bucks.
B: What if they wheel you down to the morgue and start performing an autopsy on you? Hell, they can kill you while you’re still alive and not even know it.
A: Why would they need to perform an autopsy on me? They already would know what I died of.
B: And what is it you’re going to die from?
A: I don’t know yet. I’m still working on it. I’m in no rush. I won’t do it until it’s perfect. All right, talk to you tomorrow.
B: Great, Andy. Now I’m going to have nightmares about bodies in morgues.
A: You want me to send a hooker over? I got phone numbers. She could be there in an hour. It’s on me. I had three working girls already this week.
B: Three? Why not just fuck groupies …
A: They’re more trouble than they’re worth … You want a hooker?
B: No, save your money. You’re going to need it. I don’t think faking your death is going to be cheap.
A: But you do admit it’s doable.
B: Of course it’s doable. People get away with it every day.
A: Can you imagine how great this will be when I actually do it?
B: Well, just remember: If you get caught, they don’t give out chocolate ice cream in jail. Speaking of jail, you better send me a piece of paper stating I had nothing to do with helping you.
Lynne
I slept on the couch in his room (Cedars-Sinai being the hospital to the stars, one could get away with anything there, doctors in the pocket of the famous). I rarely left his side. It was around 6 p.m. on May 16, 1984. Andy’s condition hadn’t changed and I hadn’t slept for days. I lay down on the couch at the far end of the room and fell immediately asleep. The next thing I remember is hearing ALL the Kaufman family voices shouting, “Andy, hang on! Don’t go!” I literally flew from the couch to his bedside. I can’t recall my feet hitting the floor. When I got to Andy’s bedside, he was surrounded by his family. There was no room for me at the head of the bed, so I stood and held one of Andy’s feet while he died. (Hmmmm. Symbolic for how the Kaufmans treated me, eh?) Later, I was standing at the head of the bed, stroking and kissing his forehead; cold (holy shit, could that have been a body double?). I did see him (or whoever) take his last breath.
Then the nightmare of the Kaufmans invading my home. Andy and I had rented a house in Pacific Palisades after he found out about the cancer. Of course, HE rented the house, not me. After Andy died, Stanley, his dad, “graciously” let me stay in the house for one month. After that, get out.
There they were in MY house. But they felt entitled because they were Andy’s family; who the fuck was I? I had actually asked Michael, Andy’s brother, a few days earlier if they would please move to a hotel because I needed solitude in my home. I remember that he just stared at me. He didn’t respond. And I realize now it was because they didn’t consider me of any consequence at all. It was THEIR house, not mine.
Lynne has had friction with the Kaufmans since then. This has escalated in the last few years to some serious threats of lawsuits. Andy would roll over in his grave … if he were in it.
* * *
Take your pick: either Andy Kaufman faked his death or he was a psychic. For it is an indisputable fact that he not only named the disease he would die of, but also the exact hospital he would die in of that disease, and he did it a full four years before he supposedly died.
It appears for all to see in black and white on page 124 of The Tony Clifton Story, a script that Andy and I wrote together for Universal Studios in 1980. I remember the day he rushed into our bungalow on the Universal lot quite worked up, nothing short of in a frenzy. “We’ve got to change the script, Bob. I just had a great idea.” I said, “Fantastic. What is it?” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper that he had scribbled on at 3:00 a.m. the night before and handed it to me. It read: “Tony Clifton dies of cancer at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Hollywood, California.” We put it in the script. In 1984, “Andy Kaufman would die of cancer at Cedars-Sinai hospital,” proof enough that he had decided four years earlier the exact disease he would use to fake his death and the hospital that he would stage it in. This fact has been recently verified by Universal Studios’s script department, which has had the original script in its possession for the last thirty-five years. A statistician from the University of California—Berkeley ran an odds-predictability study listing all the possible ways one could die and a total of all the hospitals in the U.S. Statistically, the odds of someone’s predicting what he would die from and the hospital he would die in are 780,000,000 to one. Basically an impossibility. That S.O.B. knew back in 1980 exactly what he would supposedly die from and where.
Actual page from The Tony Clifton Story, written in 1980, proof that Andy had decided four years before his supposed passing in 1984 what disease and hospital he would use to fake his death.
Equally remarkable is the last recording on the Andy and His Grandmother album (track 17), where the microcassette tape recorder catches Andy and me talking candidly. Out of nowhere, Andy comes up with the idea of faking his death for the first time. The recording ends with my saying, “Andy, you fake your death and nobody believes you, you’ll go on forever … immortal.” Kaufman’s reply is, “GREAT!”
When the Kaufman family heard of the release of the tapes, they tried everything in their power to stop it, sending threatening legal letters to both Lynne and Drag City, the company that released them. I couldn’t help but wonder why they were so concerned. Was it Andy openly talking about faking his death? What were they trying to hide? I could only wonder if maybe they were in cahoots with him all along. Maybe Andy agreed with my thinking that it would be a cruel trick to make his mother believe he was dead when he wasn’t and told her. Does track 17 reveal Andy’s smoking gun? Did it have to be censored by the Kaufman family at all costs because it was a clear indication that he faked his death? What or who is in his crypt? His fans want to know. Just ninety minutes with a backhoe at the grave site and everyone can get a good night’s sleep.
Working with Andy was like working with the great Houdini, and time and time again I’d see him go to incredible, painstaking lengths to pull off illusions. So why not this? Why not the greatest illusion of all time? And I wish I had a nickel for every time he called me, turning it around over and over in his mind on just how to get away with it. And those odds: 780,000,000 to one. How could he possibly have predicted the disease and hospital years before? And after all, wasn’t it I who told him, “Andy, you even have to fool me.” Had he even fooled Dr. Zmudee, as he called me? Maybe temporarily. After all, there was a body, wasn’t there? There is a death certificate, isn’t there? No, he did it. I know he did it. The brilliant bastard faked his own death, and he’s going to return thirty years later, just like he said, and it will be the single most amazing event in the history of showbiz!
* * *
One day my phone rang—surprisingly, it was Danny DeVito on the other end. I’d met Danny a few years earlier on the set of Taxi, but that was nothing that would warrant a personal call. He was quite excited: “Bob, I have great news! Universal Studios is going to make a major motion picture about Andy’s life, and I’m going to produce it through my company, Jersey Films. I’m even getting my old buddy, Milos Forman, two-time Academy Award winner, to direct it. And as Andy’s writer and best friend, I want you involved in a big way. This film is going to be amazing.” After my shock subsided,