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| ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ April 24, 2002, Egyptian Theatre, Hollywood, CA Wrestling With Andy Kaufman Review of a rare screening of Andy Kaufman films and Q&A interview with Bob Zmuda, Lynne Margulies and Johnny Legend by K. Faybinet, roving wrestling reporter. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
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| A rain-misted morning gave way to
a magical evening on April 24th, 2002 at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, USA. The American Cinematheque presented
Wrestling with Andy Kaufman, a program assembled by Chris D. (of seminal L.A. punk band the Flesheaters & co-programmer
of the Egyptian) and Lynne Margulies, former girlfriend of Andy Kaufman. The bill consisted of the opening feature,
"I'm From Hollywood", a Question & Answer session, intermission, five rare video clips and the second
feature, "My Breakfast with Blassie" by Johnny Legend, brother to Lynne Margulies. A table was set up outside the main entrance of the beautiful Egyptian Theatre for Bob Zmuda, Lynne and Johnny Legend to sit and autograph copies of the featured films as well as Bob's book, Andy Kaufman Revealed, and to talk with fans. CAKS family members note: also on the table was a myriad of multi-colored flyers promoting the Celebrating Andy Kaufman Society web site and forums. There was an overall feeling of excitement and community among the guests, who filed in quickly for good seats. What follows is a transcription from micro-cassette of the Q&A, which followed "I'm From Hollywood". Very brief portions were left out due to time constraints. The interviews were relaxed and informal. Chris D. starts out the Q&A with hesitating introductions of Lynne, Johnny and Bob. Lynne: (taking a seat in front of the screen) So this is what it looks like from up here. (chuckles) Chris: So, uh, let me start off by asking you (Lynne) uh, I know you were, um, together with Andy, in a relationship, his girlfriend, and you also put together his documentary, largely about his wrestling exploits. And one thing that was depicted in "Man On the Moon" - it was really a little bit different in real life, how you met him. I believe in "Man On the Moon" your character met him on the Merv Griffin show when you supposedly wrestled Andy, but actually it was a little bit different… Lynne: Right, um, when Andy and I actually met, you're going to see it on video in "My Breakfast with Blassie", 'cause my brother, Johnny Legend, was making that film and I had no idea who Andy Kaufman was, because I didn't watch TV. And I just came along to help out on the set (laughs). I was just supposed to be helping out. And then what happened was, they put us in this back room and there was no one else in the room. So Johnny put me and the other director, Linda Lautrec and her sister and Andy's friend Linda in the table behind them and we were just supposed to eat and leave - that was it. We weren't supposed to say a word. And what happened is, as you'll see, we get dragged into the conversation and Andy tries to pick me up and we were actually meeting for the first time on video. The first words I ever spoke to him. So it's documented in this film. Completely real. Yes. Totally unscripted. And then, in the MOTM, since they weren't including "My Breakfast with Blassie" for whatever reasons, in MOTM they said, "well Andy met so many women wrestling, that we might as well have you meet him wrestling" - so I said, "OK" (chuckles) Chris: Now Johnny, "My Breakfast with Blassie", which we're going to watch in a few minutes, we're actually, after the Q&A, we're going to have a short ten minute break and we're going to have Lynne intro about twenty five minutes of rare clips and then we'll show MBWB. But Johnny could you talk a little bit about how MBWB came about - How you met Andy and how that whole thing came about? Johnny: Okay, let's see if I can do this and still be done before midnight. I had become aware of Andy floating around town - had been doing some similar things that I was doing. You know, obsessed with Fred Blassie at the time and Freddy Cannon and a lot of rock and roll people. And he would show up who knows where, at any given time. So one night Blassie called me up since I wrote "Pencil Neck Geek" and recorded that with Blassie and he said this guy Andy Kaufman is showing up at the Arena. And a lot of people don't realize back then, this was in the pre-Hulk Hogan era and celebrities just did not go to wrestling then. I think Deborah Harry and Andy were the only ones who had enough nerve to go to Madison Square Garden. So he started calling up Fred like in the middle of the night saying, "I've got a new idea for a hold" and things like that. (crowd laughter) And he was learning to lip-sync his songs. So Fred, who basically knows, um, Englebert Humperdink and maybe John Holmes on the other end and nobody in between, (crowd laughter) called me up and says, "there's this guy, I think he's a complete nut, Andy Kaufman. He's a wrestling fan and he says he's a TV star, blah, blah, blah". So I said, "Well, basically he's both. He's a complete nut and he IS a TV star and I'll try to think of something, you know, that we can do." So then, I was at the end of my rope. I had seen every movie in town, and I really mean every single good, bad film in town. And there was a little theater, strangely enough, called the Westland Twins. A little art house, used to be down on Pico and the guy that used to work at the Olympic Auditorium was the manager there. So I could get in for free. So I went in one