by Jeff Dunham
One of my favorite moments was when there were about seven of us sitting in a semicircle in high-backed chairs. Walter was on my knee, doing our segment, and to our right was guest and infamous sports announcer Al Michaels. Michael Irvin almost always dressed in some off-the-wall outfit, and this particular day he was sitting a couple seats over to our left, wearing blue cotton plaid pants and matching shirt that looked exactly like pajamas. Between jokes, Walter spouted off to Al, “Do you see how Irvin is dressed?” Then, turning to Irvin, “Are you going to Michael Jackson’s sleepover again?”
Walter: There were so many good follow-up jokes for that, and not one of them was appropriate.
Jeff: I’m not sure if the first one was appropriate.
Walter: You’re welcome.
And another one that still makes me laugh when I watch it… Kruk was sitting in the middle of the couch and Irvin and Salley were on either side of him. Walter and I were to their right in a chair by ourselves. Walter had just done a joke with the punch line being Kruk. Everyone laughed, and the director went to a close-up of Kruk who looked anything but pleased. The other guys were still laughing and Walter said, “Oh, look: I got the brothers laughing and the cracker is pissed!”
Salley and Irvin about killed themselves laughing and falling all over each other. One thing I learned on that show was that the black guys would laugh really hard when the other guys, or they themselves got picked on, but the white guys would get mad. Kruk wasn’t really mad that day, but Chris Rose seemed to get visibly so when Walter inferred that his marriage was a “good cover” for the possibility that he wasn’t straight. Once again, the brothers laughed.
At another point after Kruk had made a joke about Walter being related to a sideline bench, Rose said to Kruk, “You know you’re arguing with a piece of wood.” Kruk replied, “Yeah, well he’s pissin’ me off!”
But the absolute best off-camera moment came not long after I had told Tom Arnold that I had read his biography and really enjoyed it. A couple weeks later when I was back at the studio, Kruk pulled me aside just before we went on the air and said, “I have to tell you what happened in the production meeting this morning. They said you were gonna be on today, and then told us the usual stuff: Just let you do your thing; if we want to come back with a line or two, that’s fine.” He paused, then added: “So Tom stopped in the middle of the meeting and said, ‘Look, guys, I just have to tell you this—he was sincere as he could be—he says, ‘You know Jeff Dunham, I really like him. But I can’t fucking stand Walter.’ ” Then Kruk added, “And he wasn’t kidding!”
This was incredibly fun stuff for me, and those few weeks on the Best Damn brought into perspective something that I had very much lost sight of—at home, I was severely outnumbered. In my house were my wife, my three daughters, my sister-in-law who always lived with us, and my mother-in-law for a few months out of every year. Six women and me! There were also three female dogs and two female rats… otherwise, it was just me and Bill the golden retriever! And one week when I was out of town, the women took Bill and had him neutered! I walked in the front door a couple days later, and I could swear Bill ran up to me and yelled, “YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT THEY DID TO ME!… RUN!”
Then I got on The Best Damn Sports Show Period and had a blast. And they kept having me back. It was locker room fun at its best, all in an estrogen-free, testosterone-filled environment.
After the show I would get in my Hummer and drive the ten miles back home from FOX Studios, still pumped. With Led Zeppelin or AC/DC thundering out of the truck’s nuclear-powered sound system, I kept that high going as long as possible. After all, I’d just gone toe-to-toe with some pretty tough hombres, and I’d held my own. Now I felt like some kind of bad-ass. This is not a good frame of mind to be in, then roaring into the driveway and trudging back into pretty-smelling, Touchy-Feely Land. On one of the best-worst days, I lumbered in the front door. My wife said something to me, and I snapped back with, “Oh yeah? You can either do that or blow it out your ass.”
And she said, “I can do WHAT?”
And I said, “Uh um uh, you um uh, well, the house looks lovely, honey.”
And the testosterone drained out the back door while Bill licked himself.
Walter: What a big wuss.
Jeff: What would you have said?
Walter: Exact same thing. You can’t mess with these women.
The success of Walter and me on The Best Damn Sports Show Period got some attention from the FOX suits upstairs. The 2002 football season was nearing playoff time, and a change was in the works on the FOX NFL Sunday pregame show. Jimmy Kimmel had been the comedy relief on the Sunday broadcast, doing sketches and making fun of the show’s hosts, James Brown, Terry Bradshaw, Jimmy Johnson, and Howie Long. He was also known as a prognosticator, picking who he thought would win certain games every week. David Hill was the president of Fox Sports at the time, and he noticed the laughs Walter and I had been getting. I can remember where I was on Ventura Boulevard when I got the news. David Hill was considering hiring Walter and me to be the guys to take Kimmel’s place, when he left for his late-night talk show on ABC. This spot couldn’t be much cooler. If this happened, I would be on the air every single Sunday during football season, trading jokes and jabs with some really big guys in the NFL. I loved Terry Bradshaw… and Jimmy Johnson? Former coach of the Cowboys. Most important, I knew this was the perfect formula and would work. I would come in with Walter, tell a few jokes about what had happened in the NFL that week, make a few jokes at the four guys’ expense, get some laughs, and all would be great.
