked. “I know I’m sick, I have a cold or something, and I’m so tired. I need sleep.”

“You need some fresh air and exercise,” I said.

“He’s in good condition,” Bob said. “Look at his build.”

Andy pulled up his T-shirt and showed us a soft white area.

“And the guy’s got a tan now,” Bob said.

“I know I’m pale and sickly!” Andy said. “This business is killing me!”

At the motel restaurant, people were finishing lunch when we arrived for breakfast. “What can we get them to give us at three o’clock in the afternoon?” Bob asked.

“You know what?” Andy said. “I’m gonna ask them if they’ll make some eggs. I’ll pay them to clean the griddle if they say they’ve cleaned it for the day. I’ll pay them ten dollars extra to get eggs. I’d give them a hundred. But I’ve done this before and they never say O.K. to making eggs.”

Andy went to negotiate and the cook consented.

“Do you have any grapefruit?” I asked the waitress.

“No, grapefruit juice.”

“Frozen?”

“It’s concentrate, freshly made. It’s not Tang.”

“What did she mean, ‘concentrated’?” Andy asked when she’d gone.

“They take out the water and freeze the orange part,” I said.

“Like somebody grabbing you and taking all the blood out of you and freezing you for the future,” Bob said.

“It really screws things up if you get frozen and returned to life, because what happened to your soul? It doesn’t work out,” Andy said.

“Maybe the soul freezes, too,” I said.

“Do you notice anything about these eggs?” Bob asked.

“They’re awful,” Andy said, laughing.

“ ‘They want eggs, we’ll give them eggs, all right!’ the cook must have said, right, Andy?” Bob said.

“Let’s not eat them,” Andy said.

“Goodbye, Masked Kid, and thanks for all the help!”

We had one minute to make a fifteen-mile drive to the airport the day after Andy’s show. “I didn’t meditate and I didn’t have breakfast,” Andy said in the van. “Where are my chocolate-chip cookies?”

“Here,” Bob said. “Will you look at him?”

Andy had the box of cookies in his lap and was putting them into his face, one after another.

The plane was an hour late. “Good,” Andy said. “We can have some breakfast.”

“There’s only an omelette on the lunch menu,” the waitress said, when Andy asked about eggs.

“Is there any fresh orange juice?” I asked her.

“No, concentrate.”

“Wherever we go she has to ask about the juice,” Andy said.

“She’s like you,” said Bob.

“But I keep it under control,” I said.

“If you didn’t, it could be a career, like with Andy,” Bob said.

“Why don’t you copy my act?” Andy asked me.

“We have a one-fifty plane,” Bob reminded the waitress.

“But it’s one-forty-seven now,” she said.

“Bob, this is your fault!” Andy yelled.

We ran down the stairs and through a long corridor.

“That’s our plane,” Andy told an airline employee, who had to signal the pilot out on the runway. He looked at Andy and Bob in disbelief. Bob was running to the plane and Andy was clutching a bag of laundry and his box of cookies. His loden coat was flapping in the wind.

“Come on, Kawfman, you jerk!” Bob yelled from the plane.

Andy hugged me goodbye with his laundry and cookies between us. “Keep in touch!” he called as he ran up the steps.

CONTRACT

When I didn’t hear from Andy by Christmas, I called his mother to ask where he was. She said he was in the hospital with hepatitis. “It’s the type you get from eating shellfish, the doctor says,” Mrs. Kaufman explained.

In January, Andy called me and said, “All I did in the hospital was watch television. I realize that there’s a whole other world out there of television even worse than ‘Taxi.’ ”

“How can that be?” I said.

“Did you see the one about the fat girl? It was touching. It was heartrending. I cried when I saw that.”

“If you cried it’s because you’re on the show.”

“Come on! It was touching and heartbreaking. Why didn’t you like it? O.K., O.K. Sometimes I just feel sick when I see the show. What am I going to do? I have a contract to be in it.”

I was waiting at the NBC reception desk for Andy when I saw him walking down the hall with a strange man in a polyester suit. They went into the dressing room. “So you want to just interview me while I get ready?” Andy said to the man.

“Here’s your birthday present,” I said and handed Andy the most recent book by Hubert Selby, Jr.

“Oh, I bet I know what this is,” he said. “Is it by my most favorite author? He’s a great writer! He’s in the same category along with Shakespeare and James Joyce.”

