by Jeff Dunham
Eddie reassured me that the bit would still be strong. I knew that was next to impossible.
Watching it a few hours later that night with friends in my hotel room, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, and in fact, they’d done a very nice job with making the set seem seamless. The trouble was, just as I had feared, some of the biggest laughs were from the most biting jokes, and they had been axed. What made it worse was that in a few instances, the setups were left, and the punch lines were missing. For example:
Jeff: They do that because those potential terrorists were trying to sneak explosives on inside shampoo bottles.
(Giant edit and then…)
Walter: There’s the one group of folks I don’t understand at all… damn suicide bombers.…
So they did a fine job of making it sound like a conversation, but from a comedic standpoint, it was like someone had made a delicious hamburger, and then served it without the meat.
Bubba J.: I call that vegetarian comedy. And it stinks. Like broccoli… or a wet dog… covered in broccoli.
Walter: Can someone just shut him up please?
Bubba J.: Or my grandma… in a small room with the air turned off.…
Walter: Seriously, can I put duct tape on his mouth?
Timing is everything in comedy so I’d chalk up the events of that day as a perfect example of shit happens. Almost no one who watched the broadcast knew the difference, but I certainly did, and I wondered if I would ever be asked back to Letterman again. What I walked away with, however, were two completely opposite thoughts. On one hand, I was incredibly disappointed that my set had been chopped up and wasn’t nearly as powerful as it had been in its original state. On the other hand, I was amazed and amused that a ventriloquist was censored on network television for being too politically controversial. The number of comics that had happened to you could literally count on one hand… but to my knowledge, it had certainly never happened to a ventriloquist.
Walter: We get it, Skippy. You’re edgy.
It was now the fall of 2006, and the engines were kicking in. It was akin to the space shuttle on liftoff. I, along with many great folks around me, had been working on this project for a long time. Comedy Central had started the countdown, and DVD sales along with the Letterman appearance launched the flight.
Two weeks after Arguing with Myself premiered and Comedy Central realized that the ratings weren’t a fluke, they asked us for a second special. It had now been a full year since I had taped the first one, so I was well into writing and honing new material. I knew I could be ready by spring, so we set a tape date for May 2007. I wanted to change up demographics and scenery this time around, and since Walter’s bits about terrorists had been going over so well, I figured why not try them out at the place where politics mattered most? I had been performing at the Improv in D.C. for fifteen years and the audiences had always been stellar. We booked the beautiful and historic Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C., to tape Spark of Insanity.
I have always been very careful about balancing the material in my act between old and new. It’s similar to how established rock bands pick their sets when they tour: They have to give the fans some of the old songs because those are the ones the audiences want and expect, but at the same time they have to play some new stuff too so they progress as artists. If you don’t include the old, they’ll be unhappy, and if you don’t include some new, you’ll seem like a tired and sad has-been.
I knew I had to use Peanut, Walter, and José in the next special. They were the most established, most well developed, and most loved characters. Sweet Daddy Dee and Bubba J. had done well, but they could easily be replaced.
I decided I’d use a new character that I’d been working on named Melvin the Super Hero. He was little and meek, a family man with a secret identity as a crime fighter with not-so-super powers.
Jeff: Do you have superpowers?
Melvin: YES!
Jeff: Like what?
Melvin: I can FLY!
Jeff: Really? To where?
Melvin (pointing to the edge of the stage): To
THERE!
Jeff: Can you stop a speeding bullet?
Melvin: Once.
Jeff: Can you leap tall buildings in a single bound?
Melvin: Why the hell would I want to do that? There’s not a lot of call for that.
Jeff: Superman does it.
Melvin: Huh… showoff.
He was one of the two new guys that I had to construct for the next special, and each step along the way with Melvin, I videotaped the process, doing a bit of show-and-tell. We then pieced all that footage together into a mini-documentary, and made it an extra on the eventual Spark of Insanity DVD.
Knowing one new character wasn’t enough, and wanting to push the edge even further than I had with Sweet Daddy, I contemplated bringing back Dead Osama. However, I wanted the material in the specials and on the DVDs as evergreen as possible. I wanted folks to be able to view the show a decade later and it not feel dated. Osama, dead or alive, would become old news. It was time for a do-over.
Achmed: It was like Extreme Makeover—Terrorist Edition.
The material with Walter regarding terrorists had been going gang-busters. I’d been reworking the jokes so he was never specific about exactly who he was making fun of, never naming a particular group, organization, or religion. Not long after that, I began to consider that maybe those particular jokes of Walter’s could materialize into an entire character. I figured he could be a generic terrorist, with the same attitude and demeanor as Dead Osama, but we would never say what group he was with or even what country he came from. His accent would be very nondescript—something that to the American ear sounded simply … foreign.
