come to a private celebration afterward at Trader Vic’s, also in the hotel, but he didn’t want to go but they made him so he went. He sat at the end of the long table commandeered by the group and noticed that bits of food were landing on him as if thrown and he looked up and saw Conaway smiling devilishly and Conaway said, “How you doing, Andy?” And Andy said that he was um fine, then went over to visit with Judd Hirsch, who was sitting across from Conaway, and Conaway, who was a little drunk, decided to further engage Andy at that moment. “I thought maybe if I talked to the guy, I could break the ice and get to know him, you know?” he would recall. So, according to what Andy told George immediately afterward, Conaway said, “Andy, let me ask you a question. Do you have any respect for us?” Andy said, “Of course I do, Jeff. I respect everybody in this cast.” And Jeff said, “Well, you don’t show it. You don’t show up to rehearsals at all, you don’t come through for us, you don’t seem to give a damn about us.” And, per Conaway’s memory, Andy “got right in my face, like spitting in my face, and screamed, ‘I don’t give a fuck about any of you!’” And, according to what Andy told George, Andy said nothing of the sort but turned to walk away and when Andy started to leave, Jeff said, “Your work habits stink!” Andy then explained that there were other things in his career and Jeff said, “What career?” And Andy answered, “I’ve had a career for ten years.” And Jeff said, “What do you do in your fucking career?” Andy said he does nightclubs and concerts and Jeff Conaway said, “Your career is nothing! I’ve been in this business for nineteen years!” Andy started leaving again and Jeff actually pulled him down. Per Conaway: “I didn’t think about it, I just hit him. Boom! Square in the jaw. And I got up and hit him again. And he went down on the table and I jumped on top of him. And the drinks and food were flying everywhere. And I’m pounding him and screaming like a drunken Irishman. This was like months of frustration coming out. I figured that he dared me by saying he didn’t give a fuck about us, but in a million years I’m sure he never thought I was gonna belt him.” Per Andy, per George: He started to swing and Andy told me that Tony Danza and a few of the other guys held him back. Conaway was screaming, “I want to kill him! That goddamned guy is never at work! I want to kill him!”
Anyway, he left and Conaway called him at home a few days later and apologized and said that he had been drunk and way out of line and Andy told him that it was okay and that he knew Conaway was drunk and thus not in control of himself and Andy suggested they get together soon to talk it out. And Conaway was flabbergasted by his benevolence—“He was so forgiving and so understanding. And he apologized, too, for provoking me. I thought, This guy’s amazing! What a guy! And so after that we got friendly.”
To get to Carnegie Hall:
That February, Foreign Man taped a Cher special called Cher and Other Fantasies and he played Adam in the Garden of Eden and Cher played the serpent with the apple and also Eve but Eve as a New Jersey harridan in cat-rimmed eyeglasses. A week later in New York, on February 24, he was himself again, as such, on Saturday Night Live, where he performed “I Go Mad When I Hear a Yodel” with the B Street Conga Band, as he had done on the Van Dyke show, and he was as good as ever although there was not much laughter from the audience which was understandably rendered agog (arty juxtaposition et cetera). Lorne Michaels, meanwhile, had begun to detect some change taking place which became more and more apparent with Zmuda now fastened to his side. “With success, there were now people around him that seemed opportunistic. I hadn’t much liked Zmuda, perhaps wrongly, for that reason. After Andy went out to California, I also think he felt this pressure to get more astringent in what he did on our show, so that his stand-up had less of a desire to please, because he was doing that professionally on Taxi. Suddenly, he wasn’t getting laughs and