THE TONY CLIFTON STORY

What the hell did I just read? Readers, you will not believe what happens in this screenplay. Of course, fans of Andy Kaufman are quite familiar with the, uhh, irascibly untalented lounge singer, Tony Clifton. You can see videos of him here. Here’s Tony Clifton with the Muppets. And apparently … he’s still alive? Here’s Tony Clifton’s MySpace page? And … here’s Tony Clifton’s blog?

That the Tony Clifton charade continues would no doubt please Andy Kaufman, who forever denied that he had anything to do with the infamous lounge singer. But we knew better. Clifton was part of that crazy antagonistic game Kaufman loved playing with his fans, except nothing -- nothing -- tested the patience of even his most devoted followers quite like Tony Clifton. He was a character who epitomized the washed-up showbiz casualty, the old star who was too lazy to remember his song lyrics or care about pleasing his audiences. He was an island unto himself. He’d insult audience members and pass it off as the comedy portion of his act. He was intentionally unentertaining to such an extreme that he wasn’t even entertaining as a joke or as satire. Worse than being unfunny, which was always ruinous for his gigs, Tony Clifton was quite often boring. Sometimes he would stop his show to make carrot juice. That’s it. No dialogue. No music. Just Tony Clifton … on stage … making carrot juice.

According to Clifton’s profile on Wiki, “For a brief time, it was unclear to some that Clifton was not a real person. News programs interviewed Clifton as Kaufman's opening act, but the interviews would invariably turn ugly whenever Kaufman's name came up. Clifton claimed Kaufman was using his name ‘to go places …’ Promoters who thought they had caught on to the joke would hire Clifton because he was cheaper than booking Kaufman. However, Kaufman had the last laugh, enlisting his brother Michael or his showbiz partner Bob Zmuda to play the role, with Kaufman making unannounced appearances onstage during Clifton's act … Rodney Dangerfield was a big fan of Andy Kaufman and hired Clifton to open for him for two shows at Fillmore West. After a disastrous first show where Clifton was summarily booed, he reappeared the second night in riot gear amid a shower of rotten vegetables.”

In other words, he was the ultimate unsympathetic protagonist.

The script opens in Africa. That’s right. AFRICA. In the deepest, darkest regions. A tribe of cannibals dance “in a hypnotic frenzy.” A plane crashes. They run to the crash site. Inside the cargo area is a splintered crate with a shipping panel that reads “Record Promotion -- Licorice Pizza, Zaire, Africa.” The crate’s filled with albums and cassette tapes. They find a Frank Sinatra album that didn’t break. They play it. Music begins. The tribe members all “hit the deck” frightened by the voice of Old Blues Eyes. They just lie there petrified as Sinatra sings “Strangers in the Night.” We stay in this moment listening to Sinatra … observing the petrified African tribe as … the opening credits roll. 

What the hell did I just read?

Cut to alow-income area of Philadelphia and Tony Clifton’s place. He wakes up. He has a Mickey Mouse clock. Tony interacts with some neighborhood kids, and surprisingly, Tony does not treat them terribly as we have seen in his lounge acts. In fact, seeing Tony behave differently holds your attention. He starts bragging to the kids about all the sex we know he isn’t having. “I'll tell ya, it's all in da foreplay ... all in da foreplay. Ya gotta use your hands. Ya gotta use your speech. Ya gotta show da woman dat you're not a wimp. Ya gotta be a man. Y'know ... da old technique.” He’s probably never touched a breast in his life. He’s the 45-year-old braggadocio virgin. In his day job, he screws the tops on salt & pepper shakers where he also brags to his coworkers about all the sex we know he isn’t having. One coworker challenges him: “Face it, Clifton, you’ve never even seen how it looks!” They argue. The coworker finally says, “Yeah, tell me how it looks then.” “I’ll tell ya how it looks,” Tony says. “It looks just like a … ham sandwich.” Strangely enough, you’re almost warming up to the crazy loon.

