Episode 1112 - Jeff Dunham
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuck nicks?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast.
Marc:WTF.
Marc:In lockdown.
Marc:Indefinitely.
Marc:How are you holding up?
Marc:It's weird.
Marc:It's getting weirder and more... It's scarier and stranger and time becomes a smear on the calendar.
Marc:Just one day into the next, don't know what day it is.
Marc:I didn't know what day it was today when I woke up.
Marc:I didn't know what day Saturday was.
Marc:There's none of the, what is it, signposts or lampposts or signifiers or just habits that define your days.
Marc:It's fucking nuts, man.
Marc:Over-focusing on cats because I don't have kids.
Marc:It's like wondering what they're up to.
Marc:I really think it's gotten to the point where my cats are like, this is getting to be a bit much with this guy here in our house all the time.
Marc:You know, it's getting a little intense for the cats, I think.
Marc:And just it's really a test of some kind, obviously.
Marc:We got the mask thing now that here in Los Angeles, I think all over California, we got to wear masks when we go outside.
Marc:I sort of started to do that before they kind of instituted as a requirement.
Marc:I still am not clear on whether I should do it while I'm jogging.
Marc:There's no one out there.
Marc:And if there is, I get much further than six feet away from them.
Marc:I kind of I really run from people.
Marc:I'll be jogging.
Marc:Then I'll see a person.
Marc:Then I'll run from them.
Marc:They don't know it.
Marc:They think I'm just jogging, but I'm running from them.
Marc:I'm running as far away from them as I can.
Marc:Watching some movies.
Marc:We watched The Pawn Broker on Criterion with Rod Steiger.
Marc:I don't know if that was on Criterion.
Marc:Was it?
Marc:Maybe it was.
Marc:Sidney Lumet.
Marc:Fucking heavy, man.
Marc:I thought I'd seen it.
Marc:Wasn't sure if I'd seen it.
Marc:And after I watched it, I'm pretty sure I didn't see it.
Marc:And if I did, I blocked it in my mind as a traumatic experience.
Marc:The movie is about a man sort of living with the weight and horror of
Marc:and complete soul obliteration of being in a concentration camp before he moved to America and all of the baggage that would bring, just living his life as a pawnbroker in Harlem, but never being able to get out from under the ongoing concentration camp in his mind.
Marc:Steiger was genius.
Marc:I think it's from 1965.
Marc:Didn't have to be in black and white.
Marc:I believe that was a choice.
Marc:But man, if I did see it, I believe it traumatized me to the point where I couldn't remember seeing the whole movie.
Marc:And then we watched The Hospital, which I had seen fairly recently, Patty Chayefsky screenplay.
Marc:We just watched Fosse and Verdun, and I kind of wanted to see a Patty Chayefsky movie.
Marc:There are a couple I watch quite frequently.
Marc:Maybe one, Network, I watch at least once a year.
Marc:But I've taken to watching The Hospital once a year as well with George C. Scott.
Guest:Because I really want to do a George C. Scott impression.
Guest:Damn it, I can't...
Guest:I'll get it.
Guest:You can't just go out there.
Guest:God damn it.
Marc:I'll get it.
Marc:But that's a dark movie as well.
Marc:It's a satire, which means there is something funny about it, but it's dark.
Marc:So last night we had to find something light.
Marc:Kind of ran through a lot of a list of 70s comedies.
Marc:Seems to be the era we're kind of fucking around with.
Marc:And came up with the Frisco Kid.
Marc:With Gene Wilder, Harrison Ford.
Marc:I think it was from maybe 70... I don't know.
Marc:Hold on.
Marc:Hey, Google.
Marc:What year was the movie The Frisco Kid made?
Guest:In the United States of America, The Frisco Kid came out on July 6, 1979.
Marc:Huh.
Marc:Seventy nine.
Marc:See, I guess I thought it was pretty late, but Harrison Ford is pretty young.
Marc:Gene Wilder is it's just a great Gene Wilder movie.
Marc:I don't know if you know the movie or how much you love Gene Wilder, but Gene, like we I wanted something with some heart, with some humor and.
Marc:It's not that it's a great movie, but it's a great Gene Wilder movie.
Marc:The premise is that he plays the sort of runt of a yeshiva, like the worst rabbi at a yeshiva in Poland in 1850.
Marc:And they send him to the United States to be the rabbi at a temple in San Francisco, 1850.
Marc:So he comes over not knowing anything.
Marc:and tries to make his way across the country, meets Harrison Ford, who's a bank robber.
Marc:They become best friends.
Marc:The thing about Wilder is he really approaches the role in a very sincere way, and it's a very beautiful and touching character.
Marc:It's just a lot of heart to the thing.
Marc:And Gene Wilder was a beautiful performer comedically.
Marc:A lot of it's schtick.
Marc:A lot of it's sort of, I think it's a Robert Aldrich.
Marc:I think he directed it.
Marc:Directed a lot of different kinds of movies.
Marc:It was probably later in his career.
Marc:But it was definitely, it was worth it.
Marc:It's sweet.
Marc:So today on the show, I'm going to talk to Jeff Dunham, the ventriloquist.
Marc:That's a tough word for my mouth.
Marc:Ventriloquist.
Marc:Here's the deal.
Marc:I didn't realize...
Marc:Maybe I did that.
Marc:He's sort of a polarizing figure for a couple of reasons.
Marc:And I understand one side of it from when I was younger, you know, is that a guy with puppets when I was coming up as a comic, the fucking puppet guy got no respect at all because he was a puppet guy.
Marc:You know, he was sort of he was the brunt of a joke, like a prop comic, the puppet comic.
Marc:It was it was thought to be a I don't know if it was a hackney thing or just a kind of a mainstreaming, mediocre thing.
Marc:But but guys like me who were coming up as real stand ups, man, were kind of hard on the the Dunham's of the world.
Marc:Both guitar acts or puppet acts.
Marc:But there are not that many puppet acts.
Marc:Prop acts.
Marc:There was a lot of prop acts.
Marc:There was a lot of guitar acts.
Marc:But at any given time, oddly, for as much shit as someone like Jeff Dunham took coming up, there weren't a lot of puppet guys.
Marc:Modern puppet guys.
Marc:There still aren't.
Marc:Really?
Marc:So I had to really wrestle with this.
Marc:Now, obviously, with Jeff Dunham, there was another layer of problems that some of his puppets were seen as racist.
Marc:And I think that they were a little racist.
Marc:And I talked to him about that.
Marc:But that was the second level.
Marc:That was more of the indicting kind of like, I'm sure the people that accused him of racism didn't like puppets either to begin with.
Marc:Maybe I'm wrong.
Marc:Maybe they're two separate camps of not liking Jeff Dunham.
Marc:But when the opportunity came up to interview Jeff, I, again, like I always do with my show, with comedians, the basis of this show originally was that, you know, I interview comics.
Marc:And I interview people in show business mostly, but comics.
Marc:And he's a comic.
Marc:There's no doubt he's a comic.
Marc:He holds a place in show business in the nightclub realm.
Marc:And there haven't been that many.
Marc:So I had to put it into context of my sense of the history of comedy.
Marc:And obviously, as I've gotten older, I've become much more inclusive in terms of people who do different types of stuff.
Marc:There are people that do things that have acts that I don't necessarily love, but I talk to for different reasons.
Marc:But to really talk to a ventriloquist, to talk to Jeff Dunham, somebody who I judged negatively in my past,
Marc:I had to go back into myself.
Marc:Now, here we are with plenty of time to think.
Marc:And I imagine some of you are using this time to think.
Marc:I know I am.
Marc:You know, think about who you are, where you come from, what you like, what's important to you, you know, why you do what you do.
Marc:And today wasn't a great day for me, really.
Marc:Today was one of those days where I really thought, what if I was done?
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:I got all this downtime here.
Marc:I'm not thinking about stand-up a lot.
Marc:I'm not mad that I'm not working that much.
Marc:I do this.
Marc:This is still work.
Marc:But really sort of like the place my brain went today was like, all right, so if we ever get through this, if life ever returns to some sort of normalcy,
Marc:Am I done?
Marc:Could I be done?
Marc:Is it okay to be done?
Marc:I mean, that's going to hinge on, you know, how much of my savings disappear.
Marc:But it was sort of a weird thought.
Marc:And then it kind of frees up your brain to sort of think about, well, what do I want out of life?
Marc:And where did I come from?
Marc:I'm being kind of thoughtful or heady or nostalgic or maybe even depressed.
Marc:I'm not even sure.
Marc:But when I had Jeff Dunham come over, which was it was right before the social distancing started.
Marc:But we were in it.
Marc:We were in this sort of try to stay at home trip.
Marc:But I had to really be honest with myself.
Marc:And in terms of how I approached him.
Marc:Which was there was a time and I imagine I'm not alone in this.
Marc:When I was a kid, it was probably 1970-ish, I lived in the paneled basement of our first house in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Marc:We had moved from Alaska.
Marc:There was shag carpet, two beds.
Marc:Me and my brother lived down there in the basement.
Marc:It had its own bathroom and another room attached to it, but it was a basement.
Marc:But we were down there.
Marc:We were down there.
Marc:And for some reason, we had a certain amount of freedom, I remember.
Marc:I had posters up that were inappropriate for a kid my age, given that I was seven or eight.
Marc:Had a poster of Dennis Hopper and Easy Rider hanging up down there.
Marc:I had the horoscope of sexual positions in a blacklight poster.
Marc:I don't know why.
Marc:I do not know why.
Marc:That shows how perhaps irresponsible my parents were.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:But the point is, there was a brief period there where I was fascinated and loved ventriloquism.
Marc:And I'm trying to think who I had seen.
Marc:I knew who Edgar Bergen was.
Marc:I had to do some research.
Marc:I don't know how I knew about ventriloquism.
Marc:But like any other kid, you know, it was sort of an old timey thing, even when I was a kid, obviously.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But it was one of those things almost it was sort of a kind of a nerdy undertaking that if you could get your parents to buy the doll, you give it a try.
Marc:Like if you ever were like a seven year old kid and you saw that you saw the ventriloquism, why wouldn't you want to try that?
Marc:And I just remember there was a there was a period there short where I was mildly obsessed with it.
Marc:Now.
Marc:The doll, the dummy, that was sort of a kind of a big tag toy purchase.
Marc:Like the ventriloquist dummy that they had back then was still kind of based on Edgar Bergen's dolls.
Marc:There was a Charlie McCarthy and a Mortimer Snurd.
Marc:Those were the two I remember.
Marc:And I think there was another ventriloquist, Paul Winchell.
Marc:who had a dummy named Jerry Mahoney, who looks similar, similar facial features.
Marc:Mortimer Snurd had kind of a doofus face.
Marc:And Charlie McCarthy was more of, he had a top hat and a monocle.
Marc:I remember I made my brother take Mortimer Snurd.
Marc:I wanted Charlie McCarthy.
Marc:And you try it for a little while.
Marc:He's little dressed up dummies.
Marc:You put your hand in the back of their head and you make them talk.
Marc:And it was, you know, I mean, I don't remember how much those dolls were, but they weren't cheap.
Marc:They weren't expensive.
Marc:They were plastic heads.
Marc:But, you know, you hear about like, you know, the real heads or you do the reading when you're a kid.
Marc:And this might be generational, like the real heads are made out of wood.
Marc:And, you know, to get a real dummy and you want the real dummy, but you don't even know how to do it yet.
Marc:But it doesn't last long.
Marc:It didn't stick with me.
Marc:But there was a period there where I thought it was fascinating and I wanted to do it.
Marc:And I had a doll.
Marc:I had a Charlie McCarthy doll.
Marc:Now, if that doll hangs around long enough as you grow up, you know, eventually it ends up with no clothes.
Marc:And it's just this weird pillow with this ventriloquist head on it.
Marc:At some point, maybe the head comes off, depending on where your life takes you in high school.
Marc:Either it ends up a prop, you know, at a punk show or maybe a piece of art.
Marc:You know, if you're kind of an arty kid in high school.
Marc:And the head, the head will travel.
Marc:The dummy head will travel.
Marc:It will end up in many places that have nothing to do with its body and that have nothing to do with its original intent.
Marc:If it hangs around long enough and you don't give a fuck about ventriloquism, you'll find other uses for the head and the doll.
Marc:I think I gave mine to an artist in high school.
Marc:No clothes on it.
Marc:And I think the head ended up part of a piece.
Marc:The sad thing is you have to un-Charlie McCarthy.
Marc:You have to take away the monocle.
Marc:You have to strip it of its original identity to just make it the head and to have other implications.
Marc:Either scary or ponderous.
Marc:Why is that head in that piece?
Marc:What does the head have to do with that tree?
