I’M FROM HOLLYWOOD
In a way, Kaufman called into question the very idea of having “fans”; his object, it sometimes seemed, was to alienate people–an object that could be deemed successful considering the unprecedented Saturday Night Live viewers poll taken in late 1982. The vote was called to decide whether Kaufman would ever appear on the program again, and he was handily banished. It was getting so he wasn’t much fun to watch. Nowhere was this truer than in Kaufman’s ever-growing infatuation with wrestling. Unpleasant enough to begin with, it took a gruesome turn when he finally agreed to get into a ring with a male wrestler. Few who saw the footage of their match will ever forget the stomach-turning sight of Kaufman being bounced to the ring floor headfirst, or his subsequent TV appearance in a cervical collar, his entire face black and blue.
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The film begins with a brief–too brief–introduction to Kaufman the comedian. Kaufman always took pride in not being a stand-up comic; “I’ve never told a joke in my life,” he’d say. It’s a marvelous Kaufmanism, because while the statement is probably true in the sense that he never told a joke the way a normal comic would, there’s no question he was putting joke telling through a savage, deadly wringer. In one of his routines he portrayed the character of a naive young comic who earnestly recites joke after joke, all of them bombs. Close to tears, with sweat running down his face, Kaufman would say, haltingly, “Wh-wh-why do all of you boo when I tell a joke, but then laugh when I don’t want you to, like right now?” Another character did tell jokes–but they happened to be in Czech or something. It didn’t matter what the incomprehensible language was, because the meaning behind the routine–from the banter with the audience to the punch lines–was entirely obvious. The subject of both routines was the loneliness of the long-distance comic: the naked pleading for love via comedy, the falsity, banalities, and cliches of the transitions and setups and shticks.
In hindsight, we can see that Kaufman’s one and only subject was performing itself; he was keenly interested in the preconceptions and expectations that the audience and performer bring to their meeting, and he examined their pressure points like a dentist sticking a probe into a succession of teeth. What if I read The Great Gatsby onstage? What if I charter some buses and take the whole audience out for cookies and milk after the show? What do I have to do to get people to watch me play bongos for 15 minutes? And (most important), how obnoxious can I be before the audience rebels entirely?
Pro wrestler Jerry Lawler, the man who gives Kaufman his comeuppance, gets into the act by intervening as Kaufman dispatches a female opponent at a show in Memphis. Kaufman goes nuclear (“I am a star from Hollywood! Don’t you dare touch me! I’ll sue you for every penny you own”); the film is full of his ripe ravings about Lawler in particular and the south in general. (In one astonishing scene, Kaufman carefully explains to southerners the uses of soap and toilet paper.) The pair trade barbs publicly until Kaufman finally agrees to the fateful match. What happens when Lawler finally gets his hands on Kaufman provides both the opening and climax of I’m From Hollywood: the shocking, sickening sight of Lawler raising Kaufman into the air and slamming him to the ring floor headfirst. Kaufman seems barely conscious after this, but Lawler drags him around the mat by his head and continues to maul him until Kaufman is removed from the ring on a stretcher. The movie also includes some news footage of Kaufman, in traction, uttering the deathless lines, “I always thought wrestling was a fake, but I guess this one wasn’t.”
There have always been rumors (none of them, conveniently, making their way into the press) that even Kaufman’s female wrestling was a setup, that he wrestled only women planted in the audience. (Kaufman used plants like he was running a greenhouse–particularly when appearing in the guise of Clifton, who regularly abused, sometimes physically, members of the audience.) If you think about it, it would be inconsistent with his entire performing philosophy if the women wrestlers weren’t plants. Kaufman wasn’t interested in taking chances per se: he was interested in pulling off effects. Think about that portrait of the young, perspiring comic. It didn’t work because the crowd knew it was a joke. The joke Kaufman was looking for–the act, I think, he eventually perfected–was the ultimate comedy act: the one that the audience doesn’t even know has occurred. The setup merely involved the destruction of his reputation–only when he was no longer viewed as a comic could he pull the joke off. He began the female wrestling, declared himself the “intergender champion of the world,” and generally acted like an asshole. He established a habit of going too far, cut his deal with Lawler, and the joke was set up. The south thought he was a devil; we thought he was a jerk.
