Lost in the Funhouse_ The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman - Bill Zehme [130]
One minute before eight-oh-three, an elderly woman who was a man who was Robin Williams who was disguised as an elderly woman who was supposed to be Andy’s grandmother wordlessly tottered from the wings and settled most visibly into a plump easy chair at stage right where she would remain—a docile silent specter—for the next three hours of exposition. As George would report in his exuberant postmortem, He sat there the whole show, reacted as a little old lady would react, sometimes laughing, sometimes nodding, and also nodding off. She acted as though she were falling asleep a few times.
Eight-oh-three: Gregg Sutton, maestro, who wore black tie and tails as did each member of his twelve-piece ad hoc ensemble, lifted his baton. There commenced a remarkable ten-minute overture that he had arranged for this occasion, an orchestral suite that portended all that would follow—Mighty-Mouse-The-Impossible-Dream-Popeye-the-Sailor-Man-MacArthur-Park-The-Cow-Goes-Moo-Oklahoma-Love-Me-Tender-Jailhouse-Rock-This-Friendly-World-Carolina-in-the-Morning. “It was high-class insanity,” he said. (He had intended to conduct in white gloves but had to forfeit them to Robin Williams so as to conceal giveaway hairy hands.) Clifton then emerged and began his attack—as he performed “The Star-Spangled Banner” a montage of images were projected on a large movie screen behind him, including rippling flags, jet flyovers, missile detonations, goose-stepping Nazis, and Hitler himself.
He did it beautifully, said George. For Tony Clifton. People seemed to enjoy it. Before being removed from the stage (and this was his most abbreviated appearance ever), Clifton introduced his “protégés”—the Love Family, a legitimate ensemble of eight brothers and sisters, ages three to fifteen, whose five-part harmonizing was actually very big in Venezuela (Andy had stumbled upon them in Los Angeles on the Venice Beach Boardwalk). And so the Love Family took the spotlight and earnestly launched into sugary medleys from Hair and The Sound of Music while moving about in sprightly/awkward geometric choreography. And the audience—sensing put-on—rebelled by the second number and booed them to tears which were real (actual real tears! oh!); the Loves, now crushed, left the stage which had now been spattered with debris. It was very sad and uncalled for and really cruel, said George, who also noted, I felt they were on too long. Sutton said, “For the first time in history, the audience wanted more Clifton! It was a very hip crowd.”
Andy took over and did what he had done before again—with certain alterations. “Um,” he said early on, “when I was starting in show business, my grandmother—we used to talk a lot and she said, ‘Why are you wasting your time?’ And I said, ‘Grandma, one day I’m gonna be playing Carnegie Hall.’ She said, ‘Oh, come on!’ I said, ‘Yup. Grandma, I promise you—I’ll be in Carnegie Hall and when that day comes, I’m gonna give you the best seat in the house!’ So, anyway, there’s my grandma over there.” And he pointed to the man on the stage who was not his grandmother and said, “See? I told you! I told you this would happen, right?” And he then promised the audience an evening of surprises and cartoons and games and prizes and big-name stars and treats. (“Everybody say milk. Okay, now everybody say cookies. Okay, very good!”) And he brought out an actual street person named Grant “Bliss” Bowman whom Andy had discovered two New Year’s Eves ago in Times Square singing a blissful Happy New Year song at the top of his lungs, which Bowman now blissfully reprised, and re-reprised, and re-re-reprised. (Zmuda and Sutton were dispatched earlier in the week to find Bowman on his favorite corner where they lured him with an offer of one hundred dollars payable after the show; Bowman would not listen to their entreaties until he received—on the spot—a bottle of port, which now protruded from his back pocket. “He wanted the kind that