Your Favorite Poisons?

[jhlurie]

Question for Ugo: If you went to a fortune teller who predicted that despite your narrow escape from the life of a food taster you would STILL someday be fated to die from some form of poisoning, which poison would you choose--assuming such a choice was possible? Or were all poisons pretty much the same to you, since the ultimate result was the same?

Question for Peter: Do you have any clue why Andy Kaufman's Taxi character was named after a Jewish potato pancake? Also: in the very brief time you worked with him, did you see any signs of some of the odd obsessions he later developed around food?

[Peter Elbling]

All poisons are painful. Wolfsbane makes the body tingle. Your hands get a funny feeling. Your body aches. Then you die. Meadow saffron makes your mouth feel as if it was in the fires of hell. You get a terrible stomach ache. Then you die. Wolfsbane gives you diarrhea. You bleed. You're in great pain. Then you die. It doesn't matter what it is, you bleed, or you shit, or you're in great pain, or all three and then you die. How can you have a favorite? If I had a choice I would jump off a tall cliff.

Thank you, Ugo. (Elbling here) I only worked with Andy Kaufman twice on Taxi. I have no idea why he was named after a Jewish potato pancake or any other pancake for that matter. There was nothing potato or pancake like about him. Not did I see any obsession with food. He only came in on the first day of the table read through and then again on the day of shooting. Even on those days he would spend all of his time in his dressing room unless he was rehearsing. I do remember passing his dressing room once just as he was saying goodbye to a woman. As soon as she was out of earshot he looked at me, shook his head and said, "She was a reporter. She wanted to see the rubber room in my house. (This was where he supposedly wrestled women.) I told her she could only see it if she agreed to wrestle me. Of course she wouldn't. Thank God. I don't have a rubber room.