All By My Selves

by Jeff Dunham

  Walter: For someone you love?

  Jeff: That would be good.

  Walter: I love you as sunshine over oceans…

  I love you as moonlight over mountains.… They say love is forever.… I love you… dirtbag.

  Another guy at that club was a big goombah by the name of Steve Schirripa. Besides being the director of entertainment at the Riviera, on a nightly basis Steve ran all three small showrooms located just off the main casino, at the top of the escalators. There was the Improv, La Cage, and Crazy Girls. Each room sat about two hundred people at best, and they all had self-serve bars in the back. Nice.

  Steve would bark orders and intimidate employees left and right, and everyone jumped when he growled. Of formidable size and truly fitting the part, Steve was the epitome of a connected guy. Oh, and that’s probably how you’d recognize him today: He was Bobby Bacala on The Sopranos. Now a celeb, back then Steve was just the scary guy that you knew would break your legs if you did something wrong, or at least that’s what most everyone thought.

  My first night at the Riviera, I met Steve in the showroom at the appointed time to set up. He gave me my little talk, which concluded with, sure enough, a threat to do me bodily harm if I went over my time. I told him no problem, but I wasn’t quite sure there wasn’t a little acting in his performance.

  For the first few nights, I stayed within my allotted time for the most part, and maybe went thirty seconds over. I think I had to do something like fifteen minutes total. But on the Thursday night, it was an awesome crowd and I went two minutes over my time. Steve was in the back of the room shining and blinking the flashlight in my eyes. At three minutes overtime, I wrapped. By the time I reached the self-serve bar at the back of the room, Schirripa was in my face with his own mug and a big, fat, ringed finger.

  “DO YOU KNOW WHAT FUCKIN’ TIME IT IS!? DO YOU KNOW HOW FUCKIN’ FAH YOU WENT OH-VU!? IF YOU EVER, AND I MEAN FUCKIN’ EVER DO THAT AGAIN, I WILL PERSONALLY BREK YOUR FUCKIN’ LEKKS! CAPISCE?”

  I stood there looking at him with a frown, not breaking eye contact. I’d seen other guys almost wet their pants at his dressing-down, but the drama just seemed a little cartoony to me. I had a feeling Steve was actually a good guy.

  It just seemed a little over the top. So I took my chances, and in my best New York Italian mobster accent I said, “Yeh… I heah yuh. Yuh gonna brek my fookin’ leks.” He stood there for a few seconds, glaring at me. I then made a big, exaggerated grin, eyebrows raised, eyes wide open, and showing all my teeth. He was a good five inches taller than me, so he was looking down. I saw his jaw twitch, then he started to chew on the inside of his mouth. He was either going to smash my face in or—He broke into a big laugh, slapped me on the back, and said, “You’re all right, kid.… Just try and stay in your time.”

  I’ve run into Steve now and then since, and he truly is a good guy. Just don’t FOOK with him!

  The Vegas Improv was of course the least glamorous of all the Improv clubs. The comics didn’t even get a room at the Riviera. We had to stay at the most horrible of horrible dive motels on the strip, which was right next door to the Riviera. Peanut’s joke was, “They remodeled our motel… they put new duct tape on the carpets.”

  One week while working Vegas, all three comics had our separate rooms broken into on the same night. It was obviously an inside job by someone who knew when we would be at the Riviera working. I had just purchased some really nice portable Bose speakers and a Sony CD Walkman. Remember those? They were all gone after the show. I remember another time being woken in the middle of the night, jolted out of my sleep. I’d made it to the door, hand on the latch, turning the knob, almost bursting into the hallway to assail the attacker before I realized that the woman’s screams weren’t from terror, but from, well… pleasure. The sound through the wall wasn’t even the slightest bit muffled.

  Playing the road like this really wasn’t any kind of glamorous life. It was grueling, it was lonely, and at times, sleazy. But if nothing else, after having lived a very nice upper-middle-class life back in Dallas and in Waco, it was a true motivator. I wanted to move up in the world.

