DEAD
OR ALIVE
HUFFINGTON
06.16.13
STEPHEN SHUGERMAN/GETTY IMAGES
Bob Zmuda,
Kaufman’s
former
partnerin-crime,
performs at
a Kaufman
tribute show
in 2004.
“[Kaufman] was incredibly open for a
celebrity,” Pagani said. “He gave me his
number. I called Alan and said, ‘What are
you doing tomorrow?’ He said, ‘Nothing.’
I said, ‘We’re meeting Andy Kaufman.’”
The trio met in the plush lobby of the
Hilton on 53rd Street, where Kaufman
was staying. By Pagani’s account,
Kaufman was “extremely interested” in
Abel’s death hoax. “He was asking Alan
all about how he did it.”
Abel said he told Kaufman everything, that day and during the friendship
that followed: how he put his “team”
to work, setting up a fake funeral home
in a trailer in Orem, Utah, and reserving All Souls Church in Manhattan for
the funeral. Then there was the critical
dispatch — an actress friend with a gift
for weeping on cue, who arrived at The
Times office an hour before deadline, and
that too, on a Sunday, when the second
stringers were in charge.
“She could shed tears at the sight of
a bumblebee falling down dead from the
sky onto the sidewalk,” Abe