day and it was "My Dinner with Andre" with Linda Lautrec and I just came out and the film affected me in such a way that I didn't just want to run around screaming about it, I thought I had to take a stand somehow. (laughter) So we first tried to think of who could be the foil, or the threat. I've known Fred for years and he's the kind of guy you could just film him for thirty hours and you don't have a problem. And so we were wracking our brain. And all of the sudden it hit us - Andy! I mean, my God, how perfect could it be? So we were in New York a few weeks later and were at the Ramada Inn on the way to the matches and we cornered Andy on the way there with Lou Albano and Fred Blassie and you know, all the people from that time period, pre-Hulk Hogan days. And I said, "Andy! We've got this great idea. We're going to do a take-off on 'Dinner with Andre'. It's going to be you and Blassie, my friend Mr. Blassie,", you know, and he said, "Oh! This could be something maybe they show before 'Rocky Horror'. And I said, "No, this is going to be something they show INSTEAD of 'Rocky Horror'", I said, "that's as bad as 'Dinner with Andre'. So he went back and forth because he was very noncommittal about ANY thing. And so he apparently went and saw 'Dinner with Andre' one night, fell asleep, went into a dead sleep and woke up in the middle of the night and as he said, "woke up in total agony", called us up and said, "I'll do it." (crowd laughter) Chris: (to Bob) A lot of this stuff that we've seen, "I'm From Hollywood", - you're of course in the film, from many different time periods. We can tell from your many different hair styles, and uh, you knew Andy from the beginning, in New York, before he hit it big and uh, before even he had come out here to Los Angeles. Can you talk a little bit about his fascination with wrestling and the whole, you know, blurring of fantasy and reality? Bob: Well, you know, it really is the KEY to what Andy Kaufman's about. Especially because of the movie, MOTM and people go, "what was this all about? Is it performance art?" And you really see how clear it is, when you see Andy in the context of the wrestling. When he was a little boy, his grandma, Pearl (was it?) would take him to the Madison Square Garden to see the wrestlers. So to Andy, his dream was not to be on a hit TV sitcom or to be in a movie, his dream was to be a bad guy wrestler. THAT'S the dream. I mean, as you know, we could go out with Andy, and you could be in a restaurant with him and it could be Marlon Brando sitting there and it could be Fred Blassie here, or Buddy Rogers, and THAT'S who he wants to be. Forget the other guy. Forget Hollywood. You know that's why, of course, "I'm From Hollywood" - it's really Andy putting Hollywood down in his own way. So it really is the secret to Andy. Because, times have changed when it comes to wrestling now. Back then, as you could see on the people's faces, back then, they totally believed it. Now it's different. Wrestling has taken on a whole different - you know its like you don't really believe these guys anymore. Nor do they even try to convince you that it's real. Back then it was real! People could really get hurt. Andy really stepped into it like that so therefore, it's that soap opera that went on. So Andy then took that wrestling design of what the folks would do in the ring, that soap opera that went on, this serial week after week, and he brought that to his own career, his own sensibilities of his career in Hollywood. He would go on David Letterman and talk about how his career was over and he didn't care. He wanted to be the bad guy. Latka was the good guy, you know, the wrestler was the bad guy, Tony Clifton was the bad guy. And that's just how he saw life in these totally, you know, black and white situations. To him that's what would… Johnny: (interrupting) Well he saw "Taxi" and things like that as his DAY job. Bob: I was talking. (mock slapping) Hey man, no… Right. That was his DAY job, and this was his love. This was his hobby. And so in the movie, it's true, many people - "Oh my God!" the management, his management, here you've got this great job on "Taxi", you're making X amount of dollars a week, "Why Andy?" Both the management, the agency, George Shapiro West - they would go crazy! You know, "people are hating you. They love you as that little Latka. What are you doing?" He didn't care! It had nothing to do about, uh, fame and fortune at ALL. He was just performing - it was what he wanted to do. Lynne: (interjects) Right. He was just being a wrestler. That's all he wanted. He didn't care. He was going to give up Hollywood. He was going to give up his career and just become a wrestler at the end. And that's a fact. (chuckles) Bob: And he really wanted to open - he had on the drawing boards, he was going to open Andy Kaufman Wrestling Palaces, all across the U.S. For real, you know? You could tell, he really is a shy kind of a guy, when it comes to women. He was, if it wasn't for his celebrity I don't think he ever would've been able to open his mouth and meet a girl. So he really believed that if you could wrestle a woman, that you immediately broke down…all that physical armor and then, you know, he really believed he met so many people that were so shy like himself, so he wanted to open up these Andy Kaufman Wrestling Palaces to meet women. Chris: Which seemed to really work, according to your book, he went home with half the women he wrestled after the 'bouts. Bob: Well, he started as a joke and when he started wrestling the women, what happened is that - it was his birthday, was coming up and he's making $35,000 a week