That persistence – and his growing arsenal of personas – landed him a guest spot on the “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson” in 1990, which helped him break out of the club circuit and start filling theaters. He struggled in clubs for a few years, but slowly cultivated a devoted following by frequenting the Comedy and Magic Club in Hermosa Beach and the Hollywood Improv.
Those new characters went over well with audiences, and in 1988 Dunham moved to Los Angeles to go toe-to-toe with the big comedy acts of the decade. After that came Peanut, the purple, wild-haired “woozle,” and retired, grumpy old man Walter. He created his first puppet, José Jalapeño on a Stick, in 1983. I wasn’t a great athlete, but I found something that I could do well and received accolades for – and eventually I got paid to do it.”ĭunham landed gigs in clubs while he attended college he says he never really had a “real job.” He realized, though, that if he was going to take his craft seriously, he’d have to put a new spin on what he calls “a tired and terrible art.” “But I certainly wasn’t one of the popular kids. Most children would get beat up for that, but Dunham grew up in a small community in Texas – where his friends didn’t make fun of him, since most of his material with his new wooden friend consisted of jokes about school lunch food and various teachers. When he was 8 years old, his parents gave him his first dummy. 28.īut things weren’t always so hectic for the 47-year-old comedy mega-star. