The following is an excerpt from "Lost in the Funhouse: The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman," by Bill Zehme, which is available here.
"He flew directly to New York to end what he had started precisely where he had started it. The material--everyone said there was nothing new, that he needed something new. . . . He was to perform on the HBO taping of Catch a Rising Star's tenth anniversary, which would take place at the Upper East Side club where he had first hauled forth his props and made everyone think he wasn't who he was and vice versa. So he decided to kill it off, to put the material out of its misery, to expose it as the charade and the lodestone that it ahd become. . . . For the sake of nostalgia, he would do what he had done at the outset, what had induced them all into falling down and falling over and falling to the floor and, most of all, falling for him. He could fool no one anymore, they said, because everyone was 'on to' him, they said, and people were even making light of the neck brace of which he was so proud which seemed very rude. . . . Besides him, there would be other Catch alums performing--Richard Belzer, David Brenner, Gabe Kaplan, Billy Crystal, Robin Williams, Joe Piscopo, Pat Benatar. He planted Zmuda up front and had Rick Newman make sure that a microphone was hidden somewhere on Zmuda's body so that Zmuda could be clearly overheard as the material was drained of its blood and left for dead. . . . 'Anyway,' he said, 'tonight what I'd like to do is the exact same routine which I did ten years ago. It's called Foreign Man Turning into Elvis Presley.' At which point there was warm applause. At which point Zmuda could be heard throughout the club and, later, on television saying, 'Tenk you veddy much.' And Foreign Man blinked into character and said, 'Tenk you veddy much.' Zmuda turned to a woman nearby and said, 'See, see! Tenk you veddy much!' 'I am veddy happy to be here but one theeng I don't like about New York--' 'Ees de traffic . . .' 'Ees too much traffic you know tonight eet was so much traffic--' 'Eet took me an hour . . .' '--eet took me an hour and a half to get here!' 'See! See!' 'Talking about de terrible theengs--' 'Take my wife . . .' '--take my wife, please take her!' 'Her cooking ees so bad eets . . .'
"And this was not mere heckling; it was worse and also better; it was the act anticipated, performed in parsed phrases, slightly ahead of itself. It was Foreign Man unmasked and torched and vanquished forever. And the audience laughed with majesitc unease as the humiliations echoed on--through 'eemetations/eemetations' and 'de Archie Bunker/de Archie Bunker' and 'dingbat get eento de kitchen and make me de food/dingbat get eento de kitchen and make me de food.' And Andy was wet; his face was soaked with flop summoned from trained synapses and abetted by blistering lights and he had to say something to stop this man down in front of the stage from ruining everything and he had to say something to push this man down in front of the stage into now decimating everything that he was and had ever been and so he said, 'Is there a problem?'
"ZMUDA: No, there's no problem. The only problem is that I'm doing your act for you. . . . If you did some new material, then I wouldn't know what you're gonna do next.
"ANDY: Well, uh, I was asked to do this material tonight, okay? This is what the club asked me to do, and I'm doing it.
"ZMUDA: Sure, they asked you to do it because your new stuff's a bunch of crap. . . . Can I say something? I was always a big fan of yours, like, I'm talkin' seven, eight years ago. And I just feel that you have been repeating yourself continually. . . . I don't consider wrestling women to be funny, to be creative, to be any of those things.
"ANDY: I do a lot of original stuff on Late Night . . .
"ZMUDA: Okay, so what? What's original?
"ANDY: Well, did you see me on *Fridays*? Caused a lot of talk.
"ZMUDA: Yeah, I saw you on *Fridays*. A put-on. Pushing people around and actors . . . That's not original, that's not comedy. That's put-on! Anybody could do that. You understand?
"ANDY: You're right, it was a put-on.
"ZMUDA: I'm telling you, I'm just being honest. . . . I'm not trying to be obnoxious. I'm just saying that you were a very original guy.
"ANDY: I was. I was a very original guy. I was considered a very original comic.
"ZMUDA: That's right. And *was* is the key word. You said it yourself.
"ANDY: Well . . .
"ZMUDA: You've lost all credibitility. I'm just saying that you used to be an original performer, see?
"And, of course, the audience felt embarrassment beyond any embarrassment ever felt for the pitiful Foreign Man when Foreign Man was new and innocent and lost. This was now the disemboweling of an actual life and career--and, whether or not what was happening was real, it was nevertheless all very true and all very profoundly true. What the room felt was hot sticky suffocating devastation and the man down in front of the stage did not stop--he attacked that stupid character Latka and called the movie Heartbeeps a piece-of-shit-bomb and said that Andy Kaufman would never make another movie because who would hire him now? And a guy in back, who was Pat Benatar's uncle, who was an off-duty security cop, screamed for Zmuda to shut the f--- up and Zmuda told him to f--- himself and Zmuda returned to his interrogation and the cop reached for the gun that he kept in his boot and Rick Newman crawled over and grabbed the cop's ankle and whispered, 'Shut up! He's a plant! This is a taping!' And Zmuda demanded to hear new material and Andy responded by doing the twist while singing booboobooboobooboo over and over and the audience laughed and Zmuda said that they were laughing only because they knew him from Taxi and Andy said, 'I guess you're right. I don't have any new material. I don't have anything new to do.' And the tears started welling and then came the little gulping sobs and Zmuda said, 'See, now this is the old crying routine, the old bombing.' And Andy stopped suddenly and said, 'You've seen me do that?'
"ZMUDA: Yes! Everybody's seen you do that! Kaufman, look, call a spade a spade. You don't have anything new to do. [Turning to the audience] As a matter of fact, that is why he hired me tonight to come here. Look--there's a little mic on me, you see this? He hired me tonight to come here and criticize him, you know? See, today he was saying, 'Zmuda, here's what we're gonna do . . . I'll take my old material and I'll call it Variation on a Theme. . . .' The theme is the old material and the variation is that I'm told to sit here and criticize it. [To Andy] Well, it's true. Am I being honest? Am I a plant? Be honest--am I a plant? Come on! Am I a plant? Is this another Kaufman put-on? Is this more bullshit? Am I a plant? . . . Tell the people . . . there's a mic here. [To audience] Come on, you see it. There's a mic, they sat me down here to do this . . .
"ANDY: Yeah . . . [sotto voce] You're not supposed to say anything.
"ZMUDA: Fine, then just cut it out [of the tape].
"ANDY: [s.v.] You just f---ed up the act!
"ZMUDA: Fine! Fine!
"ANDY: [s.v.] You weren't supposed to . . .
"ZMUDA: F--- you! Ffff--
"At which point, on the tape of the program that was broadcast, there would be an awkward edit, as though something had happened and needed to be removed when in fact nothing had happened except the execution of Andy's notion to make an obvious edit to suggest that something had happened--'It was planned that way,' said Rick Newman. 'The public went crazy when the show was broadcast. HBO and Catch got hundreds of phone calls from people demanding to know what happened. We told them there was nothing to be discussed--"We can't tell you. Just leave it be." ' And when the program resumed, Andy said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, right now I'd like to do my oldest routine, which I've done so much that many people are sick of it. Um . . . but I'm gonna do it anyway, and it's my imitation of Elvis Presley. Thank you.'
"Elvis, bewigged, hoarse, no longer lean or taut--it did not matter, really. Elvis cleansed the palate with familiarity, with 'Jailhouse Rock.' People still hooted, if not screamed. Meanwhile, many people would consider Variations on a Theme--or whatever he wished to call this act of self-immolation--to be perhaps the most brilliant thing that he had ever done. In any case, he felt very extremely liberated afterward."
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