Andy Kaufman arrives in town to do a show. Clifton happens to meet him in an all-night diner, invites Andy to see him sing, which he does. Andy loves how terrible Clifton performs. He invites Clifton to open for him in L.A. He bombs. Andy thinks he can make people love to hate Tony. He brings him along on a comedy tour and Clifton becomes an overnight sensation. Clifton mania sweeps the nation! He is taken to the White House where he insults the Chinese and gets thrown out. Andy helps him get his own talk show. He keeps pushing him to do more and more outrageous things to antagonize the audience, which culminates in a moment on his show involving San Diego Zoo’s Joan Embry, a baby seal, and a club-wielding baby-seal-killer from Newfoundland.

Tony wants to quit the talk show. He doesn’t enjoy angering people. They make a movie instead. He becomes enraged by what he thought would be a serious film (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) that has turned out to be a comedy where everyone laughs at him. He tries to get the movie stopped. He fights with Kaufman. He gets up in front of the audience. He says, “I ... I feel sorry for you people ... I don't think you even know why you did this ... I ... I was performin' from my heart ... Well, you won't have Tony Clifton to kick around any more ... 'cause I'm leavin' ... and I ain't never comin' back.” And then …

We find ourselves in an editing room. Andy Kaufman turns to the camera and speaks directly to the audience: “My name is Andy Kaufman, maker of the film you are now watching, The Tony Clifton Story. On June 12, 1980, nine weeks into the shooting ... and just three scenes away from the completion of this film ... Mr. Tony Clifton, at the age of 45, died of cancer at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Hollywood, California. On June 26, 1980, Universal Pictures unanimously decided to support the countless actors, technicians, and various other production staff members, in the completion of The Tony Clifton Story.”

The camera moves in closer.

“In memory of Tony,” Andy says, “and in all due respect to him and his family, I decided the last remaining scenes would be completed, as written, with myself playing the role of ... Mr. Tony Clifton.”

And the story continues.

Hilarious. I can imagine some of the formula freaks I’ve known in L.A. saying, “You can’t do that. You can’t break out of the story like that.” Yes, you can. It’s a comedy. There are no rules in comedy. Now, on the one hand, Andy is killing off his infamous alter-ego while also upping the ante in that game of antagonism he loves playing with his fans. This is the closest we would’ve ever gotten in terms of an admission from Andy that he’s been playing Tony Clifton. Rumor has it that for the rest of the film Kaufman was going to wear a crappy costume that only vaguely resembled Tony Clifton.

But that’s not what makes this moment so incredible.

Andy said Clifton died of cancer at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Hollywood. That is exactly how Andy himself would die four years after writing this screenplay.

What the hell did I just read?

Did Andy know he had cancer when he wrote this script? Did he plan on dying at Cedars Sinai in Hollywood? Or is this just one of those incredible Hollywood coincidences?

So now let me paint a few broad strokes about the ending. Clifton didn’t die. His plane had merely crashed in Africa, the very plane we saw in the opening scene. Ah, this was a flashback structure. Clifton learns that Andy has been telling people he’s dead and decides to show up at his own funeral to set things straight with Andy. A fight ensues between Clifton and Andy while being surrounded by dozens of Tony Clifton lookalikes who showed up at the funeral and the African natives Clifton brought with him (all carrying green cards). Andy gets punched by Tony and falls into an open grave. This is followed by a big musical finale involving grave diggers, elephants, and casket-springing corpses.

What the hell did I just read?

I’ll tell you what I read -- one of cinema’s most fascinating screenplays. First of all, this script was never about story in the sense that we think of stories. The title, The Tony Clifton Story, is a lie, just as the idea that this is his biopic is a lie, just as the existence of a supposedly "real" Tony Clifton is a lie. Tony’s just a tool for antagonism in a game of comedy. This film is really about Andy Kaufman and who he is as he tries to build a fictional myth for his persona while also playing a game with his fans and occasionally revealing bits of himself to the world. It’s like someone with a multiple personality disorder writing his own comedy and revealing aspects about himself through his different personalities.