on "Taxi" which was a tremendous amount of money back then, and his friends are like, "what are you gonna get this guy for his birthday?" But I knew there were two girls that he really was interested in. Marilyn Rubin and Gail Slobodkin. Lynne: (interjects) Who we will see on one of the rare tapes this evening. Bob: Oh really? Oh good. So he really, and so it was his birthday. And I went to his house one day and he was looking very strange. He had all the lights down and the shades drawn. I said, "Andy, what's going on?" He said, "Well, I've got to be honest with someone about this", says, "I've got to show you something." And I go into his bedroom and this closet, and this was before you had porn videos. And he had this stupid little 8mm thing with batteries in it that was like a loop. You bought these little 8mm films and ran it and you looked at it through this thing. You know, and I could see he was like, turned on by this thing, and I didn't know - God! Now I'm seeing, "what is Andy Kaufman's sexual life about?" And I looked through the thing and - it wasn't nudity! It was like, just these women in bikinis wrestling. And he was sweating and he was so excited about it… Chris: (breaks in) So, coincidentally Lynne tells me that she was actually in one of those, those old 8mm wrestling films. (giggling in crowd) Bob: That impressed Andy more than anything else in the world. That she had a part in… Chris: That's as far as she ever went, but… Lynne: That was my whole wrestling career. Bob: So it was his birthday party and I said, "Andy", and his family, his mother and father were there, we had about 40 people at his place, and I said, "Andy, this is what me and some friends got you for your birthday". We brought some wrestling mats, I came out in a wrestling shirt (referee) and I had these two girls, this Marilyn Rubin and this Gail Slobodkin in bikinis come out and wrestle each other. Wellll, he went crazy! (laughter) He says, "Zmuda, this goes in the act. This goes in the ACT." (laughter) So every place we toured, every college campus where he had an act - the wrestling worked great at the college campuses because they're able to advertise a few weeks before. They had big posters, WIN 500 dollars, you know, wrestling Andy Kaufman, so that college campuses just loved it. And when we got there all these women would show up. They'd be in their leotards ready to wrestle, and we'd separate the audience. We'd have guys on one side and women on the other, and we left it up to the audience to really decide who was gonna be picked. So it wasn't anything planned and oddly enough, as you know, about 25 to 30 per cent of all the women he wrestled, he went to bed with. And I was always the referee and I would always hear him, and then the worst thing, and I would hear him - you couldn't hear him because the people would be screaming, but he'd be wrestling and I'd be down there as the ref (crouches down) and he'd be (gruff voice), "Oh baby, BABY, Arrrghhh. You are HOT, Ohhhh". (crowd laughter) This would go on. "Afterwards, afterwards, OOOH, you come back stage, Aaahh." And this kept going on and he was so aroused by this. Finally Lorne Michaels had him wrestle on "Saturday Night Live". I thought George Shapiro was going to have a heart attack. 'Cause we knew this was really his sexual life, and now he's doing it on live TV. So he'd be in the dressing room. "Oh my God, they're going to find out!" And would, pitch a tent, wrestling, how can I put it any more delicately than that? You know what I mean. So that's why he's wearing the clothes that you see, those long Johns, so in "Saturday Night Live", he would have the jock strap on. I would take a full roll of duct tape and we would tie him down, and then he'd put the long Johns over that and then he'd put the baggy, you know, bathing suit over that. We were so afraid on live TV, you'd see it. He thought it was totally self-indulgent. You know, he was the first to say, "do you believe I'm doing this?" You know, he'd say, "what entertainment value does THIS have?" (laughter) And uh, sure enough, he was, you know - so that's how it started. Lynne: In a nut shell. Johnny: It should be noted that, uh, there was a very strong rumor, and probably true, that Elvis, in the early 60s, would basically sit around wrestling women, or watching women wrestle at his house, uh, around here. Bob: Well, in Albert Goldman's book about Elvis, and when Andy, at that point, Andy would say, "Did you read the book?! Elvis was just like me! I'm just like Elvis!" Elvis had this thing of young girls, wrestling and posing in their white panties. (unintelligible) Johnny: (I just got done saying that) I used to know girls who would go over to Elvis' place in the early 60s when we'd be going to the Olympic Auditorium, guys who hung out, their older sisters would go over to Elvis' place and wrestle. That's when I was first going there, me and Blassie and everything. So I'd say there's a pretty good chance it's true. Chris: So Lynne you probably saw a side of Andy that maybe Bob, who knew him extremely well, maybe never even saw and again, I'm wondering, just in reading Bob's book and seeing this and just from what I know about Andy from what I've seen over the years, he and Bob really seem like the real masters of the practical joke all the way down the line. In so many great put-ons and so much of the time, even after, you know, that you're still - it was so good, watching it on a screen, you're wondering what is real and what isn't. You're still wondering, well, "is this for real THIS time?" And I'm wondering just how much this addiction to being a put-on artist really