Lost in the Funhouse_ The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman - Bill Zehme [180]
Andy walked into the Shapiro/West offices two days later and made calls to nutritionists and to whoever else he could think of who could help him. He called a macrobiotics clinic in Boston. Andy looked pretty good, although he’s confused, as he’s talking to so many people…. He expressed concern that if it got out [that he has cancer] he’d have trouble getting work. I do not feel it would affect the college lecture dates and David Letterman would certainly like to have him. Meanwhile, he looked pretty good.
He told Zmuda on January 10. Zmuda came over to Linda’s and Andy told him. Andy smiled nervously when he said the words. Zmuda waited for the gotcha but knew there would be none.
He called Gregg Sutton and told him. Sutton laughed and said, “That’s hilarious!” Andy said, “No, no, I’ve really got cancer.”
So many of them would laugh when they learned. He liked that part, but it got a little tiring. No really no really no really no really. At least, he had acquired much practice at this.
The family knew nothing, except for Michael, and they went as usual to their winter condo on Singer Island in Florida. Janice’s speech had been improving somewhat. Michael sat near her by the pool and she stared ahead into nothingness and into sunshine and two words escaped her lips. “Poor Andy,” she said. And that was all she said.
“It was almost like a mother’s intuition,” Michael would say. “This was a month before she knew anything, but she already knew.”
He turned thirty-five on the seventeenth. George brought over a photo album full of pictures from the Soundstage taping in Chicago when he had snapped at Foreign Man—“What do I have to be scared of?”
His left eye hurt, he said. It was now inside his head, where all of his other selves lived. Dhrupick’s left eye hurt and it was now inside Dhrupick’s head, where all of his otherselves lived.
George got him an offer the next day—to host the pilot for a syndicated music-video-and-performance showcase called The Top; it wouldn’t require anything more strenuous than taping introductions to various segments of the program. He could even pretend it was a children’s show and call the home viewers boys and girls. “I wanted him to do this,” George would recall. “Because performing gave him positive energy which would distract him from focusing only on his sickness.” Andy said he would do it and he did, on January 22; a limo collected him with Lynne and Linda and took them to the taping. “All of a sudden, we were out in the world again and it was so bizarre,” said Linda. “We were all very nervous. The doctor told me his arm could break if anybody even bumped it or grabbed him to say hi. So I stood there the whole time, next to his arm.” George was there to oversee—The production was quite disorganized technically and Andy was off on his timing and lacked energy at times. On some takes he did well, but he was a far cry from his normal exciting energized self. He was unsure of himself and goofed up several times. I do feel that with sharp editing, the show will turn out quite good. It will be telecast this Friday, January 27. This will be Andy’s last show for a while or until he gains his strength. “He did the show and we went home,” said Linda. “He was exhausted.”
Life and strength drained as radiation blasted. He stopped the radiation for a while, then felt worse. Often he couldn’t move. Lynne and Linda prepared and brewed his placebo gruels for hours at a time—mashes of millet and burdock root and squash; broths of fresh ginger. They shaved piles of ginger scraps to dump into Linda’s bathtub, which would be filled with scalding water, where he would steep himself for forty-five-minute purges. “One night he was too weak to get out of the tub,” said Linda. “So we had to pull him out, but he was all slippery