Читать книгу Andy Kaufman - Bob Zmuda - Страница 11
ОглавлениеLynne
I slept on the couch in his room (Cedars-Sinai being the hospital to the stars, one could get away with anything there, doctors in the pocket of the famous). I rarely left his side. It was around 6 p.m. on May 16, 1984. Andy’s condition hadn’t changed and I hadn’t slept for days. I lay down on the couch at the far end of the room and fell immediately asleep. The next thing I remember is hearing ALL the Kaufman family voices shouting, “Andy, hang on! Don’t go!” I literally flew from the couch to his bedside. I can’t recall my feet hitting the floor. When I got to Andy’s bedside, he was surrounded by his family. There was no room for me at the head of the bed, so I stood and held one of Andy’s feet while he died. (Hmmmm. Symbolic for how the Kaufmans treated me, eh?) Later, I was standing at the head of the bed, stroking and kissing his forehead; cold (holy shit, could that have been a body double?). I did see him (or whoever) take his last breath.
Then the nightmare of the Kaufmans invading my home. Andy and I had rented a house in Pacific Palisades after he found out about the cancer. Of course, HE rented the house, not me. After Andy died, Stanley, his dad, “graciously” let me stay in the house for one month. After that, get out.
There they were in MY house. But they felt entitled because they were Andy’s family; who the fuck was I? I had actually asked Michael, Andy’s brother, a few days earlier if they would please move to a hotel because I needed solitude in my home. I remember that he just stared at me. He didn’t respond. And I realize now it was because they didn’t consider me of any consequence at all. It was THEIR house, not mine.
Lynne has had friction with the Kaufmans since then. This has escalated in the last few years to some serious threats of lawsuits. Andy would roll over in his grave … if he were in it.
* * *
Take your pick: either Andy Kaufman faked his death or he was a psychic. For it is an indisputable fact that he not only named the disease he would die of, but also the exact hospital he would die in of that disease, and he did it a full four years before he supposedly died.
It appears for all to see in black and white on page 124 of The Tony Clifton Story, a script that Andy and I wrote together for Universal Studios in 1980. I remember the day he rushed into our bungalow on the Universal lot quite worked up, nothing short of in a frenzy. “We’ve got to change the script, Bob. I just had a great idea.” I said, “Fantastic. What is it?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper that he had scribbled on at 3:00 a.m. the night before and handed it to me. It read: “Tony Clifton dies of cancer at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Hollywood, California.” We put it in the script. In 1984, “Andy Kaufman would die of cancer at Cedars-Sinai hospital,” proof enough that he had decided four years earlier the exact disease he would use to fake his death and the hospital that he would stage it in. This fact has been recently verified by Universal Studios’s script department, which has had the original script in its possession for the last thirty-five years. A statistician from the University of California—Berkeley ran an odds-predictability study listing all the possible ways one could die and a total of all the hospitals in the U.S. Statistically, the odds of someone’s predicting what he would die from and the hospital he would die in are 780,000,000 to one. Basically an impossibility. That S.O.B. knew back in 1980 exactly what he would supposedly die from and where.
Actual page from The Tony Clifton Story, written in 1980, proof that Andy had decided four years before his supposed passing in 1984 what disease and hospital he would use to fake his death.
Equally remarkable is the last recording on the Andy and His Grandmother album (track 17), where the microcassette tape recorder catches Andy and me talking candidly. Out of nowhere, Andy comes up with the idea of faking his death for the first time. The recording ends with my saying, “Andy, you fake your death and nobody believes you, you’ll go on forever … immortal.” Kaufman’s reply is, “GREAT!”
When the Kaufman family heard of the release of the tapes, they tried everything in their power to stop it, sending threatening legal letters to both Lynne and Drag City, the company that released them. I couldn’t help but wonder why they were so concerned. Was it Andy openly talking about faking his death? What were they trying to hide? I could only wonder if maybe they were in cahoots with him all along. Maybe Andy agreed with my thinking that it would be a cruel trick to make his mother believe he was dead when he wasn’t and told her. Does track 17 reveal Andy’s smoking gun? Did it have to be censored by the Kaufman family at all costs because it was a clear indication that he faked his death? What or who is in his crypt? His fans want to know. Just ninety minutes with a backhoe at the grave site and everyone can get a good night’s sleep.
