early as age four. “I thought that children should always be happy and when Andy wasn’t, I thought something was wrong.” Andy said, “It’s not that I was crazy, it’s just that I was sad at times because the world was sad at times. When I would perform, it wasn’t sad anymore.”
I think Andy and I were kindred spirits in this regard. Both of our dads yelled a lot. I mean a lot. I remember going down into the basement of my home and performing to imaginary audiences just to get away from it. I would venture to say that many fledgling performers did the same. Performance was distraction from the harsh reality of life. When Kaufman and I met, we intrinsically knew this and from that moment on, the performances never stopped. It was 24/7. This nonstop act unleashed an overabundance of pranks, many times heaped on unwitting strangers, like it or not.
The fact that there were now two of us created a dynamic where one was constantly fueling the other. We were like the would-be murderers Hickock and Smith in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. Alone, they wouldn’t have done what they did to that unfortunate Clutter family. But together, they hog-tied and slaughtered them.
Kaufman and I together formed the same duo. We couldn’t control ourselves or shut it down. We were hell-bent on “slaughtering” the status quo. I imagine we had a sense of youthful entitlement, but we weren’t fascists about it. It was just fun. Fun was the key. Fun was the drug that fueled it all. Because if we were having fun, we wouldn’t have to be sad. Fun … Funny … Humor … Comedy. You can see how the comedian label got wrongly applied. Fun. It’s a word that can easily be taken for granted. People casually throw it around, as in, “We had a fun time.” People who knew Andy will always use that word seriously in describing him, pointing out that fun really was his essence. Cindy Williams of Laverne & Shirley fame was a friend of Andy’s. She elaborates:
As an actress who loved to act, I couldn’t have met a better person than Andy, who acted every moment of his life. It was one big improv continuously. Such fun. The best fun I ever had in my life.
* * *
Lynne
Fun was everything with Andy. Breakfast was fun. We’d play the card game Crazy Eights for hours at breakfast because it was so much fun. Andy once challenged my brother Steve, who was a professional, world-famous card player, to a game of Crazy Eights. For fun. Sometimes we’d be driving in a car and pull up to a light. If there was a car next to us, Andy would start to strangle me and I would mouth “HELP!” to the car next to us, then when the light changed we’d speed off leaving them in shock. Just for the fun of it.
Another story: When I first got to San Francisco, I was living in an apartment with a roommate, Michael. Michael made a comment to me at some point that Andy used a lot of toilet paper. So Andy made it his mission that every night he would bring home a four-pack roll of toilet paper (always the same brand, of course) and put the pack on the back of the toilet. The pile grew higher and higher. Andy was waiting for Michael to say something, but he didn’t. So Andy just kept adding packs until the pile reached the ceiling. Then he had me go in and ask Michael if he could get me down a pack of toilet paper because I couldn’t reach it. That was the punch line.
* * *
Fun. It’s the reason Andy chose me to be his writer. In fact, I was really more “Andy’s actor” than “Andy’s writer.” We played and pranked constantly. Andy met his match with me. No matter when, no matter where, I “acted with Andy.” It was always fun. That’s why Andy became disheartened when his fun turned to work on Taxi. WORK IS NOT FUN! As the brilliant clinical psychologist Dr. Stan Martindale said, “Once they pay you for something you love doing, they kill it for you.”
Andy realized early in life that kids got away with murder. Watch them in stores or supermarkets. They yell and cry, throw temper tantrums, and God forbid their mother physically reprimand them. Nowadays, a mom can run the risk of being thrown into jail. I am often asked, “Was that childlike nature Andy displayed a put-on?” The answer is “Yes … and no.” You see, he too wanted to get away with murder, so he would turn it off and on whenever he chose, depending on the situation. At the high end of innocence you have Foreign Man; i.e., the lovable Latka character from Taxi. In Foreign Man’s case, the innocence is amplified by the use of a foreign accent, making the character that much more vulnerable, as he tries to maneuver in a society that speaks a different language.
On Andy’s first Tonight Show appearance with Johnny Carson, when he’s invited to sit on the couch, Johnny is talking to him much like an adult to a six-year-old. In this case, he’s dropped the foreign accent all together, but the Bambi eye movement, innocence, and shyness are all part of the act. Johnny doesn’t know it at the time and believes it to be real. Besides, comedically it works for both pros. Later, on other Carson appearances, Andy turns it down quite a bit and starts acting more his age. This new dynamic throws Johnny, he doesn’t know how to play Andy, and the laughter becomes less and less each time. Soon, Johnny realizes it’s not working any more between him and Kaufman and doesn’t invite him back, at least not when he’s hosting. In retrospect, if Andy had maintained that childlike quality each time, he most likely would have been asked back countless times, and Johnny could have done his famous deadpan takes to the audience, much as he did with other childlike wackos like Charo and Tiny Tim.
But Kaufman didn’t want to maintain that innocent character all the time. After all, there was a trunk load of alter egos just waiting in the wings, some of them bad guys who wanted to wrestle or the obnoxious lounge singer Tony Clifton who needed to come out. But innocence was in his arsenal of characters and could be summoned up whenever it was called for, even in everyday life, especially to pick up girls. That wide-eyed childishness just sucked them in. It was like a lost puppy they were gonna save. Once that puppy had got them in the sack, however, he would turn into a full-grown wolf—“Wanna wrastle?”
This man/child gimmick proved quite effective in business dealings also. Let the managers and agents bust their balls figuring out the best direction to take his career in. After all, they were getting a piece of the action. He’d just sit wrapped up in his innocent cocoon, spooning chocolate ice cream into his mouth like a child. He played the innocent to his manager, George Shapiro, through his entire career, and George would reciprocate by talking back to him in baby talk—much like his real dad did. Howard West, George’s partner in Shapiro/West, knew it was an act and didn’t buy into it, so Andy steered clear of Howard, choosing to deal with George instead.
With Lynne and me, he dropped the façade altogether. We wouldn’t put up with it, nor would he want us to. Recently I was talking to Scott Thorson, who was Liberace’s lover, played by Matt Damon in HBO’s highly successful Behind the Candelabra. After watching Michael Douglas’s portrayal of Liberace, I asked Scott if Liberace really talked like that. He said, “Hell, no. Only onstage. At home, he used his real voice.” Same with Kaufman. At home, he used his real voice, at least around Lynne and me. Still, he’d cleverly work us sometimes with his hurt innocence when he really wanted something.
Like an artist with a palette of colors, Kaufman could mix and choose whatever character it would take to get what he wanted. I’m sure in the faking of his death, he had a whole other persona waiting in the wings, so he could live unrecognized. And I doubt very strongly that he would have flown off to live on some remote little island in the Caspian Sea. I think rather like Osama bin Laden, he would be hiding in plain sight, every day gloating in the satisfaction of his legendary disappearing act. Look around next time you go out. You just might spot him. Someone, someplace is probably standing next to him this very minute. By now he might be bald or have a beard and probably a good size gut to go along with it. Once he even told me he might have one of his legs amputated. This way no one would suspect him of being Andy Kaufman, who had two good legs.
This obsession
