by Jeff Dunham
Here’s a bit of trivia that most of my guy friends shake their heads at, even to this day. On that one day, May 19, 1994, yes on that ONE day, I not only got a wife, but: I got a daughter (I adopted Bree not long after that), I signed the papers to finalize the purchase of my first house in Encino, we got a dog at the mall earlier in the day, and after the marriage ceremony late that afternoon, we went to the local dealership and I bought a brand-new, bright red 1994 Dodge Viper. Good lord. One minute I was single, living in a $400 a month apartment, the next I had a wife, a kid, a dog, a big mortgage, and a kick-ass sports car.
Walter: And I thought Peanut was a mental case.
Peanut: Thanks—Wait, do you mean in a good way?
Walter: I couldn’t have done all that… I was too traumatized just from getting married.
Three months later we had the bigger official ceremony with 120 invited guests at Disney World in Orlando. Mickey and Minnie cut in on our first dance, and a couple minutes later, Winnie the Pooh came in to dance with an almost-two-year-old Bree. It was truly a storybook wedding.
We lived in that house in Encino for a couple of years, where our second daughter, Ashlyn, was born. In 1997 we moved to Tarzana, into a bigger house with a bigger mortgage and a lot more rooms to furnish. The day before we moved from that house to the next, baby Makenna came into this world, and I was now truly a blessed man. I had a beautiful wife and three beautiful daughters.
The holidays were always magical for us, and Christmas, hands down, was the most fun. Paige decorated the house to look wonderful. Our living room had ceilings two stories tall, so our tree was usually thirteen or fourteen feet high. When the girls were really young, my favorite thing to do was to create “The Mommy Store.” Since the girls were too young to actually shop for their mother, I would buy a bunch of presents for Paige, large and small, cheap and expensive, beautiful and funny. I would then turn my office into a store, complete with big price tags on all the items placed all around the room, and a little cash register at my desk. I had three little toy shopping carts and play money that I would divide into equal piles. A big banner hung across the back wall that said THE MOMMY STORE. My wife of course was never allowed anywhere near my office during this, but I’d run the video camera so she could watch it later. I’d open the door, and the girls would run in and start choosing treasures for their mom. I would sit at my desk, and they would then come over and I’d ring up the sales, taking their toy cash. Then we’d sit on the floor and wrap all the gifts, with the store’s “complimentary gift wrap.”
Bubba J.: Daddy did the same with me when I was a kid. Ours was the “Momma Pawn Shop.”
Jeff: What kinds of gifts were there?
Bubba J.: Rolling papers, beer, spit cups, everything she loved!
One of my favorite Christmas mornings was a few years later, when Paige and I had been married seven years. It was Christmas 2001. All of Santa’s gifts had been discovered, and the girls thought everyone’s presents had been opened. I gathered all of us around the tree and said, “Well, that really isn’t everything. There’s one more present for Mommy… and it’s from me. Hang on.” Out to the garage I ran and hauled in a wooden crate, sealed tightly with a bunch of screws. It was about the size of a carry-on suitcase, but it weighed more than seventy pounds. I had built this crate myself, and had packed tightly the contents weeks before.
All the girls, including my wife, were bewildered. I just smiled, handing Paige a cordless drill with a Phillips bit in the chuck. “Have at it!” I said. She went to work on the crate as I sat back, grinning, and the girls looked on, confused. They almost always knew what the presents for Mommy would be, but I’d kept this one a secret.
A few minutes later, all screws in the lid were out and Paige pulled it to the side while the girls gathered around to see what lay inside. With a perfect fit, nestled inside the rest of the crate was a well-worn, scratched-up, and beat-up pay phone. One reason it was so heavy was because the money was still in it.
“What in the world—?” Paige asked.
“Think,” I said.
“Daaaaad,” Ashlyn said, “why’d you give Mommy a PAY PHONE?” Ashlyn was now six, Kenna was four, and Bree was ten.
Paige still looked confused. “I don’t get it,” she said.
“Oh, come on,” I responded. “Look at the address.” On the phone, behind the thick clear plastic cover, was the address of where the stolen pay phone had originally been installed. For years I had been telling the proprietor of the establishment that if they ever remodeled the building and changed out that phone, I wanted it. The staff knew my wishes too, and they had done even better. One night a few of them had a little too much to drink and they decided to get the thing for me. When they brought it to me, I opened the guy’s car trunk, and there it was, still mounted to a piece of drywall! Portions of a stud had even come along for the ride when they’d ripped it from its mooring.
My wife looked at the address on the phone’s faceplate, mouthed it silently to herself, then the realization hit her. This was the pay phone from the comedy club lobby that she’d been talking on when I interrupted her conversation. I found out later that the guy she’d been talking to hadn’t been a date that stood her up, but it was, in fact, her father. She had called him to check on infant Bree, who he was babysitting back at their apartment.
Paige burst into tears, and the girls were even more confused. “Mommy, what’s wrong?” asked one of them.
“I think she’s happy,” I said.