Working with Andy was like working with the great Houdini, and time and time again I’d see him go to incredible, painstaking lengths to pull off illusions. So why not this? Why not the greatest illusion of all time? And I wish I had a nickel for every time he called me, turning it around over and over in his mind on just how to get away with it. And those odds: 780,000,000 to one. How could he possibly have predicted the disease and hospital years before? And after all, wasn’t it I who told him, “Andy, you even have to fool me.” Had he even fooled Dr. Zmudee, as he called me? Maybe temporarily. After all, there was a body, wasn’t there? There is a death certificate, isn’t there? No, he did it. I know he did it. The brilliant bastard faked his own death, and he’s going to return thirty years later, just like he said, and it will be the single most amazing event in the history of showbiz!
* * *
One day my phone rang—surprisingly, it was Danny DeVito on the other end. I’d met Danny a few years earlier on the set of Taxi, but that was nothing that would warrant a personal call. He was quite excited: “Bob, I have great news! Universal Studios is going to make a major motion picture about Andy’s life, and I’m going to produce it through my company, Jersey Films. I’m even getting my old buddy, Milos Forman, two-time Academy Award winner, to direct it. And as Andy’s writer and best friend, I want you involved in a big way. This film is going to be amazing.” After my shock subsided, I congratulated Danny and told him how proud Andy would be of him. I then asked what he needed me to do. He said, “For now, nothing. I’ll be contacting you in a week or so with more details. Till then, hold tight and don’t tell anyone. I want everything signed, sealed, and delivered before we make an announcement.” “I totally understand, Danny.” Danny’s last words to me were, “I’ll call you back in no longer than two weeks.” When I hung up the phone, I was ecstatic. Finally, Andy would get his due and, unashamedly, so would I. After all, ever since his “supposed” death, I had done everything within my power to keep his memory alive.
Weeks went by and every time the phone rang, I jumped, hoping it would be DeVito. Weeks turned to months. The call never came. I chalked it up to the deal’s having collapsed, something that took place on a daily basis in Hollywood. I stopped anticipating that DeVito would call back. I figured he was probably bloodied by the studio. To save face, he just wasn’t going to call back.
More time passed and I thought the whole matter was long dead. Then one day, my answering machine got a workout when call after call came in congratulating me on the fact that Universal was indeed making the film. Supposedly there was a huge write-up about it in Daily Variety. I ran to the nearest 7-Eleven and swooped up a half-dozen copies. I stood out in the street fighting the wind, trying to read the article. There it was in print, just as Danny said. Milos was going to direct, DeVito was going to produce with his partners Stacey Sher and Michael Shamberg, Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander would write the screenplay, George Shapiro and Howard West would executive produce. The film was to be called Man on the Moon, after the hit R.E.M. song about Andy. Everything and everyone was mentioned … except … except … where the fuck’s my name? … except … me!
I called a friend I knew from Universal when we had been developing The Tony Clifton Story before Kaufman’s disappearing act. His name was Sean Daniel (Dazed and Confused, Tombstone, The Mummy). I told him my story. He concluded that I had “danced to the Hollywood two-step.” I asked what the hell was that. He put it simply: “You’ve been cut out. Actually,” he added, “You were never really in.” “But DeVito called me,” I said. “Obviously someone got to DeVito, Bob, and said we don’t need Zmuda.” “Is there anything I can do, Sean?” “Oh, yes,” he said with great confidence. “Listen to me and do exactly what I say.”
The letter Sean instructed me to send “to everyone” was polite yet firm. It sincerely congratulated all involved on how wonderful it was that Andy was finally being recognized. Of course, it also conveyed that since I, being his writer and all, was not involved, they did not have the right to portray a laundry list of material such as Carnegie Hall when we took the entire audience out in school buses for milk and cookies, him wrestling women, Tony Clifton, the Great Gatsby, the masked magician, the fight on Letterman with Jerry Lawler, and a slew of other pieces that I had also developed with Kaufman. In short, all they’d be left with was basically Andy playing the congas and singing to the Mighty Mouse record.
Soon my phone was ringing off the hook with apologies: “A mere oversight.” In short order, I was made a co-executive producer on the film, allowed to choose whom I wanted to portray me, be downloaded by the writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, and most importantly, work closely with Jim Carrey, giving him insight into Kaufman and Kaufman’s alter-ego, the notorious lounge lizard Tony Clifton. For all this, I was rewarded quite handsomely financially, along with a single-card producer credit in the film.
