with more details. Till then, hold tight and don’t tell anyone. I want everything signed, sealed, and delivered before we make an announcement.” “I totally understand, Danny.” Danny’s last words to me were, “I’ll call you back in no longer than two weeks.” When I hung up the phone, I was ecstatic. Finally, Andy would get his due and, unashamedly, so would I. After all, ever since his “supposed” death, I had done everything within my power to keep his memory alive.
Weeks went by and every time the phone rang, I jumped, hoping it would be DeVito. Weeks turned to months. The call never came. I chalked it up to the deal’s having collapsed, something that took place on a daily basis in Hollywood. I stopped anticipating that DeVito would call back. I figured he was probably bloodied by the studio. To save face, he just wasn’t going to call back.
More time passed and I thought the whole matter was long dead. Then one day, my answering machine got a workout when call after call came in congratulating me on the fact that Universal was indeed making the film. Supposedly there was a huge write-up about it in Daily Variety. I ran to the nearest 7-Eleven and swooped up a half-dozen copies. I stood out in the street fighting the wind, trying to read the article. There it was in print, just as Danny said. Milos was going to direct, DeVito was going to produce with his partners Stacey Sher and Michael Shamberg, Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander would write the screenplay, George Shapiro and Howard West would executive produce. The film was to be called Man on the Moon, after the hit R.E.M. song about Andy. Everything and everyone was mentioned … except … except … where the fuck’s my name? … except … me!
I called a friend I knew from Universal when we had been developing The Tony Clifton Story before Kaufman’s disappearing act. His name was Sean Daniel (Dazed and Confused, Tombstone, The Mummy). I told him my story. He concluded that I had “danced to the Hollywood two-step.” I asked what the hell was that. He put it simply: “You’ve been cut out. Actually,” he added, “You were never really in.” “But DeVito called me,” I said. “Obviously someone got to DeVito, Bob, and said we don’t need Zmuda.” “Is there anything I can do, Sean?” “Oh, yes,” he said with great confidence. “Listen to me and do exactly what I say.”
The letter Sean instructed me to send “to everyone” was polite yet firm. It sincerely congratulated all involved on how wonderful it was that Andy was finally being recognized. Of course, it also conveyed that since I, being his writer and all, was not involved, they did not have the right to portray a laundry list of material such as Carnegie Hall when we took the entire audience out in school buses for milk and cookies, him wrestling women, Tony Clifton, the Great Gatsby, the masked magician, the fight on Letterman with Jerry Lawler, and a slew of other pieces that I had also developed with Kaufman. In short, all they’d be left with was basically Andy playing the congas and singing to the Mighty Mouse record.
Soon my phone was ringing off the hook with apologies: “A mere oversight.” In short order, I was made a co-executive producer on the film, allowed to choose whom I wanted to portray me, be downloaded by the writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, and most importantly, work closely with Jim Carrey, giving him insight into Kaufman and Kaufman’s alter-ego, the notorious lounge lizard Tony Clifton. For all this, I was rewarded quite handsomely financially, along with a single-card producer credit in the film.
As for Lynne, she was in New York when she got the call that the film was being made. She was told that the writers, Scott and Larry, would like to interview her. She met with Scott and Larry at their office on the Sony lot. They told her that they were having trouble getting a fix on Andy. “A very key moment in the research for us,” they said, “was interviewing Lynne. We said, ‘We’re looking for the real Andy Kaufman,’ and she said, ‘There is no real Andy Kaufman.’” Bingo! A light went on for them. It was a theme that was played out through the entire film. She had also given the studio tons of Andy’s personal belongings to use in the film as well as advising the set designers on how his house looked, how he dressed, even what he ate.
When the film was going into production, Lynne had not heard from anyone about her being involved. (Sound familiar?) She had assumed, after meeting with Scott and Larry, and after giving the studio all of the memorabilia, that of course they would want her on board. After all, she was the love of his life—that should count for something. She called George Shapiro, who was executive producing the film with his partner Howard West, and set up a lunch meeting.
Lynne
He took me to Morton’s steakhouse on La Cienega. (That was always one of the best perks about hanging with the Hollywood set. Great free meals and drinks.) I told George that I very much wanted to be involved with Man on the Moon. He said, “Doing what?” Well, that rather flabbergasted me into a stuttered reply of, “Well, I’m not sure,” and George said, “Send me your resume and I’ll forward it to Danny DeVito.” I nearly spit out my food. I wish now that I had, right in his face. In those days, I was more intimidated by people than I am now, and I just stared at him in silence. Later, Bob and I compared notes and he told me that Stanley Kaufman didn’t want either of us involved. Why?
Because Stanley (Andy’s father) felt the story should be told through his eyes, not ours, and he had already dictated to the writers the scenes he wanted in the film. The scenes, besides of course co-starring Stanley, also included a lot of revisionism. It’s not that they weren’t true, but they were aimed at cleaning up Andy’s image. Stanley wanted to paint a more innocent, loving, and normal Andy, a good Jewish boy who never missed Thanksgiving or Seders with his family. Yes, Andy did drive a long distance to visit a girl who was dying in the hospital. Yes, he did draw a crowd of people around a woman who was collecting for a local charity and helped her raise more money. Great, but not exactly the kind of scenes for a motion picture about the world’s greatest prankster. This wasn’t the Mother Teresa story, but the Andy Kaufman story. And Andy himself had already laid the foundation for the script with his body of work. But Stanley the overbearing patriarch and his family just couldn’t get that through their thick skulls. Or didn’t want to. After all, Stanley was acting like every needy actor who wanted to get as much screen time as possible. Major studios do not make movies of family albums. They make movies of remarkable people who have done remarkable things.
The seldom-heard man behind the scenes, Howard West, George Shapiro’s partner in Shapiro/West, the management firm that signed Andy, has what I feel is the most accurate assessment of who Andy was from his no-nonsense, professional viewpoint:
I’d say to him, “What else are you going to do to wreck your career? You make things difficult, Andy! Dif … fi … cult!”
There was a self-destruct button in Andy. He was a daredevil, a high-wire act. I got this wire here. I can walk on it. Forty feet. Sixty feet. Eighty feet. One hundred feet. Maybe? That’s a self-destruct mode. But it’s also his talent. You can’t separate it. Andy did what Andy had to do for Andy and did it well.
The real Andy you never knew or felt you knew. Nice, sweet conversationally, normal in his desires and wants, but I didn’t see that much of that too often. Maybe others saw it with those he was closer to, like Lynne, and saw what we didn’t see in their relationship. Mine was more career-oriented, with a few personal moments like talking about our hair loss, what can be done about it. That’s a personal moment, when the veneer is gone, but I didn’t have enough of those.
Once I met with Scott and Larry, I just dazzled them with the adventures Andy and I had together. Eventually they came right out and told Stanley, “We went with Zmuda’s stories. They were better than yours.” After hearing that, Stanley would hate me and the movie to the day he died.
With my newfound clout as one of the producers, I raised a ruckus and was able to get Lynne on the picture and paid. Still, first cuts are the deepest; the earlier snub by George and DeVito left its mark on us. After that, we never really trusted any of the executives who we felt tried to screw us, except for one, a producer by the name of Stacey Sher. Occasionally during the filming, DeVito would plead with me, “Bob, I had nothing to do with cutting you out of the deal. You gotta believe me!” Of course, he could never adequately explain why he never got back to me. Later, I would