David Hill called me in for a meeting, and details were hammered out. We worked out the financial aspects, what the segments would entail, what I needed to keep up with stats and subject matter, and he even asked me what I liked in the way of alcohol to celebrate. He said, “Get ready—you’re going to be a household name very soon. We’ll make the announcement during one of the playoff pre-games, the guys will introduce you and Walter, and then you’ll take over for Kimmel next season.”
This was huge… absolutely huge. It was finally the breakthrough that I’d been striving and working for since 1988 when I moved to LA. Fourteen years of treading water were about to pay off.
Hill concluded our meeting, saying that just to make a final check and be sure it was a good mix, we should come in the following Sunday, and between the actual live segments, Walter and I would sit down with the four guys and do a taped, pretend run-through, as if we were doing a live segment. I thought that was a great idea too, and I couldn’t wait to meet those four guys. It seemed like such a great bunch on the air.… And since the guys on the Best Damn had been so great, I knew this would go equally well.
When writing this book, I have chosen to tell the stories of my journey. There have been highs and lows, successes and failures. I have tried to not leave out anything significant, be it good or bad. But what I’m about to talk about now was truly one of the biggest failures, disappointments, and worst crash-and-burn moments I have ever experienced in this passage. Not only was I disappointed in myself, but in others as well. Men I looked up to and admired, men who I thought were great, were anything but.
I was very excited when Jeff Rothpan and I walked into the FOX Sports studios that day. I had been there many times before, and each appearance had gone either well, or incredibly well. I was so sure that this day would go even better. We had picked out the best jokes of everything we had written, and I had honed the segment to a smart, sharp edge. I had practiced the four minutes every night that previous week, and I was ready to make these guys laugh.
Into the studio we were escorted, and we sat quietly off camera in the huge studio while James, Terry, Jimmy, and Howie did their thing. There they were: bigger than life, laughing and kidding and talking to the nation about what was happening in the NFL at that very moment. Then they went to an extended break, and I was shown to a chair between all four guys on their amazing set, with lights and graphics
and cameras all around. Walter and I were seated right between Terry Bradshaw and Howie Long. I should have known it was a setup when I walked into it.
In hindsight it makes perfect sense as to what happened next. Here were four men who were gods in their professions. Jimmy Kimmel had made a mockery out of these guys, poking fun at just about anything about them, but could stay out of harm’s way since rarely was he ever actually talking to them. Most of his segments were done on tape. They could fire away back at him and make just as many jokes about him as he did them, but he wasn’t there to fight hand to hand. I, on the other hand, wanted to be in the middle of these guys. But I made the mistake of thinking that they would play the game just like the Best Damn Sports Show guys did. Not only was I fresh meat, but I was entering the lion’s den with a little wooden talking stick.
Walter: I can’t relive this; let me know when this story is over.
Jeff: Where are you going?
Walter: To the bathroom with my iPod.
We came back from a fake commercial break, and James Brown introduced us. Walter barely had half a sentence out of his mouth when Terry Bradshaw pounced. He came at Walter with something that made no sense and wasn’t funny. It was simply loud and overwhelming. Whenever I would try to set up a joke, Bradshaw was either stepping on our lines, or interrupting any kind of comedic timing that I needed. No one laughed at anything we said. There were simply sneers, interruptions, and a couple of chuckles. Was Bradshaw off his rocker and as crazy as he admitted in his own biography, or did he know exactly what he was doing? I tend to believe the latter. I think that at least two of the four guys were insulted beyond measure that a ventriloquist was being put on their show, and this was the only way they could stop the management’s plan.
The biggest insult happened when it was all over, as I was holding Walter and slowly standing up to walk away. Howie Long looked me straight in the eye and with nothing but finality in his voice said flatly, “Nice meeting you.” I knew I was finished.
Impressionist and comedian Frank Caliendo was chosen for the gig, and has made a fine go of it ever since. For a long time after that, though, I would catch myself wondering if I had screwed up the “big” opportunity forever, and if there weren’t going to be any more.
For two more years, we continued to pitch sitcom and television show ideas here and there to no avail. But Judi had never given up on the Comedy Central end of things. She was convinced that there were still big opportunities at that network, and she just needed to convince them to put me on the air again.
At home, I was very close to dropping the bomb that we were going to have to move. Did that mean just a smaller house, or did it mean a new location with new schools and friendships strained due to distance? I didn’t know, but I was scared. All I could do was keep working. Club after club.
Once in the late 1990s and again a few years later, I had self-financed very small, inexpensive, professional multicamera video shoots of my show. Once I did it at a theater just outside of Phoenix, and another time at Charlie Goodnight’s comedy club in Raleigh, North Carolina. They were last-minute ideas, and I never had a staff on hand to help me. I would contact a local video company who would scout the place, then bring in a camera crew and shoot. I would take the raw tapes and edit together a production on my Mac. My intention was to sell these tapes as another revenue stream, but also use them as another way of getting my act out there. Both times, after spending a few thousand dollars on each, I was unhappy with the end product. Both were great shows and funny, but I hated the overall look of the tape and that it wasn’t good enough for my fans. I wasn’t proud of it, and that was the bottom line. So I would take all that time and money and effort, and all those tapes and backup hard drives, and put them on a shelf in my garage.