“Well, Andy, I read a slightly flattering profile of you in, what was it, New West,” the reporter said. “It was kinda ‘We don’t know if he has real talent.’ I say to myself, ‘Here’s Andy Kaufman doing small clubs and “Saturday Night Live” and he finally saw the light . . .’ ”

“No, I took ‘Taxi’ for a lot of reasons. There’s not much else I can do with Foreign Man. At first, people would get scared and embarrassed. Then when they saw it was just an act it wasn’t brave anymore, and I always want to be new and brave. But people loved the character, so I decided to do it once a week.”

“But, I mean, beyond that, Is your star rising, Andy? I don’t want to compare you to Steve Martin, but, I mean, Are you a hot property in show business?

“Let me explain. I’m not concerned about being a star. I’ve made a special for ABC which most people think is the most innovative special ever made—they compare it to Ernie Kovacs, who I’ve never seen—but all the networks are against letting it be shown. It’s a wonderful thing and I love it very much—that’s why I’m doing ‘Taxi,’ so I can do more of my own shows.”

“Last time on ‘Saturday Night Live’ what was it you read, ‘War and Peace’?” the reporter asked with a smile.

“Yes, ‘The Great Gatsby.’ ”

“I wonder if you’ll stay as nice as you are.”

“Who knows, maybe in ten years I’ll be a bitter man,” Andy said sincerely.

As soon as the reporter was gone, Andy began muttering interview questions to himself.

“How about those ‘are you hot’ questions?” I asked.

“And how was my answer?”

“I think the more you say you don’t care about being a star the more he thinks you do.”

“Why does he ask me if no matter what I say he’s going to think something else?”

“They never can believe anyone wouldn’t want to be a star.”

“So what will he print? I should have said ‘off the record.’ Oh, I should have said, ‘Yes I’d love to be a star, but off the record I don’t care.’ I need a publicist to tell people what I do. Like in California, we did fantastic things and the public never knew. One thing I did for my finale was a duet with Tony Clifton.”

“How did you do that?” I asked, because I was under the impression that Andy did Tony Clifton.

Because, as I told you,” Andy said, “Tony Clifton is a real person. We rehearsed it together. ‘Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning.’ Then I brought out the Rockettes and had them dance. Then I took the whole audience out to a restaurant, where we had milk and cookies, like I’m going to do at Carnegie Hall. Now, should I put gook on my hair or leave it? Oh—I forgot to tell him I’m a busboy at the Posh Bagel.”

Bob was standing out in the hall. “Where’s Andy?” he said frantically. “I gotta talk to him! He’s gonna ruin the whole spot tonight! He’s gonna pull out a gun and shoot himself!”

“You make me want to be a better man, Olivia. Then maybe I could find somebody else.”

Away from everyone he’d hoped would hear, Bob said, “Did that sound convincing?”

When we got to the dressing room, Bob told Andy, “I was starting rumors in the hall. I said, ‘He’s lost his mind. He’s gonna blow his brains out on TV.’ ”

“I’d love to do something like that,” Andy said wistfully.

“You could say, ‘I don’t know how this got started. Zmuda’s out of his mind.’ Then I could say, ‘Andy meditated for six months and he’s going to do it on TV.’ ”

Andy loved the idea. “You think Lorne would want me to go on to see whether I’m going to do it?” he said.

“I think he would, even at the cost of blowing your head off onstage,” Bob said.

“Sure, everybody’d watch the show!” Andy said.

“Does he think that way?” I asked.

“He’s a producer, isn’t he?” said Bob.

“Most producers would say no,” Andy said.

“Baaah! They got no sense of humor,” Bob said.

“That’s why they’re producers,” Andy said.

“Now, after Carnegie Hall,” Bob said, “you take the three thousand people, but maybe you could break them up into smaller groups. You say, ‘Now, folks, we’re gonna go down to Seventh Avenue and everybody start screaming ”Godzilla! Godzilla!” ’ ”

“Ohhhh yes!” Andy said. “But couldn’t I get arrested for inciting a riot? I know if you yell ‘Fire’ . . . but I don’t know if you yell ‘Godzilla.’ ” He opened up his suitcase and started unpacking his costume.

“What would you do if Lorne comes up to you now and says, ‘You’re out of the show’?” Bob asked.