As for Lynne, she was in New York when she got the call that the film was being made. She was told that the writers, Scott and Larry, would like to interview her. She met with Scott and Larry at their office on the Sony lot. They told her that they were having trouble getting a fix on Andy. “A very key moment in the research for us,” they said, “was interviewing Lynne. We said, ‘We’re looking for the real Andy Kaufman,’ and she said, ‘There is no real Andy Kaufman.’” Bingo! A light went on for them. It was a theme that was played out through the entire film. She had also given the studio tons of Andy’s personal belongings to use in the film as well as advising the set designers on how his house looked, how he dressed, even what he ate.
When the film was going into production, Lynne had not heard from anyone about her being involved. (Sound familiar?) She had assumed, after meeting with Scott and Larry, and after giving the studio all of the memorabilia, that of course they would want her on board. After all, she was the love of his life—that should count for something. She called George Shapiro, who was executive producing the film with his partner Howard West, and set up a lunch meeting.
Lynne
He took me to Morton’s steakhouse on La Cienega. (That was always one of the best perks about hanging with the Hollywood set. Great free meals and drinks.) I told George that I very much wanted to be involved with Man on the Moon. He said, “Doing what?” Well, that rather flabbergasted me into a stuttered reply of, “Well, I’m not sure,” and George said, “Send me your resume and I’ll forward it to Danny DeVito.” I nearly spit out my food. I wish now that I had, right in his face. In those days, I was more intimidated by people than I am now, and I just stared at him in silence. Later, Bob and I compared notes and he told me that Stanley Kaufman didn’t want either of us involved. Why?
Because Stanley (Andy’s father) felt the story should be told through his eyes, not ours, and he had already dictated to the writers the scenes he wanted in the film. The scenes, besides of course co-starring Stanley, also included a lot of revisionism. It’s not that they weren’t true, but they were aimed at cleaning up Andy’s image. Stanley wanted to paint a more innocent, loving, and normal Andy, a good Jewish boy who never missed Thanksgiving or Seders with his family. Yes, Andy did drive a long distance to visit a girl who was dying in the hospital. Yes, he did draw a crowd of people around a woman who was collecting for a local charity and helped her raise more money. Great, but not exactly the kind of scenes for a motion picture about the world’s greatest prankster. This wasn’t the Mother Teresa story, but the Andy Kaufman story. And Andy himself had already laid the foundation for the script with his body of work. But Stanley the overbearing patriarch and his family just couldn’t get that through their thick skulls. Or didn’t want to. After all, Stanley was acting like every needy actor who wanted to get as much screen time as possible. Major studios do not make movies of family albums. They make movies of remarkable people who have done remarkable things.
The seldom-heard man behind the scenes, Howard West, George Shapiro’s partner in Shapiro/West, the management firm that signed Andy, has what I feel is the most accurate assessment of who Andy was from his no-nonsense, professional viewpoint:
I’d say to him, “What else are you going to do to wreck your career? You make things difficult, Andy! Dif … fi … cult!”
There was a self-destruct button in Andy. He was a daredevil, a high-wire act. I got this wire here. I can walk on it. Forty feet. Sixty feet. Eighty feet. One hundred feet. Maybe? That’s a self-destruct mode. But it’s also his talent. You can’t separate it. Andy did what Andy had to do for Andy and did it well.
The real Andy you never knew or felt you knew. Nice, sweet conversationally, normal in his desires and wants, but I didn’t see that much of that too often. Maybe others saw it with those he was closer to, like Lynne, and saw what we didn’t see in their relationship. Mine was more career-oriented, with a few personal moments like talking about our hair loss, what can be done about it. That’s a personal moment, when the veneer is gone, but I didn’t have enough of those.
Once I met with Scott and Larry, I just dazzled them with the adventures Andy and I had together. Eventually they came right out and told Stanley, “We went with Zmuda’s stories. They were better than yours.” After hearing that, Stanley would hate me and the movie to the day he died.
With my newfound clout as one of the producers, I raised a ruckus and was able to get Lynne on the picture and paid. Still, first cuts are the deepest; the earlier snub by George and DeVito left its mark on us. After that, we never really trusted any of the executives who we felt tried to screw us, except for one, a producer by the name of Stacey Sher. Occasionally during the filming, DeVito would plead with me, “Bob, I had nothing to do with cutting you out of the deal. You gotta believe me!” Of course, he could never adequately explain why he never got back to me. Later, I would learn of similar transgressions by DeVito against others. I soon realized the cuddly Danny DeVito persona the public loves is in fact a power-driven mogul. Director Tim Burton, who is known to cast to type, scored a home run by casting DeVito as the Penguin in Batman Returns. If you know DeVito the real guy, you know he is the Penguin when it comes to business, as diabolical as one could get.
