Laugh Lines: Conversations With Comedians (40 page)

Corey: Boy, if you could find a way to tie those two together.

David: I can. Can and will. Will and have.

Bob Odenkirk: Where are you calling from?

David Cross: Philadelphia.

Corey: No, actually I’m in Illinois, right outside of St. Louis. You’re from Naperville, Illinois, right Bob?

Bob: It’s about 30 miles southwest of Chicago. I went to school in Carbondale.

Corey: I graduated from Southern Illinois University. Small world.

Bob: Oh, wow. Well, yeah, actually.

David: I think you’ve got your story.

Corey: I spoke to David earlier this year when he was on tour, and he talked about the idea of putting something like this together. How did it come to be?

Bob: Have you ever gotten a summons from a court?

David: Yeah.

Corey: I have not personally.

David: But you’ve seen them. You’re familiar with the process?

Bob: David sued me for breach of … what was it?

David: Breech birth. Or lack of a breech birth.

Bob: He claimed that I had misled him by performing in a sketch show with him called ‘Mr. Show’ for five years on HBO, and that I misled him into believing that that would be a career. And I lost. I lost. I guess he was right.

Corey: You put a cast together of some of the original members of the show?

David: Yeah, we got who we were able to get—not to take anything away from these guys. We only had enough budget to bring three other people. One of them’s
gotta
be a girl. Everybody’s happily busy and stuff, and we’re psyched to be working with John (Ennis) and Brian (Posehn) and Stephanie (Courtney). Everybody from the old ‘Mr. Show’ gang, as we like to call them out on the porch, is doing quite well.

Corey: David has said he really enjoyed performing live, that he really gets jazzed from that. Bob, how do you feel about touring. Are you excited, nervous?

David: But it’s old-timey jazz; it’s not new age jazz. It’s not Kenny G jazz.

Bob: I’m excited about seeing David perform live. I’ve never seen him live. He was an animatron on the show. He was a ro-but animatron in the show.

David: Which is different than a robot. A ro-but is a Midwestern robot.

Bob: So, for me this is going to be a real treat to see the actual David Cross and not the ro-but.

Corey: I’ve done some interviews with other comedians—and I love David’s work—but I’m told he can be a little adverse to authority figures. Are you at all worried about keeping him on track?

David: What?

Bob: We are performing for the Policeman’s Benevolent Association for Jack Welch. We’re doing a private show for Jack Welch. That’s in his retirement contract that he gets any show he wants. The stockholders of GE have to pay for him to have a private show. Can you tell I read the New York Times? It’s coming out now, his ex-wife, the agreement he has with GE, which is gonna upset stock holders because they have to treat him like a king for as long as he lives.

David: What was the agreement? I missed that part.

Bob: His ex-wife is suing him and the agreement he has with GE is coming out, where he gets treated like a king for the rest of his life and he doesn’t have to pay for anything, ever.

David: Yeah, well he can just join the list of people. At some point somebody’s gonna be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

Bob: Anyway, I don’t have to keep David in line.

David: I think it was tongue-in-cheek, that question.

Bob: What are you concerned about? I’m the one who takes my clothes off all the time. I’m the one who’s gonna get us arrested.

David: Yeah, because this is a Doors concert 30 years ago in Miami.

Corey: Have you plotted out what the show is going to be?

David: No, it’s all improv.

Bob: David’s half is all improv. My half is scripted tight.

David: Makes it interesting; it’s a twist.

Corey: You’ll be responding to David’s improv with a script?

Bob: That’s right. It should be a disaster.

David: Those scripted lines are all from Moliere’s ‘Tartuffe,’ and I don’t know French at all.

Bob: We have a scripted show. Some scenes are old scenes that we did in the show and a lot of the scenes are new. And to top it all off—with a topper—it’s got a story. It tells a story about one lucky young man named David Cross, who becomes president of the United Snakes.

David: Played by Bob.

Bob: No, it’s true, we’re going to tell a story with this show. There are sketches just like the show; there are video pieces that pass from one scene to the other, hands-off, through video.

Corey: That was one of the nice things of the show where one theme led to another, similar to the Monty Python days. So that is something you’re continuing?

Bob: That’s right.

Corey: Can you talk about some of the returning scenes?

Bob: Indomitable Spirit will be playing. They’re a handicapped rock band.

David: Who as it turns out is not so handicapped.

Bob: And we’re gonna do Shampoo and we’re gonna do Burgundy Loaf.

Corey: Which one was Burgundy Loaf?

Bob: That was the restaurant where they don’t have a toilet.

David: Oh, they have a toilet! It turns out it’s not in the usual place.

Corey: Can you talk about some of the new sketches?

