Lost in the Funhouse_ The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman - Bill Zehme [102]
And so Martin introduced him to the Burbank studio audience and he went directly to his drums and reprised every beat and eebida of his Conga man transmogrification, complete with female levitation and singalong, to equal success. “I remember observing at the time,” said Martin, who beheld all of this from Carson’s desk, “that it was a classic example of anticomedy. In anticomedy, one of the most difficult things to accomplish is—once you state the premise which is funny and they laugh—you have to keep it going. That’s what he managed to do for eight minutes, maybe longer. And it was funny all the way through. To me, that was the miracle. He managed to sustain it by being funny internally after the premise was stated. Once you go out there and start with the gibberish and they go, Oh, it’s gonna be the gibberish thing, then you have to come up with the humor and the jokes to keep it going. That’s what I thought was amazing about it—sustaining that in absolute gibberish which was known only to him but accepted by us.”
But what followed when he joined Martin at the desk—where he was greeted by fellow guests Kenny Rogers, Elke Sommer and Steve Allen who proffered the word “funny” as they shook hands—was an exchange that traversed the craft of his multiplicities in an altogether new manner. Martin, upon congratulating him on the performance, began, “That character with the, uh—I don’t know what kind of character it is exactly or where it’s from.”
AK: What, which one?
SM: The one out there that you did.
AK: Oh, no—that’s really me.
SM: Ahhh. And then—
AK: The Foreign Man, you mean? That’s another character.
SM: Mmmm-hmmm. So that was really you out there. And then what are you doing right now?
AK: Right now? This is really me.
SM: Oh. [Audience laughter] And then—now, what about the Foreign Man?
AK: No, that’s not—that’s just a character I do.
SM: Oh, I see. [Laughter] So there’s two real yous, and then there’s a character.
AK: Well, there’s some others also—there’s other real mes—but Foreign Man isn’t one of ’em.
SM: I see. Where did you originate that character, the Foreign Man?
AK: In New York. [Well, who would understand de Boston?] I used to perform at a place called the Improvisation…. And I would go onstage and my act began with my Elvis Presley imitation. [Applause—tenk you, well, who would understand de Boston?] So then people would say: ‘What is this? He thinks he’s Elvis Presley!’ So I—I wanted to come up with something like, innocent, so that people would like me—and then I could imitate Elvis Presley…. because people thought it was off-the-wall to do Elvis Presley. So I made up the character for that. [Um, de Boston de Great Neck no really.] And, um, I would come onstage, I’d say, Ehh, tenk you veddy much [Laughter, applause, Vait-vait, oh they love thees character they don’t stop de clapping] I am happy to be here but, ehh, ees too much traffic today took me an hour and a half to get here. And everybody would go, ‘Oh noooo …’ Because the audience, they really believed it was true, so they would go, ‘Oh no—this guy just got off the boat, he’s gonna starve, he’s gonna starve.’ But then one person would start going [stifled giggle], you know, embarrassed. But they didn’t want me to hear them laugh. So I’d hear like one person almost laugh and I’d go Vait-vait until I fineesh and they just couldn’t help it—they had to laugh. So once they started laughing, I’d make like I thought they were laughing with me when, really, they were laughing at me. And the whole thing would—
SM: You actually went out to deceive in a sense.
AK: Yes, so they would all get embarrassed. And then—
SM: That’s an interesting point of view—to embarrass the audience!
Three years later he would elaborate on this theory to a reporter