DeVito wasn’t always like that. When I first met him early on, when Taxi started, he was a regular Joe. It was funny—he and I had something in common. We both didn’t have much money and drove beat-up jalopies. Both of our cars looked so bad that friends and business associates would tell us that we really shouldn’t be driving these shit-cans onto the lot, as it was bad for our images. I remember having an exchange with Danny on this subject and he said something I’ll never forget: “Bob, the day we’re too embarrassed to drive those cars on this lot is the day we’ve sold out.” Truer words were never spoken. Eventually both Danny and I got different cars. As Jonathan Nelson, an advertising executive, once said, “If history proves two things, one is that the avant-garde almost always gets assimilated, and two, young people get older.” Yep, “times they were a changing.” DeVito went for the Mercedes. My tastes were much more modest: a Land Rover, used.
As for Andy, he fought being co-opted with the best of them. The material possessions that fame and fortune brought he could do without, and did, except for one: “the pussy.” Celebrity attracted pussy like nothing else and Andy couldn’t get enough. After all, he had to make up for all those years when he was this unknown dork who was too shy even to talk to women. DeVito, on the other hand, seemed to be pretty grounded when it came to wife and family. If he had a mistress, her name was “Power.” Andy’s priorities were quite simple—TM first, and tied for second would be career and sex. As for the sex, he was insatiable. At first, groupies would do, but soon paid prostitutes became the order of the day.
Who would have predicted in those early days of Taxi that DeVito would go on to be a mogul and one of his passions would be to make a film about Kaufman? Why? Curiously, I feel I have an insight into that, and it came to light almost by accident one day when we were making the film. With Lynne’s background in shooting documentaries, Universal needed an EPK (electronic press kit) for the film. So they threw a few extra bucks at Lynne to shoot it. It’s simple enough to build. You shoot some B-roll here and there and a few short interviews with some of the principals involved. But here’s where it gets interesting. One day, Lynne comes back to my trailer (as a co-producer I did get my own Winnebago) and she looked stunned. I said, “What’s wrong?” She said, “Something weird just happened.” I automatically said, “With Jim Carrey?” She said, “No, with Danny.” She explained that while she was shooting him for the EPK, he started talking about how distraught he was when he attended Andy’s funeral. I jumped in and said it the same time she did, “BUT HE WASN’T AT THE FUNERAL.” “Exactly,” she continued, “So why would he say that, when he wasn’t there, nor were any other members of the Taxi cast except for Carol Kane?”
It all became crystal clear to me a few weeks later when it was time to shoot the funeral scene. And now things even got stranger, if not downright morbid. When shooting a film, especially a studio film, one of the advantages is you can make your movie on the lot. They have everything you need, as far as exteriors and interiors go. And for Man on the Moon, most of it was shot right on the Universal back lot. One of the exceptions was the funeral scene. For that, DeVito wanted to shoot off the lot at a real cemetery inside a real funeral chapel, which really didn’t make any sense because we easily could have constructed a small chapel right on one of the sound stages. It was just an interior shot, anyway. So why go to the added expense of schlepping the entire cast, crew, and equipment out to the real location? I believe because this one scene to Danny was the most important scene in the movie and perhaps the real reason why he wanted to make the film in the first place—and that is he and the Taxi cast never went to Andy’s funeral. And I believe that fact had been haunting Danny for all these years. But now he could change all that. He could right a wrong and rewrite history, for in his film not only he but also the entire cast of Taxi would be at Andy’s funeral.
And that’s just what happened the day we shot it. Everybody was there and to make it as real as possible, they spent $35,000 on a wax figure of Andy/Jim to lie in a coffin. Now they easily could have had Jim lie in the casket and grabbed the shot and saved thirty-five g’s, but DeVito wanted that “dead body.” He wanted himself and that cast of Taxi to be in a real chapel at a real cemetery. He wanted his cast to experience the funeral of Andy Kaufman they were never at but knew in their heart of hearts they should have attended. And now they were. I’ll say it again: I believe that Danny DeVito made Man on the Moon specifically so he could shoot that scene and finally thaw out his frozen grief. Let me tell you, that day was probably the most gut-wrenching scene for all of us. Long after the cameras stopped rolling, Danny and his fellow cast members of Taxi sat perfectly still and wept openly, paying their last respects to Andy. And then the casket was slowly closed.
