Zitat des Tages von Jeff Dunham:
I try to make the majority of my audience laugh. That's my audience. They'll laugh at the dead terrorist.
When I was in third grade I taught myself ventriloquism... What's hard is to learn to be an entertainer and make people laugh. I was a few years out of college before I felt I had enough material. Then in 1988 I moved to L.A. and started to do some shows at comedy clubs.
In 1980, when I graduated from high school, my goal was to be on 'The Tonight Show' with Johnny Carson at least once before our ten-year class reunion. Our class reunion was in June of 1990, and I was on 'The Tonight Show' in April 1990, so I made it by a few months.
A lot of my best stuff is just ad libs on stage, and that's one thing that I've gotten back to at the live show.
My goal in any show is to make people laugh. That's the No. 1 thing. Everything else pales in comparison to that.
Family time was very difficult when my girls were little, but I never missed a birthday; I was there for every major event.
It's strange because even in the vaudeville days, ventriloquists were never the main attraction. They were the guys brought out to stand in front of the curtain while sets were being changed. Ventriloquism wasn't even celebrated as an art until Edgar Bergen came along in the 1930s.
It's amazing how these little guys can say things that a mortal human could never get away with. There's some sort of unspoken license... when outlandish things come out of an inanimate object, somehow it equals humor.
The magic in performing as an entertaining ventriloquist happens when the characters come to life and the interaction between the separate personalities on stage becomes 'real.' Then don't forget that the act has to be funny, and to me, being funny and entertaining any given audience is more important than anything.
A comedian needs to have his own filters, needs to know his audience, how far he can push things.
The only way a ventriloquist speaks differently is that he forgoes using his or her lips, and learns to reproduce sounds using the tongue, upper palate, and teeth only. Those 'difficult' letters are B, F, M, P, V, W, and Y.
I try to make the majority of my audience laugh.
I'm a Macintosh nut. I got my PowerBook, so if I'm not writing jokes, I'm working on that.
What I do for a living is whimsical and fun and ridiculous. I'm supposed to make people laugh. We all have that child in us. For many people, that child gets pushed into a corner. But if you want to be creative, that little kid can never go away.
We just got a tour bus. I didn't know tour buses could be this nice. It's just me, Brian Haner the guitar guy, the tour manager and a writer. We laugh ourselves silly. Apparently we're going to have a road dog, a miniature pincher. It's the smallest they've ever seen. How masculine am I going to look, working with dolls and a miniature dog?
It's a survival thing. I don't do anything to be artistic or just because I like it.
There are not that many ventriloquists out there who build their own characters. I love that because they are uniquely mine.
I'm guilty of being fascinated by gadgets and toys and technology, but any penny that I spend, I try to make it be a part of what I do for a living. Because then you are forwarding. You are forwarding that art, forwarding that career ahead.
I think maybe one reason why ventriloquists are looked down on is because it's very difficult to be funny. I think what happens is that people get a dummy, they learn the technique of ventriloquism, they memorize the script, they think they're in show business.
I taught myself computer. Then Macintosh came along, and it became a really bad addiction. If I wasn't in show business, I'd have pocket protectors growing out of my chest. I do everything on it. It's kinda sick.
Up until college age I was using the typical little-boy dummy that sits on the knee and makes woodpecker jokes. My first original character didn't happen until later, and that was Jose the Jalapeno on a Stick.
I've always said that instead of watching a guy juggle seven things amazingly I would rather see a really bad juggler who's really funny.