I removed the phone, then put the lid back on the crate, and we stood it on end next to our big television in the living room. I then mounted the pay phone on top of the crate. As cheesy as it sounds, it looked perfect, almost like an abstract piece of white-trash art.
Bubba J.: That’s a nice story. I got my wife something special from our first date.
Jeff: What was it?
Bubba J.: The smashed-up folding chair from a wrastlin’ match.
Jeff: That’s nice.
Bubba J.: And for our five-year anniversary, I topped it with an exhaust pipe from our twenty-ninth tractor pull!
As the 1990s wore on, nothing made me happier than being with my family. Though I worked an incredible amount and was gone a great deal, nothing was more important to me than time together with my wife and children. I wanted to push my career as far as it would go, but like most people, it became an incredibly difficult balancing act between job and family.
My goal was always to be doing better the next year than I was the last. Whether that meant bigger venues or more TV, it didn’t matter; I simply wanted progression. I had also always said to myself that I would never take a gig simply for the money. Each and every booking had to advance my career. Corporate dates, colleges, comedy clubs, Las Vegas, cruise ships, amusement parks, every one of them was a step in the direction I’d been heading.
By mid-1993, the theater work began to wane. So now I was faced with one of life’s dilemmas: I wanted nothing more than to work less and be with my family, but if I did that, we wouldn’t have enough money to make ends meet. I was still one of the top-earning touring club comics in the country, and we were going broke. It was ridiculous. On top of that, when I was home, I couldn’t spend much quality time with the family. I would have to spend hours on end sitting in my office, paying bills, making deposits, and taking care of all the business aspects of my job and domestic life.
The worst memory of those days came early one morning when Ashlyn was barely four years old. Before I left, I would always put my trunk, my suitcase, and my backpack just inside the front door, where it would sit until I took it out to the car. One morning I had piled it all there, and then went back to the kitchen to say good-bye to my wife. I walked back to the front door, and there sitting next to all my stuff was little Ashlyn’s own colorful kid-sized rolling suitcase. She wanted to go with Daddy. I got a huge lump in my throat, and then truly had to fight back tears when I took it back to tell her she couldn’t go. B
efore I left, we sat down on her bed and opened the suitcase together. There were only three things: Her two baby dolls and her blanket. It was heartwrenching as she sobbed, standing at the front door, crying for me to stay as I was driven away in the cab. I couldn’t fight back the tears either.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Moving Forward? Not Exactly
During the rest of the 1990s, though I knew that business was going well, I felt like I was spinning my wheels: Even though just about every club show was a sellout, and although I knew this was a position any comic would dream of being in, by 1993, I was starting to feel like I was trapped under some kind of thick layer of ice and I couldn’t break out to go any higher. I thought the answer for keeping the career growing was television. I was pushing for what many of my more successful contemporaries were doing. I wanted a sitcom.
My guest appearances on the many stand-up shows from 1989 to 1992 had created a legion of fans who kept coming to the live performances. But in 1994 the market changed. By then, most of the stand-up television programs had come and gone, and just about the only conventional places left for comics to be on the air were The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Leno having replaced Johnny Carson permanently in 1992, and Late Night with David Letterman. The Arsenio Hall Show came and went as well, as did a few more late-night talk shows and hosts. With television appearances harder to come by now, touring clubs, and even doing local radio morning shows as club publicity was becoming incredibly important. Momentum is important in a career, and since television continued to be elusive, I was always on the lookout for ways to keep my shows memorable.
One week when I was in Tempe, Arizona, playing the local Improv, I was having lunch with Dan Hutchinson, who at that time was the manager of the club. He loved my act, but especially Walter. We were tossing around ideas of what kind of guy Walter was, and what he and I should be discussing onstage. We then started spitballing the idea back and forth that Walter should be some sort of advice giver, like Dear Abby. On my PowerBook I pieced together a handout that had a picture of Walter’s head in black and white, and the words Dear Walter… with multiple blank lines following it. Dan agreed to make and cut multiple copies of the sheet, then have the staff distribute them to every table in the club. Before the show started, the sound guy would make an announcement for folks to “Please fill out your ‘Dear Walter’ cards. You can ask his advice on anything and everything. We’ll be around to pick the cards up shortly.” Then just before the show started, the staff would gather all the cards and bring them to me in the Green Room. I would then furiously go through them all, picking ones that I knew Walter could answer with good jokes.
The first night, the bit killed. Folks knew that this was a unique part of their show. They were seeing Walter and me think on our feet and not simply go through the motions of a set routine. The piece got so successful that for many years I ended the show with it.
Dear Walter, Did you vote for Abraham Lincoln?
Walter: No, but I gave him my theater tickets.
Dear Walter, Why do women play mind games?
Walter: ’Cause they’re no good at regular sports.
Dear Walter: We’re newlyweds. Any advice?
Walter: Nope; too late.
Dear Walter: What is the difference between sex and making love?
Walter: Fifty bucks.
Dear Walter, How do I keep my wife’s butt from looking like a golf ball?
Walter: Stop pokin’ it with your putter.
Dear Walter, If a man touches and smells a woman’s hair, is that considered sexual harassment?