Months later, when filming had wrapped, the studio asked Jim if he wanted the wax figure of himself/Andy. He said no, it creeped him out too much. If you ever get a chance to watch Man on the Moon, look closely at that funeral scene, especially at the wax figure. Look how real it looks. Could a similarly realistic wax figure have been used at Andy’s real funeral? Dr. Joe Troiani, a good friend of Andy’s, attended Andy’s funeral in ’84. To this day, he will tell you that he believes the body at the Nassau funeral home in Great Neck, Long Island, was a wax dummy. Why? Because he touched it with his own hands. “I was alone with the body as it lay in the casket. Realizing that Andy and Bob were probably pulling off one of their elaborate pranks, I had no qualms about giving the corpse a few good shakes. No matter how hard I shook it, the head didn’t budge one millimeter. It was as if it wasn’t even attached to the torso. There is no doubt in my mind then or now that the whole thing was faked.” Dr. Troiani himself will be in attendance for Andy’s return to shake his hand for pulling off the longest prank in history.
Milos Forman, the director, is a star in his own right. Back when we shot Moon, he was sixty-six years old. He was handsome, with a captivatingly dramatic Czechoslovakian accent and two Academy Awards for Amadeus and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest that he carried with him wherever he went (figuratively, not literally). A friend of Danny DeVito’s, Milos had given DeVito his first film role in Cuckoo’s Nest, starring Jack Nicholson. Remember Martini? A great performance by Danny. Now DeVito was the big dog at Universal with his Jersey Films company. DeVito’s and Milos’s paths crossed at some Hollywood shindig, and the subject of Andy Kaufman came up. Seeing that Milos had a pay-or-play deal at Universal for another project called The Black Book, which Universal wasn’t too keen on doing but DeVito’s company was hot on, the Man on the Moon project came together quicker than most. Milos had two young writers in his pocket named Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. Besides writing Ed Wood for Tim Burton, they had just written The People vs. Larry Flynt, which Milos directed. They were immediately commissioned to start on the script and did extensive research on Kaufman. Once the script was completed and approved, casting began.
Here’s where things got interesting. No sooner did the word get out that a biopic was being made by Universal Studios about Andy’s life, directed by the legendary Milos Forman, than a slew of major motion-picture stars began to clamor to get the role. Tom Hanks, Sean Penn, Jim Carrey, Gary Oldman, Ed Norton, Nicolas Cage, Kevin Spacey … the list went on and on. We were all stunned. This was quite problematic for Milos. You see, Milos is what they call a gun-for-hire director. He shoots a movie every eight years. Between movies, he and his much-younger and gorgeous wife, Martina, enjoy the good life of fine wine and dinners with well-known personalities from all walks of life. One night Milos the raconteur might dine with Elton John and the next night with Henry Kissinger. All these stars wanting to play Kaufman put Milos in a precarious situation. What if the next movie he made depended on one of these stars to get financing? If Milos had rejected him for Man on the Moon, he wasn’t very likely to think kindly of Milos next time.
So he came up with a clever plan. He would get the word out that if anyone wanted to play Kaufman, he’d have to make an audition tape, thinking many of them would say, “Screw that,” and simply withdraw, not having to get rejected and cloud a relationship down the road with the Czech director. His plan paid off and many walked away. Secretly, Milos wanted his buddy Ed Norton to play the role. Ed had played the lawyer to Woody Harrelson in Milos’s previous outing, The People vs. Larry Flynt. Norton was Lynne’s first choice too. When she saw Flynt, the moment Ed Norton walked onscreen she leaned over to her friend Wave and said, “If they ever make a movie about Andy, that’s who should play him.” Danny DeVito wanted Jim Carrey, whose box-office appeal would be sure to open the film big. I personally wanted Nicolas Cage to play Andy. There was something about Cage that reminded me of my best friend. Besides, at the time, Cage had a list of stellar performances such as Leaving Las Vegas. Somehow Cage got my number, and he and I spoke quite often. I assured him that he had my vote. As Andy’s writer, best friend, and now co-executive producer on the film, I knew my voice as to who should play Andy was a significant one, and I wanted Cage. Period. Nothing and no one was going to change my opinion.