Marc:Why is there a small cage?
Marc:Yeah, installations were, you know, they could go anywhere, man.
Marc:But it was my interest at that time that I was able to tap into while talking to Jeff Dunham because I was able to find them again and legitimately find them again.
Marc:And I became very interested in that stuff because he is the best.
Marc:But it's weird because I did have to overcome the only way I could overcome what was once a kind of judgmental resentment of this entertainer.
Marc:And he's a huge entertainer.
Marc:Jeff Dunham is, is to kind of reach back into my own memory, my own childhood, to find that excitement and that curiosity.
Marc:And I was thrilled to do it, really.
Marc:And it turned out to be a great talk.
Marc:It was very interesting to me.
Marc:And it is a unique skill.
Marc:However you want to condescend, whatever you want to say about, like, fucking puppets, it's a real craft of
Marc:And as I talk to him more, you really find out where it comes from, where the dummies come from, and just working the face.
Marc:I mean, it's a thing.
Marc:It's like magic in a way.
Marc:I don't love watching magic, and I don't necessarily seek out ventriloquism.
Marc:But when I see both of them, for a little while, I'm like, holy fuck, that's crazy.
Marc:How'd they do that?
Marc:How do they do that?
Marc:It's a how do they do that art form?
Marc:It's entertainment based in how the fuck do they do that?
Marc:Hey, Google.
Marc:How old is ventriloquism?
Guest:On the website, the vintage news dot com, they say the act of ventriloquism as an entertainment starts back in the 18th century.
Guest:But the history of ventriloquism as a practice has been around for thousands of years.
Marc:Thousands of years.
Marc:So now I'm going to going to shift gears into my conversation with Jeff.
Marc:He's got like eight Netflix specials on.
Marc:He's got a lot of a lot of specials.
Marc:I think that.
Marc:Yeah, I think there's eight of them.
Marc:This is me.
Marc:Talking to.
Marc:To the ventriloquist.
Marc:Jeff Dunham.
Yeah.
Marc:But vegan, though.
Guest:We can start.
Guest:Oh, we don't need to talk about that.
Guest:Sure we do.
Guest:That's not my fans.
Guest:That's not my fans.
Guest:All right, whatever you want to talk about.
Marc:But I think that's interesting.
Marc:I mean, where'd you grow up?
Marc:Texas.
Marc:Barbecue.
Marc:It's a big change, man.
Marc:But at home, were you used to eating?
Marc:Would you call yourself, by nature, a meat eater?
Guest:Yeah, I think so.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I haven't...
Guest:I haven't really missed it, believe it or not.
Guest:But it's also because my wife is an amazing cook and chef.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So she's doing the fancy vegan stuff.
Guest:Oh, my gosh.
Guest:Some of the stuff that she comes up with is unbelievable.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I'm asking you because I feel like I should be doing that.
Guest:Well, you know, there's just so many arguments for it.
Guest:And what the trouble is, you get the animal rights folks mixed in there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then it becomes political.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then it's just this big mess.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So.
Guest:It's just healthier.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:So when you just start at the health part of it.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Then I've been now this way eating like next to no meat.
Guest:You know, look.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If somebody comes up with a great steak, says you got to have a bite, of course it
Guest:come on jeff when you're on the road you're on the road no no on the road you know i'm really i'm actually really really good on the road because yeah this is so she monitoring you no she makes my meals really i take him in a big cooler on the tour bus wow she's really doing it you're in buddy and i don't cheat either it's like i you know i will tell her i said i had a you know whatever today and i'm completely honest it's because i'm trying to stay healthy look i'm gonna be a grandfather in a month
Guest:Is that true?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How old do you do?
Guest:Well, I'll be 58 in a month.
Guest:What, did you have a child when you were 10?
Guest:She's 29.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Yeah, my oldest daughter's 29, and she's pregnant and in Montana and happy, and this stupid virus thing, it's got to be horrifying for her.
Guest:Oh, that's scary, sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But so no, before we get to the virus, no, no, when you want to have a meat snack, what do you do?
Marc:Like a beat, like a swim gym or what?
Marc:No, I don't do that.
Guest:It has to be, if I'm going to eat it, it has to be, yeah, it's got to be some Ruth's Chris kind of steak.
Guest:Oh, yeah, sure.
Guest:Amazing, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But that's not often.
Guest:It used to be like once a month I'd have a steak and now it's cut down to next to nothing.
Guest:But I was very excited when Burger King came out with the Impossible Burger, Impossible Water.
Marc:Apparently they're these burgers, right?
Marc:That look like hamburgers.
Marc:And yeah, I mean, I haven't, I've eaten different versions of them and I've tried to, I've gone out with Lynn, who you met is not a vegetarian, but the two women I was with before her were both vegetarians.
Marc:So, I mean, I've been where you are.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, and so people harp, they say, Audrey and I went to Burger King right when they came out with that burger, and we posted pictures of us eating it, and people were like, it's not healthy.
Guest:Well, no, of course it's not healthy.
Guest:It's just not the meat.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:Well, yeah, but it's like we get to go to Burger King.
Guest:I was so excited because I grew up with Burger King.
Guest:That was my thing.
Guest:Me too, man.
Guest:Do you remember the guy, the king with the white hair sitting on the Whopper?
Guest:That was their logo back in the beginning.
Guest:With the white hair?
Guest:With white hair, yeah.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:It doesn't look anything like the little short guy with the red hair.
Marc:I'm trying to remember.
Marc:I remember when the Big Mac came out.
Marc:So, like, I remember when I was a kid, and I remember certain things.
Marc:I remember when the first Wendy's happened.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Yeah, but that was, I mean, I grew up in New Mexico, so I'm next to Texas.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:In college, it was a regular thing for me to go have a triple at Wendy's.
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:They were the best.
Marc:So greasy and square burgers.
Marc:Well, it's because they fried the meat.
Marc:They didn't charbroil it.
Marc:It's so funny because they fried it.
Marc:They just let it sit in the oil.
Guest:Yeah, they just put it on, not deep fried.
Marc:Remember when they came up with the salad bar, when they put the salad bars in Wendy's?
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:We could get something healthy over here.
Marc:But it's weird growing up in New Mexico right next to Texas because there were regional places like Piggly Wiggly.
Marc:Didn't you have Piggly Wiggly?
Guest:We had Piggly Wiggly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And what are the other ones?
Guest:And then Hardee's versus.
Guest:Hardee's, right?
Guest:Which is.
Guest:Arby's.
Marc:Hardee's versus.
Marc:Well, Carl's Jr.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Hardee's.
Marc:But you didn't have Blake's Whataburger.
Marc:I don't think that was New Mexico.
Guest:No, we had Whataburger.
Guest:You did?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, that was a good one.
Guest:Yeah, they still have that down in Texas.
Marc:Whataburger, too, I don't think.
Marc:I saw Whataburger.
Marc:Remember Whataburger?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And Lottaburger.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Boy, back when we were kids, man.
Guest:Weren't things better?
Guest:They were.
Guest:And you know what's funny?
Guest:One of the things I do is I collect toys.
Guest:You mean your act?
Guest:Yeah, thank you very much.
Guest:No, I actually go back and collect toys, and eBay is an evil, evil thing.
Guest:I don't get involved with it, but you do it, huh?
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:And I have a collection of toys that is all the coolest stuff we had back in the 70s.
Guest:And one of my biggest videos right now is the toys that almost killed me.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Like what do you got?
Marc:So you have your own YouTube channel where you do this stuff?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But you know what the number one toy is for killing?
Guest:In the world?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:It's like jarts, lawn darts.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Do you remember those?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And there were these spikes of metal.
Guest:They were big plastic with spikes in them.
Guest:Well, there were spikes of metal with plastic wings.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they were literally like a foot long.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they were heavy.
Guest:It was like a three-eighths inch diameter shaft on this thing with a point.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They're still around?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:They were outlawed.
Guest:You can't even buy them on eBay because they'll get in trouble.
Guest:It's like selling a weapon.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Kids died from those things.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Wait, did you know anybody?
Guest:No, I didn't know anybody that died, but I definitely got a set illegally.
Guest:Sure, I remember them.
Marc:I remember them.
Marc:Slip and slides, too, felt dangerous to me.
Guest:They still make those.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Do you know Wham-O's still in business?
Guest:No, I didn't know that.
Guest:It's got to be somebody bought it, and now they're just selling, like, the Super Bowls.
Guest:Nostalgic stuff?
Guest:Yeah, well, it's Super Bowls, and remember Super Bowls?
Guest:Sure, man.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:With the little balls that bounce all over the place?
Guest:Yeah, but now they have a Super Bowl, but it's, like, it's sad.
Guest:It doesn't bounce.
Guest:Not the same?
Guest:No.
Marc:Oh, not a non-bouncing Super Bowl?
Guest:What's super about it, then?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, it sort of bounces.
Guest:Here's the thing.
Guest:Here's the technical thing.
Guest:When a Super Bowl, when you drop it, it would return, no matter what height you dropped it from, like 95% of the height you dropped it from.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And then you'd remember when you were a kid, you'd be like, what if we dropped it off a building?
Guest:And it would bounce over the building.
Guest:Pretty close.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So what other toys did you get?
Guest:Well, the ones that would almost kill me.
Guest:Man, I don't remember.
Guest:Do you remember they were called Incredible Edibles?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:What were those?
Marc:You made them?
Marc:You cooked them yourself?
Guest:Yeah, you had a little oven.
Guest:And the little monsters?
Guest:Yeah, and that's a thing maker was another thing.
Guest:That was a little oven.
Guest:Made gummy.
Marc:It was almost like gummy stuff.
Guest:The incredible edibles were like gummy things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they'd come with it.
Guest:So this is one of the things I did on that video.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is I found a set that had never been opened.
Guest:It was 55 years old or 52 years old.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:And so we made it.
Guest:Oh, it was a live video, I think.
Guest:And I ate them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, 52-year-old goo.
Guest:Oh, did you get sick?
Guest:No, I was fine.
Guest:Oh, it held up, huh?
Yeah.
Guest:Is that vegan, though?
Guest:I think it is, actually.
Guest:No, it had to have gelatin in it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Gelatin is cow's feet.
Marc:So we were talking in the kitchen about like when you in the midst of now, this is at the beginning of this coronavirus outbreak.
Marc:And I assume it's going to go on for a while.
Marc:So it's going to be still relevant.
Marc:But two questions now, outside of the canceling work, that's that's got to be sort of devastating.
Marc:But
Marc:Do you think in terms of like, all right, so which one of my characters, which one of my puppets can talk about this?
Marc:I think one of them should catch it.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:You can have a mask.
Guest:By the way, Mark, I think I actually have it right now.
Guest:No, come on.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I do.
Guest:I think I have it.
Guest:I don't have any symptoms at all.
Guest:Like, I feel fine.
Guest:I don't have a temperature.
Guest:I'm not sneezing.
Marc:Are you pretty sure you got it?
Guest:I'm pretty sure I have it.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:I think everyone's going to get it.
Guest:Right.
Marc:It's just, you know, I think we're trying to stop the people that might die from it from getting it.
Marc:Right.
Marc:We're all trying to chip in.
Marc:That's the idea.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I do.
Guest:I think I have it.
Guest:And so now I feel better about, you know, I can't, I'm not going to catch it because I already have it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There you go.
Marc:You move through it.
Guest:Exactly right.
Marc:But, but the work though, they have canceled a lot of dates, big dates.
Guest:Oh my gosh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So most of my shows are now anywhere between five and 10, usually between six and 10,000 folks.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:So we've the big arena is, and that's, that's a tough date.
Guest:Cause we're, you know, we're competing with the NBA and the NHL.
Guest:Those are the same places.
Marc:They canceled too.
Guest:Yeah, they're canceling all their stuff.
Guest:So now we have to rebook all the dates.
Guest:And so now everybody's scrambling to try and make all these new dates fit.
Marc:Into July and stuff and August.
Guest:And you hope, you know, again, who knows how long this is going to go on.
Marc:But that's fascinating because I don't know that a lot of people realize that.
Marc:I mean, that you do, you know, you're one of the biggest comedy acts in the country, really, right?
Guest:Yeah, and now for 11 years, almost 12 years, we've been doing these arenas.
Guest:So my 15 minutes has lasted way longer than anybody ever expected.
Marc:No, you mean not your act.
Marc:You mean your fame.
Guest:My 15 minutes of fame, yeah.
Guest:No, the show is now two and a half hours long.
Guest:Two and a half?
Guest:For a damn puppet show.
Marc:How many dummies do you have?
Guest:Characters?
Guest:Well, I come out and I do like- What do you call them?
Guest:Dummies, characters.
