about forty of us all sitting in the lotus position outside on a beautiful day, gathered around the Maharishi. He was lecturing. Occasionally, someone would ask him a question. I was still pretty shy back then. It took me a while to muster enough courage to raise my hand.
“Yes, Andy!”
“Maharishi, what is the secret of comedy?”
“The secret of comedy is …”
He lowered his head, which he would do when he was giving something great thought. Paused … then raised his head back up and with a broad smile on his face said: “Timing!”
We all laughed.
—ANDY KAUFMAN
Phone rings …
B: Hello?
A: Bob!
B: Yeah, Andy.
A: How would I go about getting my hands on a cadaver without anyone knowing?
B: Go dig one up, like Igor did.
A: Seriously, I’m not joking.
B: Neither am I. You could probably buy one from a city morgue some place. They routinely sell those poor homeless bastards to medical schools so med students can practice on them. But there’s going to be paperwork. Besides, you need a body that looks like you—that complicates the matter.
A: Well, I’m kind of figuring that one out. If I died in a car crash or fire, that would make it harder to identify the body.
B: Yes, that’s true, but they’re still going to check dental records. How are you going to get around that?
A: Maybe I can have some of my teeth pulled out and throw them in the fire. Will that do?
B: You’ll have to yank a hell of a lot of them out. They usually have X-rays of the entire set of teeth, uppers and lowers.
A few weeks later. Ring …
B: Hello Andy, what’s up?
A: I figured it out!
B: Figured what out?
A: I don’t go the cadaver route. I work with a real live body. I find someone who’s dying of some disease, like cancer. At the end, they’re all shrunken up and the chemotherapy makes them lose all their hair.
B: OK so far. I’m with you.
A: Bob, it’s just what we did with Clifton. We made everyone think that you were me as Tony through prosthetics. I do kind of the same thing, but this time I find somebody who kind of resembles me who’s terminal. I’ll pay them off. This way, they can leave a substantial amount of money for their loved ones. And then on my end, I’ll start to look like them.
B: How you gonna do that?
A: I’ll lose weight. Shave my head. Maybe I’ll even go through chemo myself. I wonder how much of that stuff a healthy person can take without doing too much damage to themselves. My hair will really fall out and I’ll have severe weight loss. Everyone will really think I’m dying. Nobody has ever gone this far to pull something like this off. It would be the crowning achievement of my career.
B: What career? You’ll be dead.
A: Exactly. Dead, but not forgotten. Eventually I’ll come back.
B: Andy, are you serious about this?
A: Dead serious.
* * *
Lynne
Every time Andy would go to a doctor, he’d ask him if he had cancer. I’d get so mad at him, I’d say, “Andy, you’re going to talk yourself into getting cancer.” So he called me from the doctor’s office one day and told me he had cancer. He said in a bragging tone, “You see, I told you I was going to get cancer.” His doctors sat us down over the first week and said, “There’s nothing we can do. You might not even live for six months. You’re going to die.”
The amazing thing is Andy took it like somebody had just told him he couldn’t go to the movies—“Oh, all right.” It’s like he believed in magic or something and he’d be cured.
I think he was so evolved because of meditation that the thought of death didn’t scare him. He didn’t want to die. He just wasn’t afraid of it. Then off we went to the Philippines to see this “psychic surgeon,” getting two treatments a day, six days a week. You’d take off all your clothes except your underwear and then lie on a table. It’s very sterile and you’re in this third world country. It’s very hot. And the décor is kind of bamboo fake Jesus. And you’re standing in line with these Japanese tourists who come there on tour because it’s a fun thing to do. So you have them, and then also a few people like Andy who are really very sick. So you lie on the table and the guy starts putting his little hands on you, and blood starts flowing out, and he starts pulling these gut-like things out of you. It only takes a few seconds and then they wipe you up and off you go, and then the next Japanese tourist lies down. So there we were for six weeks. Andy was good at first. But then around the time Bob got there, he turned for the worse and couldn’t even walk. Bob had to go to some Catholic hospital and get down on his hands and knees and pray with the nuns before they would give him this World War II walker that was like a huge cage for Andy. Then back to LA in Cedars-Sinai Hospital. It’s like he went to sleep and that was it.
When Andy died, many people thought he had faked his death. What the public didn’t know is that for many years he had talked about faking his own death. The first person I know of who he told was John Moffitt, the producer of “Fridays,” back in 1981. I know he talked to Bob about it constantly. He talked to me about it many times. He told his manager, George Shapiro. He also told an ex-girlfriend named Mimi. He told all of us he was serious about doing it and then he died. I was in the room the moment he passed, and yet at times I say to myself, Could he possibly have faked it? ’Cause if he had, he would have taken it all the way with his family, his loved ones being around the bed. He would have taken it that far. He would have done it to me.
* * *
If I had lectured him back in the States about crossing his t’s and dotting his i’s in regard to making those around him believe he was dying, once in the Philippines he took the task to heart. When I arrived in Baguio City, Philippines, on April 7, 1984, he totally appeared as someone who would be dead in a short time. He was skin and bones. He could hardly walk. Lynne would have to assist him going to the bathroom, clean him up and help him back into bed. It was truly a sad, pathetic sight worthy of an Academy Award. I was quite impressed. I couldn’t wait to speak to him privately, but Lynne never left his side. Occasionally he would weep about his condition. I had only