  With the exception of the Vegas Improv, while working almost all other clubs, the headliners got preferential treatment and much better accommodations than the lower acts. I shudder when I hear the words comedy condo. This is where the opener and middle (also called the feature) acts would stay. A club would purchase or rent a condo or apartment usually within walking distance of the club, and that’s where you’d live for the week. Talk about sleazy: Road comics come from all walks of life, usually younger guys (and a few chicks) who were happy just to have a gig and a roof at night. You never knew who was sleeping in the bed the week before you, or what went on there before you arrived. It was much worse than even a sleazy motel because there usually wasn’t a maid service. To further cut costs, the clubs usually made one of the lower ranked managers or even a server head over on Monday mornings to “tidy up.” Sometimes you’d arrive on a Tuesday, and the well-worn sheets would still be in the washer or dryer. Lord knows what stains those were on the carpets.

  Peanut: I’ll tell you what was on the carpet—

  Jeff: Please don’t.

  Peanut: At the comedy condo, I was too happy to be sleeping in a trunk.

  The final straw came in Minneapolis one winter when I was playing a club called Dave Wood’s Ribtickler. Dave was a stand-up who I met working at the Comedy & Magic a few times, and he was part owner of this downtown Minnesota club. I’d never experienced truly cold temperatures, but this would be the week. Negative 40°F with a wind chill of -70°F. Holy mother. Southern Californians and Texans are not hearty folk when it comes to temperatures like that. But the cold wasn’t the point. I got dropped off by the cab at the condo, and the front desk “guard” gave me my key. Oh, let me mention the cab: I’d heard this rumor before, but I had to confirm it. When the cab driver picked me up at the airport, I asked him when the last time was that he’d turned off his engine. Two and a half weeks. Because of the cold, some of these guys would never turn the car off. They’d just let it idle, even when they were inside asleep for the night. Block heaters did no good at those temperatures, according to this guy. It was better for the engine to just keep chugging. It was too damn cold.

  Anyway, I got to the condo and opened the door. It was like a bad movie. Stains on the walls, floors, and ceiling; discarded food containers scattered about; holes punched in the drywall; and a kitchen and bathroom that looked like something out of a bad CSI episode. But the final, final straw for me were the two or three crusty stains on the bedspread. I was disgusted and I’d had it. I also knew the only way out was to become a headliner in the A clubs.

  Walter: Or get a real job!

  After getting good reports back from the Vegas Improv, Budd finally set up a time for Debra Sartell to check me out. I was scheduled to do twenty minutes at the short-lived Sherman Oaks Improv, which was an ingloriously converted banquet room located inside the Marriott Hotel at the 101 and 405 freeway exchange. But unlike the jaded industry Hollywood folks from the Melrose club, this was certainly more my kind of crowd. This was a more typical audience for me. Afterward, one of the lower agents from Morris introduced me to Debra. “That was great,” she said. “I’ll start booking you right away as a middle.” Whoa. Perfect. It was so simple a statement, yet such a huge career moment. The agent was almost as shocked as I was happy. Trust me on this: Next to no one expected a vent to be able to work the Improvs. And Debra was sticking her neck out to the club owners simply by booking me. But the proof had been the reaction by the crowd in front of Budd, as well as in the reports from the Vegas club. So now the real roadwork began.

  There is nothing easier for a good comedian than being the middle act at a comedy club. There’s very little pressure because no one is expecting you to be good. You don’t have the responsibility of carrying the show. You just have to get up there, do your thing for twenty or so minutes, then get off
. It’s a layup. Well, I was just too darned competitive to be content with a layup. I knew I could headline. I sharpened my twenty minutes to a fine edge and it was becoming a very powerful set.