did affect his career and if he ever had any intimations, just from a practical stand point, that he was like, completely destroying his meal ticket. Have you ever thought about that at all? Or did it really just never matter to him? Lynne: Absolutely he knew what he was doing. I mean because his career, after he started the wrestling, well it wasn't the wrestling that took his career down. It was the stuff he was doing on TV like on the "Fridays" show, where he got into the fight with Michael Richards and threw water in his face. Everyone just went nuts about that and when Lawler slapped him on the Letterman show and, what else did he do on TV that was so -? Those were the two main things. After he got slapped, after the whole thing with "Fridays" he stopped getting hired. I mean, people would NOT hire him anymore. And then "Taxi" was cancelled and George really couldn't book him on shows. And so Andy knew this was happening and I used to say to him, like with the wrestling and with all this stuff I actually said, "Andy! You are ruining your career! Cause people really, really, they REALLY hate you. It's not a joke!" You know, it's not like they're saying, "aww, we really hate Andy Kaufman". They really were HATING Andy Kaufman. And he didn't care. He didn't care. He was such a purist, because to him, if they hated him that much, he was doing his job right. He was doing exactly what he wanted to do. And he even, towards the end there, when no one would hire him, he just - we were living up in San Francisco and he was writing his novel and he said, "well, maybe I'm just, now I'm a writer. I'm gonna, write novels, maybe I'll never do anything on TV again." And he didn't care. It did not matter to him. You know, if he never was on TV again. Chris: Um, a question I can ask both of you and Bob is, uh, with some of the things that happened, for instance, Jerry Lawler throwing the fire in his face, and some of the stuff that looked, pretty real, the pile driver stuff, and uh, I'm just wondering, because something too, when you're doing that stuff, it's like; it's something from the legacy of Mr. X, which we'll talk about in a minute, somebody you were, uh, familiar with that's related in the book. There's stuff that's really dangerous, that was really borderline, with the way Andy was railing on and on about people from the south. Especially the way a lot of people are from the south, you just don't do that. You're taking your life into your hands, like when you go down there. That's what I've always known. So I'm just wondering how close Andy was really coming at times to getting injured, because there are times when it really looked like it had gone over the line. Lynne: Well, I'd love to say first that, just because Andy was, well he was kind of a weakling really, (giggles). He wasn't a wrestler. You know, wrestlers know how to fall; they know how to take it. Andy didn't. I mean he really did get hurt. I mean there were a couple of times, because I was there on a lot of those things, you know, and I see that thing where Lawler jumps and hits him in the face, and he really hurt him. You know, when he dropped on his neck? Because Andy didn't know how to do it. You know, he wasn't a wrestler. So he really got hurt. Bob: Well he was fearless! I mean he, Robin Williams said he was the kamikaze of comedians, you know? It's just amazing stuff that he would just go into these things and it really just didn't matter to him. That was it. And that's what was so bizarre about him, you know, what took place in the wrestling ring where you could control some of this, he just saw it as his life. You know to him, it probably was a drug to him. You know some people, it's like being a daredevil, I guess in a way. And some people just really get off on that. And I think Andy probably did. To him that was theatrical. 'Cause remember, when he was a little kid, he believed this all, because the wrestling was different. He would go in and he would believe that and that was entertainment. The excitement, and that's why Universal made a 55 million dollar movie about Andy Kaufman. Because of this, because nobody pushed the envelope further. And now, I mean, scholars are looking at Andy Kaufman's work is because of the fact that, what he did is so different in the world, in the realm of entertainment. Usually you have the performer, and you have the audience, and that's it. And that's how it worked for many years. You got the comedy then, the people are funny on stage and the people in the audience laughed. That's the agreement between audience and performer in the world of comedy. Well, he changed that. First of all, he changed it to the point, well, "maybe I'm going in, but I'm not going to make them laugh; I'm going to make them", let's take the extreme, "I'm going to BORE them." Oh! There's a concept! (laughter) "I'm going to read The Great Gatsby", and believe me, for years, for YEARS I produced the show on the road, and we'd go there and he'd bring that damned book out. George Shapiro would get in his car and leave. He said, "I can't take this". (laughter) "I can not take this." That's amazing stuff when you think back on it. It is SO different. It BREAKS the rules. He really is, if you had to put it in context you would say he's probably the first punk rocker. That finally, this is not about entertaining you anymore. It's about entertaining ME, and FUCK you. It has nothing to do with you, this has nothing to do with life, entertainment is BAD for you. Who knows?! You know, Andy meditated, what, how many hours a day? Lynne: Three to five. Bob: Yoga. You know this guy was on a totally different