Lost in the Funhouse_ The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman - Bill Zehme [149]
Redemption was offered two weeks later by Dick Ebersol, who had three years earlier left Saturday Night Live in the hands of Lorne Michaels. Ebersol had moved to Los Angeles to shape other NBC projects, which now included restructuring The Midnight Special, a long-running rock music cavalcade that aired Friday nights following The Tonight Show. Beginning in early 1977, Andy had made a handful of appearances on the show—the most memorable of which featured his renditions of “You Light Up My Life” and “Stayin’ Alive,” for which he accompanied himself on cymbals. Ebersol now proposed that Andy take over an entire ninety-minute installment of the show, which would dedicate itself, partly in documentary style, to answering the ephemeral (and all-too-urgent) question—Who is Andy Kaufman? “Andy Kaufman is me,” he announced at the outset. “I’m Andy Kaufman.” The program would largely serve as an in-studio showcase in which he welcomed many selves onto the stage: Foreign Man would appear and do de Elveece and there would be conga numbers (he beat along to “Tallahassee Lassie” sung by boyhood hero Freddy “Boom Boom” Cannon) and Slim Whitman would teach him to yodel and he would do bad ventriloquism with store-bought Howdy Doody and Little Red Riding Hood puppets and Clifton would perform his usual malevolent set (during which Andy would be seen laughing riotously in the audience). And in the documentary clips he would sit in his sparsely furnished home and explain the evolution of his career and cameras would follow him through the Taxi soundstage and through a busboy shift at Jerry’s Famous Deli in Studio City, where he now worked Tuesday nights since the Posh Bagel had closed. (Jerry himself would be heard describing him as “an excellent, hardworking, very serious-in-his-work type of man” and expressed interest in hiring him full-time.) Also there would be wrestling footage shot a few nights earlier at The Comedy Store about which he explained that he played the role of the villain to purposely engender audience hostility—“I believe in being a purist and going all the way with the role—and not breaking character or giving away that I’m playing a role. I believe in playing it straight to the hilt.” And George would be seen mournfully discussing the hate mail and the loss of fans. And Zmuda would be seen matter-of-factly stating, “The wrestling has definitely cost Andy Kaufman his career. There’s no doubt about it. Right now this is the only show that has offered this man to be on in a long time. And we thank you for that.”
Clifton, in full persona, checked into the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, where he would open, once again, for Rodney Dangerfield during the last three nights of January. The two-show-per-night engagement at the Warfield Theater would be especially historic because now the audiences would actually try to kill him. (Coincidentally, or not, the movie of his life was now two months dead, having been rejected by Universal and then Paramount, Columbia, and Warner Bros. as well.) David Hirshey had flown out from New York to continue his Rolling Stone exploration and to search for cracks in the Clifton façade (finding none besides the presence of George and Bob and the occasional backstage disappearance of Clifton’s gut). “He looks like Roy Orbison pumped with cortisone,” Hirshey would write. On the first night, derision flamed as Clifton sacreligiously mangled “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” and someone screamed TAKE THE DOGSHIT OUT OF YOUR MOUTH! Debris quickly rained from the balcony and, before Clifton had left the stage, twenty people would be refunded their money. Dangerfield found this hilarious—“They all hated him, you know? And he kept saying, ‘It’s too bad that a few of you out there