  This was still 1989, and in addition to the Funny Bones and some other independents clubs, I started doing multiple weeks nationwide at Budd’s other Improvs, courtesy of Debra Sartell. In addition to Melrose, the Improvs that existed back then were Dallas; Addison, Texas; Seattle; Washington, D.C.; Cleveland; Tempe, Arizona; Brea, California; Irvine, California; and San Diego. Shows were always Tuesday through Sunday nights, eight or nine shows a week. A couple of other names you might have heard of who were also middle acts at that time were David Spade and some guy named Adam Sandler. And pay? The three of us were getting top dollar for middles back then: $100 per show. So I was pulling in $700 a week. I was working probably forty-two weeks a year, so that’s about $30,000 a year.

  After one really strong week at the San Diego Improv, I called Debra and said, “I was wondering about headlining.” She replied, “You what?” And I said, “Well, I really feel like there are people in the audience that are there just to see me.” I could almost feel her roll her eyes over the phone.

  “Don’t tell me you think you’re getting a following,” she said.

  “Yeah. I really think I am.”

  She took a deep breath and spoke a sentence that became the perfect challenge.

  “You can move up from middle when the headliners can no longer follow you.”

  I replied, “Okay. Deal.”

  Peanut: This is my favorite part!

  Jeff: What is?

  Peanut: This is where I kick ass and take no prisoners and women fall at my feet!

  Jeff: That’s a little much.

  Peanut: I can dial it back.

  The tipping point happened at the Tempe Improv not too many weeks after that. In 1989, jalapeño peppers weren’t exactly a popular food for most of the country, but in the Southwest, and especially Arizona, José Jalapeño’s “on a steek” got a huge reaction. Then I topped his segment with the tequila-worm-in-the-bottle bit. I ended with the five-voice, fast-talking business. It was a killer set. It was made even bigger by the fact that no audience was expecting much more than average stand-up from the middle guy. Oftentimes I’d get standing ovations, and that’s pretty rare for the middle guy. The best part? According to folks on the inside, I was making the headliners uncomfortable because I was tough to follow. I was soon given a trial run as headliner, at the… guess where… the Dallas Improv. That was my hometown, and I guess the powers that be wanted to give me the best chance at doing well.

  José: I was so excited.

  Peanut: You? How did you show it? By opening your eyes slightly wider?

  The next big step was appearing on television in stand-up comedy shows as often as possible. It was 1989, and the then fledgling FOX network was having success with a show called Comic Strip Live. I performed on that show multiple times, as well as on more of A&E’s An Evening at the Improv. Next was Jonathan Winters and His Traveling Road Show on Showtime, and a few others here and there.

  For each television appearance, I had to pare a portion of the act down to a tight five or six minutes. I began to figure out by watching the stopwatch what would make a killer television comedy segment. The guys who did well in these stand-up shows or on Carson or Letterman did best if they got a good laugh within the first twenty seconds. And then, there was simple math: If the guy got a laugh every six to twelve seconds, the spot was killer. So that’s five to ten laughs per minute. Conversely, if he or she was getting four laughs or less per minute, it simply didn’t go well.

  Also, the television audience is a different animal than the club audience. Usually they want the comic to do well, but they immediately start to get nervous if the comic is sweating, or if the laughs aren’t there. At that point they begin to get quiet and it can all go south very quickly.

  With each and every television appearance, The Tonight Show never left my mind. Between 1986 and the spring of 1990, I auditioned for Jim McCawley a total of eight times, and after each one, he turned me down. My ten-year high school reunion was scheduled for June of 1990 and I didn’t feel any closer to achieving my goal than I had five years before. No matter how many shows I did on TV, or how many sold-out shows and standing ovations I got at clubs and colleges around the country, I wasn’t happy with where I was. That elusive Carson goal was always seemingly just one audition away.

  For as long as I could remember, my father had told me he wanted to go to Africa on a safari. He had grown up watching Johnny Weissmuller in Tarzan movies, and he had always dreamed of seeing the wilds of that continent. He was now sixty-three years old and he had finally made plans to go over there with a tour group on a two-week picture safari. My mother never wanted to go. She was delicate and fearful and knew she couldn’t handle it. Dad was chomping at the bit.

  “Who are you going with, Pop?” I asked.

  “No one,” he said.