level, wave-length, and uh, (to Lynne and Johnny, quieter) he was just the strangest human being I think we've ever met in our lives! Lynne: You know, you actually said it. Everything he ever did was just to entertain himself. That was it. Everything else was secondary. He was entertaining himself no matter what. Bob: And that makes him the ultimate control freak, when you think about it. You know, people say, "was it destroying his career?" and all this stuff, well he'd been going on TV and saying I (Andy?) was destroying his career, so he's feeding it. He wants the career to be destroyed. He wants to self-destruct and by self-destructing, he reveals the artist control of it. Because HE'S destroying it. Not them. Not Hollywood. Not his Dad, not, somebody else. Him. Amazing stuff. Chris: So let me ask both you one more question and you one more question Johnny, and then we're going to open it up to the audience cause we, I'm sure there's quite a few people who want to ask more questions and we do have to start the rest of the show eventually here. Bob, can you talk just a little bit about the influence of Mr. X and who Mr. X was? I want to know, I know Mr. X is dead now, so I want to know if you can reveal his identity at this point or not. Bob: Yes, do you know who I'm talking about, Mr. X? You folks in the audience? Yeah. Okay, well, Mr. X is probably the reason that I got hired by Andy to be his writer, because I worked for Mr. X. Now Mr. X, I've got to take this back a little, Mr. X was a fellow I worked for. He's Norman Wexler. In my book I called him Mr. X because he was still alive and died a week before my book came out. Lynne: (laughing) He was so relieved. Bob: I was, yeah, this guy was, Norman Wexler wrote, a genius, he wrote, uh, "Serpico" with Al Pacino. He wrote "Saturday Night Fever". Chris: He wrote "Mandingo". Johnny: And "Joe". He was still alive and he was here. (Egyptian Theater) Chris: And "Joe" with Peter Boyle was one of his most famous movies. Bob: But Wexler was a trip. This guy, when I went to interview with Norman Wexler, the interview went like this, because my friend, Chris Albrecht from HBO, he said, "you've got to meet this guy, he's looking for somebody to work for him. He's going to pay them $2000 a week, off the books and he's gonna teach you how to write screenplays on top of it." And this is how many years ago? This is like 30 years ago. $2000 a week off the books - I couldn't believe it! So he said, Chris said, "you've got to go to the Improvisation. I set up an interview with him, at 2:00. You're gonna love the guy…" NOTE: At this time Bob goes into Story Telling mode about Wexler and continues into the Glazed Donut Story, during which side one of my micro-cassette tape ran out. For the complete story of Bob meeting Mr. X and the subsequent Glazed Donut Story, read them in Andy Kaufman Revealed, by Bob Zmuda and Matthew Scott Hansen, pps. 30-48. We continue later on with - Chris: Uh, Johnny, let me ask you before we open up things to the audience. With MBWB, what was the reception to it? (continuing question edited) Johnny: Because of the fact that we shot it so cheaply, we shot it with three barely broadcast quality cameras, and I actually told Andy that, because he was still coming off "Heartbeeps" at the time - and I said, "don't worry Andy", I said, "we're gonna go ahead with this thing and finish it and show it to you and if you really think it's terrible and you're gonna have another…albatross hanging over your back, I'll just, won't put it out. I'll just give you the tapes or whatever because it's just not worth it having another blemish on your career" and whatever. And he thought that was kind of great. So because it was so cheap it took us over a year, a year and a half or something to get the thing finished and while we were doing it his career just went into free fall, in every conceivable category. And while we were editing this thing almost every major and minor video company - video was still in its infancy then, no one was shooting anything direct-to-video like an original video feature - probably porno people were still just beginning to think about it - and all these companies were like, "Oh! They're doing something with Andy Kaufman", you know, and by the time we got the thing finished some company that had just put out a rockabilly glamour size video suddenly backed down and said, "we're not interested anymore". It just sort of was that kind of thing, uh, the only one in the country that actually was even slightly interested was Mike Nesmith's company which had just put out "Dinner with Andre" and I was afraid they were just going to put up a small advance and then bury the thing. So you know I was a little paranoid at the time. So we got the thing finished. Andy came over. We were all living in Venice (CA) at one point. He came in one day and he thought it was absolutely great because it was just a raw hunk of what he was like, warts and all. I mean, it's very much a take-off on "Dinner with Andre" It's a couple of guys sitting in a Sambo's, you know, across town over there and we just kept hacking away at it. We shot over about four or five hours of footage. Some people think it takes place in real time, which is very flattering, but we spent, Lynne knows, she was there with us, it took us a year of sometimes just picking part of a sentence in one place and cutting thirty minutes in and jumping back. Lynne: Andy thought it was one of the best things he'd done, if not thee best. Johnny: Yeah, it's lucky that he got to see it at the NuArt and, you know, he got to see it a few times and it was out on video while he was still