BOOTLEG FILES 803: “Stick Around” (1977 TV pilot starring Andy Kaufman).
LAST SEEN: On YouTube.
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.
REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: Mostly likely due to rights clearance issues.
CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Probably not.
During the mid-1970s, Andy Kaufman began to percolate across television in a number of guest appearances on popular programs ranging from Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” to “The Midnight Special” to the premiere episode of “Saturday Night Live.” He was also a regular on Dick Van Dyke’s short-lived 1976 variety show “Van Dyke and Company,” where he used his Foreign Man persona for a running gag of coming out in the middle of a skit and interrupting it with sincere bafflement over what was transpiring on-stage.
In early 1977, ABC was willing to consider a sitcom with Kaufman as the leading character. A concept was created that imagined Kaufman (in his Foreign Man voice and behavior) as a bumbling robot who serves as a butler to a young couple in a futuristic epoch. This unlikely idea was taped as a pilot episode under the title “Stick Around” – but ABC opted not to pursue the series and dumped it on the air for a one-shot broadcast.
“Stick Around” fails at almost every level, with the sole saving grace being (not surprisingly) Kaufman. But this creates a weird effect throughout the half-hour episode: Kaufman does his shtick and the other actors go through their paces, but there is no common ground and it plays like a split-screen presentation rather than a cohesive whole.
“Stick Around” takes place on April 9, 2055, with Kaufman as a robot (named Andy) playing a chess-type game with his owner Vance (a nerdy and bespectacled Fred McCarren) while Vance’s wife Elaine (Nancy New) wonders why they are playing – she points out that Vance programmed Andy to lose. Vance nervously double-checks Andy’s controls by lifting an epaulet on a jacket that Andy wears and is confident he will win. But Andy outsmarts Vance and wins the game, leading Elaine to look at the camera and declare, “Robots that don’t work, computers that fall apart – if you think things are complicated in 1977, just stick around!”
Vance runs an antique shop full of stuff from the 1970s, which the futuristic society doesn’t recognize – he sells an old-fashioned toilet as a garden planter. Andy is Vance’s bumbling assistant who has problems following simple commands – a request to gift-wrap a toaster results born wrapping paper and yards of tape that barely cover the merchandise.
A customer comes into the store who identifies as formerly being cryogenically frozen from the “old days” and brings in a .38 pistol – and he proceeds to rob the store, with Andy helpfully handing over the store’s cash while obeying the thief’s command to tie up Vance (that happens off-screen).
Vance is unhappy with Andy’s inefficiencies, which are on full display when another formerly cryogenically frozen individual – their neighbor Mr. Burkus (played by veteran character actor Cliff Norton) – comes by for dinner. Andy’s skills as a server create havoc, and Vance decides to get another robot. The replacement is a tall, strapping and somewhat impatient robot named Earl (played by Craig Richard Nelson with a slight Paul Lynde snarl). Andy recognizes what Earl’s presence means and arranges for him to fall out of the window of his owners’ apartment. Ultimately, Vance gives in to his wife’s fondness for Andy and opts to keep him.
The problem with Kaufman’s robot is that there is nothing robotic about him. Without Vance and Elaine constantly mentioning Andy is a robot, it would be easy to assume that Kaufman is just a clumsy eccentric rather than a mechanical being. And on his own terms, Kaufman is charming and funny as the misfit out of place in his surroundings.
Ugh, but those surroundings! Outside of Kaufman, “Stick Around” is a typical third-rate sitcom with bad actors overselling poorly constructed jokey dialogue while mugging with oversized reactions not seen since the Mack Sennett days. The pilot was obviously taped without a live audience and presented with a shrieking laugh track that put absurd emphasis on the most trivial of mirthful verbiage.
Mercifully, Kaufman moved beyond this dinky failure and landed in “Taxi,” which is arguably among the greatest sitcoms of all times. The Latka Gravas character was Andy the robot in a garage, and this became one of the most beloved characters in sitcom history.
As for “Stick Around,” some people who had VCRs in 1977 had the foresight to tape and preserve it, and several unauthorized postings now online. It is unlikely this will get a standalone home entertainment release, so these bootlegs are the best (and only) way to enjoy one of Kaufman’s rare misfires.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.
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