  “Dad, that’s sad,” I replied.

  “I don’t mind,” he said. “It’ll be fun.”

  I sat there thinking. I felt really nervous about leaving the country because I would be out of touch, with no one to answer the call if I got a big gig. But I also knew Dad wasn’t getting any younger. He’d talked about this since I was a boy.

  “I’ll go, Pop,” I said.

  “What? Really? Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said. “It’ll be fun!”

  “THAT’S GREAT!”

  We left a few weeks later and it was a once-in-a-lifetime adventure. Not only did we see every wild animal he’d ever talked about, but we took literally hundreds of pictures. We missed Mom, as neither one of us had ever gone that long without talking to her. To this day, I’ve never told Mom the secret of how much beer Dad drank that trip. I didn’t even know he LIKED beer. Way to go, Pop!

  Not long after we returned from Africa, my ninth audition for Jim McCawley and The Tonight Show took place. It was late March of 1990, at the Ice House in Pasadena, California.

  It was just a guest spot, so afterward I was out in the parking lot putting the big trunk back into my car while the show was still going on. I was alone; the Morris agents had long since given up going with me or even scheduling these auditions. For the past few, it had simply been Lacey telling Jim to see me again at Comedy & Magic, or me calling McCawley at NBC and asking nicely.

  I was a little depressed as I hefted the heavy case into the vehicle. The audience had responded well, but I didn’t feel the six minutes was all that much different from the other eight times. I’d changed a few jokes here and there, updated characters, and tightened up the laughs a bit, but basically, it was the same stuff. I didn’t know how to make it any better without starting from scratch. Jim walked out the club door and toward my car. I was ready for the same old, “Really good, but you’re still not ready.”

  “Well… you got it,” he stated with a smile.

  “Got what?” I honestly didn’t know what he meant.

  “The show. You got the show. I’ll call you tomorrow and we’ll find a date.”

  My mouth hung open and I just stood there, blinking, not really comprehending what had just happened to me. Then his words took on meaning, and an honest-to-goodness joy swept over and through me.

  I look back now and have to smile at what an innocent and simple time that was in my life. Completely self-absorbed in my own career with zero responsibilities other than to make sure I called my parents a couple of times a week just to say hi. That was it. I gave a little to charity here and there, rent was low, my health was good, no one was depending on me for anything, and my mom prayed for me every day. There was no war, no threat of terror, and the economy was good. All I had to do was get onstage every night and make sure that everyone who had paid good money for the show laughed a lot. And now a goal that I had set nine years and ten months before was about to finally be achieved, only two month
s before its due date.

  I asked Jim later what the difference was that night, and he said it was confidence, timing, and better jokes. Well, that all made sense. I had practiced that bit over and over so many times that it had become second nature. But would it pay off when the real pressure was on?

  Even though I’d done the bit a million times before, I rehearsed it over and over in front of the mirror and a video camera in my tiny room for the next few days. No fat. No unneeded pauses. Like I’ve said for many years: Ventriloquism is easy; comedy is hard.

  Though I felt like it might be bordering on bad luck, I told all family and friends again. Mom and Dad once again called everyone that they could think of. This time I bought myself a designer silk suit for something like a thousand bucks. You could be on Carson for your first time only once.

  Walter: A silk suit?

  Jeff: That was the fashion at the time.

  Walter: What, looking like a white pimp?

  As a kid, my favorite fast-food restaurant hands down was Burger King. I decided that my LLBC (Last Lunch Before Carson) had to be a Whopper with cheese (no pickles), fries, and a chocolate shake. I had timed things just right so that I arrived at NBC in Burbank only a few minutes before I was supposed to. Once again, it was just me. No agent, no manager, no publicist, no family, and no girlfriend, which was okay since I didn’t want any distractions anyway.

  One of the guards told me where to drive and park, and it was unbelievably surreal. All the parking spots next to the main backstage entrance had name plates on them, clearly visible. There was a Corvette, spotless and beautiful. The name read JOHNNY CARSON. Holy crap.