around, and uh, yeah. He even went on David Letterman with Blassie and announced that they were going to do a whole series of films, which I, originally they were going to redo "Piano Box", the Laurel and Hardy film at a 7-11, ah… Lynne: And he meant it. NOTE: On "Late Night with David Letterman", February 23rd, 1983 Andy told David that he and Blassie were re-making "Sons of the Desert" the Laurel and Hardy film. They then proceeded to do a routine with Andy as Laurel and Blassie as Hardy. Chris: You know, we don't have much time left because, we need to start the rest of the show, but is there anyone in the audience who wants to ask a question? Audience member asks something about Tony Clifton. Bob: Yeah, well, Tony, once again, the bad guy wrestler, you know. Tony Clifton, the total opposite of that sweet Latka. Basically Andy could not stand doing Latka anymore. Being that sweet guy was just getting to him. And so the idea, when Andy first started his career in New York, the whole thing was this put-on, was this happening, situation. So he would hang out at the Improvisation. You went to see a show at the Improv, which was the only comedy club in America at the time, in Hell's Kitchen, New York. Andy would come in a couple of hours before his performance on stage, and he would come in with his little suitcase, and the character was called Foreign Man, cause this was before Latka had his name, and he would ask Bud Friedman to put him - (as Foreign Man), "Can you pleese put mee", and the people, the audience, that would be coming in, he did it very, very, very low key, under the radar, so you would just kind of buy your ticket or wait to go in to see the show, and you would hear this foreign guy talking to Bud (laughter), like kind of begging him, could he put him on stage, like he just got off the bus. And you just believed it! You totally, you know, he did this two hours, but to do this, to set up that practical joke, night after night and to go in and do that to an audience. And at the end of the evening you'd see everybody, Leno, you know, everybody would be on, Richard Lewis, Richard Belzer, Elayne Boosler, these were the people that were performing, Larry David, at the time. And finally, at, you know, hours later when they were going to wrap up the show, Bud said, "Ladies and gentlemen, before we say goodnight, there's a guy that came in here earlier today and he's been asking me if he could go on stage - folks, you have to audition for the Improv. Don't tell your friends to come here. He's a nice guy. I never do this. I'm going to break my own rule. I'm going to let him up tonight. His name is, Mr. Andy." And you believed him! And he came up on stage and you sat there and he started doing these awful impressions, (as Foreign Man),"I'd like to do de Archee Bunker, you meat head get out of me chair. You ding bat go into de kitchen, fix me de food." And you'd go, "Oh no" (laughter) And he'd go on, but it wasn't done like a guy doing a routine and women would sit there with their boyfriends and they'd say, "quit laughing at him". You know, it was terrible. I saw a guy one night, got up, went back to where Bud was, said, "Mr. Friedman, you've got to call the suicide prevention for New York City cause this kid's going to kill himself". Cause he's on stage and he starts realizing that he's getting laughs, but they're not laughing with him, they're laughing AT him. And it's just, you heart just went out to him, and you just got sucked into this thing, and finally he turns around and says, "I'd like to do de last impression, thee Elvis Presley", and then he turns. Well then, the lights dim, there's a lot of production going, music and everything and I'm going, "Wait a second", and he turned around and he did a drop dead Elvis. And everybody went, "we've been HAD". Then, after that, he'd go back to (Foreign Man), "Tenk you veddy much". So you're thinking, well this guy, the only ability he has is doing this great Elvis impersonation, you believe he's still the foreign guy. So anyway, the point was this, he had great big fun in putting an audience on like that. That's what it's all about, even putting America on with all of the stuff with the wrestling and David Letterman. Why would a guy do this? Because he was performing for himself. He got off on the fact that he could fool you…Working for Andy Kaufman was more like working for Harry Houdini. That you're doing these illusions constantly and fooling people constantly. Well finally when he becomes famous on "Taxi" he can no longer go on stage and make believe he's this foreign guy. He's lost the act. He's lost the joy of it. So at that point he decides he's going to create this character Tony Clifton with all this make-up and nobody will know it's Andy Kaufman. And he could screw with audiences again. See then he could go to the little places before the word gets out and then once the word did get out - he got away with this for about six months into doing Tony Clifton, you know, but then soon the Hollywood, the loose lips sink ships, and sooner or later people realized it was really Andy Kaufman. I remember a night we were at the Comedy Store, and he went up as Tony Clifton and he wasn't into the act a couple of minutes and somebody said, "Andy, we know it's you." The audience started going, "Latka, Latka", and he walked off stage. And I never saw him that violent - took a chair and threw it against the wall and said, "Great! Now I can't even do this anymore!" You know, and then he went, "wait a second, Zmuda, they think Andy Kaufman is Tony Clifton? Fine. YOU now be Tony Clifton", so then George Shapiro would start booking Tony