Bob Pagani on Alan Abel and Andy Kaufman Part 1. Page 2.
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BP: And I said, "Andy! I just wrote you a letter!", and he said, "About what?", and I said, "About being, here, but you couldn't have gotten it!", and he said, "No, I didn't get your letter." And I said, "what are you doing here?!" And what happened was he was walking down Broadway that afternoon, and the guy who did the show from 10:30 to 11:00, right before us, he produced like martial arts stuff, he happened to run into Andy and he gets to talking, he says to Andy, "hey, why don't you come on down and do my show tonight?" And Andy said, you know, "that might be fun, but I don't know if something else might come up, so please don't plan anything around me. If I can be there I'll be there, but please don't expect me." So the guy's thinking Andy's just being polite and he's never gonna show, you know. So here it is fifteen minutes before he's gotta go on the air and here's Andy saying, "what do you want me to do?" So the guy's like, "I, don't know! I didn't think you were coming.",right? And I'm watching this and i'm saying to my friend, "this is not a million-to-one shot, this is like a billion-to-one! This will never happen in our lifetime. He can't leave here without doing our show. He HAS to do it, it's just too -- so I went over and I said, "this is like a billion-to-one shot, you have no idea how farfetched this is for you to be here.
ME: Yeah, your mind was boggled!
BP: Yeah, I'm like, "listen, I'm a big fan and you gotta come on!", and he goes, like, "Okay. Can my parents come on?", and I'm like, "sure! I'll put Hitler on, what do I care? It's just a stupid access show. Of course your parents can come on." So I said, "Okay, listen, I've got an idea. This is this character we're going to play", I said, "how about if they come on and they say you're indecent, you're horrible. They'll stay in character and...say you shouldn't be allowed on television. And he said, "yeah, yeah, that sounds good. Okay." So I met him literally at 10:15 and at 11 o'clock I was doing a live show with him and his parents.
ME: Incredible!
BP: Which I would be almost ashamed to tell people because I would think nobody would believe me if I didn't have the videotape to back it up. Because it's so farfetched. And then, have you seen the video where he ends up wrestling the girl in the end, right at his parent's feet.
ME: Yeah. He puts on a Russian accent or something too.
BP: Yeah, like twenty minutes of it, then he finally breaks character and says, "you know, none of you even mentioned this stupid accent I'm doing.", and you know, "what's the matter with you?" ... wrestling to supposedly settle the debate, and that's how we went off the air with him wrestling around on the floor. And everybody in the studio was like, their jaws were just hanging, you know, because they had witnessed this weirdness that, He had walked in and I went over and said, "you've gotta do this! this will never happen again.", and he was a big believer in stuff like that, like fate and coincidence and, you know?
ME: Yeah, you've just gotta wonder about spirits guiding you together.
BP: You know? So if there was ever evidence for that, you might suffice, because it was SO farfetched but it's what happened. It's exactly what happened.
ME: Or just putting your mind to something and just putting out the vibes.
BP: You know? You tell me, man. I don't know.
ME: So, uh, after the show, then what happened? You guys...
BP: We were just like talking, you know, and this and that and he says, "I'm in New York for two days. I'm at the Hilton. Come on down and see me tomorrow.", so I said, "yeah, great!", you know, so I said something about Alan, I said, "there's this guy you probably should meet", you know, and he's like, "okay." So I called Alan and I said, "listen, Andy Kaufman is staying at the Hilton and could you come over?", so Alan said, "yeah, I'll take the late train...back to Conneticut." So uh, he came up. I think I met him at the office. We walked up to the Hilton which is directly across the street from ABC, on sixth avenue, and we met him in his room. And, you know, Andy had his room service meal and said, "do you guys want anything? Go ahead.", all this vegetarian stuff, and we were like, "no", and we were just talking to him about this, that and it hadn't very long before that, only about a year or so that Alan had gone through that faking his death.
BP: Uh, that was like, he revealed it on like January 2nd, 1980, I think, or something like that. This would've been like '81 I think, when I met Andy. So it wasn't very long before that, you know, and Andy was kind of asking him about that, you know, had that going. What had happened was Alan, he said he always had it in the back of his head to do that, to see what his obituary would say. And who would be, you know, like a real friend and be really upset and everything. And his wife was very opposed to it. Alan's wife was like, "this is bad, you're going to hurt a lot of people's feelings. I really don't think you should do this." But he did it anyway, and um, he had a press conference announcing that he was still alive. You know, it was pretty funny because the New York Times, I mean, obituary writers never leave the office. Why would they have to? They felt compelled to send the obituary writer to the press conference. This guy is like 75, you know? and he hasn't been out of the office in twenty five years...[other press] all turn to this guy to try to get a response from him, and it was pretty priceless...
ME: You were there?! Oh, shit.
BP: Yeah! The guy's comment was pretty priceless. The guy says, "well, as far as the New York Times is concerned, Alan Abel is still dead.
(laughter)
BP: Yeah, so I was at the press conference and it was pretty entertaining. If I remember correctly, it was up by the Trump Tower now, in some kind of office.
ME: So let's see now. You guys were hanging out there. He offered you the food...
BP: Right, you know, I just introduced him to Alan and they were talking about just this, that and the other thing and Alan said, "I've gotta split, I've gotta get the last train to Conneticut", was like in a half hour so he had to run down to Grand Central, so he took off...
ME: How did Andy react to finding out about him faking his obituary?
BP: You know, it's interesting. He asked for like, details, and what did people think and you know, stuff like that, and you know, "that's neat, I've thought about doing something like that myself", and that kind of thing.