“What would I do? Why, what would you do? What should I do? I’m getting paid. A free trip to New York. Plane fare. Hotel. Why should they do something like that?”

“It could happen.”

“How?”

“It could never happen. But what would you do?”

“What would I do? I’d be a little sad.

I’d feel a little rejected. A little sad. . . .

What’s so funny about that? Why are you both laughing?”

THE TWO HOURS

The moment has arrived for the two hours Andy has promised all year. “I can meet you for dinner, make a train back to Great Neck, and in between I have to meditate,” Andy said.

“Do you want to do it downtown at our house?” I asked.

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

Andy arrived after ten o’clock. I tried to get him to start meditating immediately so we wouldn’t be too late for any restaurant. I left him in the living room. When his hour was up, I noticed that my husband was watching “The Twilight Zone.”

When Andy came in they both watched it together, discussing plots from various episodes they had seen.

Once outside on the street, in Greenwich Village, Andy looked around and said, “I used to be romantically in love with this place. I wanted to be a beatnik from the time I was in fifth grade. I wanted to be Maynard G. Krebs on ‘Dobie Gillis.’ It was the greatest show! It was a satire of a beatnik.”

“Here we are—Spring Street Natural,” I said.

“Oh, Natural!

The hostess let us in and we sat down. “Anyhow, my parents took me to Greenwich Village when I was in fifth grade. They took me to Café Bizarre. I saw the advertisement—it said, ‘Off Beat Place for Beatniks.’ I thought, This must be where Maynard G. Krebs goes, even if he is a fictional character. Then four years later I went with my grandmother back there. When I first went, there were poetry readings and folk music, and, later, with my grandmother—no more of that. But when I thought about it I liked it even more. Gospel, calypso, African steel-drum bands—it was wonderful! That’s when I started to get into conga drumming. You see, something within me woke up. Anyway, I always wanted to be a beatnik. That was in ’64.”

“Wasn’t beatnik passé by then?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t know that. I was always a little bit behind. I was the only guy getting up in coffeehouses reading poetry when beatnik was all finished.”

“What did people do when you read your poetry?”

“How should I know? I was so into it I didn’t care. They’d clap politely—they were probably embarrassed. Then my parents wouldn’t let me go to Greenwich Village, but a coffeehouse opened in the town near mine, called MacDougal East, and there were these Long Island housewives who’d been beatniks when they were young.”

“That sounds so depressing.”

“It was a store and the window was the stage, but it was fun for me—I’d read poetry and play the bongos.”

“I wish I knew how you got from being the person you were in your high-school yearbook to the person you are now.”

“It has to do with transcendental meditation.”

“Do you look at that picture and say, ‘Oh, what a jerk I was then’?”

“I was naïve in a way, and I wasn’t. Anyhow, when I was seven my grandfather gave me a 16-mm. sound movie projector with sound movies and cartoons. My father would show them as a treat—the whole family would gather round to see them. We had Abbott and Costello, horror films, ‘The Mummy.’ So one day I ran the movie projector, and that meant we didn’t have to be dependent on my father. And word got round, and before I knew it I was asked to run the projector at other birthday parties, and they’d buy me a toy.”

“What made them want you to do it? Was there some special way you did it?”

“You’re the first person who ever asked me these questions and they are so stupid I can’t believe it! I was asked to run it because it was enjoyable, O.K.? Now. Listen to this James Brown. My friends and I were the first to be into black soul stuff like this. And, if my memory does not fail, we were into the Rolling Stones before anyone else, too. Anyway, when I was fourteen I started being hired out to strangers’ houses. I’d show movies, do magic, play games, play guitar, I’d do things with the tape recorder.”

“We blew a fuse.”

“Did anyone call it comedy?”

“Of course not! It wasn’t comedy. It was just playing with kids.”

“When did it get to be called comedy?”

“In college, when I did night clubs.”

“Who is that zombie voice you and Bob are always doing?”

“Norman. We can’t say who it is. He’s a paranoid schizophrenic, and if he finds out we’re doing him he’ll come and kill us. I want to cover some more points. Like every Monday night I work as a busboy at the Posh Bagel simply because I like the work.”

“The things I really want to know you won’t tell me.”

“Like what?”

“Like how you went from being a jerk to what you are now.”