It wasn’t long before I got the phone call I dreaded most. It was from Jim Carrey. I knew Jim previously, but only briefly, when he was still an up-and-comer and shot a vignette for me a few years prior for the Comic Relief charity that I am the president and founder of. Now Carrey was a major star, the highest-paid actor in Hollywood—$20 million a pic. Jim’s own story of success could be a movie itself. He’s Canadian, never finished high school. His family was poor, his dad a sax player whose career never really took off, but a great guy. His mom and sister filled out the rest of the clan. From the time he was very young, they all knew Jim had a special talent. He could impersonate anyone. Not just celebrities like Elvis and Clint Eastwood, but the typical guy off the street. It was sort of uncanny how he did it. He has this physicality to his impressions that are spot on. You can sit with him in a restaurant and point to any one of the patrons and say to Jim, “Do him,” and within seconds his whole physical being morphs into that person. Frankly, I’ve never seen anything like it. When young people come up to me today and ask how to get into show business, especially stand-up, I always tell them the Jim Carrey story. How he worked at Mitzi Shore’s The Comedy Store on Sunset in Hollywood for eight years—two shows a night—for FREE! It was only when he befriended the Wayans Brothers, who themselves were just starting out and they got a show on Fox called In Living Color with an all-black cast, that things happened for him. They needed a “token white” and Jim was their choice. Remember Fire Marshall Bill? Every time he was in a sketch, he killed.
Soon, he caught the eye of a young director named Tom Shadyac. Shadyac was looking for the lead of a film he was about to direct, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. They risked everything on Jim’s scene-stealing, over-the-top, broad physical comedy, which no one was doing at the time and didn’t want to. The gamble paid off and Ace Ventura was a monster hit, with half of America quoting Jim’s lines from the movie, such as, “Allllll rightteeee then!” He followed it up with other films (such as Dumb and Dumber, Liar Liar, The Truman Show, and my favorite, The Cable Guy, produced by Judd Apatow) and now he had his heart set on playing Kaufman.
Jim was still a struggling comic at the Store when Andy and I would come in and test new material on the audiences. Comics would sit in the back of the room, mouth agape in awe of Kaufman’s antics that left audiences either loving him or hating him. Either way made no difference to Andy. He was operating from a whole other gearbox. Carrey would later say, “The comics would watch Kaufman and say, ‘Just make a statue of the guy already. He’s a god!’” The chance to play his comedy hero would be a dream come true. Somewhat spookily, added to that, he had the same birthday as Andy, January 17. He was going to play Kaufman come hell or high water, and now he was calling me.
B: Hello?
J: Hi, Bob, it’s Jim Carrey.
B: Jim. How are you?
J: Fantastic. You probably can guess why I’m calling you. I made the audition tape and before I embarrass myself and show it to Milos, I wondered if you could come and take a look at it.
B: I’d be happy to. [I wasn’t happy at all about wanting to see it.] When?
J: How about right now?
B: NOW!?!
J: Yeah, if that’s OK.
B: Yeah, sure. What’s your address?
On my way out to Brentwood, I kept saying to myself, “No matter how good it is, don’t say anything that he could take to the bank”—i.e., don’t say, “That’s great.” Say something like, “Very interesting.” Remember, I didn’t want him. I wanted Nic Cage for the role.
Jim’s house in Brentwood is fab-u-lous! Although modest by movie-star standards, Jim’s digs made my humble home in Burbank look like a hovel. Jim greeted me at the front door. We walked through his house out into a back yard that had one of the best swimming pools I’ve ever seen, designed out of natural rock. It had a waterfall pool on a top level that also served as a Jacuzzi that cascaded into the main pool. Off the pool was a pool house that housed a bar and various arcade games.
He led me into another building that was his own movie theater. Jim’s costumes from all his films (Ace Ventura, The Mask, The Riddler from Batman Forever, The Cable Guy) lined the walls, sealed behind Plexiglas. The room was designed to impress and it did. Besides hiring a projectionist just for me, he had a fully stocked concession stand with everything your tummy could desire: candy bars, popcorn, soda, ice cream, etc. Jim said, “Bob, excuse me, but I have about ten minutes of phone calls to finish up. Then I’ll be back with my audition tape. Help yourself.”
He pointed to the candy counter and left. As soon as he was out of sight, I greedily started filling my pockets with SweeTarts, M&Ms, licorice, Nestlé Crunch, Butterfingers—you name it. I figured I might as well stock up—I’d never hear from Jim Carrey after today. I was going with Nic Cage.
With pockets bulging with goodies, I nestled into my cozy theater chair, my buttered popcorn and Coke overflowing onto the thick-carpeted floor, waiting for Jim to return with the “audition tape.” Jim had playing on the large screen old clips of Andy on Taxi and SNL. I stared at the real Andy Kaufman and thought how surreal this whole experience was and wondered if Andy was going to forget his thirty-year deadline, cut it short, and show up at the premiere. For all I knew, perhaps Andy was already sequestered away somewhere on Jim’s palatial estate.
