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that was intended to produce a Rolling Stone cover. Vince Prentice had transformed Zmuda into a lippy lounge gargoyle, but it worked and even George thought this Clifton was impressive both in look and comportment—Clifton strangled Andy in several shots—and within weeks it was decided that Zmuda would take over the role and be booked on talk shows and perform an engagement at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe Resort and everyone would continue to think that Clifton was Andy but now it truly wouldn’t be Andy. They went to the Japanese restaurant Amagi—George, Bob, Andy—and piled their hands together on the tabletop and vowed that no one but Prentice and a few others would know the truth. I will not discuss Tony Clifton [even] with my partner Howard, which is his pleasure, George later dictated. Rolling Stone editor Terry McDonell called George the next day and said he had nixed the Andy-and-Clifton cover and instead wanted Andy posed alone strapped into a straitjacket which George nixed—although Fridays photographer Wayne Williams had shot him in a straitjacket three weeks earlier and those pictures had appeared as commercial bumpers on the infamous broadcast. They would tentatively settle on using a more straightforward photograph, but it would not matter, because when the April 30 issue of the magazine was published, Ringo Starr was the cover subject and at the very top of the cover were the very small and very provocative words WHY ANDY KAUFMAN IS NOT FUNNY.

As quoted by David Hirshey—

CARL REINER: Unless you let the audience in on the joke, you are making fools of them, and that’s what he’s doing with this Tony Clifton.

STANLEY KAUFMAN: I never understood why he would want to alienate the audience to such extremes unless he was trying to get them to go from hate to love. Why Tony Clifton? It’s possible he created this character to draw hisses for the villain so he can come out the hero.

CAROL KAUFMAN: I don’t think anything that makes people uncomfortable is entertainment. Sometimes I just want to stand up on my seat and shout, “He’s only kidding, everybody!” I think with Andy, it all goes back to the self, the I. What am I going to get pleasure out of, not how am I going to please the audience. He knows they want to laugh, they want him to tell jokes. But no. That would be selfless.

Two letters to Rolling Stone were subsequently published:

One: … “As for my not letting people in on the joke, there are times when real life is funnier than deliberate comedy. Therefore, I try to create the illusion of a ‘real-life’ situation or character. However, it must be believed totally; if I were to let people in on the joke, it wouldn’t have that effect…. Finally, concerning my ‘brief flirtation’ with levitation, this is something I have studied and practiced for several years and I take it very seriously. Not only am I able to levitate about eight feet off the ground, but once in the air, I am able to fly about in all directions.”

Two: “You promised to put my picture on the cover of your magazine and I flew to Los Angeles at my own expense and I spent a whole evening posing for your photographer standing next to that asshole egotist Kaufman who thinks he’s Mr. Hollywood Show Business and I didn’t get nothin’ out of it and as far as I’m concerned to me that’s a waste of time and you’re all a bunch of schmucks and you can go fuck yourselves. Incidentally, I am appearing on The Merv Griffin Show June 8 all across the country, so could you let your readers know about it.”

All things had been well considered at Taxi: The sixty-fourth episode—entitled “Latka the Playboy” as written by Glen Charles and Les Charles—introduced Vic Ferrari, a slick, smooth-talking cad who was Latka Gravas’s alter ego. It was the first indication of a multiple personality disorder that would possess Latka for much of the next year.

It was nobody’s business and he told very few people that he did this, but he did do it and the reason why lived somewhere in a scared and lovely place that was as much a part of him as the other variegated colors. It was early