“O.K. A jerk. The year after high school, everyone went to college and I didn’t. I drove a taxi and trucks. I drank heavily.”

“Were you very unhappy?”

“I was unhappy most of childhood. I had no confidence.”

“What did your parents think? Didn’t they want you to go to college?”

“They understood it might not be right for me. They understood that. But my father said, ‘You could do more with your life. You used to perform at children’s parties. You could do something with that.’ So I had pamphlets printed up—‘Uncle Andy’s Fun House.’ And then my friend said, ‘You should go on TV and become a children’s clown, like Bozo!’ So I put it together—I should go on TV as a clown and continue my party-entertainment business and get such a name that I’d have the biggest children’s party-entertainment business in the world and franchise it and train people.

“So I went to this junior college that anyone could get into—it was all kids who were trying to keep out of the Vietnam War, not a real college. So, you see, it was so cold in Boston that I’d dress up in a shirt, a sweatshirt, a sweater, a jacket, a coat, a raincoat. Much like I dress now, but more so. And of course I’ve always been late for everything, so I’d be late for class. So I’d come in and I would just take off my layers of clothes one at a time and throw them on the floor—I’d stand there, I’d been running because I’m late, so I’d be panting, and I’d try not to be conspicuous, and people would watch me. After a few minutes, the whole class would be laughing. The teacher was a nice guy, he’d laugh, too.

But he told me at the end of the semester, ‘Don’t stay in radio, because you’re very visual.’ I said, ‘I’d like to be in TV, so I thought I’d major in radio so I could be a great disk jockey and work my way into TV.’ He said, ‘You know, Andy, if you want to be on TV, major in TV.’ I said, ‘Yeah!’ I felt he taught me a great lesson: If you want to do something, do it, don’t beat around the bush. So I majored in TV and started performing in front of grownups for the first time. I did Uncle Andy’s Fun House.”

“Did they think that was comedy?”

“No, they thought I was nuts. They would laugh at me. I realized that all my life I’d been laughed at, and I used to not like it, and that’s why I was so unhappy. So I started using it. Not being laughed with, being laughed at. One day, I looked in the mirror and I had my hair parted in the middle and I had a mustache and I looked like an old-time comedian. All my life I’d been such a serious guy and never could tell a joke, and so I looked at myself in the mirror and said, ‘Andy, you can be a famous funnyman if you would like.’

“Then, in college, these black guys were having a ‘Soul Time’ show and asked me to be in on it. They said, ‘We want you to be the comedy relief.’ Now, I had never done comedy, but they were laughing at me all the time on the street—I was their buffoon. So I decided, ‘I’ll imitate Elvis Presley and play the conga drums,’ and that’s what I did.

“I said to my friends, ‘I’m gonna perform in a coffeehouse—imitate Elvis, play conga drums, sing “That’s Amore,” ’ and they all laughed. Just doing Elvis in a coffeehouse was ludicrous. People thought I was serious—they’d look at me and say, ‘Am I dreaming? Is he for real?’ I was just doing what I did and they loved it. So I was asked back, and I came back with ‘Mighty Mouse.’ It was a song I’d been doing in my room for years, fantasizing doing it on a children’s TV show. And it worked! They clapped for it, they laughed for it.

“Then, Foreign Man. One of those afternoons when I’d read my poetry and played the congas at the Café Wha?—I was fourteen—everyone in the place was so embarrassed by this other man there with this sort of Pakistani accent trying to do these terrible jokes. God, they were so bad, anecdotal jokes, and then he’d say, meekly and shyly, ‘Vell, dat ees my story,’ and no one would laugh, and then he’d say, ‘Vell, dat ees all I vanted to say,’ and still no laughter or applause—just dead silence and painful embarrassment, and then he’d say, ‘Vell, tenk you vedy much.’ My friend and I were hysterical. You know, quietly hysterical. When we got outside, we went crazy.

“He’s talking now, but only through his attorney.”

“So in college I saw that the audience wouldn’t accept it if I started out with Elvis Presley. They were offended. They’d go, ‘What, he thinks he’s handsome or something?’ I decided that my natural innocence—I’d lost it after the first few times I did my act—I thought I could be more innocent as the Foreign Man. Maybe I could get famous as a guy who speaks foreign and the only thing he does is Elvis Presley. So the first time I tried it, the whole act was Foreign Man, and when I got to the Elvis part I said, ‘So now I vould like to do de Elvis Presley.’ I could see that I was on the right track.