Guest:I call them, they're dummies, but I call them characters.
Guest:And then when I'm self-deprecating, I call them puppets.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah, it's a puppet show for God's sake.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah, when you're trying to like, you know, like, hey, man, it's a job, right?
Guest:I'm a puppet guy.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:That's what it was in the clubs.
Guest:I did almost 20 years in the comedy clubs.
Guest:We must have worked together.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:I think we might have missed each other.
Marc:Did you do the improv chain?
Marc:No, not much because, and I still won't do it.
Marc:Like, they never helped me with anything.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I was the type of act, Jeff, I don't think we would have really worked on the same bill, and I don't know that the improvs, they were never that great to me.
Marc:They'd give me fallout weeks, and they'd always tell me how much they liked me, but I didn't do the chain much.
Marc:It was really scattered how I paid my dues, but they were not as glorious.
Marc:I was never a go-to guy for the improv chain.
Guest:Well, I was at the top of that food chain, like I said, for 18 years.
Marc:That's before Hartman, right?
Marc:No, Robert became my manager.
Marc:All right, so that's when that big shift comes.
Marc:Yeah, I didn't think he thought much about me.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I think he's all impressed now.
Guest:A little late.
Guest:A little late, Robert.
Marc:Is he still your manager?
Guest:No, he moved to Nashville.
Marc:And he's still in the business or no?
Guest:Yeah, he's still in the business.
Guest:California boy, you know, he and his wife and two kids, they moved out to Nashville.
Marc:Well, Nashville's beautiful.
Marc:You know, a guy who I like a lot as a comic, Nate Bargatze, he's out in Nashville and he stayed in Nashville.
Marc:It's a real show business town.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But you live here?
Guest:Yeah, I live here.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:All right, so let's talk about this.
Marc:So I just want people to know that you're selling 5,000 to 10,000 seat arenas.
Marc:Like, where are your big markets for the puppet show?
Guest:You know, thanks, Mark.
Guest:It's really interesting.
Guest:Where you would think that I would be the slowest is actually where I would sell those tickets the fastest, the Northeast and the Northwest.
Guest:That's where we'd sell tickets the fastest.
Marc:We're talking like Washington, Oregon.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Idaho.
Guest:Portland, Oregon, I think was my biggest show ever, like 16,000, 17,000 people.
Marc:No kidding.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then up in the Northeast, oh my gosh, Boston used to be one of my best cities.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's crazy.
Marc:So where would you assume people would think that you would sell big?
Guest:Texas, where I grew up.
Guest:I mean, I still do well in Dallas.
Guest:I still do well in all the Texas towns.
Marc:Are you Mormon sanctioned?
Marc:Can you do Utah?
Marc:Do you do the Salt Lake City show?
Guest:I do Salt Lake City, but I'm not sure if it's the Mormons coming to my show.
Marc:No, but you would know because you could play a week at the arena.
Marc:Oh, that's true.
Marc:Like Regan, that's a big part of his nut is doing like four or five shows at the basketball arena.
Guest:Well, my show is kind of PG-13-ish.
Guest:Oh, pushing the envelope.
Guest:Yeah, there's a few F-bombs in there, but that's another thing that I like to talk about.
Guest:It's about content to me.
Guest:It's not content that's questionable.
Guest:It's just a few words here and there.
Guest:So I used to say to my girls when they were growing up, it's like, okay, we can hear the bad words.
Guest:We're not going to repeat them, but yeah, you're going to hear a few bad words in Daddy's show.
Guest:But I'm not talking about... This is Jeff Dunham, folks.
Guest:He's on the edge, man.
Guest:It's a blue show.
Guest:No, it's not.
Guest:But it's subject matter.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:You're using it in context.
Marc:It's spice.
Marc:Right, spice.
Marc:Let's go back, though.
Marc:Let's get to the present through going through the past because I'll be honest with you.
Yep.
Marc:You know, I was fascinated with ventralquism as a kid.
Marc:I bought the... I had Mortimer Snurred and I had Charlie McCarthy.
Marc:That's what I started with.
Marc:My brother and I each had one.
Marc:And, you know, but it didn't take that long before they had no clothes and they were broken.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But, you know, they were... It was sort of a big deal because it's not really just a toy when you get that first dummy, even though the head's plastic.
Marc:But it's the real thing, right?
Guest:By the way, that's what I was doing in the club days.
Guest:I had no clothes and I was broken.
LAUGHTER
Guest:Sorry.
Guest:Go on.
Guest:You know where you just have that weird cotton body that's just this stuff thing?
Guest:Yeah, and the hands all in one position.
Guest:It was very sad.
Marc:It was sad.
Marc:They're very sad without clothes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But is that, because you're a little older than me, and certainly when we were kids, I mean, Edgar Bergen was long gone, really.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So, like, how did you, like, are you an only child?
Marc:Yeah, I'm an only child.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Guest:Yeah, so you guessed it.
Guest:You nailed it.
Guest:So that's why you get the big bucks, Mark.
Guest:You know your guests before you know them.
Guest:So, yeah, and that's what I started with is just a little toy dummy.
Marc:How did you know, though?
Marc:I mean, how did we know?
Marc:How did we know about ventriloquism?
Marc:What did we see?
Marc:Do you remember?
Guest:There were a handful of things on TV.
Guest:Paul Winchell was still in those years doing a few things.
Guest:He had his big television show many years earlier.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Before we were conscious.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And what was his dummy's name?
Guest:Jerry Mahoney.
Guest:Yeah, Jerry Mahoney.
Guest:And Knucklehead Smith.
Marc:Knucklehead Smith.
Guest:Smith.
Guest:Smith with an F. Smith.
Guest:So he was on every once in a while.
Guest:But the only way that I found out anything was to go to the library and check out a book on ventriloquism or encyclopedias.
Guest:Because when they mentioned encyclopedias back then when they talked about ventriloquism, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy were always the subjects.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because and then back in those days, your family probably had the the encyclopedias that you bought.
Marc:Britannica.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Britannica.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's some high end shit.
Marc:You come from a highbrow family.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Not just a world book or whatever.
Guest:Mine were all from I think my parents, they were all from the 50s and stuff.
Guest:What did your folks do?
Guest:My dad was a real estate appraiser.
Guest:My mom just a homemaker.
Guest:They still around?
Guest:Yeah, mom's still hanging in there.
Guest:Lost dad about three years ago.
Guest:But yeah, still hanging in there.
Guest:She's nuts.
Guest:Yeah, in Texas, in one of those homes that they've locked down now.
Guest:I think they're still doing that in Texas.
Guest:They're not letting any people in right now.
Marc:Oh, no, it's all just starting.
Marc:Those are the people we're trying to keep alive, is people like your mom.
Guest:And it is, you know, it's kind of sad because a little bit of dementia has set in and she remembers her, you know, her first grade class.
Guest:But during a conversation, I'll have to answer the same question, you know, eight times.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But she knows who you are.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That can go to, you know, of course.
Guest:But, you know, she is she's with it except for that short term memory just shot out of hell.
Guest:So I kind of have fun with it.
Guest:And it drives the people around me crazy because she'll ask me the same question.
Guest:And I'll give her a different answer every time.
Guest:So honey, where are you going to do a show?
Guest:Buffalo?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Five minutes later.
Guest:Honey, where are you going to do a show this week?
Guest:Poughkeepsie?
Guest:Does she have the same reaction?
Guest:Doesn't matter.
Guest:Oh, that's great.
That's great.
Guest:All right, so you're this kid.
Guest:You're alone.
Guest:You need friends.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:And I got this little dummy for Christmas one year, and I saw it in the toy store.
Guest:You know what's funny is I went back to- Which dummy?
Marc:Who was it?
Marc:Mortimer Snurd.
Guest:Oh, it was a Snurd dummy.
Marc:That's a big, goofy face.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But I went back to Dallas just recently to visit my mom, and I had some free time, and I drove over to where that toy store was that I got my first dummy.
Guest:I had not been back there since.
Marc:Still there?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, it's a Mexican food restaurant now, which is great.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So, uh, yeah.
Marc:It was like one of those old hobby shop kind of stores.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:It was an independent.
Marc:And the dummy was a high end toy.
Marc:So it was up on top.
Guest:So it was up on the, it was high enough that I, uh, low enough that I could reach it.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And so I took it, it was right before Christmas and I picked it up.
Guest:I took it to my mom and said, mom, look at this.
Guest:And she's like, oh yeah, cute.
Guest:Great.
Guest:Put it back.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there it showed up a Christmas morning on the couch.
Guest:Right.
Marc:So you had, you had your Mortimer Snurred.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Mortimer Snurred.
Guest:And how old were you?
Guest:I was a third grade.
Guest:So what are you in?
Guest:Eight, nine years old.
Guest:Third grade.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So my first show was a little book report, and I remember to this day, when Biography did my biography, we went back.
Guest:They actually got in the school, and we were actually able to go back to my third grade class and sit down there, and I took Mortimer with me.
Guest:I still have him.
Guest:The original Mortimer?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:The plastic one, you have it?
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:So I took him back, and unfortunately, they didn't use that footage in the piece.
Guest:Did you do a show for a bunch of kids?
Guest:No, they wouldn't let us in when there was kids.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They'd seen my show, apparently.
Marc:Yeah, he's going to say those words, but you don't have to say them.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:You're going to make more and more snores.
Marc:He's going to be a filthy, filthy man.
Guest:And like it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, yeah.
Guest:And, you know, it just started growing from there.
Guest:I mean, I did that first show and realized, whoa, because I was one of those unremarkable kids.
Guest:I wasn't popular.
Guest:Girls didn't pay attention.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:I was a little pudgy.
Guest:And team sports, forget it.
Guest:And now you're a guy with a puppet.
Guest:Yeah, it made it worse.
Guest:But you know what?
Guest:I know it made it way worse.
Guest:I look back on it now and I go, what the hell?
Guest:Okay, Mark, here's the embarrassing part.
Guest:I used to have this in my act.
Guest:So when I got to junior high in seventh grade, I was doing shows, doing pretty well, doing even corporate dates, Qantas clubs.
Guest:How old are you?
Guest:In seventh grade?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like 13?
Guest:Yeah, because I'd get up there and I'd tell jokes and I'd make fun of the president of whatever, of the company or whatever.
Guest:You could do it, huh?
Guest:Yeah, and I couldn't.
Guest:It was his kid.
Guest:doing pretty good jokes.
Guest:So you're like a prodigy, a ventriloquist prodigy.
Guest:Something like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But here's the sad part.
Guest:This is the really sad part.
Guest:When my girls found this out, they were so unbelievably embarrassed.
Guest:Really?
Guest:So I wanted a headshot.
Guest:And my parents weren't going to pay for me to go sit down with a photographer and get a picture with a dummy, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:So when it came to school picture day, I thought, why not?
Guest:So I carried my little dummy to school picture day.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:This is bad.
Guest:This is horrible.
Marc:But it's also business thinking.
Guest:It was.
Guest:So here I sat down, and I put my dummy on my knee, and the guy goes, I remember this, in seventh grade, he goes, you know, this is going to end up in the yearbook.
Guest:And I go, yeah, I know, it's publicity.
Yeah.
Guest:So he shot the photo of me and the dummy.
Guest:Publicity for who?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he pulled back the camera and shot the picture of me and the dummy.
Guest:So now I had one 8 by 10 and a bunch of wallet sizes of my head shot.
Marc:It's sitting in that weird kind of like school picture environment.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'll show you the picture here in a minute if you want to see it.
Guest:You still have it.
Guest:But here's the, okay, that's sad enough, right?
Marc:You should still use that picture.
Guest:Well, that was sad enough, but here's the deal.
Guest:It worked out so well, I did it every single year.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:With the same puppet?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:The dummies grew as the act grew.
Guest:They got better and better.
Guest:So by my senior year in high school, that was the only time I didn't do it.
Guest:why because you had a real picture well you know by that time I'd figured out girls and women you found one yeah I did I don't know she was blind she had no idea I had a doll in my hand what kind of girlfriend was your first girlfriend did she like what you did she was three years older than me oh yeah yeah yeah yeah so we met at summer camp oh that's nice yeah it was awesome and she liked your act
Guest:I guess so.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:My performance.
Marc:So, okay, so you're doing that.
Marc:At seventh grade, you're doing corporates, and you're starting to make a living doing this in that form of show business.
Marc:You had a strange but practical skill, unlike a stand-up, where you could do a corporate like that, or you could do a kid's show.
Marc:You could do anything, really.
Marc:It's a different realm of performing.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Because it's adaptable.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's adaptable.
Guest:You can do it for anything.
Guest:You know, I started doing comedy clubs when, like, my junior or senior year in college.