Clifton on Merv Griffin or David Letterman and they thought it was Andy Kaufman. So I would go on Letterman as Tony Clifton and Letterman thinks I'm Andy! During the commercial break Letterman would turn to me and say, "Andy, if I didn't know it was you I'd swear it was somebody else, OK, we're coming back!" (laughter) But nobody you know, and Andy Kaufman would be at home laughing his ass off. (crowd laughter) Just for himself! Just like in the movie, MOTM, you got George Shapiro, Danny DeVito saying, "why are you guys doing this?" Well, (Bob laughs) how do you sell this? I mean it makes no sense. It got so crazy he finally got, just like in the movie, Harrah's casino in south Tahoe, calls George Shapiro's office, said, "we'd like to book Tony Clifton for a couple of weeks…" NOTE: Tape cut off, see Andy Kaufman Revealed pps. 213-216. This concludes the Q&A portion of the evening. What follows is a transcription of Lynne Margulies' brief description of the rare clips were shown next. Lynne: …I'm also an artist, and I own an art gallery which is right across the street behind Starbucks (1708 N. McCadden Pl.) and there are flyers out front. It's called Weenie Dog Gallery and also Lynne Margulies Studio and it's mostly my art. We also have rock and roll photos, all kinds of stuff. So please pick up a flyer and please come to my gallery. Now comes the best part. Now what I want to do is I want to tell you about these clips that we're going to be running which are from my own collection, except for the first one which is courtesy of Comic Relief, and um, you may have seen tiny bits of them here and there because I used bits of them in a couple of places, but you've never seen the stuff that's here, most of it. The first one is from a show called "Buckshot" (1) which was I think was from '79 or '80 and I think it was a summer replacement show they gave Andy like 15 minutes to do whatever he wanted, so of course he did Uncle Andy's Fun House, his recurring theme, and just a couple of little notes on that that I want to bring up, that there's a dog in the beginning that he's playing with and that's Bob Zmuda's dog Lazarus who's no longer with us. He's with Andy in heaven. (Bob nods from his seat in the audience) And also if you look really closely in the front row to the right is John Landis, the director. He was there and he was a friend of Andy's so he's sitting on the right in the audience. So I wanted to point that out to you. Um, the second piece is really rare. This was Andy Kaufman's very first appearance on television ever. It's from 1972 which pre-dates "Saturday Night Live" by three years, so he's completely unknown. This is a weekly taped little show from Long Island in New York or something. It's called "Kennedy At Night" (2) and they had Andy performing Elvis but the thing is, Andy is so unknown, that they wouldn't even let him sing on it; he had to lip-sync. So it's the first and last time you'll ever see Andy lip-syncing to Elvis, cause they wouldn't allow him to do it. So that's from 1972. Um, and then the next clip is from 1969, is from when Andy was at Grahm Jr. College and he was in the theater department there and they put him on this show, a production of Spoon River Anthology (3). And this is a few clips of Andy playing various characters from Spoon River Anthology. And you'll be happy he didn't pursue an acting career after you see this. And then the next clip is another very rare piece of video. It's from 1975 and it's Andy's first appearance here in L.A. at the Los Angeles Improv. (4) It was immediately after his appearance on the first "Saturday Night Live" and Bud Friedman flew him out here to Los Angeles to be at the Improv. So this is very grainy, kind of shaky black and white video of him doing some of his routines, and that's where you're going to see the famous Gail Slobodkin that Bob was telling us about in that show. And then, something no one has really ever seen. And this is from 1977. And this is 8mm footage that someone shot in Andy's dressing room when he was a guest on a show called "Variety '77" (5) and it's once again Andy and Bob in the dressing room, screwing around and acting like immature adolescents, which uh, Bob fortunately hasn't grown out of that phase quite yet (Bob heckles from the audience) so um, that's very rare. That's never been shown anywhere. And then the last shot is just back a little more footage of that original "Buckshot" which is opening the clip. (6) So I want to say once again thank you all for coming and just to reiterate we will be out in the lobby (she laughs) selling dvds and videos and Bob's book and I just want to let you know that we are going to lock the theater doors and no one is leaving until we sell every bit of merchandise. (laughter and crowd applause) NOTE: This is the end of the transcript. And then the lights dimmed and the magic happened. I turned off my micro-cassette recorder before the rarities began, for reasons regarding legalities, but also for ethical issues and matters of conscience. I believe these treasures will one day be presented to the public in a format for home viewing, but that will have to come from Lynne. For now, I will give a brief, general description of what the rare clips revealed. WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS. (1) "Buckshot" begins with an exterior of the Stanley Kaufman home. It's dusk and one, lone light shines from the basement window. We move into the window and then into the basement interior of the Kaufman residence. Andy welcomes us as host of Uncle Andy's Fun House. A small 'peanut gallery' of young men and women in yellow Fun House t-shirts