My two favorite steps in the construction process of a dummy are the beginning and end: sculpting and painting. Sculpting the character is starting on the proverbial blank page. There’s nothing before you but a block of clay and your imagination. As with Sweet Daddy Dee, I gathered multiple pictures, but this time of skeletons, plus I pulled out a few Halloween decorations to pose for me.I also consulted with longtime friend Kelly Asbury, who had been an animation artist and illustrator for Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks, and later a director for Shrek 2 and Gnomeo and Juliet. Kelly drew me a few versions of what he thought this new guy should look like, running the full spectrum of explosive tragedy. The drawings went from a clean face to half-blown up, to the full-on Daffy Duck blown back, nothing-but-charred-face-and-eyes look.
I absorbed all the photos, toys, and illustrations, and began to sculpt.
Like an oil painting, you can take as much time as you want creating a clay sculpture. Walter’s sculpt was done in one sitting. Achmed took a few weeks as I could only work on him between club runs in and out of town. I would work a few hours, quit, then come back a few hours or days later and go at it again.
Finally when the clay head began to look crazy enough and I could hear the voice in my head when I looked at him, I knew he was ready. The next step was to make a silicone mold, then the fiberglass head shell, but I had given up that part of the process with the last Walter, when I breathed in too many fumes in a closed garage one day and started hallucinating. That particular day I even made a few phone calls I shouldn’t have, accusing the pool guy of stealing my tools. Good lord. Time to give up the chemicals.
Walter: I still think that pool guy has our tools.
Jeff: No he doesn’t. I was just loopy from the fumes.
Walter: I think they left some permanent damage.
Jeff: I don’t think so.
Walter: I do. You used to just talk to yourself. Now you and talk and type to yourself.
I found an artist named Dragon who had been working in special effects in Hollywood for years. He and I had become friends a couple years before, and he was now the guy who took over the “gooey” process and would take my clay, make a mold, and then cast the fiberglass shells of the heads. Dragon was incredibly talented, his shop was s
cary, and his work was beautiful. A few days after dropping off the clay, I went back to Dragon’s, and he handed me a perfect fiberglass head ready for mechanics. As I was ready to walk out the door, I said to Dragon, “I have no idea what to use for eyes. The sockets are bigger than a real human’s, so I can’t just get glass eyeballs like I usually do.” Dragon said, “Yeah, I was looking at that. I think I have just the thing.” I followed him deep back into his shop, past alien spaceships, androids, robot suits, suits of galactic armor, weaponry from God knows what universe, giant masks and suits of all frightening sorts, and even a bunch of pirate stuff. Finally we arrived at his desk area. I say area, because you really couldn’t tell where the desk ended and just piles of parts and junk began. About five minutes later he popped up with an, “AH-HA!” In his hand he held a larger-than-average eyeball. It looked really cool… and unusually familiar.
Dragon continued to dig and finally came up with the other one. “You ever seen these before?” he chuckled.
“Yeah,” I said, “hang on.” I thought about it, gazing at the giant eyeball, both of them beautifully cast in resin with veins and details I could never have matched in paint. What was typically the white part of the eye was an interesting dull yellow, and the iris a brown-orange with red highlights. Then it hit me! I had seen smaller versions of these eyeballs daily, because they were sitting in my office, molded in the heads of toys I had collected ten years before. “MARS ATTACKS! ” I said!
“Exactly!” Dragon replied. “We made the full-sized aliens for the movie, and a buddy of mine made the eyes. These are two extras we never used. You’re welcome to them.”
“How great is THIS?” I thought as I was installing them a few days later. “This guy is going to have the real Mars Attacks! alien eyeballs!” And so it was.
Walter: Oh great… so now he’s a Martian terrorist? Achmed is part alien?
Jeff: I guess so.
Bubba J.: Now I know who probed me!
As I assembled my newest cast member, I had been tossing around ideas for names and, somehow, Achmed just fit him. Next was the reworking of some of the old Osama material, and then of course writing specific jokes and bits for Achmed. Because no two vent figures I build are ever the same, each one has individual physical traits and movements, which affect manipulation and personality. These quirks then play into the material. Jokes are jokes, but if I can get a laugh from a physical movement too, there’s no reason to pass it up. Bergen was stuck with radio and only had to worry about dialogue, but today we have high-definition video from multiple camera angles. Besides being funny, everything and everybody had to look good and move just right.
As for material, I decided that the funniest idea that would create the most tension would be if Achmed were a failed terrorist who simply didn’t have his heart in his work. He needed to be conflicted between what he was trained for and was supposed to be doing, versus becoming enamored with Americans and our culture, and starting to love all the cool stuff we have. I also thought that maybe, just maybe, he might not be sold on the idea of killing people. Sure, he would feign the attitude and always be yelling, “I KEEL YOU!” but like Walter, every once in a while a soft side would show itself.
Achmed’s character traits and quirks began to gel together very nicely, and I knew he was going to be perfect for the next special. A newspaper review from the early Achmed days said that somehow I’d accomplished making a terrorist a sympathetic character. I took that as a big compliment.
Achmed: That’s right. Terrorists have feelings too.