Guest:But here's the thing.
Guest:The reason that I like what I do so much is because, unlike a monologist, now we have situational comedy.
Guest:And what are the best ingredients of comedy?
Guest:It's tension and conflict.
Guest:Yeah, you got your characters.
Guest:I can build tension and conflict into the dialogue.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And what makes the act work is the relationship on stage and my acting and my reacting and the dummies doing the same thing.
Guest:So it's fairly complicated where I'm acting and reacting as an actor.
Guest:And then I'm making the dummy do the same thing and the opposite to me.
Marc:No, I mean, I swear the thing the weird thing about it is, you know, as a guy who come out of straight stand up.
Marc:But like is that, you know, it is sort of a unique and fun skill to watch.
Marc:And, you know, especially when it's done well, which you do do it well, but for some reason, and I'm sure you feel this and know this, you know, somehow or another, you get your own, you get your own, uh, your own category, you know, you know, you know, and I did fight that for years in the club.
Marc:Wait, wait, before we get to that, I want to, I want to talk about dummies.
Yep.
Marc:So, because I want to talk about the clubs and about the tension, you know, and about guys like me who back in the day were like, Dunham?
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yep, yep.
Guest:And I'd find things written on the walls of comic books.
Marc:Are you here to settle a score, Dunham?
Marc:Is that what you're doing?
Marc:You're going to show us all?
Marc:Like, you fucking comics, you filthy social satirists.
Marc:I was lonely.
Yeah.
Guest:We fucking talked to you.
Guest:Not much.
Guest:We acted like we liked you, Jeff.
Guest:No, no, nobody did.
Guest:Nobody did.
Guest:I would find epithets.
Guest:What's it called?
Guest:Yeah, epithets.
Guest:Epithets written on the walls of comedy clubs.
Guest:Death to Dunham.
Guest:When I won stand-up comic of the year in 1997.
Marc:Who did that?
Marc:The magazine did that?
Guest:No, it was the big show, the big TV show.
Guest:What's his name?
Guest:I forgot his name.
Guest:I don't remember.
Guest:But yeah, it was a big show.
Guest:Forgot his name.
Guest:Rat guy, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But when I won that, it was like the world melted.
Guest:It was like people were so pissed off.
Guest:The stand-up world melted?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, was it like a Comedy Central thing?
Guest:Nope.
Guest:It was Laugh-In.
Guest:What the hell?
Guest:Oh, Slaughter?
Guest:George Slaughter?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:George Slaughter.
Guest:It was his deal.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:So he was not happy because I campaigned for it.
Guest:With the dummies?
Guest:Yeah, pretty much.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, we sent... At that time, even then, I had merchandise, and we were sending stuffed peanut dolls to all the club owners because the club owners were the ones that were supposed to nominate.
Guest:Oh, you fucker.
Guest:And vote.
Guest:You politician.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That was 97, I think.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:But so...
Marc:Well, still backloading.
Marc:I'm curious about the craft of dummy making.
Marc:So when you're like doing Mortimer's Nerd, how old are you when you decide and how do you decide on the first dummy?
Guest:The first professional dummy?
Guest:Well, like we were talking about, there was no way to find out about anything back then.
Guest:I didn't know there was a ventriloquist organization.
Guest:There was a ventriloquist convention.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:You just had the book on how to do it.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:And you were able to go, where'd you see footage of like Winchell and Bergen and that stuff?
Guest:Whenever Bergen came on, you know, TV.
Guest:That was it?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Because there was no YouTube.
Marc:Nope.
Marc:You never went to New York to the Museum of Broadcasting?
Guest:Nope.
Guest:And I think that's, excuse me, I think that's what helped me is that I had nothing to compare myself to.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:And the only thing I had to listen to were Bergen's radio shows.
Guest:Oh, the radio shows.
Marc:So you could hear the patter.
Marc:You could hear the patter.
Marc:The rhythm.
Guest:You're great.
Guest:You're jumping way ahead.
Guest:I'm sorry.
Guest:No, that's great.
Guest:That's exactly what it was because I could sit there and listen to the routines.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was, you know, Bergen was the Seinfeld of his era.
Guest:Right.
Guest:His radio show was number one for like 10 years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And as a ventriloquist on radio, which made no sense.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But he had guests on there.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But it was just comedy sketches.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like every other comedian.
Guest:Like Jack Benny and like Bob Hope.
Marc:Oh, so he would do a few of the voices and then he'd have guests do the other parts in the radio show.
Guest:Yeah, it would be...
Guest:like little drama things.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Like W.C.
Guest:Fields was a normal guest.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I have guests all the time.
Guest:That's where Mae West actually got kicked off the air on radio for being too suggestive.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:On Edgar Bergen's show.
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:So it was a huge show.
Marc:And that was available to listen to.
Guest:Well, I could find the cassettes and the albums and listen to them.
Guest:And what I would do is I would sit there and I'd listen to the dialogue and I would actually type it out.
Guest:Here I was as a kid, fourth, fifth grade, sixth grade, and I'd type it out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'd look at it.
Guest:You had no friends and you're an only child.
Guest:You had time.
Guest:I had time.
Guest:But I would look at it and I wouldn't understand because there were no jokes.
Guest:It was not set up punchline.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It was all characters.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Driven.
Guest:And so that was such a great lesson in how to make people laugh.
Guest:It wasn't like, knock, knock, who's there?
Marc:Did you know that at the time?
Marc:Or is that something you look back at and realize that's what set in?
Guest:When I really kind of figured it out was when I moved out to Los Angeles in 1988.
Guest:That long?
Guest:yeah moved out here in 88 and i had been doing you know growing up doing church shows and shows in college and i'd do the ventriloquism thing yeah and like you said the skill is fascinating to watch right that lasts for six minutes then it's like okay now you got to make us laugh because i would come out here and you know i had a 15 minute show 15 minute act i was a good uh middle and i do the show and i drink the water and make the dummy talk and everybody applaud and you know what absolutely
Guest:Stand by.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And I'd get laughs and accolades.
Guest:And, you know, Mike Lacey loved me as a middle act.
Guest:But after a few months and following guys like Seinfeld and Leno and those guys that are there, no, you got to make that audience laugh.
Guest:You can't just do these.
Guest:If you're going to be a headliner, you're going to have to.
Marc:So you knew that.
Marc:You knew you were like sort of a novelty act.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That wasn't up to par with the writing or the comedy of these guys were solo acts.
Guest:That's correct.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So that's when I realized I can do this skill.
Guest:I can do this all day long.
Guest:It's like riding a bike.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I need to start coming up with material that makes as many people in this room laugh as much as possible.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's when I knew when I started doing that and people started coming back and bringing family and friends, that's when it started growing.
Guest:I'll never forget Deborah Sartell.
Guest:Oh, Deborah Sartell.
Guest:I remember her.
Guest:She booked most of the improvs.
Guest:oh yeah right right the one you probably didn't like more than Hartman and I remember I was a middle act and I asked her I said you know I was doing great and I said I finally called her one day and I said when am I going to headline and I said because I think people are coming to see just me and I could she actually sighed on the phone and she goes you think you're getting a following I go yeah I said when do you think I can headline she goes
Guest:I tell you what, because she'd heard this a million times.
Guest:She said, when the headliner can't follow you, then you can headline.
Guest:I'm like, okay.
Guest:And that to me was like a challenge.
Guest:I'm like, yeah, all right, great.
Guest:And it was Phoenix, Arizona at the Improv in Tempe.
Guest:I know that improv.
Guest:Oh my God.
Marc:That was one of the...
Marc:Bigger ones.
Marc:It was like a theater, but it was by virtue, they didn't do it on purpose.
Marc:It was before they were building those huge rooms.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But it was just as big, almost a theater-looking place.
Guest:Yeah, it was one of the biggest clubs in the country.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I remember that particular week, I don't remember who the headliner was.
Guest:Come on, you do.
Guest:No, I don't remember who the headliner was.
Guest:It could have been J.J.
Guest:Wall.
Guest:Do you remember J.J.
Guest:Wall?
Guest:I do, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, okay.
Guest:So all I know is I had, what, 14, 15, 18 minutes as a middle act?
Marc:20.
Marc:20.
Guest:and it was Jose Jalapeno on a stick, my little Mexican Jalapeno, and it's him, it's my character Peanut, it's Walter, I would smoke that frickin' room.
Guest:I mean, the roof would come off the place, because I only had a few minutes, and I'm the middle act, I'm not expected to be good.
Marc:That's the cush position.
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:The middle act's always gonna put it up the headliner's ass at some point.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So when Deborah started getting complaints from the headliner that they couldn't follow, it was like, eh, that was it.
Guest:Get the puppet guy.
Guest:So that's where the resentment starts.
Guest:That's exactly right.
Guest:He's cheating, man.
Guest:I'm just me.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:He's got the mental problem and the four puppets.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And look, I know what I do is goofy.
Guest:I say this in my own act.
Guest:I look at my own headshot and I go, really?
Guest:There's a grown man sitting there with six dummies and everybody's smiling.
Guest:It's okay.
Guest:No, it's weird.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:Yeah, you feel that.
Guest:Yeah, I do.
Guest:I know that.
Guest:Okay, but let's talk about that first dummy, though.
Guest:Which one was it?
Guest:So Mortimer was the first plastic one.
Guest:Oh, right.
Guest:I had a few more plastic, and then I had a professional dummy made.
Marc:How'd you find that out, though?
Marc:Because you said you didn't know there was a ventriloquist association.
Marc:So did you lock in with those guys?
Guest:Jay Johnson, who was the ventriloquist on soap.
Guest:Right, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he was from Texas, and it was before soap.
Guest:He was playing a place called Charlie's Place in Fort Worth, Texas, where it's singing and dancing in a variety show.
Guest:And so I went and saw him.
Guest:My parents took me to see him.
Guest:And you were like, what, seventh grade?
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And he was incredibly nice to me, and he said, here's the address for the Ventriloquist Association.
Guest:You can get the newsletter.
Guest:So I got the newsletter, and then the newsletter told me about the convention.
Guest:The first one, it was like 75, 74, 75.
Guest:Wow, you must have been like, oh, man.
Guest:Yeah, it was like geek central.
Guest:I mean...
Guest:I get it, Mark.
Guest:You're not going to hurt my feelings.
Guest:I completely get it.
Marc:I'm fascinated, actually.
Guest:I'm curious about this.
Marc:No one knows this.
Marc:I don't know this.
Guest:And I was an only child, and nobody told me that what I was doing was really sad.
Guest:Nobody told me that.
Marc:But it wasn't sad, Jeff.
Marc:I mean, you know, I'm not here to, I'm sure you know you're doing fine, but I mean, you know, you were engaged in this.
Marc:It was, look, I was fascinated with it.
Marc:I think a lot of us, maybe it's a generational thing.
Marc:I don't know if it's now.
Marc:But certainly back then, for some reason, it was still around.
Marc:And it was still sort of this interesting kind of skill and weird kind of thing.
Guest:Well, what I was going to say is growing up in Dallas and Richardson, Texas, I think it was the school system.
Guest:It was the kids.
Guest:It was the environment.
Guest:It was the teachers.
Guest:All people were encouraging.
Guest:They were just encouraging.
Guest:And I think what it was was the material that I chose.
Guest:And when I would do a show...
Guest:I would always make fun of the school, the principal, the teachers.
Guest:In a nice way.
Guest:You weren't like, you know, like, you know, fuck the police or anything.
Guest:No, no, no, no.
Guest:But it was making jokes about them in good taste.
Guest:With the dummy.
Guest:Yeah, with the dummy.
Guest:And I think that's why there was a little, there wasn't that level of, it was a level of cool because I got voted most likely to succeed.
Guest:And you did.
Guest:But yeah, but what I'm saying is it was a great environment of support.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:There was nobody beating me up in the alley because I had a doll on my
Marc:But this is not a small town.
Marc:You're in Dallas, right?
Marc:So it was a big school.
Guest:Yeah, it was almost 3,000 kids for three grades.
Guest:Almost 1,000 a grade.
Guest:So they were just happy to see someone doing something special.
Guest:I guess.
Guest:But the biggest accolade I got was my senior year in the senior talent show.
Guest:I had my dummy.
Guest:Everybody knew Archie.
Guest:He was a professional dummy.
Guest:That's your first dummy?
Guest:No, that was the first really professional one.
Guest:And this is when radio-controlled toys like airplanes and stuff were really becoming commonplace and not crazily expensive and reliable, the radios.
Guest:So I took one of those radios.
Guest:I disassembled it.
Guest:I put the transmitter.
Guest:I built it into my suit jacket.
Guest:I put the controls in my hand so the dummy could move his head, move his eyes, and move his mouth.