Walter: No, unless the guy’s a midget.
Dear Walter, Are you anatomically correct?
Walter: No, I’m politically correct; I have no balls.
Seemingly, the comedy was the main purpose for the cards. But I had an ulterior motive on the business side of things. At the bottom of the cards was a second section, which was adorned with a picture of Peanut. A short line of text promised folks that if they filled in the blanks and gave us their mailing address, we would use that data for Jeff Dunham promotions and mailings, and nothing more. It said that we’d notify them when I was coming back to their area for live shows, or whenever we were going to be on TV, and that we would never sell nor give the information to anyone else for any reason. We utilized the mailing list in every way imaginable, but did what we said we would and kept the addresses all to ourselves.
My agency made these cards a part of every single contract, and it was a deal breaker. The clubs were required to help with the “Dear Walter” cards at each show, and I had to be allowed to farm and cultivate all the collective data. Many of the clubs protested, wanting to keep the information for their own databases. Again, that became a deal breaker for us, as I absolutely refused to allow that to happen, simply out of loyalty to the fans. Granted, some of the clubs would try and pull a fast one by copying the cards before they were given to me, but we quickly squelched that process by making sure the cards went directly from the tables to one or two of my guys and then to me. Another trick the clubs would pull would be to “innocently” cut the cards in half so that the “Dear Walter” section would be separate from the address pieces. That way they could give me the Dear Walter side, and then copy the addresses for themselves while I was onstage. The fix would always be a simple phone call to my agency or management, who would call back and “straighten out the misunderstanding.”
The next huge step with the Dear Walter cards came a few years later when the Internet started to take off, and e-mails became the better choice for publicizing. A mass e-mail was a fraction of the cost of snail-mail postcards, but that wouldn’t come for a couple more years, and long after we had used the snail-mail list to huge advantage. Though it sounds like a small number now, at that time we maintained an average of thirty thousand to forty thousand good snail-mail addresses.
The Dear Walter cards were a huge success for many years. On both the comedy as well as the business sides of things, it was magic. Some of my best material for years came from the ad-libs and jokes Walter would answer with after I read the questions aloud. A few years later, I gave a list of the funniest ones to my wife, who turned them into a soft-cover book that we titled—what else—Dear Walter. This was long before we had anyone interested in carrying any of my merchandise in retail, so since no publisher wanted it at that time, we self-published it and sold it at shows and online for a couple of years. It wasn’t a huge seller, but it certainly did pretty well as a homegrown piece of work.
Understandably, the database grew in leaps and bounds every month. It was a true key to maintaining and informing loyal fans, but soon it simply became too much for me, my wife, or any of my publicists to handle. I finally had to source out the mailing list maintenance to a professional company.
After taking over for Johnny, Jay Leno had me on as a stand-up guest. Just as with my first time with Carson, I ended up on the couch right after my set. The other guest who was still there when I made my walk over with Walter in my arms was none other than Sugar Ray Leonard. Not being able to resist, I had Walter turn to him and say, “So you’re gonna fight again, huh? How old are you?” Sugar Ray replied back, “Forty.”
“Forty, huh?” Walter asked. “Oh kaaaaayyyyyyy….” That reply from Walter drew a nice big laugh from the crowd, but once again, I never asked anyone if I could talk to Sugar Ray—I just did it and luckily, the affable boxer seemingly didn’t take offense, and instead laughed along with everyone else.
During the next few years, I returned to Leno every so often, making guest appearances in fake satellite hookups with Walter dressed in ridiculous costumes. One time he was a bad mall Santa, then Cupid, then the Easter Bunny, and finally Uncle Sam. “I know what NBC stands for! ‘Nothing But Crap!’” (Another nonsanctioned ad-lib.)
I’ve always found that one of the best ways to keep audiences interested and laughing is to utilize current topical material straight out of the headlines. That’s pretty much
99 percent of most talk show opening monologues, and there have been a handful of characters and public figures in recent years that many comedians owe a debt of gratitude to. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are a couple of the top guys, but the big one of the 1990s was O. J. Simpson, plus many of the clowns surrounding him and that entire goofball circus.
After the slow-speed chase and all the nutty stuff that followed the tragedies, like every other comic, I jumped on it, but I also took it a little further than most comedians. During the Simpson trial, the poor O.J. jury was sequestered, and during the almost four-month trial, they had little to do. I heard through the grapevine that the court was trying to find entertainment for the jury during off hours, since they weren’t allowed to go anywhere, talk to anyone, or do much of anything. So I had my publicist at the time contact Judge Ito, the presiding judge in the case, to see if he would like a little free entertainment from me and my guys. How cool would that be?
Well, sure enough, Judge Ito said yes, and we were put on the docket. As the day for the performance grew closer, I began to wonder about jumping on this crazy bandwagon of publicity and hype. Leno had the “Judge Ito Dancers” and everyone in the world was making jokes about the case and the judge himself. Certainly there was nothing funny about a double homicide, but everything that surrounded the case made it all look like complete tomfoolery. I knew I could add my own twist to it all.