Jeff Dunham Quotes
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I was a shy little kid, and getting up in front of people and making them laugh and being able to carry on a dialogue rather than a monologue was something that was pretty interesting to me because you could set yourself up - you could ask a question and then answer it.
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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.
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I try to make the majority of my audience laugh.
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But the mechanics of learning to 'throw your voice' are pretty simple. Anyone with a tongue, an upper palate, teeth, and a normal speaking voice can learn ventriloquism.
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Family time was very difficult when my girls were little, but I never missed a birthday; I was there for every major event.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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My goal in any show is to make people laugh. That's the No. 1 thing. Everything else pales in comparison to that.
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I had a happy, dramafree youth, growing up in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Dallas, Texas. The only thing that was slightly unusual compared to most of my friends was that I was an only child... I don't think that's why my parents gave me a dummy, at least they've never copped to it.
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Math? Forget about it. If I add four plus eight plus six, I have to count on my fingers. I guess I'm hooked up differently.
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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.
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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.
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I'm not trying to teach anybody anything, I'm not trying to say anything, I have no political motive whatsoever. My motive is just the big laugh.
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A comedian needs to have his own filters, needs to know his audience, how far he can push things.
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When I was eight years old, I got a dummy for Christmas and started teaching myself. I got books and records and sat in front of the bathroom mirror, practising. I did my first show in the third grade and just kept going; there was no reason to quit.
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Stand-up comedy is tough right now. Anybody can come to a concert, tape you, and put you up on the Internet. You either fight it or embrace it.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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There's some sort of unspoken license... when outlandish things come out of an inanimate object, somehow it equals humor.
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I'll come up with an idea for a character, and I'll write some jokes and make sure that that character is going to have some legs to it - that it's really going to work. If I can come up with jokes and material that I think will work, then I make a cheap version of the doll. Achmed started out just being this little plastic toy from the store.
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All through college, I was searching for characters that would make me unique and set me apart from the typical ventriloquist with the typical dummy that was the little boy, cheeky hard figure like Charlie McCarthy.
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Growing up, I thought it would be great if I could do big theaters. Now we're doing arenas.