Guest:All by himself.
Guest:And I could control that from the palm of my hand.
Marc:I then took a wireless... You wired the dummy up?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I put the transmitter, built it into my jacket.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then put all the receiver and all the servos and all that crap in the dummy.
Guest:This was in 1979.
Marc:Is that how everyone does it with the eyes and stuff?
Guest:No, no, no, no.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:No, this is all electronics, radio control.
Guest:And then I took a wireless microphone...
Guest:a lav mic, and I put a mute switch in my other hand so that I could talk and not come over the PA.
Guest:So we did my act, my senior talent show, I'm doing the act, and then he and I get in an argument.
Guest:The dummy and I get in an argument.
Guest:I put him on, this is before David Strassman, another guy who does this, years before.
Guest:I put him on the stage, I get mad at him, I say, fine, you do it yourself!
Guest:I'm out of here.
Guest:And so I walk in the audience and I'm yelling at the, and we have a videotape from it.
Guest:And I'm in the middle of the audience yelling at the dummy from the audience.
Guest:Like I've completely lost it.
Guest:And then the dummy moves his head and at the same time rolls his eyes over and said, is Dunham throwing a fit?
Guest:And it came over the PA and I was, you know, cause I lit up on the mute switch and the fricking audience went nuts.
Yeah.
Guest:It's a 79.
Guest:Way ahead of its time.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:So, you know.
Marc:That was exciting just to hear that.
Guest:The audience was like, what's happening?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:There was a couple of screams and the whole thing is like.
Guest:People running out.
Guest:Not quite that.
Guest:The dummy lives.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's a good idea, but how long did it take you to figure out how to rig that up?
Guest:Oh, just a couple weeks.
Guest:Really?
Guest:No big deal, yeah.
Guest:And that was the one and only show I did that with.
Guest:That's crazy.
Guest:Looking back on it, was it cheating?
Guest:It just wasn't.
Guest:It was amazing.
Guest:I guess I was starting to catch on even then.
Guest:It just wasn't funny.
Guest:It was like, what?
Marc:Shocking.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Jarring.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, okay, so you talk to Jay Johnson.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:And he gives you the address.
Marc:Now, you write them, you're a little seventh grader.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You write the association.
Guest:Yeah, and I said I'd like to be, the guy even 25 years later, he'd saved my letter.
Guest:I guess he saved everything.
Guest:And he said, here's your letter asking to join.
Guest:And it was like, are you kidding me?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Did they let you join?
Guest:Oh, yeah, of course.
Guest:What, five bucks a year and you get the newsletter?
Guest:Five bucks?
Guest:I don't know what it was.
Guest:Your parents threw for it?
Guest:You were making money.
Guest:And then the first of that set of conventions started.
Guest:1975 was the first convention, and I begged my parents left and right.
Guest:Where was it?
Guest:It was in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, where they have the largest...
Guest:It's a Vent Haven Museum.
Guest:It's the largest collection of ventriloquial memorabilia in the world.
Guest:I've heard of that place.
Guest:Yeah, it's great.
Guest:Almost a thousand dummies in there.
Guest:And people at first go, oh my gosh, this is going to be creepy.
Guest:You walk in, but it's all this Americana as well as dummies from all over the world from 100 years back.
Guest:And it's actually kind of fascinating.
Guest:When did the art of ventriloquism begin?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:back in the days before Christ, because they'd use ventriloquism to make the altars talk and soothsaying and all that fake stuff.
Marc:Oh, so it was used as a racket, like the hustle.
Marc:They'd actually use it as magic.
Guest:Give us money.
Guest:Right, exactly.
Guest:And then the first dummies started coming along.
Guest:I don't know, I guess.
Guest:We have pictures from the Civil War era of guys sitting there with dummies.
Guest:Sorry, it's the coronavirus.
Marc:Sorry.
Marc:Do you want to get your water?
Marc:No, I'm good.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:It's too late now.
Marc:Oh, here we go.
Marc:We're going down right on the air.
Marc:You're hearing it.
Marc:So, all right, so you go to the convention in Kentucky.
Marc:You're in eighth grade, seventh grade?
Guest:Yeah, and then they had the contest, and I kicked ass and walked away with a trophy.
Marc:For a best new talent or whatever?
Guest:Best junior ventriloquist for 17 years.
Marc:But what was the feeling when you get there to see all the other fucking ventriloquists?
Marc:Were you like...
Guest:I'm home?
Guest:Or were you like, oh, no?
Guest:Well, it was a little bit of both.
Guest:Because as you can imagine, we still have that convention to this day.
Guest:Every July, it's in the same town.
Guest:You're active.
Guest:You're the guy.
Guest:I'm on the board of the museum.
Marc:Of course you are.
Guest:Yeah, of course.
Marc:Who else is going to be on the board?
Marc:You are the board.
Guest:I am the board.
Guest:And we're having a fundraiser right now.
Guest:We're raising money to build the new building.
Guest:Where can people go to the website?
Guest:I think it's venthaven.org.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I think it is.
Marc:Well, you people, if you're looking for a charity to give to, the maintenance of a thousand dummies in a museum in Kentucky needs a few bucks.
Guest:They're a 501C.
Guest:You don't even want to know how much money I give in that place.
Guest:I'm sure you're keeping it afloat.
Guest:No, not that.
Guest:Well, maybe.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:No, not really.
Marc:They're doing great.
Marc:Do you ever go in there by yourself and just like, I'm going to give this dummy a trip?
Marc:They won't let me go in by myself anymore.
Guest:Because I would pick up the dummies and play with them, make them talk.
Guest:They're like, that's old.
Guest:That's old.
Guest:Put it down.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:A buddy and I named Bob Rumba, we would go in every year and he'd make balloon animals.
Guest:And so we'd take balloon animals and we'd hide them inside dummies.
Guest:It was just like a retard.
Guest:I'm sorry.
Guest:Ridiculous fun.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was close.
Guest:Good catch.
Marc:You did it.
Marc:And then you didn't.
Marc:You took it away and then you went ahead and did it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And by the way, I use that word in my act, but I don't say it.
Guest:With the old man.
Guest:No, with Bubba J, my redneck character.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:He accidentally says it, yeah.
Marc:Well, see, that's the interesting thing about some of the characters is that you can, we know it's you, but there is something about the character portraying some part of American culture that everyone identifies with who is also struggling with the change that we're going through as Americans.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:Sure, and as a writer, people say, oh, you're a patriloquist just so you can say outlandish things and get away with it.
Guest:No, that's not what I do.
Guest:I create these, and I'm accused of being racist.
Guest:With the Ahmed character?
Guest:With Jose Jalapeno, with Ahmed, with Sweet Daddy D, my African-American character.
Guest:What I do is I try and create characters that people understand almost immediately.
Guest:So are they stereotypes?
Guest:Yeah, they are.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So what I do is I create these characters.
Guest:And if I have a question or if you have a question and you pose it to one of the characters, if I'm a good writer and a good comic, every one of those characters would have a different answer and a different joke because I'm writing for that particular character.
Marc:And also it seems to me that the more you broaden the number of characters,
Marc:that you're almost doing that thing that Rickles talked about, where it's not insulting everybody, but at least you're representing everybody from your weird Texan white point of view.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:It's a little bit of tap dancing, I admit.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But I do think that I'm celebrating those characters.
Guest:Yeah, I could see that.
Guest:And it's not like we don't, you know, when we talk about Jose, I don't make fun of him being Mexican.
Guest:I don't make fun of him whatever racist things you want to come up with.
Guest:He's a freaking jalapeno on a stick.
Guest:And I modeled him years ago after Slowpoke, Speedy Gonzalez's cousin.
Guest:Remember that?
Guest:He was just this Mexican character.
Guest:He was just slow.
Guest:Slow as in speaking, not stupid.
Guest:And so Jose has been that for years and years and years.
Guest:And if I don't use him in a show, people get angry.
Marc:Yeah, of course.
Marc:You know, it's delicate, you know, because those of those stereotypes, I think they they to people who they may represent or the ethnicity they represented.
Marc:It's a very sort of kind of narrow representation.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And you're dealing with these traits that have been sort of associated with these ethnicities to sort of keep them down or belittle them for a long time.
Marc:So it's hard to navigate that.
Guest:And then I do the opposite because Jose and Peanut, my purple crazy character, are the ones that always get into it.
Marc:And the latest routines... Well, Peanut's just like a thing.
Guest:Yeah, he's a thing.
Guest:We don't know what he is.
Guest:But the two of them get into it, and Jose always ends up on top.
Guest:So that's the way the arguments have gone.
Marc:So the Mexican beats the thing.
Guest:Yeah, the thing.
Guest:But let me... See that?
Guest:It's like the Alamo, you guys.
Guest:What?
Guest:Not really.
Guest:But it's the same thing when I came out with Walter, this cranky old man character.
Guest:And I was in college.
Guest:And people were saying, oh, you know, it's like you're making fun of old people.
Guest:They're going to get upset.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I talked to Foxworthy.
Guest:This is years ago we had that conversation that when he first came out with You Might Be a Redneck If, people were saying, oh, you're going to make these people angry.
Guest:Who, the rednecks?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:No, it's the exact opposite.
Guest:They loved it.
Guest:And old people love Walter because they either are him or they're married to him or somebody knows somebody like him.
Marc:Well, I can see that being less challenging than the ethnic character.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:I'm just using it as the example.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:Because when I would be in the improv, okay, this is the Comedy Magic Club, Lacey would say, you know, I hate it when you bring out Jose.
Guest:I go, oh, bad?
Guest:He goes, no.
Guest:All the kitchen guys come out and watch.
Guest:We'll get anything done.
Guest:So it was the Mexican guys that loved Jose more than anybody.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, again, I guess there's always I guess that's interesting because I never really thought about that.
Marc:That just like, you know, the ratio of people that are happy that that they're being represented on some level ethnically versus the people that are critical of how the ethnic representation reads.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And when I have Hispanic people in my audience, they're laughing the hardest at Jose.
Guest:And it's great.
Guest:And I have Hispanic people come up to me all the time that say, you know, I've loved Jose Jalapeno for years and years.
Guest:And so it's like you're going to get it from both ways.
Marc:What about the black character?
Marc:How does that go?
Guest:Sweet Daddy D, I made him to try and do my best innocently and stupidly as I could to try and make fun of racism.
Guest:I wanted to reverse it.
Guest:I actually got in contact with a couple of black comics and I said, come on, give me some great white jokes.
Guest:Tell me some jokes that Sweet Daddy D could tell about me and make fun of me for.
Guest:And there were a handful of things that worked out.
Guest:But here's the deal.
Guest:Sweet Daddy Dee didn't work out for the same reason that my female character, Diane, didn't work out.
Guest:And that's this.
Guest:Every character that I have as an actor, I have to understand that and be in their heads.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:And so Bubba J, the redneck, I get.
Guest:Peanut, the wild crazy, I get.
Guest:Walter, the old man.
Guest:Even Achmed, the dead terrorist, I understand being angry and frustrated and et cetera.
Guest:And dead.
Guest:Yeah, that was to be there.
Guest:So when it came to Sweet Daddy D, I came up with the one routine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I stopped because when it came to ad-libbing, which is one thing that I love to do in the show, I have no earthly idea what to say in any given situation.
Guest:I don't understand.
Guest:I can't live with... I've never been where an African-American or black person has been.
Guest:I don't get it.
Guest:It's not in me.
Guest:A woman, same thing.
Guest:I was in a movie called Dinner for Schmucks with Paul Rudd and... Right, right, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:they had me create the character and, uh, I did.
Guest:And we got all the rights for me to use it in my act, which was a really expensive and long drawn out process.
Guest:But after using them for her for a month, it just didn't work because I didn't think I couldn't be a female.
Marc:That's interesting.
Marc:So, you know, you, it requires a certain amount.
Marc:You, you are self-aware enough to know that your empathy deficit is, you know, is reasonable.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I don't I don't, you know, you can't claim.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Black people have been through way more than me as a white guy in America has been through.
Guest:And I don't I don't I have never lived it.
Marc:And same with women.
Marc:But but and the Mexican thing is just this.
Marc:It's sort of a broad.
Guest:But I limit him so much because of the character.
Guest:He's a vegetable on a stick.
Guest:He's a jalapeno or a pepper on a stick.
Guest:He's out for six minutes.
Marc:I could hear just in the tone of your voice how many times you've had to defend this.
Guest:He's a fucking vegetable.
Guest:What is wrong with you people?
Guest:It's not a person.
Guest:It's a vegetable.
Guest:But when people say I want to interview the characters and I say, okay, Peanut, yes, Walter, great.
Guest:Let's talk to Jose.
Guest:And I say, nope.
Guest:And they say, why not?
Guest:And I said, because it's the same reason.
Guest:There's nothing there.
Guest:I don't know how to respond as a Mexican person because I don't get it.
Guest:Who are you voting for, Jose?
Guest:Sure, I can make wall jokes and stuff like that.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Marc:So is that a common thing that happens on morning radio?
Marc:Like people want to interview the characters?
Guest:Well, at first, when I first started, you know how it is in the comedy clubs when you're the headline, you've got to go do a morning radio.
Marc:Now my question is, right, and there's usually an audience there.
Marc:There's usually at least three people there.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And then the guy on the board.
Marc:So you've got the main guy, the laughing guy, the confused lady.
Marc:That's perfect, Mark.
Marc:I talked about a jaded guy.
Marc:That's exactly right.
Guest:I know.
Marc:I used to do a bit about it.
Marc:Is that right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The tones are like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:Oh, fellas.
Guest:That's awesome.
Guest:Oh, my Lord.
Guest:That is awesome.
Guest:You just summed up every market.
Guest:Every morning market.
Guest:Every market.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:So, yeah.
Guest:But when they'd say, and I'd bring in the dummy, it'd be like, what?
Guest:This is radio.
Guest:Why do you have the dummy?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I go, just trust me on this.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so I'd take in Walter, and they'd introduce me.
Guest:And then when they were in the middle of the introduction, Walter would pop up from behind.
Guest:I'd set him on my lap, and it would throw everybody off.
Guest:And it was we're off to the races because then Walter would I was the greatest radio guest because they said, do you have any questions?
Guest:I go, no, just say hi.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then Walter would bring Walter out and we just launch in to whatever current topic stuff was going on in the country.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they loved it.
Guest:They just had to sit there and laugh.
Marc:Well, that's funny because the first instinct is to be like, can you just do this without the guy?
Marc:But you've got to have the guy.
Marc:Yeah, and they would- Because you interact with that guy because that's the gift that you have is that at some point, you're not thinking you're doing the guy.
Guest:Well, and it's great to get somebody that's really jaded and really knows their craft, a radio guy that's been there forever, to make him go, actually, you see him actually talking to the puppet.
Yeah.
Guest:But then the best is when the sound guy, this happens so many times, the sound guy or the engineer would set up my mic and then he'd be like, oh, and he'd set one in front of the dummy.
Guest:And it would take everybody else a couple seconds and I'd be like, you know, it's actually coming from me.
Guest:He doesn't need one.
Guest:And then, of course, that guy would catch shit for the next five months.
Marc:For the rest of his career.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:I remember when Dunham was here.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:This idiot put a mic in front of the puppet.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:And then every time I'd go back, they'd bring it up and he'd be all made fun of again.
Marc:So when they, so my recollection is like, you know, when you had, cause like I never committed to much of anything really, uh, in terms of like, you know, I've, I've played guitar and done comedy a long time, but whatever.
Marc:So you got the dummy.
Yeah.
Marc:But I remember, like, before I even thought about the craft, I'm like, but a real one's made out of wood.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, there was this sort of idea, like, this one's not real.
Marc:You know, and then, like, how much is a real one?
Marc:Where do you get the real ones?
Marc:Right.
Marc:And then there's the thing about, like, how all the guys who have the real ones, the ventricles, they're all different.
Guest:Well, you know, they call them vent figures.
Guest:That's the figures, yeah.
Guest:So that craft of building a dummy is incredibly complicated and lengthy, and there are a lot of skill sets that go with it.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Well, I'll just run through it real quick.
Guest:First, you've got to create the actual head, the first head, the character.
Guest:You've got to sculpt it.
Marc:And when you want one, do you talk to the guy?
Guest:No, no, I build everything myself.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I'm one of the unusual ones.
Guest:There's not many guys that do that.
Guest:So you don't have them made?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:They're all mine.
Guest:And there's legal stuff nowadays.
Guest:You know, when an artist creates something, that's technically he owns it even if he sells it.
Marc:Okay, so tell me.
Marc:So you start with wood or you start with a sketch?
Guest:Well, nowadays, what I do is I start with clay and I sculpt the perfect head.
Guest:And that's the easiest way to do it.
Guest:Sculpt that out of clay.
Guest:Then I have a 3D scanner, a big old thing that's worth more than most cars.
Guest:And I scan the head, 3D scan.
Guest:I got the file in the computer.
Guest:Now I have a 3D printer and I print just the shell of the head.
Guest:So now you have this plastic shell printed on the 3D printer.
Guest:Then I take that and then you have to... But it's an actual plastic thing.
Guest:Yeah, it's a head.
Marc:It's not a printing.
Marc:It comes out and it's like a toy, right?
Guest:Yeah, it's a plastic head on a 3D printer, full size and all that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then take that.
Guest:Now you have to animate it.
Guest:You have to cut everything out and you have to put all the mechanics into it.
Guest:What are those?
Guest:Oh, you know, like the mouth and the eyes and the eyebrows make all those move.
Guest:So that's all mechanical.
Guest:And that has to be controlled by a stick, the head stick that goes underneath it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So each each each part of the face has its own lever.
Marc:Uh huh.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So like when this lever moves the mouth, this one does the eyes, does the eyebrows.
Guest:So yeah, there's a mechanical part of that.
Guest:And then you got to seal the head up.
Guest:Then you got to paint it.
Guest:So you got to paint it perfectly.
Guest:Then you got to put a wig on it.
Guest:You got to wig it.
Guest:Then you got to build the body.
Guest:You got to costume it.
Guest:So there's a whole bunch of stuff.
Guest:And it's, you know, it's not cost effective to do that for a living.
Guest:It's a handful of guys that do it, but it's ridiculous.
Marc:Yeah, especially since you're doing your own, apparently, putting those guys out of business.
Guest:Well, I also do it because I got sick and tired of waiting for people because they would take years.
Guest:To make a head?
Guest:Sometimes years to make a doll?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So the first one, though, did you make your first one?
Guest:The first one, there was this one old guy that was really reliable that would get one done for me in three or four months, but it was garbage.
Guest:It was crap.
Marc:Just what, the mouth didn't look right?
Guest:Well, it was what every...
Guest:beauty pageant contestant who didn't have a talent would get oh so it's reasonably priced yeah right yeah for okay in 1975 it was 375 dollars oh i heard it was like thousands well that's now that's now well i don't know what was 350 bucks yeah it wasn't thousands but it was i guess that was a lot of money sure yeah so uh yeah nowadays they're thousands of bucks
Marc:So that was your first puppet and it didn't work out?
Guest:That was okay.
Guest:I used him for years.
Guest:But then when I got into high school and I went to the convention, I won best senior ventriloquist.
Guest:And the guy that made dummies and was really good at it, they gave out what they called the, they gave the dummy to the most promising ventriloquist.
Guest:And the figure maker would do it because he thought, okay, this is going to, my creation has a chance of becoming famous.
Marc:Oh yeah, yeah.
Marc:I'm going to bet on this horse with my wooden guy.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:So he gave me Archie.
Guest:He became a friend for 30-something years, Alan.
Guest:Alan Simok.
Guest:And he gave me Archie, and I used him for years and years and years.
Marc:And that was a wooden head?
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Well, plastic wood.
Guest:Plastic wood dough.
Marc:Oh, so that's what it is.
Marc:So, okay, I know what you mean.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then I started making them out of fiberglass, and then a few years ago I moved on to the 3D printer.
Marc:Now, how many other Ventuokas make their own dummies?
Marc:Next to none.
Marc:Huh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I couldn't name one today.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:so this is like a full kind of like all immersive art form you're in.
Marc:I mean, you're not like, cause that means to me that you're building like, you know, when you have the, the, the creative idea to, for the, for the character that, you know, you, you know, you make it out of clay.
Marc:So you're building your relationship with this character from, from nothing.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And, and you, you, you birth it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it is an interesting process because what do you come up with first?
Guest:The jokes or the dummy?
Guest:And it's kind of both.
Guest:You know, what I do now is I think, okay, what socially right now, what would be a character that people could identify with or laugh at or with?
Guest:Ahmed the Dead Terrorist is an extreme example because- You still use him?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:He kills.
Guest:Hey.
Guest:So let me tell you the quick story on that, though.
Guest:So it was a year after 9-11.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Nothing funny about 9-11 ever will be.
Guest:Even Titanic jokes to me are a little iffy today.
Guest:Nobody could laugh at 9-11.
Guest:But I looked to Leno and Letterman, and they were making fun of Osama bin Laden.
Guest:We didn't know where he was.
Guest:We didn't know if he was dead.
Guest:We didn't know if he was alive.
Guest:Anybody remembers that time?
Guest:We didn't know what had happened to him.
Guest:But it was a year later.
Guest:So I thought, I know where he is.
Guest:And I was at the top of the food chain in the comedy clubs at this time.
Guest:I thought, I know where he is.
Guest:He's half dead.
Guest:He's kind of dead, but he's not.
Guest:And he's living in a suitcase, hiding out with my characters, my other guys.
Guest:So I thought, this might work.
Guest:So I went to, there's a store.
Guest:Do you remember a store, Oz, here in town?
Guest:A-A-H-S.
Guest:It's still in business.
Guest:It's still in business.
Guest:No.
Guest:Anyway, they have all kinds of costumes, holiday stuff.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So I was walking through there and there was this big bumbling plastic skeleton.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That looked like something out of South Park.
Guest:And I thought, you know, and then what I would do is I would make the cheap version of the dummy first.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And if it worked, then I would make the real ones.
Guest:Commit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I got this plastic thing.
Guest:I put a moving mouth on it.
Guest:I put a thing on his head.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I thought, I'm going to write jokes as if there are family members in the audience who lost people in 9-11.
Guest:Widows, widowers, parents, kids.
Guest:So I'm going to write the jokes and material as if they're sitting there.
Guest:What are they ready to laugh at?
Guest:How are they ready to move on?
Guest:How would that work?
Guest:I wrote that material.
Guest:I then said, I'm not going to chicken out and go to Hawaii or Alaska or someplace on the far west coast where it doesn't sting quite as much.
Guest:I know where it counts.
Guest:I got booked at bananas six miles from ground zero.
Guest:So, you know, I did a Wednesday through Friday, but on Friday night, I wait for the big show or Wednesday through Sunday.
Guest:I wait for the big show on Friday night, sold out completely.
Guest:I was a headliner.
Guest:The audience knew me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I couldn't have done any better.
Guest:I did my 45, 50 minutes.
Guest:Couldn't have been better.
Guest:Yay.
Guest:Now I come to the end and I go, well, folks, there's one sentence we've all been waiting to hear, and that is Osama bin Laden is dead.
Guest:Huge applause.
Guest:Yay, yay.
Guest:Cheers.
Guest:I said, well, got some news for you.
Guest:He's here with us this evening.
Guest:Please help me welcome Osama bin Laden.
Guest:And it was like God sucked all the air out of that room.
Guest:It was like you could hear those people go, what the fuck is this asshole from Texas going to show us?
Guest:What's the guy with the puppet going to do now?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:So out of the suitcase, I pulled this bumbling stupid skeleton.
Guest:And I started running through the jokes.
Guest:And that's when I came up with I Kill You as an ad lib.
Guest:And it could not have gone any better.
Guest:Could not have gone any better.
Guest:And I started using them in every single show.
Guest:And I started getting letters from people in the military because then it caught on YouTube and started going nuts.
Guest:And people started thanking me for it, the parents of people in the military.
Guest:And so there.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, like it provides relief for a certain.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, I understand it, man.
Marc:I mean, and it's like, yeah, I just did a special where, you know, Jesus doesn't fare well in my special.
Guest:Oh, no.
Marc:Wait, what?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But he didn't fare well at all to begin with.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But, you know, I was able to sort of put it together with just the idea of belief and whatever.
Marc:It's me and my heady shit.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But, like, I knew heading into it that there was a possibility of offending people.
Marc:So I did structure the bit.
Marc:So I took some of the weight off of that.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Do you know what I mean?
Marc:So, like, I don't know if it was Muslims who pushed back or what.
Marc:But, you know, I know that there is going to be a certain amount of people who are going to be like, that's not right.
Marc:But the bigger issue is, you know, isn't that going to be everything?
Guest:Well, that's what happened because I used him for a couple, three years, the dead Osama.
Guest:I then put him away because Osama Bin Laden got out of the news.
Guest:Then my second special, Comedy Central special, came along and I wanted another new character.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so I thought I went back in the archives and I thought that guy was good.
Guest:So I'm going to change him from the dead Osama to instead of offending one dangerous guy, I'm going to offend an entire group of dangerous people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I came up with Ahmed the Dead Terrorist, and then I made the real version of him, and that's when things took off.