Ten minutes later, as promised, Jim walked back in, carrying a small brown paper bag. He stood next to me and said, “And now for my audition tape.” Next, he reached inside the bag, fishing around for something. A puzzled look came upon his face, as if it was lost. And then he violently tore the bag open and started laughing like a mad man. It was empty. His laughter grew, to me, more sinister and in the dark theater, with only him and me, I got creeped out. I thought, “Who’s to say a movie star couldn’t also be a serial killer?” Then in a grand gesture, he pointed to the movie screen. The old clip was of Andy playing the congas on SNL, and he said, “So, what do you think of my audition tape?” At first, I hadn’t a clue what he meant. And then it hit me: Oh my God, that wasn’t an old clip of Andy on SNL. It was Jim. I had been watching the clip from SNL for five minutes and just assumed it was Andy. Instead, it was Jim, and he nailed it.
Get this: He had his buddy, director Judd Apatow, shoot the scene. They rented a studio and matched up the SNL set to a T. Jim had even taken conga lessons four times a week for three weeks just to learn how to play them for the “audition tape.” He hadn’t even been given the role yet. That’s Jim Carrey. When he wants something, he goes for it full steam. My jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe he had bamboozled me and in such a Kaufmanesque style. I must admit my eyes moistened as I watched my best friend come alive through the talent of Jim Carrey. I told him right then and there, “As far as I’m concerned, you got the role.” A broad smile appeared on his face. He knew he had it anyway. I would find out later Jim’s like that. He knows what he wants, goes for it, and gets it every time. He’s the second-most driven person I’ve ever encountered in my life, the first being Andy, of course.
I didn’t hang around for long now that he had sold me on his performance. I refilled my pockets with goodies and left. He was ready for stage two. As soon as I drove off the property, he must have had four deliverymen on motorcycles with audition tapes in hand peel out and scatter in all directions:
1. To Milos, staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel
2. To Ron Meyer and Stacey Snider, executives at Universal Studios
3. To Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher at Jersey Films
4. To Danny DeVito’s house in Malibu
By the time I got back to my shithole in Burbank, there were already three messages on my machine from irritated executives who lambasted me for telling Jim he had the role. He had obviously called them. Ten minutes later (after they too had viewed the tape), they all called back and apologized: “Of course he has the role.” He was Andy Kaufman. Fuck Nic Cage. I never called him back. I was as bad as DeVito was about returning phone calls.
Now here’s the punch of all punches: A year later, when the film was shot, edited, and presented, I was at the opening-night premiere. There was a grand party afterwards, and as I was consuming my alcoholic beverage of choice at the bar, I felt a tap on my shoulder. Lo and behold, it was Nicolas Cage. Before I had a chance to tense up—after all, I’d stopped returning his calls—he immediately put me at ease and said, “Bob, it’s OK. I couldn’t have done what Jim did. He was fucking great.” We shared more than a few cocktails, and as it turned out he and Jim had been close friends for years. Then I asked him, “Nic, why didn’t you make that audition tape?” “Oh yes, the audition tape. Well, the reason I didn’t make the audition tape was because my good buddy, Jim Carrey, told me, ‘Guys in our position shouldn’t make audition tapes.’” Then he broke into uproarious laughter. I just shook my head and smiled: Jim Carrey. I rest my case.
Now that Jim was cast, Universal left it to me to choose who should play me, although I did consider their suggestions. On the top of the list were Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti.
One Saturday night, I received this bizarre phone call from Milos at 3:00 a.m., telling me he had found the perfect person to play me: GARTH BROOKS! I was in shock. “Garth Brooks, the country western singer? Milos, he isn’t even an actor.” Milos informed me that Garth had hosted SNL that evening. Milos watched it and said the guy was terrific. Come Monday, I got a tape of the show and sure enough, Garth held his own with the Not Ready For Prime Time Players. And “Bob Zmuda played by Garth Brooks” sounded crazy enough to work. If not, at least I might get laid in Oklahoma.