cheer and applaud as the show begins. Andy is playing with the dog, Lazarus, and then throws something off camera to get the dog out of the way. Andy has electric energy in this short and seems very happy and excited. We see the marionette Knuckles, which looks and talks like a babyish man child, and exploitable, dim-witted innocent, who is soon joined by the Tony Clifton marionette, as also seen on the PBS "Soundstage" special. Tony kicks Knuckles' ass, after the usual disparaging commentary. Andy is also joined by Playboy playmate Deborah Jo Fondren, looking great in a grass skirt and bikini top. She straps a grass skirt around Andy's waist and they begin to hula, when we hear the voice of father Stanley and mother Janice from upstairs, calling Andy to supper. Andy finally runs upstairs to the kitchen where his actual parents insist that he eat then. Andy begs two more minutes. (2) "Kennedy At Night" A fuzzy black and white video clip shows 23 or so year old tall, lanky Andy Kaufman in modest Elvis attire, movin' and groovin' while lip-syncing to an early Elvis hit. (Blue Suede Shoes?) Since he was lip-syncing, it seemed that Andy was focusing more on his movements, which were slightly awkward, but mostly convincing. The best part of this clip however, comes after the song, when the host sits with Andy and interviews him as Elvis. While Andy affects a near-perfect tone of voice, a super-imposed graphic appears over his chest, "ELVIS PRESLEY", in bold letters and smaller underneath, "Andy Kaufman". Andy seems slightly nervous, and you can tell he's getting a little dry in the mouth. But more impressive is the true poise that he carries, and the relative ease of his improvised and humorous answers to the questions put to him. (3) "Spoon River Anthology" at Grahm Jr. College features close-ups of Andy portraying characters from the Anthology including a blustery character, a Jewish, Yiddish-type and an old man. You can see glimpses of expressions and characters that were yet to fully come. His acting isn't all that bad. When you consider the acting he did in his "Fridays" apology, you know that Andy was a great actor. Examples of these college performances can be found on the A&E Biography tape. (4) L.A. Improv-'75 First appearance at the west coast Improv, Andy does the children's song at the piano, "And the Cow Goes Moo…and That's the Way It Goes!" routine shown in close-ups in black and white video. The viewing audience at the Egyptian began to interact with the onscreen Andy and it was a bittersweet experience. Following the song, Andy introduced Gail Slobodkin to his "Has-Been Corner" to sing a schmaltzy song and then Andy asked her how it felt to be a has-been and why she had started medical school if she wasn't a has-been, and why she didn't complete med school. Gail said she didn't know the segment was going to be called "Has-Been Corner", etc. (see AKRevealed, pps. 83-84 for Gail's true story) (5) "Variety '77" (dressing room film) Hand-held 8mm film footage of Andy in his dressing room, with Bob Zmuda, a girl and the camera operator. This was the best part of the rarities for me. An off-the-cuff goofing session showing Andy standing before the camera, looking young and exuberant asking the camera man, "so you want to see the real Andy Kaufman?" kind of thing. Andy proceeded to continue with the Bronx jerk persona, not quite Tony Clifton yet. He talks about Bob Zmuda, "my writer", doing everything for him and goes on to humiliate him, getting him to finally kiss his feet. Andy then picks up on Bob's girlfriend and begins making out with her, which pushes Bob over the edge. Bob reappears onscreen with a knife in hand and goes straight at Andy. Andy grabs his wrist and they struggle until Andy convinces Bob that he was just joking. Bob backs down and Andy looks into the camera, telling its owner to, "never show this to anybody!" as the film runs out. (6) Back to the "Buckshot" bookend - before Andy closes the show from his basement, he reaches up and he pulls down a screen, like a teacher's map over the black board. But his has a very special secret message for the kiddies written on it - "WHATEVER IS UNKNOWN IS MAGNIFIED" - a great summary of Andy's big message. Andy waves goodbye as we exit, back to the exterior shot of Andy's basement window, where all the magic began, in his childhood, long, long ago. Immediately following was the feature, "My Breakfast with Blassie". After the film, Bob, Lynne and Johnny were at a table in the lobby with their wares, signing books, dvds and videos and chatting with the fans. I overheard Bob discussing Andy's obsessive-compulsive traits. For example, if Andy forgot to say goodbye to his motel room, he would go back upstairs and go through the required routine, joking to excuse his peculiar compulsion. Lynne added that when he inserted the key to his place, he would jiggle it for a certain number of times, or a certain period of time, always. Another person asked about the possible death hoax, putting it to Zmuda, "if Andy WAS going to fake his death, who would he have told?" Zmuda effectively answered "nobody". Bob said again that he had cautioned Andy that others who were in on such a hoax would be legally culpable. He talked about how many people still believe that Andy faked his death, "Fridays" producer John Moffit being one of them. Bob went on to mention how even his own role as Tony Clifton had been hidden knowledge until Jim Carrey revealed it on the NBC Special Tribute to Andy. "So you can keep a secret." I said. Bob just looked at me with a wry, Mona Lisa smile. End |
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