Guest:And that's when it went on YouTube and went crazy.
Guest:And that's when I started getting incredible death threats.
Marc:From Muslims?
Guest:All over the world.
Guest:We don't know where they were from.
Guest:The FBI got involved, but it was real threats.
Guest:But then when you look at my act, if you just look at a picture and you see this guy, it's unbelievably offensive.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you think.
Guest:It's until you listen to the show, you go, oh my gosh, it's just a stupid failed terrorist who's fallen in love with the free world.
Guest:He thinks he should be angry and should hate us, but he actually loves everything about it.
Guest:He's very conflicted.
Guest:He's not proud of the fact that he killed himself.
Guest:So he's a failed terrorist.
Guest:It doesn't hurt anybody.
Guest:And I even say he's not Muslim.
Guest:We don't know where he's from.
Guest:When Steve Carell was Gru the first time in Despicable Me, I saw him interviewed.
Guest:And the interviewer said, where'd you come up with that accent?
Guest:And Steve goes, well, you know, Europe?
Guest:And the guy goes, yeah.
Guest:And he goes, like that.
Guest:So it's the same thing with Ahmed.
Guest:It's like Middle East.
Guest:It's like that from somewhere.
Guest:We don't know where he's from.
Guest:So how did you handle the death threats?
Guest:The FBI got involved, but then, you know, it was...
Guest:You just lived your life?
Guest:Yeah, and it just kind of went away for a little bit.
Marc:Did you bring people on the road with you to watch your back and shit?
Guest:There was extra security.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, if a red dot appeared on my forehead, it's like, oh, all right, this isn't going to work out.
Marc:Yeah, people will not want to take the audience to realize, like, is he really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:The thing was, anybody... Okay, here's the thing that I ended up with.
Guest:If you're the guy that goes out and kills the puppet guy...
Guest:Are you a martyr of some kind?
Guest:It's not going to go down well with your with your bros.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So and then I thought, well, maybe they're stupid enough.
Guest:They'll just shoot Aquaman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Destroy the puppet.
Marc:So how many puppets you got now?
Guest:In the act six.
Guest:But they all have to be well-developed characters.
Guest:Who are they now?
Guest:Jose, the old guy?
Guest:There's Peanut, the little purple crazy guy.
Marc:There's Jose Jalapeno on a stick.
Marc:The mainstay, Peanut and Jose.
Guest:Yep, and Walter.
Guest:Those three have been there forever.
Guest:There's Walter.
Guest:There's Bubba J, the white trash trailer park redneck.
Guest:Did I say Ahmed the dead terrorist?
Guest:Not yet, that's five, yeah.
Guest:And this is my rotating spot until I find another one.
Guest:But the one I've been using right now, politically, our country is obviously divided.
Guest:I have a set of conjoined twins named Rich and Happy.
Marc:So you're going to piss off the conjoined twins community.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Have you got any mail from the three living sets?
Guest:Oh, that's another thing.
Guest:By the way, when Achmed was reaching his peak in popularity in 2008, 2009, I had it on a credible source that there were even...
Guest:businessmen sitting around at lunch in Iraq and Iran going, I kill you, and laughing.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Because that's how international that thing went.
Guest:And that's why I started being able to do shows everywhere.
Marc:Believe me, there's plenty of people within every Muslim country that don't like terrorists.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Most of them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But when I did a show in Abu Dhabi.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, man, I was a little bit terrified because we were setting up my world tour and we're going to go countries.
Guest:It was 12 different countries, 40 different cities all over the world.
Guest:Everything.
Guest:Australia, South Africa.
Guest:This is one.
Guest:I've done nine world tours, but this was the giant one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Robert, my manager at the time, said, all right, so you're going to Abu Dhabi.
Guest:And I went, oh, yeah.
Guest:What?
Guest:Abu Dhabi?
Guest:He goes, they love you there.
Guest:And I go, no, they'd love to kill me there.
Guest:He goes, no, no, no, no, you have to.
Guest:You're sold out.
Guest:I go, how many tickets?
Guest:He goes, 4,000.
Guest:I'm like, and they want me to use Ahmed?
Guest:Yes, that's their favorite one.
Guest:I'm like, no, really?
Guest:So I was terrified.
Guest:I really was because I didn't know what to expect.
Guest:And now we get to the show.
Guest:And I curtain peaked, and I thought, this is going to be all expatriates.
Guest:It's going to be military folks that are over there that just want to see an English-speaking show.
Guest:Nope.
Guest:The first two to four to six rows were full of guys in the full dishdash, all the white garb.
Guest:The women were all in black with only their eyes showing.
Guest:Yeah, it was the first few rows, and I'm like, oh, my Lord, what am I going to do?
Guest:But this is how small the world was.
Guest:They knew every character and loved it, and when I pulled Achmed out, it was like a fucking homecoming.
Yeah.
Guest:Oh, I'm not kidding.
Guest:They thought it was the greatest thing ever.
Guest:Now, here's how small the world is and how I get to view it through rose-colored glasses.
Guest:Two days later, I'm in the middle of Tel Aviv, Israel, doing the show for 4,000 mainly Jewish folks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Did the exact same act.
Guest:Guess who their favorite character was?
Guest:Achmed the dead terrorist.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it's a small world.
Guest:Mark, I tend to believe that this world is—and you're more cynical than I am, obviously—
Guest:I think this world is full of really good people.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And it's the handful of idiots that ruin it for everybody else.
Guest:I believe that.
Guest:Because every corner of the globe that I went to, and again, it's sanitized because it's my audience.
Guest:They're coming to see me.
Guest:I understand that.
Marc:They seem to be making more idiots, though.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, it's just everybody has a voice now with their phone.
Guest:I think that's right.
Marc:I think you're right.
Marc:It's like everyone sitting at home can now have some sort of global impact if they hit the right buttons.
Guest:And that's my next character that I've just now finished.
Guest:I can show you a picture of him, but he's going to be my internet troll.
Guest:Oh, that's great.
Guest:I'm announcing it here on your show.
Guest:Oh, great.
Guest:Yeah, internet troll.
Marc:By himself?
Marc:I mean, does the character not get out much kind of guy?
Guest:Oh, of course not.
Guest:He lives in the basement and he writes about everybody and attacks everybody.
Marc:Does he actually get the president to respond to him or anything like that?
Marc:You're writing my material.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:This is, you know, I haven't explored that.
Guest:I just know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I just know that there's a, I mean, come on.
Guest:And Andy's always on his phone.
Guest:It's going to be the one.
Marc:He should, he should piss you off.
Marc:Like, you know, I got through to Dunham.
Marc:That's how you met him.
Marc:Is that like, you know, he kept bothering you on Twitter.
Marc:That's a great idea.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That's the way to introduce him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I have a lot of haters online and we have the biggest hater online ever.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Cause I get, you actually got into an argument with him on Twitter and you kept at it until you like, let's meet.
Marc:That's really great.
Marc:Mark.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:You want to see a picture?
Guest:You should have it, buddy.
Guest:Let me show your audience the picture.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay, but this is just his face.
Guest:It's just the head, and it's before I've painted him.
Guest:So there's that.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And there's that.
Guest:It's kind of snurd-like.
Guest:Well, he's troll-like.
Marc:No, I get that, but he's got that same nose.
Marc:There's a little snurd to him.
Guest:Well, it's all I have to do with the hair.
Guest:Oh, you don't know what you're going to do.
Marc:But if you look in the background, see the troll back there?
Marc:No, I get that.
Marc:It's a troll doll.
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:Oh, I get it.
Marc:Oh, see, I see.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:You got to be careful on the copyright on that?
Guest:I think the rule is you got to make them 15% different?
Guest:You're asking me like I know?
Guest:No, I don't know what it is.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:If you make them different enough, you're fine.
Marc:Well, that's exciting.
Marc:So maybe I helped you write something.
Marc:Thanks.
Marc:Yeah, that's great.
Marc:But what about this Siamese Twins guy?
Guest:So the Siamese twins, I've been using them for a little while.
Guest:There was Larry, who was the personal advisor to Donald Trump.
Guest:I used him for a little while.
Marc:He was in my special.
Guest:But it was great.
Guest:How did that go?
Guest:Because he was conflicted as well.
Marc:Would you say that he was a pro-Trump guy?
Marc:Or how was that received?
Guest:Well, see, that's the deal in my show, is I try and go right down the middle as much as I can.
Guest:Because I have folks from both sides of the aisle, all sides of the aisle in my show.
Marc:I mean, I think that's why you're so popular.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I try and do it like both Leno and Carson did.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Where you never really knew their politics.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you made fun of both sides.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so that's what I try and do.
Guest:So that was this guy was conflicted.
Guest:There were jokes for both ways.
Guest:Rich and Happy is the extreme example.
Guest:One guy's left, one guy's right.
Guest:They hate each other.
Guest:And there's always arguments.
Marc:Oh, so that's it.
Marc:And that's still in it?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So now let's talk about this sort of the evolution of like, you know, how you weathered, you know, decades like, you know, you came up through the improv chain.
Marc:But, you know, me sort of being one of the more condescending people or more aggravated people at another point in my life sort of dismissed you or sort of isolated you.
Marc:But, you know, you always caught flack.
Marc:From comics.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And this is, on some level, I get that the Association of Antiochus is your community, but really your community are nightclub entertainers.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:For, you know, for whatever, however long you were doing that.
Guest:Right.
Marc:For 20 years or whatever.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:Now, like, how did you handle that?
Guest:I mean, did it hurt your feelings?
Guest:I didn't, most of the time I didn't pay any attention to it because by the time I got to where people really disliked me, I was already headlining.
Guest:And you know how headliners are.
Guest:You're not around anybody else.
Guest:But I guess being an only child, too, you were sort of used to the isolation or the lack of friends.
Guest:I don't know, but it didn't.
Guest:I just never hung out with any of the crowd.
Guest:I didn't hang out at the comedy store or hang out at the Melrose Improv.
Guest:I just didn't.
Guest:Why, because you were married and you were okay?
Guest:You were a family man?
Marc:Well, there was that.
Marc:You were never a partier or a drinker.
Marc:You never needed that sort of weird affirmation from other comics?
Marc:You hit every one of those as yes.
Yes.
Guest:That's exactly right.
Guest:I was never accepted in those years and I didn't have any friends who were comedians.
Guest:That's sad in a way.
Guest:All my friends were car guys and- Car guys?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, you're a car guy?
Guest:Car guy, yeah.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:So you collect cars?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:So- Do you know that my neighbor across the street, Troy, he fixes cars?
Yeah.
Guest:If I need something, now I know a guy.
Guest:He's a car guy.
Guest:He's a car guy.
Guest:So yeah, so I didn't, and there was nothing to me, no bigger nightmare than having to go to Melrose and do a set.
Guest:Because it was that jaded.
Guest:The improv on Melrose.
Guest:Oh boy, yeah.
Guest:Because it was that jaded Hollywood set and you guys were hip and I wasn't.
Marc:So what was the feeling when you had to do one there?
Marc:You go heading over.
Marc:Yeah, because my agent would walk by.
Guest:Oh, it was an industry.
Guest:You know, there'd be industry nights.
Guest:My agents would talk me into it.
Guest:And I just I absolutely hated it.
Guest:And I would die.
Guest:I've died a thousand deaths on that stage before.
Marc:It wasn't an easy room, really.
Guest:No.
Guest:I never liked it.
Marc:The acoustics were never great, and it wasn't easy anyways.
Guest:Versus you come right over here near your house at the Ice House, and you'd kill.
Guest:If you didn't kill, you were a moron.
Marc:Yeah, if you walk out of the Ice House going, I can't even decide whether to judge that as real.
Marc:That's exactly right.
Guest:But that's how I got booked on the Carson Tonight Show for the first time is from the Ice House.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:It had been nine years.
Guest:I had, how many years?
Guest:Let's see.
Guest:I first started auditioning in 86, so no.
Guest:And I got booked in 1990.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Oh, in 84.
Guest:84 to 90.
Guest:I auditioned for Jim McCauley nine times.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:I got eight.
Guest:No, no, no, no, no.
Marc:What the fuck was he looking like?
Marc:We've done a lot of introquists.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:No, it was very simple.
Guest:He says, you're not funny enough.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that was another thing that kept pushing me.
Guest:He says, but I can be on if I'm funny enough.
Guest:He goes, absolutely.
Guest:You're a great ventriloquist.
Guest:You're just not.
Guest:You got to be funny when you're in front of Johnny Carson.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so that's what I, you know, and then, you know, I worked and honed and honed and honed that five minutes until he, Macaulay came and saw me at the ice house.