Messages were sent back and forth between Garth’s people and Milos. Did Garth understand that besides playing me, he also had to play Tony Clifton, Andy Kaufman’s alter ego, just as I had done for Andy over the years? Brooks understood. In fact, he wanted the role so badly, I was told he canceled one of his sold-out concerts on a Saturday to fly to LA and have dinner with Milos. Much to Milos’s surprise, he walked into the restaurant dressed like and doing a spot-on impression of Tony Clifton. Milos loved it and wanted to give him the role, but at the last minute, Brooks’s agency had a change of heart and decided against it. Brooks, not to let the experience of playing Tony fall by the wayside without some payday, a year later summoned up his own alter ego by the name of “Chris Gaines” and released an album in that name, giving himself a goatee and a whole other look. The album didn’t do so well, but I did get a kick when a reviewer from Rolling Stone said, “It looks like Garth lifted the alter-ego idea from Andy Kaufman’s Tony Clifton.” Little did the reviewer know that he’d hit it right on the head, even though he never knew about Garth’s doing Clifton for Milos. For a while, I considered Philip Seymour Hoffman. I went to the video store and rented Boogie Nights. I was in for a real shocker when in the film, Philip Seymour Hoffman tried to kiss Mark Wahlberg. I thought to myself, “Jesus Christ. I don’t want some gay guy playing me,” and nixed Hoffman immediately. Years later, I was in the American Airlines lounge at Heathrow Airport and I spotted Philip making out with one of the hottest young chicks I’d ever seen. They were really going at it, and I thought to myself what a dummy I was. He wasn’t gay. What he was was just one hell of an actor. I was quite saddened years later when I heard that Philip had died of a heroin overdose.
Eventually, with Lynne’s help, I chose Paul Giamatti, a great guy just like myself. Besides, like they say, Brad Pitt wasn’t available.
When I hired Paul to play me, I made him promise to do one thing. “What’s that?” he asked. I said, “Play me more intelligent than I really am.” He laughed and said, “Oh … that won’t be a problem.”
I drove Paul nuts on the set, overanalyzing every little motivation and gesture. One day, Milos yelled at me in front of everybody, “ZMUDA! Leave Zmuda alone!”
Meanwhile, Lynne was spending time with Courtney Love, who played her. Lynne told me, “I felt so sorry for her about all the conspiracy theories that she had killed Kurt Cobain. Shit, I felt horrible being treated badly by the Kaufmans, and here she had people saying she had killed her husband. Horrible.”
Once Lynne and I realized that Jim was going to approach the role of Kaufman in a “method acting,” Kaufmanesque kind of way—i.e., he would become Andy or Tony Clifton for the entire shoot, never breaking character—we realized this had to be captured on tape. So Lynne, Universal Studios, Jim’s production company (Pit Bull), and I agreed that we would all partner up and shoot a documentary of Jim’s journey into “channeling Kaufman.”
Since Jim the star wanted it, Lynne as cameraman and I had free rein to shoot anywhere and at anytime, much to the discomfort of Milos and the rest of the crew. Seldom did the camera leave Lynne’s shoulder, and after a while, she became a fly on the wall and almost disappeared, offering us the opportunity to document some pretty bizarre happenings. Jim arrived at the studio every day in character, stayed in character all day, and went home in character. In fact, Milos Forman didn’t meet Jim until principal photography was over eighty days later.
Jim had researched Andy, who himself would always stay in character. In fact, when Andy would become Tony, he did so for three or four days. Bill Knoedelseder, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, who spent much time interviewing Andy and Tony, believed that “Tony Clifton was a controlled multi-personality disorder; i.e., Andy suffered from multi-personality disorder. And since he was in show business, always looking to present the absurd, it was natural that he would present Tony to his audience.” Andy kept a pink Cadillac convertible in his garage and drove it only when he was Clifton. Andy also was a strict vegetarian who didn’t drink or smoke. Tony was just the opposite, a chain smoker who was always slugging from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He’d eat steaks rare and run around town with hookers on his arm. Jim’s Clifton mirrored Kaufman’s in this regard … except for the hookers part. When you’re Jim Carrey, you don’t need to pay for it.
When we were shooting at Universal, Jim insisted that Lynne and I have lunch with him on the front porch of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho house. Jim would dress as Norman Bates’s mother, in granny dress and grey wig. Occasionally, when an unsuspecting Universal tram of tourists would drive by, Jim would jump out of his chair, pick up a real axe, and run after the tram, smashing into it, actually denting the hell out of the vehicle. The unsuspecting tourists thought it was just some minimum-wage actor Universal had hired to give them a scare. They were much more interested in the guy in the Frankenstein suit. Little did they know this was superstar Jim Carrey. Axe-wielding granny tore through those Universal tourist trams like Godzilla tore through Tokyo. I thought this was pretty rad, reminiscent of the golden days of Hollywood when stars could literally get away with murder and the powerful studios would mop it up. Carrey had balls as big as Kaufman’s. Lynne and I were really beginning to like this guy. He was a daredevil like Andy.
