All By My Selves

by Jeff Dunham

  One day, however, I noticed a particular Achmed clip that our guys had missed that was getting a significant number of views… and I mean a LOT of views. A bunch of folks had uploaded entire Achmed segments of Spark and we had successfully gotten YouTube to remove most of them, but this particular one had been missed, and had been viewed more than any other very quickly. Plus, the view numbers were growing almost exponentially on a daily basis.

  Achmed: I have something to tell you.

  Jeff: What’s that?

  Achmed: I was about 19 million of those views.

  I began to rethink things when I realized that if we had taken that clip down earlier, millions of people wouldn’t have seen Achmed and our routine. Were we being too strict? It wasn’t like it was the entire DVD, and we were now in the age of the Internet. This is where the most give and take mass communication was taking place, in a never-before-seen, free-for-all way. If people thought something was funny, they would watch the piece themselves, then forward it on to friends, business associates, and family. If that particular video was a hit, the view numbers would explode in mushroom-cloud fashion. So, our guys removed and kept removing as many Achmed videos as we could, except this one.

  A week before Thanksgiving 2007, the clip was at 11 million views. Two weeks later, it was at 13 million. By December 17 it was at 18 million, and a week later, 20 million views. And this video wasn’t a minute or two long that could quickly be viewed. It was ten minutes in length.

  Achmed the Dead Terrorist and his best-known catchphrase were quickly becoming a phenomenon. Everywhere we went, people said to me and to each other, “I KEEL YOU!” My favorite example of how huge it was becoming came from a substitute schoolteacher from Florida who stopped us outside a theater one evening after a show. She said that not long before, she had no idea who I was, or who any of my characters were. She had never heard of me or Achmed or any of the little guys. But one day at school, she was substituting in an unruly second-grade class. The bell rang and class was supposed to start, but the kids wouldn’t stop chatting. She said she kept trying to get their attention: “Class… it’s time to settle down… boys and girls!… you have to be quiet now! CLASS?” All to no avail. She finally got so frustrated that she yelled at the top of her voice, “SILENCE!” There was a beat of quiet in the room, and then almost every kid in the class yelled back as one voice, “I KEEL YOU!”

  It goes without saying that things were going incredibly well on the road, and the characters were becoming more and more well known. But now we get to the part that completely blew me away… something I had never even dreamed of. I’ve had three huge surprises in this journey, all within the last few years, and this was the first one. As the numbers on YouTube grew and grew, we started getting e-mails from outside the United States. It was so easy to be thinking solely about the U.S. and Canadian markets, because this was our turf. Neither I nor anyone else on the team was thinking beyond the United States’ borders. But while scanning on YouTube, I began to notice that people were posting their own videos, acting out the Achmed sketch.… And many of them weren’t from America. Then to add further wonder, people in other countries were posting the Achmed clip with subtitles in their own native tongue, and some even went so far as to dub other peoples voices in other languages, speaking for Achmed and me! What the—?

  It was becoming plainly obvious that Achmed was reaching further than any of us had ever imagined. But now, the final piece that made me literally sit back in my chair with my mouth open, staring at my computer screen, was when I went to google.com/ trends and typed in my own name. It turns outs that there were more people Google searching me and Achmed in other countries and in other languages than there were in the United States and in English. The country Googling me the most was South Africa, followed by Germany, Poland, and some of the Scandinavian countries. Danish, Polish, and German were the top languages, followed by English.

  What had happened? What was it about this little skeleton that was hitting home for so many people?

  Achmed: And that’s when I realized I couldn’t handle the pressures of fame and stardom, so I turned to alcohol.

  Jeff: No, you didn’t.

  Bubba J.: Well, I did!

  Jeff: No, you didn’t either, Bubba J.

  Bubba J.: Oh yeah, I was already there.

  We began getting more and more fan mail, and not just e-mail, but loads of snail mail as well. Servicemen and women from our own armed forces were digging Achmed like no one would believe. The armed forces stores were now carrying both of my DVDs and the soldiers couldn’t get enough. I can’t tell you how proud I was that my little guys were making the members of our armed forces around the world laugh.

  There have been a great many remarkable and heartfelt moments that I’ve experienced in the past few years, thanks to our military. With their letters and stories of appreciation for Achmed and the crew, I could almost fill an entire second book. But for now, I’ll tell you about two of my favorites.

  One particular week I was at the Stardome Comedy Club in Birmingham, Alabama, where I had performed at least one week a year for almost two decades. Bruce Ayers, the owner of the club, came backstage one night before the show and told me there were a couple of air force guys who wanted to say hello afterward. I’m usually pretty zonked after a gig, but this was one meet-and-greet I didn’t want to pass up.