Marc:And of course I killed.
Marc:And you've always written your own shit.
Guest:Most of the time, but no, I've had a handful of guys that have helped me throughout the years.
Guest:Comics?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, of course.
Guest:And comedy writers.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:It also gets me off the blank page.
Marc:No, no, I'm not judging.
Marc:I mean, I know plenty of guys.
Marc:You get to a certain point where when your business is big as your business is and you've got this variety of possibilities that you want to keep stuff fresh, why not hire guys who do that for a
Guest:No, that's what I do.
Guest:But nobody ever, I mean, rarely does anybody ever hand me a joke, go, here it is, and then I do it verbatim.
Guest:It's always dialogue.
Guest:What comics have worked for you?
Guest:Judd Apatow?
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's one of the, way back when, he wrote a couple of the really good Walter jokes.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Way back in the beginning.
Guest:Oh, that's nice.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When he was just a writer?
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, recently.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Judd, I need some jokes, dude.
Guest:He'll throw you a bump if he likes you.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:So coming up in the clubs.
Marc:We're talking about The Tonight Show.
Marc:So yeah, it took nine years.
Guest:Yeah, it took nine years and then I finally got it.
Guest:And after that, you never forget that first time walking through the curtain when Johnny's introducing you.
Guest:And you knew your life was going to change and be different.
Guest:And it didn't change that much.
Guest:It was just this stamp of grade A.
Guest:like okay and i got invited to the couch the first time and walter you know uh just freddy de cordova said to me you know you got this walter character i go yeah i'm not doing him tonight he goes no but put him behind the couch just in case he get invited over i go mr de cordova there's no way i'm going to get invited over and he goes put him behind the couch just trust me walter i mean johnny would love walter yeah
Guest:And that was the best part of the show.
Guest:I did my bit with Peanut and drank the water and did the whole thing.
Guest:And then they called me.
Guest:Then Carson called me over to the couch and I pull Walter out and I go, you know where we are?
Guest:He goes, yeah, I don't give a damn.
Guest:And I go, it's the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
Guest:And he looks over at Ed and he goes, don't you have some envelopes to lick?
Guest:You know, because...
Guest:Because, you know, Publisher Cleared House.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:And I said, at the end of the show, there were a handful of lines that were great.
Guest:But at the end of the show, when we were in commercial break, I turned to Johnny Carson and I said, Mr. Carson, would it be okay if you thanked me for coming because I have a joke with Walter?
Guest:And he's like, yeah, don't worry about it.
Guest:I'll thank you for coming.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he set it up perfectly.
Guest:We come back from commercial and he goes, and Jeff, thank you and Walter for coming to the show.
Guest:Hope we can come back again soon.
Guest:And Walter turns to Carson to Johnny Carson and says, yeah, it'll be a cold day in hell before you get me back here.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:Talk about taking a chance.
Guest:And, and Carson laughed.
Guest:I mean, laughed really hard.
Guest:And that was like, that was it.
Marc:And how many times you do it with him?
Guest:Five?
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So you really got in under the wire there, huh?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:Yeah, it was interesting.
Guest:Here's one of the worst times, though.
Guest:This story's terrible.
Guest:So remember Carson's son died.
Guest:He went off a cliff in a car accident.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So they canceled the show.
Guest:So I think it was two weeks later, my colleague called me and he says, I need you to do a favor for Johnny.
Guest:I go, what's that?
Guest:He says, Johnny's coming back tonight.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he has his bit where he's going to show his son's photographs.
Guest:But if he bails on the bit, I need you to be standing by ready to go.
Guest:I'm like, you want me to come back on the show where Carson comes back after his son's died and you want me to do stand up with my dummy?
Guest:He goes, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I go, this is not the greatest night to be on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
Guest:He goes, do it for Johnny.
Guest:I'm like, okay.
Guest:So I'm back there in the green room and about 20 minutes into the show, Macaulay comes back and he goes, you're off the hook.
Guest:He's going to do the pictures.
Guest:You don't have to do the show.
Guest:I'm like, thank God.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, and did you see Johnny that night or no?
Guest:Yeah, I told him, I said, I told him to give him my indulgences and all that stuff.
Guest:Yeah, but yeah.
Marc:Now, all right, well, okay, since you were able to somehow, but I do sense that, you know, obviously it wasn't great for you all those years, you know, in terms of us.
Guest:Well, I didn't hang out with anybody.
Guest:No, I get it.
Guest:And I didn't care.
Marc:But still the fact that the stress of going to Melrose, I know you didn't care, but it's still like you were driving to Melrose going like that.
Guest:Yeah, but that was only a handful of times.
Guest:Most of the time I was on the road.
Guest:But when you read those epithets, nothing?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Guest:And it was written by, oh, I have to think about this.
Guest:I don't remember who wrote it.
Guest:You do.
Guest:I don't.
Guest:If it was multiple choice, I could tell you, but I can't remember.
Guest:But it was like, what the...
Guest:What's your problem?
Guest:I'm just doing my show.
Guest:What was the epithet?
Guest:It was just something like, after I'd won the comic of the year, it was like, you know, the same thing you said, just a hack and, you know, he's got a puppet and all that stuff.
Guest:But you know what?
Guest:Maybe this isn't the best example, but Carrick Top was kicking ass.
Marc:Well, I remember when he became Comedy Central, it was like the best comic of the year, like the year Hicks died, you know?
Marc:That was a real controversy.
Yeah.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:But he was selling tickets.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:He was selling out clubs.
Guest:And to me, it's like, I get the straight monology, and I do 30 minutes of stand-up all by myself at the beginning of my show.
Guest:That's all I do is my stand-up.
Guest:And my special, second special, Comedy Central special...
Guest:We shot, you know, an hour and 40 minutes of material, and 30 minutes of it was my stand-up.
Guest:It was just about my kids and being a father and all that stuff.
Guest:And we kept it in the edit and showed it to them, and they said, uh, we want two versions.
Guest:We want the hour and a half version,
Guest:where Def does his stand-up, and then the edited-down version where it's mainly the ventriloquism.
Guest:So they loved it, and they played that thing over and over.
Guest:So I love doing just straight stand-up comedy.
Marc:I don't know that I ever called you a hack, but for some reason I felt that I was a purist of some kind.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And as I got older, you start to realize, like, we're all under the entertainer umbrella somehow.
Marc:And, you know, there's a long tradition of it.
Marc:Like, you know, I've softened only, you know, it was like the judgment was really had to do with the same as like guitar acts or anybody else.
Marc:Even like Carrot Top has got a sort of brilliance to whatever he's doing out there in the desert.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But, you know.
Guest:If you see a show, it is amazing.
Guest:I did see it.
Guest:My wife and I went when I was living there for eight months, and I couldn't believe it.
Guest:It was just like, see, that's the thing.
Guest:Yeah, that's the thing.
Guest:I live on the laughs per minute, and that's how I made my act now, is you could put a stopwatch on a stand-up when he's doing a spot on The Tonight Show, whatever.
Guest:And if he gets a laugh every six to ten seconds, he's doing great.
Guest:If it's every 15 seconds, so he's getting four laughs a minute, he's dying.
Marc:But what if it's like 15 seconds but he ends so huge?
Guest:Of course there are exceptions.
Guest:You know what I'm saying?
Guest:Look at you.
Guest:You got a little attitude too, don't you?
Guest:But I would put a stopwatch to that to guys and I'd go, yeah, this is a formula.
Guest:So I started writing my act, building the Tonight Show bits so I would have a laugh every six to ten seconds.
Guest:And that's how I was able to do that many spots on there.
Guest:And so now when I write my act,
Guest:It's the same way.
Guest:It has to have that many laughs in the show.
Guest:And again, I think that's why people keep coming back and bringing family and friends over and over again because you really get your value when you're laughing that much.
Guest:And also the puppets.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But there's storytelling in there as well.
Marc:It's like watching a play.
Marc:Because they're like, oh, now he's going to bring out that other guy.
Guest:Yeah, and it is weird that they all have their following.
Guest:They all get their big screams.
Guest:So it is an odd thing.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:But the suspension of disbelief, just like a good magician, it really is fun.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, no, I mean, I'll take that to heart.
Marc:Okay, I'll try to get one every six seconds.
Marc:I think I do it relatively innately.
Marc:But maybe that's what I'm missing is.
Guest:But, you know, it's the same thing with Cosby.
Guest:He was a storyteller.
Guest:And, you know, growing up, you know, people say, who's your favorite comic?
Guest:And to me, well, it was the only albums my mother would let me have.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Pre-knowing he was a rapist, Cosby.
Marc:Of course.
Guest:No, you got to say that.
Marc:You know, of course you have to.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, he had a tremendous impact on me, you know, 10 years ago, even just watching.
Guest:Bill Cosby himself you know like we're like you can just sit down you can you have control of the situation right and that was the special that did it that's what brought him down yeah exactly nice but that is the special that made him and we didn't know all that at the time but at the time he was a guy to look up to because he was you know he had more comedy albums than anybody
Marc:But yeah, and even, but the point being that even these long form guys, you know, had the jokes every, you know, you could be telling a story and have a joke every six seconds.
Marc:I guess.
Marc:No, for sure.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Maybe not quite six seconds, but maybe you're offered a little bit of leeway when you're telling a story.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:There's jokes within the long form all the way through.
Marc:I mean, that's why I have a problem with people saying, like, you're a storyteller or whatever.
Marc:A lot of great stand-ups were long-form stand-ups.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And the jokes are in there.
Marc:Right.
Marc:They're strung all the way through it.
Guest:Well, I used to not have much respect for Leno when I saw him on The Tonight Show because I'd never seen him live.
Guest:Then I went and saw him live, and it was like, oh, my gosh.
Guest:Real puncher.
Guest:Yeah, and his stories are unbelievable.
Guest:And he's the real deal.
Guest:And I never realized that until I went and saw him live.
Marc:What did you think of like Willie and Lester or Otto and- Otto and George, oh my gosh.
Guest:Yeah, Otto and George is like the filthiest ventriloquist ever.
Guest:You think he was good though?
Guest:Well, technically no, but he was good because it was just like, I mean, he would kill.
Guest:He would kill.
Guest:So dirty.
Guest:Yeah, but some of the lines were like, how do you even think of that?
Guest:Yeah, he's a dirty boy.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Willie Tyler and Lester, great.
Guest:I mean, you know, I'm not into singing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And to me, it's great if you entertain the audience.
Guest:Again, we're back to that.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:But I just, again, I approach it more of a stand-up and I'm telling jokes.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But you've got to know how to drink the water.
Right.
Guest:I stopped doing that a long time ago.
Guest:It's a rite of passage, though, right?
Guest:It is, but I did try and bring it back a few years ago just because it was such a big bit, and I felt like such a chump on stage doing it.
Guest:I really did.
Guest:It would be like Seinfeld going, you know, I used to juggle.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So here we go.
Marc:Kind of, but it's sort of like, you know, it is, but unlike stand-up, unlike any, it is the mark of someone who's good at what you do.
Marc:Like, you know, like, I think it's like, you know, a gymnast, you know, when they do a triple, whatever.
Guest:Whatever it is.
Marc:Yeah, like, I think a lot of people are like, I don't know, I wonder if he can drink the water.
Ah!
Guest:Right?
Guest:Yeah, I guess.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I guess.
Guest:But I also look at what I do like South Park.
Guest:This is the worst animation when they were actually cutting pieces of paper.
Guest:It's the worst animation ever.
Guest:But the writing was so great and the characters were so great.
Guest:Who cares?
Guest:I would rather see a horrible juggler that can't juggle anything or a magician that can't pull off a thing that's funny than I would that's amazing that can, you know, a juggler can juggle eight things at once.
Guest:Who cares?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I want to see the guy drop it and fall on his face.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:say something funny yeah yeah yeah once and hopefully on purpose it gets a little rough when they just keep dropping shit and you're like I think we gotta go click well good luck working on you got plenty of time to develop the you know whichever character is gonna deal with coronavirus you're gonna have a little time off yeah but Mark I will say that is a brilliant idea that he was one of my haters online there you go that's really fun run with it thanks great talking to you man appreciate it
Marc:Now, see, I enjoyed that immensely, to be quite honest with you.
Marc:Guy makes his own heads.
Marc:Makes his own puppets.
Marc:You can go to Stitcher Premium to pick up the premium service and get you all 1,100-plus episodes of WTF.
Marc:You can watch my special on Netflix, my three specials on Netflix, my most recent one being End Times Fun.
Marc:And stay safe.
Marc:Try not to lose your minds.
Marc:Now I'm going to play three chords with maybe a fourth chord dropped in.
Bye.
.
.
Guest:Boomer lives.