Just consider what Andy reveals about himself with the two romance subplots. Andy reveals through a brief flashback sequence that he got into show business because he thought that was the only way to get women. There was one in particular, Marilyn Comstack, who inspired him as a kid to do something “big” to earn her love. We don’t believe this story as we don’t believe much of anything Andy tells us, but we know there’s a grain of truth in his lie. So Marilyn shows up at one of Andy’s shows, they fall in love, and then she loses interest in Andy and moves on to another man. Then there was Tony Clifton. He starts the film by bragging about sex. Later, he goes to a discotheque and he fails miserably with women. Then he finds himself in a situation with a prostitute where he’s faced with the prospect of actual sex. For the first time. We’re almost rooting for the dumb bastard to get laid. Miraculously, Clifton has sex. And, of course, he falls in love with her. BUT -- Andy Kaufman and Tony Clifton are one and the same. So just consider what Andy’s revealed about himself. He got into showbiz for the girls but he’s so goofy as himself, he can’t hold onto them in relationships. His alter ego gives him courage, which was evident in the end with Marilyn popping out of a cake during the musical finale and Tony telling Andy to “tell her now or you never will,” which he does. And yet, even his alter ego fails with women and the only way Andy can get a woman is through his alter ego while also paying for it.

It’s also interesting how the unsympathetic character, Tony Clifton, is the protagonist and the seemingly sympathetic character, Andy Kaufman, has been made into the antagonist. That’s brilliant. You expect Clifton to be the asshole you’ve known him to be but he isn’t, although he is offensive in a lovable Archie Bunker sort of way. You always laugh at him and never with him. When Andy shows up in the story, you expect him to portray himself as the perfect angel, but he doesn’t. He does behave ultra-politely at first, almost too perfectly you might think, but then you later find yourself surprised by just how wickedly Andy behaves. We learn that Tony Clifton wasn’t so unsympathetic as a person as much as he was just being pushed by the sympathetic Andy to do awful things to get attention and make money. This means that Andy himself wasn’t always happy about what he was pushing himself to do. Over the course of the story, both characters shift into this grayish neutral zone of being both good & bad. They have guilt for what they’re doing, and they ultimately fight it out between each other.

This duality in Kaufman’s nature as well as the contrast between his reality and the persona of himself that he puts out there was expressed in one scene in Kaufman’s office. There’s a built-in wet bar, stereo and very erotic painting on the wall. “Kaufman is in bed wearing silk pajamas and gold chains around his neck. Sharing the bed with him are Mary and X-mas, two sisters whose motto is, ‘double your pleasure, double your fun.’ Kaufman is doing just that. There is a knock on the door. Kaufman continues to make out. Another knock.” Kaufman answers, talks to his manager, and goes back to wrestling with the girls. Yes, wrestling is Andy’s secret fetish. He’s interrupted again. Now Clifton wants to talk. It must be serious, he’s told, because Clifton’s not wearing his tuxedo. Kaufman kicks the girls out. “He walks over to the central control panel and pushes a button. The room mechanically changes. The bed disappears and is replaced by a straw mat. The wet bar rolls into a wall and a juicer with a basket of fresh carrots appears. The erotic art on the wall turns over, revealing a picture of a guru in the lotus position.” Andy changes his clothes. He puts on “a pair of pants and a sweatshirt that reads: ‘I Love Grandma.’” He opens the door and says to Tony, “I was just meditating. Would you care for some carrot juice?”

And consider this, probably the most explicit verbal expression about Andy’s duality, whichis found in this unbelievable confrontation between he and Tony:

ANDY: Do you remember ... ‘dank you veddy much?’ Do you? 

TONY: Sure ... you were known for that.

ANDY: That's right ... that's what I was known for ... ‘dank you veddy much.’ (louder) ‘Dank you veddy much.’ Do you think for one moment I liked doing that? A grown man walking around going, ‘dank you veddy much, dank you veddy much.’ Have you any idea what it does to you, to say that asinine phrase, in that nauseating, high-pitched voice, day in and day out? And yet I did it ... and why? Because it was my gimmick ... my trademark ...my five syllable, easily remembered combination. It's a simple enough formula to understand. You take any four or five syllable combination that makes up a catchy, easily remembered phrase, and spoon feed it to the ignorant masses ... (counting on fingers) ‘Wild-and-cra-zy-guy.’ ‘You-can-call-me-Ray.’ ‘Na-no, na-no.’ ‘It's-not-my-job-man.’ ‘Dank-you-ved-dy-much.’ ‘Get-cha-hands-off-me.’ Five little words, Tony -- your gimmick.