  After the performance, I went into the showroom, and there stood two men who weren’t exactly kids. I was expecting the usual younger guys, barely out of boot camp, but this wasn’t the case. Both men introduced themselves as pilots who had flown multiple missions over Iraq and Kuwait. One of them said, “Mr. Dunham, we just wanted to thank you for all you’re doing for the morale of all us guys over in Iraq and wherever else hell is taking place, and we’d each like to present to you our individual talisman. I’ve had this one in my pocket for eight missions over Iraq, and John’s here is about the same.” A talisman in this case is a coinlike object that has the insignia representing the branch of the soldier’s service on one side, and the insignia for their separate company or squadron on the other. I couldn’t believe what I was holding and what this serviceman was saying to me. I was pretty much speechless.

  The second occasion took place that same week and was a moment that left me touched, proud, and even bewildered at how far this simple comedy act had grown to affect others.

  Once again Bruce told me there was someone he thought I should say hello to after the show. It was a woman this time; a mother of a soldier. I greeted her and she said, “My son is somewhere in the Middle East. He usually can’t tell us exactly where he is, because he’s in Special Forces and we don’t get many details. He sent one of these home to me, and I thought you should have it. All the men in his squadron have them sewn onto their uniforms….” She handed me an embroidered round patch, about the size of a drink coaster. It had a black background with white lettering around the edges. In the middle was stitched a very accurate representation of Achmed’s face. Three or four sewn bullet holes seemingly riddled the patch, and the wording around the perimeter in bold lettering read, “SILENCE! WE KILLED HIM AND WE’LL KILL YOU.”

  It was now early December, and I tried to think of some sort of quick video we could shoot to put out on YouTube for the holiday season. I told Robert I thought we should do some sort of Christmas song with Achmed. “Jingle Bombs!” I said. All I had at this point was the title, but it sounded funny as hell to me, and I thought it could be something perfect for Achmed. “Rothpan and I can write some sort of goofy revision of “Jingle Bells” and Achmed can sing it. How about we tape it in the Chicago club next week? If it’s good enough, we’ll put it on YouTube.”

  “Sounds great,” Robert said.

  And then I added, “Let’s just find some local piano player who can improvise. I’ll kid around with him a little and see what happens.”

  That was the plan, so Rothpan and I sat down to write some Achmed lyrics to the tune of “J
ingle Bells,” a simple tune for any piano player. But the next day Robert called back and said he thought he had a better idea than a piano player, and the guy could double as my opening act as well. “He’s a guitar player,” Robert said.

  “A guitar comic?” I replied.

  “No, not a regular guitar,” Robert said. “An electric guitar. He could literally add some rock and roll to your show.”

  “Oh, come on,” I replied.

  “Trust me!” he said back.

  “Whatever,” I replied.

  Rothpan and I wrote a song that made us laugh, and we both met Brian Haner at the Chicago Improv for the first time that next Thursday afternoon. With Rothpan as opener and Brian as the middle act, we’d be doing two shows a night through Sunday. We had arrived barely in time on Thursday to set up and shovel down a quick dinner, thanks to typical snow and weather delays at O’Hare. As for rehearsing “Jingle Bombs,” even though I didn’t know a thing about singing, and had never even attempted any kind of music in my act, I told Brian I didn’t want to bother with a rehearsal. “Who can’t sing ‘Jingle Bells’?” I said. I was just too tired to rehearse. I also knew that screw-ups onstage sometimes turn into comedy gold. And that’s exactly what happened that first night.

  While Rothpan was opening the show, Brian said to me, “At least sing the first couple of notes so I’ll know what key to start in.” I sang, “Dashing through the sand…”

  “Okay. You’re in E,” Brian said. I had no idea what he was talking about.

  Rothpan introduced Brian, and Robert was right—he put some rock and roll into the show. But the real test would be how “Jingle Bombs” came off. I did my stand-up, then Walter, then the first half of Achmed’s routine. Brian then came out to help with the song—the video camera in the back of the showroom was rolling. We started in, and since I was completely out of my element, I couldn’t have been more awkward or unsure of myself. But I did what I knew best. When Achmed messed it up, he’d turn and look at me with a knowing angry look, acknowledging what the audience knew, and that was of course, that everything bad happening was all because of me.

  Walter: Now Achmed knows how I feel! But this time it wasn’t booze; just stupidity.

  The problem, as I didn’t figure out for a few minutes, was that I was starting the song with the first verse lyrics, but I was using the chorus notes. So the words, “Dashing through the…” were being sung by Achmed with the notes from the chorus. Everyone in the room, including, of course, Brian, realized how I was screwing up and what I was doing wrong.… That is, everyone except me. We kept starting and stopping, and the audience was laughing their asses off because Achmed was getting angrier, and I was absolutely stumped as to what in the world I was doing wrong. Poor Brian didn’t know what to do. We’d never worked together before, so he assumed I was doing this on purpose, simply for the laughs. Finally I think Brian figured out I really had no idea what was going on, maybe because flop sweat was starting to drip off my face. He sung in a whisper the correct words and notes, “Dashing through the sand…”

  “OH YEAH!” I said, and then it was on with the song.

  Dashing through the sand.

  With a bomb strapped to my back.

  I have a nasty plan,

  For Christmas in Iraq…

  And on it went…

  Once again the next night, we didn’t rehearse, and we had the video camera rolling. For comedy’s sake, we repeated some of the same screw-ups, but did a perfect rendition of the song, then had it online in no time. Once again, the views were off the charts, and we had another YouTube hit on our hands. This would end up being just the warm-up for a very big special to come, one year from then.… But much was yet to happen before then.

  As 2007 was coming to a close, I couldn’t begin to count my blessings. It had been a whirlwind year of success, triumph, new friendships, and performances in the large-sized venues I had played in a distant fifteen years before. My kids were well and happy. Financially I was back on track. To reward the success and give the girls a little taste of the road, I decided to make a family trip out of the week of shows between Christmas and the New Year. Robin Tate had me booked for five dates at bigger venues with larger audiences than my family had ever seen before. Very purposefully, Robin and I had booked the south and southeast for this time because that’s where my wife and her family are from and I knew it would be fun to have the girls and be with everyone for Christmas.

  Beginning December 27, I played one theater each night in Charlotte, Mobile, Daytona, and Fort Pierce. Then finally on New Year’s Eve, we ended 2007 with one of the largest venues I’d ever played up to that point: The Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center, in front of nearly four thousand people. I remember walking offstage at the end of my show to the incredible and loud ovation in that beautiful venue, with my wife standing and watching backstage. She was literally stunned at what she was hearing. As the applause rolled on, and with 2008 quickly approaching, I couldn’t help but reflect on where my life’s journey had brought me and how much I’d been given. I smiled and said, “Cool, huh?” Then I hugged my family. It was one of the highest, warmest, and most memorable moments of my life.

  It’s amazing how many times you hear the same story over and over of successful people’s personal and professional lives simultaneously heading in opposite directions and in extremes, because little did I know that less than three weeks later, having been dealt an unbelievable blow, I would be in the middle of marriage counseling, and in the depths of a depression so low that I would be at the point of not caring if my life was over and ended.

  I don’t know how many people seriously think about suicide, but I’m pretty sure that most of us have taken the Jimmy Stewart It’s a Wonderful Life journey in our own minds, and wondered what the world would be like without us. If we had never been, or if we were taken suddenly, would it matter? During the third week in January 2008 I was certainly at that point, and because of what I was now facing, for the first time in my life I started canceling shows. I couldn’t find any way in my soul to walk onstage and make people laugh when I didn’t care if I were alive or dead.

  Show business, like many professions, presents an incredible number of pressures on a marriage. Some relationships are able to survive and withstand the stress, and some are not. Unfortunately, mine was one of those that did not. In late January, I knew deep down that my marriage was over. But, for the sake of our daughters, and through much turmoil and distress, we tried to keep the marriage together for many months. I went through the motions of, as our therapist described it, “Pretend as if…”

  Despite the hard work, I finally made the most difficult and heartwrenching decision of my life. I filed for separation in the fall of 2008 and moved out of my much-loved home… the first home I had truly called my own and where my beautiful girls had grown to be beautiful young ladies.

  That evening, after having packed up my truck with a few changes of clothes, some important collectibles, and all my dummies, I drove to the Marriott in Sherman Oaks. Ironically this was the same hotel where the Sherman Oaks Improv had been, and where I had auditioned for Debra Sartell from the Improv nineteen years before.

  During a session with our family therapist less than a week before, I told the girls that I was going to move out. As I remember back to those days, and now write these words, they are memories that I can barely face again now. The girls and I cried, but we also faced the uncertainty with as much optimism as possible. I had picked out a rental house a few miles away, and I was managing my work calendar so that I would have every other weekend home, something I had never done for their entire lives.

  Something else we looked forward to was that in a few months I would let the girls help me pick a new house, one closer to their school with rooms that they could decorate themselves. Bree, my oldest, was now at school out of state, but she would have a room too. Though my career had been such a huge part of my life, and though I was out of town more than any of
us would have liked, when I was home, I always tried to make sure that I was truly there. This would be even more so now, since I was now a single parent.

  A broken family is rarely what any child wants, but there was no other choice for me. My parents have been married for fifty-four years now, and that is my example. I never imagined anything else for myself, and I had lived my family life and my marriage always with that intention. I like to think that I have remained the same person throughout all these years and that my values and morals haven’t changed with success. I don’t go to church as much as I used to, and the characters go a bit further with language and subject matter than they did when I was younger, but my core values and basic Christian beliefs remain the same. My girls have taken the good from both their parents, and I know they will grow into strong, smart women. I have tried to give them what I know best, and that is a sense of optimism and a sense of humor. I want them to be able to look at life and see first, the good in people and in humanity. I want them to dream and work hard for what they want, and I want them to never be satisfied with “good enough,” but to push for greatness at whatever they choose in life and whatever path they take. I want them to be independent and never rely on another person for their happiness, but to also love and be loved so much that they can’t imagine life without that other person. I want their hearts to be broken so that when they love again, they will know the beauty of love, and never take for granted sharing their soul with the person they choose to go through life with. I want them to be healthy and happy and to have their own children and experience all the joy that they have given me. I want them to fail and to succeed. I want them to fall and pick themselves up. Most of all, I want them to laugh.