Bob Zmuda's Promise To Andy Kaufman Is Fulfilled

Dec 19, 1999

John Hartl

Seattle Times Movie Reviewer

On his deathbed, Andy Kaufman asked his friend, co-writer and all-around accomplice, Bob Zmuda, to do three things for him: write a book about him, produce a movie biography and continue with an obnoxious character they created, Tony Clifton.

Fifteen years after Kaufman died of cancer at 35, it's finally happening.

Zmuda's book, "Andy Kaufman Revealed: Best Friend Tells All" (Little Brown, $24), is in stores now. Zmuda is an executive producer on "Man on the Moon," which stars Jim Carrey as Kaufman and Paul Giamatti as Zmuda and opens Wednesday in theaters. If it's a hit, Zmuda is hoping Carrey will play Tony Clifton in a script Kaufman wrote.

According to Zmuda, Kaufman's chief motivation for wanting all this was to separate him from his most popular success, the television series "Taxi."

"Andy was more fearful of being remembered for playing Latke on `Taxi' than he was of dying," said Zmuda during a Seattle visit. "It was just a sitcom to him. He never watched it. Guys today want to be on Jay Leno, they want a sitcom. But Andy was a product of the 1960s.

"To Andy, it was really about the work. He wanted to change things, to reverse the roles between performer and audience, and he thought sitcom work eroded his soul. He was so afraid of losing contact with people that he took a job as a busboy at Jerry's Deli (while he was doing `Taxi'). He didn't think it was cool to be a sitcom star."

Unlike many executive producers, Zmuda was on the set of "Man on the Moon" every day. The director, Milos Forman, even asked him to play the small role of Jack Burns, a television producer who worked with Kaufman on "Fridays" (a short-lived attempt to copy the success of "Saturday Night Live"). Several cast members from "Taxi" played themselves, David Letterman and Lorne Michaels play themselves, and Zmuda would like to have played himself. Danny De Vito, who was part of the "Taxi" cast, plays someone else.

"It was pretty bizarre, a real psychodrama," said Zmuda. "I call it `One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 2.' "

While Zmuda and the late Phil Hartman were told they were too old to play Zmuda, Garth Brooks came surprisingly close to landing the job.

"On `Saturday Night Live,' Garth proved that he's a really good sketch actor," said Zmuda. "His timing is impeccable." The casting didn't work out, but Zmuda wonders if Brooks' recent adoption of an alter ego, Chris Gaines, has anything to do with Kaufman's split into Kaufman and Tony Clifton. Zmuda himself has impersonated Kaufman playing Clifton on national television.

"Jim Carrey lost his mind playing Andy and Tony," claims Zmuda. "He wouldn't take direction from Milos when he was Tony.

"Jim looked at this as methodology for anyone who was going to play Andy. I don't think he would have done it for anyone else. It was only because it was Andy that it demanded that kind of commitment to character."

Nevertheless, the "Truman Show" star was not Zmuda's first choice.

"I was originally not so supportive of Jim Carrey," he admitted. "Everybody wanted to play Andy: Tom Hanks, Sean Penn, Nicolas Cage, Hank Azaria." Forman was cautious because so much of Kaufman's original material was available on cable, on Nick at Nite and "Saturday Night Live," and physical comparisons would be inevitable.

"I thought Nic looked more like Andy," said Zmuda. "But once I saw the audition tape Jim did, I was convinced - and this was before the hair, makeup and costumes. We shot for 85 days, and he just worked his butt off."

The screenplay by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who wrote "Ed Wood" and Forman's "The People vs. Larry Flynt," is not based on either Zmuda's book or Bill Zehme's "Lost in the Funhouse" (Delacorte, $26).

Zmuda points out that Zehme, a friend of his, never met Kaufman, so Zehme's book has a different focus. He thinks his own book should really be called "Bob and Andy," whereas the movie and Zehme's book put more emphasis on Kaufman's other friends.

"The script came out of the interviews they did with everyone who knew Andy," said Zmuda. "It would take an eight-hour movie to do the book, and Milos wanted to keep it under two hours."

Zmuda sees it as a "biopic," a drama with comic moments.

"The jokes stop at the end," he said. "Then it's about death and dying. That was the most painful part for me, but I found myself compelled to be there for Jim Carrey's Andy.

"Those scenes became closure for many of us. It took me so long to write the book because I couldn't go into a bar without seeing `Taxi' on the television; it was just too painful."

Now he's surrounded by Kaufman memorabilia. Universal Home Video has released a tape of Kaufman's only movie, "Heartbeeps" (1981), a flop that Zmuda detests so much he can't believe it still exists: "You mean they didn't erase it?"

There's a new tape of Kaufman's "Midnight Special" television show, in which Kaufman does his uncanny impersonation of Elvis Presley, and a Kaufman biography on the A&E Channel. A CD of music from the movie includes Kaufman and R.E.M.'s rendition of "This Friendly World," an obscure tune taken from the 1959 teen movie "Hound Dog Man."

"Andy was a huge Fabian fan," explains Zmuda.

In addition to working on the ninth edition of "Comedy Relief" (he's the president and founder) and "The Tony Clifton Story," Zmuda has been creating a 95-minute documentary, to be called "The Unmaking of `Man on the Moon,' " drawn from 120 hours of footage shot on the set. It will be released along with the video version of "Man on the Moon" next year.

Several scenes were edited out of the movie to keep it under two hours. They will eventually appear on the DVD, though Zmuda says he couldn't be more pleased with the movie as it stands.