“The rest is history. I met Bob, and we’d share ideas—he’s the only guy who thought like me. But before I’d ever met him I’d had the idea I’d take a gun out onstage and blow my brains out. I was seeing a psychiatrist since age three.”

“Have you ever seen a good one?”

“How should I know? How can you write this? You don’t know anything juicy about me. You don’t know about the craziness, the insanity. You don’t know the half of it. Anyway, you should read Hubert Selby, Jr. I know you say you hate his writing. It’s poetry, each word is a masterpiece. Read ‘The Demon.’ I was flipping out as I was reading it. I was screaming with delight! That’s my mind in a nutshell. I like horror movies. I like to be scared. I like the whole spectrum of emotions. I like to laugh, I like to cry. I don’t think any sense of humor is funny. Did you like the way I had Robin Williams dressed up as my grandmother and sitting on the stage in the easy chair for the whole act at Carnegie Hall?”

“Yes, even if it wasn’t Robin Williams.”

“Trust me. It was Robin Williams. I’d tell you if it wasn’t. Why do people not believe me?”

IN THE JAGUAR WITH MRS. KAUFMAN

Andy’s mother agreed to meet me when she was in the city. A complicated plan was worked out. She was driving to New York with Andy’s grandmother, Mr. Kaufman’s mother, in order to drop her off at the apartment of the other grandmother, her mother. Then she and I would sit downstairs in her car, a brown Jaguar, since there were no legal parking spots.

Mrs. Kaufman introduced me to her mother-in-law and explained, “She’s writing a story about Andy.” Then I said, “I’ve been working on it for a year.” The grandmother smiled and said, “With him you need a year.”

In the Jaguar with Andy’s mother, I asked her if she’d noticed anything unusual about him when he was a baby.

“Oh, he was quite unusual. At nine months of age, he used to pull himself up in his crib. And next to his crib was a dresser with a little Victrola and we used to buy children’s records, and he couldn’t turn it on and off but he could pull the plug out and put it back so we kept it on all the time and he’d use the plug to put it off or on. He put the records on himself. He was unbelievable.”

“Did you think he must be pretty smart?”

“No, I didn’t think anything. I just thought he liked records.”

“Did you notice anything else when he was a baby?”

“He was always a loner. He was two when Michael was born, and then he would just stand and look out the window. It was a little heartbreaking.

“I had some peculiar ideas with Andy. It was tough taking care of him. My mother-in-law said to me, ‘You know what I used to do with my son Jack, he was a wild one,’ and Andy was wild, he was so cute, but he had a temper. One time, he ran out the door—no pants—and he was down the block before anyone could get him. He was always a fast runner. So my mother-in-law said, ‘Tie him up with a rope,’ and I tied him to a tree out front, and I took one look at him and he looked like a wild animal. And I couldn’t stand it. I called a new pediatrician, and he said, ‘Don’t you ever tie a child up.’

“I had the strange idea that children are always supposed to be happy and smiling. So when Andy was four I took him to New York to a psychologist and he said Andy could use some play therapy. He should have been put ahead in school and not expected to do the ordinary normal things. He could have used a special school, for gifted children. I didn’t think of it. And neither did anybody else. He went to psychologists until he was in college and found meditation. He was always an angry person, unhappy and impatient. It calmed him down.”

“What happened when he started to do really well?”

“Oh, he didn’t do really well until just recently. He didn’t get much encouragement from us. All the times he was knocking his brains out working for nothing . . .”

“What did you think he should be doing?”

“Well, we didn’t know he was going to be this kind of a star. My feeling was, maybe he wants to go on Channel 13 with a little kiddie program. When he did the children’s parties, he was given fifty cents once, and once a little gift. Then, when he was twelve, for five dollars he threw the whole party—he bought the favors and everything. Like at Carnegie Hall, giving the milk and cookies to the whole audience.”

“When did you get an inkling that he’d be a big success?”

“You know, I can’t tell you. The whole thing seems like a dream. The best part is that he’s happy. When I used to drive him to the psychiatrist when he was twelve, thirteen, I’d say, ‘What you do in life has to be what you love, wake up every day and say, “I can’t wait to get to work.” ’ And now he has that. It’s a dream come true.” ♦