Jeff Dunham: ‘As a ventriloquist, you always want the dummies to outshine you’
After traveling the world for two tours of his show “Perfectly Unbalanced,” comedy ventriloquist Jeff Dunham is about to settle down with a new summer run at Caesars Palace. First, though, is tonight’s introductory show at The Colosseum before he moves in for his June 16-Sept. 13 run.
“I really did like my previous residency in Las Vegas. We had fun, but I miss the road and doing giant arenas,” Jeff told me, referring to his run at Planet Hollywood Showroom, at Guy Fieri’s El Burro Borracho at The Rio on Tuesday. “I thought how we do a little of both, so we’ll have one night a week in Caesars throughout the summer.
“I love Caesars Palace. I’ve been playing there for years. Celine’s room — I don’t know how you beat that place. If we can do decent business there one night a week, that’s fantastic during the summer. I love this town, but I admit that I get a little stir crazy over and over and over again in the same place because I’m so used to the road.”
The first leg of “Perfectly Unbalanced,” his ninth global tour, began in December 2015. The second began last October with shows in more than 60 cities. He begins a global trek, after tonight’s performance, to Canada on March 25, then Ireland for a new Netflix comedy special before returning here for the run.
Jeff and his characters, including Achmed the Dead Terrorist and Jose Jalapeno, have toured 20 countries on five continents and sold more than 7 million DVDs. He’s amassed a billion views on YouTube.
Jeff is the proud parent of 17-month-old twins with his wife of five years, Audrey. She was here with him Tuesday, along with her parents, for lunch at El Burro Borracho to film a Food Network special. He also shot segments at Hash House a Go Go and the new Sugar Factory Fashion Show.
“The twins are 17 months and Audrey is staying home more, so this is great that we are all in Las Vegas together. For me it’s back to almost what the comedy club days were. I did almost 20 years of comedy clubs. That was tough. Five and six days at a time in one place almost four weeks in a month, but now it’s only 10 days a month, so 10 cities a month around the country, and I love that.
“The tour bus is like my second home. Robin, how do you beat an average of 6,000 and 12,000 people in a big arena? It’s like a family out there. Everybody is so appreciative that you’ve shown up in their town, and we’re not just doing big cities. We’re doing midsized towns because those places are so appreciative. I have to come back to Las Vegas because there’s such an energy here and something special and different.”
I asked Jeff why his and Terry Fator’s ventriloquism works so well here with sold-out audiences — Terry celebrates his eighth anniversary on the Strip on Monday with a new Elton John doll — and Paul Zerdin’s show, after he won Season 10 of “America’s Got Talent,” didn’t click at Planet Hollywood.
Jeff replied: “I think the reason mine works is because of years and years and years, so many years, of that grassroots thing where we go around the country and form that following. When I finally got to Las Vegas, there was a decent number of people who knew who I was.
“Terry has a very unique act that is friendly for everyone. There’s music, there’s singing, there’s impressions and ventriloquism. He and I do two different things. Mine is standup comedy that uses ventriloquism as the vehicle. His is music and impressions with ventriloquism as the vehicle. Two separate forms of entertainment even though they use the same medium.
“Paul won ‘America’s Got Talent,’ but not enough people knew who he was when he opened in Las Vegas. There’d been no grass-roots touring across America building a loyal following like me, like Jay Leno.
“Robin, it’s like when Carrot Top was coming up. I remember in the standup world, he was slightly ahead of me in the progression of career, and I remember other standup comics criticizing him saying he’s not a real standup, he uses props. But my thing always has been if you’re getting the crowd reaction, if you’re entertaining people, what does it matter?
“If people walk away happy and feel like they got their money’s worth and want to come back, then you’ve done your job. If you entertained them, if they had a good time, but they don’t want to come back, you’ve fallen slightly short of your goal.
“It’s been a long time since variety has been popular, and it could only be music and standup comedy, and that was it. There were a handful of magicians in town. Edgar Bergen was incredibly popular on radio. He was brilliant with his characterizations and acting and the writing of the writers — the comedy material. He was the Seinfeld of his era.
“It was brilliantly written, beautifully performed, and people really thought his characters were real; they thought the dummies were actual actors pretending to be the ventriloquist dummies. That’s why it worked in the theater of the mind. If he’d come along a few years later and he’d be on television, I don’t think he’d ever achieved any sort of fan base.
“It was because the theater of the mind that it worked. Then Hollywood gets ahold of that, and every ventriloquist you see was bad. We had a whole couple of generations of people who knew ventriloquism was lame. It took two or three folks who were skilled at ventriloquism who could entertain, and now I think that it’s come back that it’s OK to see ventriloquists.”
Jeff’s daughter’s friends at school didn’t know what her father did or thought it was weird. But Achmed the Dead Terrorist became the coolest thing that they’d ever seen. Said Jeff: “When Achmed got popular, it was the perfect storm. The DVD business was still huge.
“YouTube was just reaching a zenith of popularity with not only younger people, but with the military, with middle-age folks. Everybody started to watch YouTube, and Achmed was on there. My career was doing well. It was a good few years after 9/11. We were making fun of Osama Bin Laden. We hadn’t caught him yet; it was perfect timing. When I came out with him, it hit big. People thought I was crazy for doing it, but it wasn’t this dangerous time.
“There wasn’t the politically incorrect thing, so it worked. The lucky part for me is that now my fans already know who he is. Everybody knows that he’s fairly harmless. We can make jokes about the current situation. We can make jokes about ISIS. He’s been there for so long, and it’s proven that it worked. People have accepted it. If I started with him today, I don’t think that there’s any chance in hell that it’d work.
“Achmed better have the right visa to be here for Caesars Palace. I’ll ask him. You have to hit that stuff over the head. Come on! It’s funny, and people think it’s funny, and they still laugh at that stuff because some of it is so ridiculous. No matter what side politically you’re on, if I write that material so that everybody thinks that you’re making fun of the other side, then fine.”
I couldn’t resist asking Jeff if Achmed had become more popular than him pulling the strings. “Oh, sure. It’s always been that way though,” said Jeff. “As a ventriloquist, you always want the dummies to outshine you.
“Again that’s different from Terry Fator. I want my characters to be slightly bigger and more important than I am because people will remember that more. You’re going to remember a dead terrorist before you’re going to remember some plain white guy. I look like every other guy driving a pickup down the freeway.
“Does that bother me? No. My wife, Audrey, points out that I’m not one of the cool kids. I’m not in the tabloids. She says, ‘How great is that because we can still go to Disneyland?’ Yet at the same time, we still get the respect of having a tour guide when we need it.
“But I’m not Mel Gibson. I’m not recognized as the man with the hands behind Achmed. Well, sometimes, just enough to feed my ego. It’s enough to know that I’m somewhat famous, but I can still go everywhere and people are usually very respectful. The most I get is, “It’s that guy with Achmed.’ ”
In May, Jeff films his next special for Netflix in Dublin, Ireland. “President Trump and his political stuff will be evergreen for at least four years, so that’ll be in the show, but I do very little current topical stuff. I can’t do the Oscars Best Picture screw-up because two weeks from now, people will have forgotten it, and nobody’s going to care anymore.
“On four of my nine international tours, we went to Dublin. We went from places like Singapore to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, all over Europe, all over the U.K. Irish audiences are amazing. They love being entertained, they love comedy, and they go nuts over my stuff. One of the biggest laughs I got was when we were in Dublin, I said to Achmed, ‘Do you enjoy being here?’ Achmed said, ‘We’re in Belfast. I thought that I was here for a job interview.’ ”
Then Jeff dropped a bombshell as he continued to tell me of his connection to Ireland. We’ll have a story of how he was adopted and never knew his birth mother or father when he returns here in June. He’ll add an Irish baby character to his lineup of dolls when he’s in Ireland, not just because Audrey and he have the twins but because he discovered that he’s mostly Irish.
“So I’m Irish, and my current show is about family. It always reflects my own life. I’m doing a lot of jokes about family and heritage and where I came from and who is my real father, my birth father. To this day, I still do not know. Not a clue.
“I have never known who my mother and father are. There’s a curiosity but no real interest. I remember junior high staring at family trees. I remember at one point going, ‘I really don’t care who my relatives are — it means nothing to me.’ ”
“But to an adopted child, when you eventually have your own children, it means so much more. I couldn’t say more, I don’t know I couldn’t compare, but it means a lot to look in the eyes of someone who’s truly your first blood relative. It was about my background to see what that heritage was, but it was also for the health of my children.”
Jeff’s Food Network shows taped in various cities, including this week here, air in June and July. His schedule with the Caesars summer dates calls for him to spend 10 days a month on the road and the other 20 at home.
Jeff summed up: “People keep coming back; it doesn’t slack off. If the numbers were starting to slow down, then of course I’ll go straight to theaters. But for as long as I’m entertaining and the audience is laughing, ventriloquism is going to continue to rise. Life is good, and I’m having fun.”