Judi and Robert saw what I was doing and we all began to think very hard about what the next career move should be. TV certainly wasn’t coming to us. Comedy Central had said no too many times to count, no matter how much we touted my sales numbers or reminded them how well my half-hour special had done for them. They simply didn’t want a ventriloquist.
I’ve talked about different turns in life, and how sometimes seemingly small decisions or events here or there can change our futures immeasurably. I can point to a few moments and people in my own past that had they not been there, I don’t think I’d be anywhere near where I am now. And so it is that you may never have heard of me or Achmed, or anyone else in my trunk, had it not been for a gentleman in a wheelchair.
It was now the late summer of 2004, and NBC had just completed their second season of Last Comic Standing. Image Entertainment, an independent distributor of home entertainment programming, had an employee named Bob Foster who loved stand-up comedy. Bob wasn’t a top executive at Image, or a big decision maker. In fact, he was one of the guys in charge of the details, like designing menus on the DVDs. Bob had lost part of a leg to diabetes, and when not on crutches, was tooling around Image in his wheelchair. He had become a fan of Kathleen Madigan, one of the contestants on Last Comic Standing that season. He searched for Kathleen on the Internet, and found that her manager just happened to be one Judi Brown-Marmel, one of my managers as well. He contacted Judi and told her that he had shown Kathleen’s Last Comic Standing appearances to his bosses, and that they liked her. Judi didn’t know much about Image, but took a meeting.
Judi had lunch with Barry Gordon, who was one of the top guys at Image and made a lot of the decisions. It turned out that in the past few years, Image Entertainment had been very successful with the acquisition of all the Blue Collar Comedy guys and their DVD titles. They were distributing not only the DVDs of the group together, but also their independent projects as well. Image distributed titles for Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy, Bill Engvall, and Ron White. The simple formula they had come up with was this—sign a client, produce their live special, sell it to a network where the edited version of the special would air, then sell and distribute the full-length version on DVD in retail. It was genius. They were raking in the dough.
Judi made the deal for Kathleen, but she also took a very important step for me: She sent Bob (the menu design guy) the latest version of my promo reel, which I had edited myself. It contained my funniest clips from the Carson days, plus the Best Damn Sports Show, and bits with Dead Osama shot with a simple handheld home video camera. Bob dug it in a big way. He took my tape straight to Barry Gordon as well as Richard Buchalter, the head of sales, and told the guys they had to watch. Well, apparently, not only did they like it, but they loved it. And these guys saw what Judi did. They saw Middle America, all the normal folks out there who would buy this DVD for themselves and their family. The material wasn’t cerebral or highbrow—it just made you laugh.
The deal finally became official in early 2005. Image would pay us $50,000 to produce a special. Judi and Robert joined forces with Stu Schreiberg and created Levity Entertainment. Their idea was to produce comedy DVDs and sell them to distributors and broadcast partners. Stu already had a solid track record producing shows like Iron Chef America on the Food Network, all the live finales of Survivor on CBS, The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders on CMT, and most important from my standpoint, Jamie Foxx’s Laughapalooza. Stu knew how to shoot comedy. It was a perfect marriage: By co-owning and booking a huge number of the major comedy clubs in the country, Robert had relationships with just about every comic in the business. Judi had great relations with many of the networks and shows because of her background in bookings, and Stu had the experience and track record on the production end of things. So now, not only could Levity Entertainment develop comics in the club chain, but they could then cultivate their careers through television and DVDs. And now, it looked like I was to be their flagship project.
The team tried to figure out how in the world we could shoot a decent comedy special, worthy of airplay on any given network… for $50,000. It was pretty much impossible. That wasn’t enough money to do anything worthwhile, and certainly noth
ing near the quality I was telling them I wanted. We hadn’t yet convinced anyone to buy the show, so there was only one place to get the money. I had to borrow it.
Peanut: And we borrowed that money from the Mafia.
Jeff: No, we didn’t.
Peanut: Just trying to make the book more exciting.
A guy named John Power had entered my life not long before that, and he was well on the way to helping me not only keep my head above water financially, but he was also going to help our family understand that we had to stop spending so much money. My yearly purchases of new Apple laptops weren’t the problem—it was more the lifestyle and the yanking out of credit cards at every whim that was killing us.
Anyway, I had no doubts that this could be my last stab at accomplishing my lifelong goal. I was now forty-three years old. Comedy careers rarely, if ever, take off for anyone after that age. Borrowing this money was going for broke, but I believed that if we shot this thing the right way, made it beautiful and high-quality, and made it funny, we could get it on the air. And if we got it on the air, I was confident that all kinds of good things would follow. Remember what a gamble this was. This was borrowed money spent with zero guarantee of return. Image had made a $50,000 investment, confident that they would earn it back, even if it meant simply selling the DVDs at clubs after my shows. Twenty-five thousand copies of a DVD sold was, and still is, considered a huge success. Everyone was telling me that was the goal.