TONY: I don't understand any a this. I'm not a gimmick. I'm a artist.

ANDY: (laughing) An artist! There are no artists, Tony! They all died of starvation, or cut their ears off and gave them to sluts as going away presents. All that will survive, Tony, are men like me ... men who are clever enough to know how to make a buck ... milk a gimmick ...come on, you didn't really believe the audience wanted you to play The Hunchback of Notre Dame seriously! To them, you've never been anything more ... than a buffoon ... a jerkoff ... and I made that buffoon jerkoff ... a SUPERSTAR.

TONY: I'm not a buffoon jerkoff... andyou didn't make me anything.

ANDY: (sadistic) In the beginning you were nothing more than ... a pitiful mental case, living under the delusion that you had what it took to go straight to the top. Left alone, after a few years of defeat ... you would've been forced to face facts and give up that ridiculous goal. But, fate entered in ... I came along and I took that ‘pitiful delusion’ and shaped it into a ‘multi-million-dollar-a-year reality.’ (pause) One could go so far as to ask ... Who is the real Tony Clifton? The puppet? Or ... the puppeteer?

TONY: (stands) I'm ... I'm me ... I'm Tony Clifton ... and I'm gonna go out there and tell those people what you've been doin'.

ANDY: It won't do you any good, Tony ... You see, I've taken care of that also. I not only created you, but I also created the audience's reaction to you. They're conditioned at this point. No matter what you possibly tell them ... they're going to laugh right in your face.

What amazing revelations here -- Andy’s disgust for himself, for what he does, for the “ignorant masses,” and for all the entertainers pawning themselves off as artists. Plus, Andy is actually telling himself, “In the beginning you were nothing more than ... a pitiful mental case, living under the delusion that you had what it took to go straight to the top. Left alone, after a few years of defeat ...you would've been forced to face facts and give up that ridiculous goal. But, fate entered in ...”

Andy Kaufman was years ahead of Charlie Kaufman.

I guess since Tony Clifton never could get the kind of adoration Andy wanted him to have in real life, he chose to shower Clifton with a nation of adoring fans in a fictional story. On the one hand, we’re witnesses to his love for Tony and on the other hand, we’re witnesses to his disgust for him, too, who is part of his own psyche. Ironically enough, it’s only in the pretend world of fiction that this real-world fictional character could obtain a measure of fame and financial success.

That an Andy Kaufman screenplay could even inspire these kinds of thoughts in me is staggering. This goes to show that, when it comes to screenwriting, you have to do something big and unique that will get people talking. The only reason this didn’t get made was in large part because a previous film of Andy’s, Heartbeeps, bombed. When the studio was through interfering and diluting the brilliance of this original Clifton concept, the evil Andy had been replaced by an evil manager named Norman who would commit both Andy and Clifton to a sanitarium. By that point, nobody cared much anymore. Years later, Universal President, Ned Tannen, the man who greenlit Heartbeeps but pulled the plug on Tony Clifton, was quoted as saying, “You know, that’s the one we should have made.” 

Overall, the script was far from perfect. It was overwritten in some places, had too much dialogue in other places, and generally needed a good polish. Yet, this version of The Tony Clifton Story was quitepossibly Andy Kaufman’s creative pinnacle for his own unique brand of comedy. Had this film been made, I don’t know if its critical reception would’ve surpassed the 62% on the critic’s Tomatometer that Man on the Moon received. Yet, this script was more fascinating, more entertaining, and had more to say about Andy Kaufman than Man on the Moon ever hoped to say.

Sometimes the myth is more fun than the reality.

In the third act, if you can call it that, when Tony shows up to his own funeral, he turns to the crowd and says "The Tony Clifton Story. What bullshit! This movie has nothin' whatsoever to do with my life ... it's total fabrication ... that Kaufman made it up!"

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Mystery Man is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. He blogs at http://www.mysteryman.org/ and tweets at Twitter.com/MMonFilm. And he has nice shoes.A version of this post originally appeared on Mystery Man on Film. 

 Photo: Bob Zmuda as Tony Clifton / Guastella / WireImage