Jeff: Well, at least you do.
Achmed: Hug?
Material for Achmed was becoming a mixed blend of subject matter and purpose. Since he would be completely new to a majority of the folks seeing him in this special, I had to do introductory jokes simply to establish who he was and where he was coming from. Obviously at first sight of Achmed, you know this is comedy. He immediately got laughs by simply looking around.
Whenever writing material, I always go for multiple laughs in a short span of time, but I also try to never sacrifice character in the process. When I was writing for Achmed, I made sure that whatever he said, it was an accurate reflection of his personality. After establishing himself with a few lines and jokes about who he was, his name, and what he was doing in the United States, I went the route of asking him serious questions as if I were speaking with an actual terrorist. Then he would answer with Achmed-like responses.
Jeff: So you’re a terrorist.
Achmed: Yes.
Jeff: What happened to you?
Achmed: I am a horrible suicide bomber. I had a premature detonation.
Jeff: You did all this for a bunch of virgins?
Achmed: Are you kidding me? I’d kill you for a Klondike bar!
As I wrote for him, I would also try to imagine what it would be like to come to the United States for the first time, especially if your heart wasn’t meant for killing. This allowed me to do some observational humor as well, but all from the standpoint of a somewhat innocent albeit goofball terrorist.
Jeff: Do you like being in Washington, D.C.?
Achmed: I think some idiots must live here.
Jeff: Why?
Achmed: For example, the Washington Monument. It’s looks nothing like the guy. It looks more like a tribute to Bill Clinton.
Last, because Achmed was already politically incorrect, I thought a few somewhat related, non-PC jokes would fit right in:
Jeff: Where do you get your recruits?
Achmed: The suicide hotline.
We taped Spark of Insanity on May 5, 2007, in front of about 1,400 people. At this time, this was a big venue for us, and the show felt huge. Once again, we shot two full shows with two different audiences in one evening. The set designs were beautiful, and this time we employed a new technique of having a completely different set for each character. Everyone agreed that set changes had to be as quick as if we were shooting live. In that way, the audiences’ energy was kept high, and lulls were almost nonexistent.
Both shows were knockouts, and we again knew we had a lot of great material to choose from while editing. And as I had hoped, D.C. had been the perfect backdrop for Achmed.
Once again I walked offstage thinking, “Wow, that was a lot of work….” But this time I knew it had only begun. Comedy Central wanted the special on the air and soon as possible, and September 23, 2007, was the date scheduled.
Spark of Insanity premiered while I was onstage in Tucson, but all I could think and wonder about that night were the ratings. Were we going to do as well as we had with Arguing, or had that been a once-in-a-career fluke? Did people really want to see me and my guys again? The wait to find out the numbers was unbearable.
Late that same evening after the Tucson show, Robin Tate, who was now back and promoting my theater appearances, drove me to, of all places, Casa Grande, Arizona, to an almost deserted golf resort out in the middle of nowhere. The reason it was deserted was because it was off-season and literally no one was checked into the hotel… except me. And when I say there was nothing and no one around, I mean nothing and no one. I had a corporate gig the next night somewhere near in Casa Grande, and this was the nicest hotel they could find for me. But no one bothered to tell me it was going to be The Shining in the desert.
Robin dropped me off, laughing as he drove away. I know he was laughing, because I could hear him. After ringing the bell at the front door of the creepy place for five minutes, some old guy finally unlocked it and said to us, “Oh, they told me someone was checking in tonight! Sorry, I forgot.” I hauled my trunk and backpack up to the top suite, which was an entire floor that I had all to myself. I was fully expecting Jack Nicholson to show up with an ax and to find REDRUM scrawled on a bathroom mirror. Seriously?
Walter: Trust me, Robin would not have left you off at a dangerous place.
Jeff: How do you know?
Walter: If anything happens to you, he doesn’t get paid!
But I went to bed that night thinking about nothing but people and numbers and the Arbitron.
The ratings came back the next day, and yes, once again, we were all wrong. It was bigger than anyone had expected. We got a 1.8. That meant 3.8 million viewers.
So the rocket ship was clearly in the atmosphere now, and gaining altitude. The following Tuesday, the Spark of Insanity DVD hit the shelves and blew away Arguing with Myself in no time.
Ticket sales on the road blew up as well. We figured this would be a good ride, but we had no idea… our efforts to market the DVD and promote the network’s repeats continued to be effective, but now there was a new fuel for the rocket that was more powerful and far reaching than anyone had ever imagined. It was called YouTube.
As soon as any new video content is released in the market or goes on the air, people post their favorite segments of it on YouTube. However, when the uploads happen to be segments of their products, most content providers consider that to be a bad thing. Every download is a potential lost sale. We felt that way about uploads from my DVDs. So as a seemingly smart business tactic, while we had one team of guys uploading carefully edited promotional video clips, we had another group of guys policing the net, doing their best to remove everything else. We felt we were simply protecting sales.