ME: What kind of details? Do you remember?
BP: Just Alan talking about, I mean, I know the whole story how Alan set it up and everything, if you want to know that.
ME: Um, maybe later. I want to get to what you and Andy did later that night.
BP: Oh, okay. So Alan takes off and we're just hanging out and Andy says, "let's go out!", and "okay.", you know, like I'm going to say 'no', right? So, "sure", so we go out on sixth avenue and I don't know how we got into it, we got into doing these stupid accents. Like these sort of quasi Eastern European kind of accents.
ME: Did he kind of pick up where he left off?
BP: I don't know, sort of, we just started doing it; I don't really remember why we started doing 'em, but we started doing 'em. And for the next like, five hours neither one of us ever spoke without it being in the accent.
ME: You were just playing and improvising with him.
BP: Yeah, even when there was nobody around. Just the two of us walking down the street, ya know? There was no audience, we were just doing this, ya know? We were in the cab, and we're talking like that, you know, every place we were!
ME: Uh huh.
BP: So I guess somebody invited him to come over to some disco which was on First avenue, over near Dangerfield's club? ...59th st? And we're over there and of course they recognize him at the door and they let us in, and we go in and uh, we're just talking in these dumb voices all the time there's these girls there. It's kind of dark. I don't know if they recognized him or not and he's talking to them in this stupid accent. And he says to the girls, you know, "we are the wrestlers", you know, "we are wrestling champion", and they're just looking at each other rolling their eyes like we're the biggest morons. I mean just clearly ridiculing us right in front of our faces.
ME: It must have been like a Hans and Franz.
BP: Yeah, right. It was just this stupid, stupid accent, and they're looking at each other like, "what's with these stupid assholes?", you know?
ME: Uh huh.
BP: And finally they like walk away laughing, you know, like they're just laughing to each other about what morons we are. Andy turns to me and goes, "They laugh at us. We laugh at them.. Everybody laughs." Sort of read between the lines, it's sort of a summation in a way of, you know, a lot of what he did!
ME: Totally.
BP: You know, like the Foreign Man, people thought, "this poor idiot thinks he's funny! He's not funny!"
ME: Everybody laughs!
BP: Right, they're laughing at him thinking they're superior to him.
ME: Yeah.
BP: Of course Andy is laughing at them in his own mind knowing it's not that way at all. And so we get into the cab and we're going over to the Improv, and uh, I remember in the cab he was telling me how, uh, he had always been afraid of [freaks? immigrants?] as a kid. Because I think like the driver was an immigrant or something.
ME: How he what?
BP: I think the driver was an immigrant, so Andy was talking about how when he was a kid he deliberately wrote this really racist, uh, essay. And, (chuckling) how minorities were like, inferior, and you have to picture, he's telling me this in this accent, "you know, I do not really believe such a thing, but I thought it would be interesting to take such an opinion. You know what I'm saying, right? I just thought it would be interesting to see what would happen if you say such a thing." (laughter) So here he is telling me about this thing he did as a kid, and he's telling me in this stupid accent, you know, so we're like three levels removed from reality!
ME: That's beautiful.
BP: Yeah, so we get over to the Improv, and he introduces me to the guys at the door as his brother, cause he figured that way they wouldn't charge me, right? So we get in and he goes, "now you know, when I go on the stage, I may have to pretend to be American, you know, for the audience, but you and I will know that I'm not American. And I said, (in the accent),"well of course not. You're not American; we all know that." But he didn't. He didn't break. He went up on stage and just was goofing around basically, you know. Screwing around with people in the crowd, but he was doing it in the accent the whole time! And we just stayed that way the whole time, and eventually, uh...
ME: Do you remember what he did on stage?
BP: Messing around, just bringing people up. Nothing really directed, ya know. Yeah, the crowd was just thrilled that he was there. He was just, you know, having some fun, but not like a real thought out bit or anything. Of course the Improv was happy to have him; the crowd was thrilled to see him, and he was on TAXI and it was a major deal. So then eventually, you know, I had to go back to the Bronx, so I jumped in a cab and went home and he gave me his home phone number, back in L.A., "I will be back in L.A. but you have to call me" (still in accent).
ME: You guys stayed in touch for quite a while.
BP: Yeah, for the next couple of years, yeah. It was just so odd, because, you know, we were talking about Steven Allen, in that book, "Funny People", how having a phone conversation with Andy is one of the strangest experiences you'll ever have.
ME: Uh huh.
BP: Because you do ninety percent of the talking.
ME: Uh huh.
BP: It was true! Andy was like, the phone would ring and it was like, (soft voice),"Hi, it's Andy.", "HEY Andy! What's happening?!", "Ah, nothing.", really quiet, with like, long gaps. If you didn't talk it was just like, dead air. It was very odd.
ME: So he kind of, he wanted you to kind of carry the ball.
BP: Yeah, pretty much. I guess he just wanted to see what you'd say, you know?
ME: Hm, interesting.
BP: Yeah. But I mean, in a way, it was strange, I've met celebrities over the years, working in radio, working the Yankees, working by the dugout, you know. Very different from anybody I'd ever met along those lines. It was not that he didn't like being recognized, and he certainly liked girls, but he didn't act like he was a celebrity. He was just Andy; he was a weirdo, you know? You know what I mean? He would just talk to you. I was very conscious of the fact that he was this guy that I thought was cool and everything, but he didn't act like you should think he was.
(to be continued! stay tuned for our next installment!)