David: I don’t want to give anything away.

Bob: Yeah, let’s give stuff away. The people are still gonna want to see it, only more so.

David: Yeah, if anybody was on the fence at this point. There’s a scene about the solution to the moral question of executing retarded people. There’s a scene about the solution to all the tension and fighting in the Middle East.

Corey: You’re trying to stay current.

Bob: We’re trying to solve problems.

David: And currants. We have a currant bar. I’ve been handpicking currants for fucking two months now. My hands are stained. That’s part of keeping current.

Corey: The show is called ‘Hooray for America,’ and that’s all anybody can talk about with the anniversary of 9/11 coming up. You are kicking off the tour next week. Was that a conscious decision with the anniversary?

David: We had talked about calling it, ‘Fuck You, America,’ and this was two weeks after September 11. Then when we found out the news …

Bob: We don’t read the news.

David: Yeah, I don’t know what you’re referring to. September 11, to me, was when I watched soft-core porn on Showtime and jerked off. And that’s every day to me.

Bob: It’s not a reference at all to September 11. The story we tell and the political pieces we do are focused on domestic politics. David lives in New York. He was there. We don’t really have a position on that. I guess we don’t support Osama bin Laden. What’s this thing, two guys claim credit for September 11?

David: They just found two guys in that cell in Hamburg. Two of those guys have confessed to being part of the planning.

Corey: What is the writing process like?

Bob: We switch off on letters.

David: Yeah, it’s cool. Bob and I get together and we play word jumble and we get a bunch of word jumbles from across the country—the syndicated word jumbles—and we’ll take those words and cut those letters up and play Scrabble. A long, arduous, stupid process.

Bob: You forgot the craps part. First we bet on craps over the Internet. It’s very complicated. The point I’m making is, it’s very complicated. There’s a certain amount of stealing we do from other comedians, and that plays into it, where we transcribe acts. That’s basically how I spend most of my evenings, transcribing stand-up comedy acts in the back of the Improv.

David: And Bill Engvall is giving you fits, isn’t he? He has those crazy characters.

Bob: I don’t know who that is. Who is that?

David: He’s a bad comedian.

Bob: I can’t elaborate more on the writing. Read the book!

David: I hate to sound like I’m 10 years too late. I think a lot of the best comedy is on the Internet. There’s some great stuff on there. That’s ultimately the most satisfying source of satire and comedy right now, certainly more than on TV or in the comedy clubs or in the movies.

Corey: Don’t you think it’s tougher for someone to make their living if they’re just giving it away on the Internet.

David: That’s the beauty of it. They’re not trying to make a living doing it. It’s a lot more organic and pure. They don’t have to take notes from network executives or Midwestern audiences going, ‘Huh?’ That’s what’s great about it. Comedy and profits do not necessarily go hand in hand, nor should they.

As far as ventriloquists go, Jeff Dunham is rather boring. He doesn’t have nightmares that his puppets come to life. He doesn’t mutter to himself, and he’s never gone on a killing spree under the guise of one of his characters.

He’s no Anthony Hopkins in “Magic,” but he is a funny and talented guy. He’s won loads of comedian awards and become the most-famous ventriloquist since Edgar Bergen, with his characters Peanut, a sarcastic purple Woozle with a sprout of green hair; Walter, a crotchety old cuss who likes to dish out salty advice and Jose, a jalapeno—on a stick.

Corey: Why are women more attracted to the ventriloquist’s puppet than the ventriloquist himself?

Jeff Dunham: Maybe they can control them better, I’m not sure. That’s funny, I have no idea why that is; just safer I guess. It’s not like rock ‘n’ roll. You carry puppets around; you’re not a chick magnet. It’s a sad thing. My wife and I met at a comedy club, so something was right there. Who knows?

Corey: People who have seen you, do they start to believe the puppets are real?

Jeff: That to me is one of the funniest things—and the most fun aspect of what we do. People go to the show and tend to forget. When Walter says he’s been married for 46 years, he gets a round of applause. When people walk away from the show and saying, ‘Those guys are funny,’ and not ‘He was good,’ then I’ve hit my mark there.

Corey: Do you ever get tired of being the straight man?

Jeff: I do about 10 minutes of stand-up myself on the outset and it goes over fine, and it establishes my character. But once you pull the dummy out, people just don’t expect you to be funny. And there’s a couple of times that I’ve actually tried to throw in a couple jokes myself, and I make Peanut and Walter look at me like I’m an idiot. And they don’t react; they just stare at me. And it makes the audience realize, that wasn’t funny; why is he attempting to do that? It’s like Abbott and Costello. If Bud Abbot tried to do a joke, it never got the laugh.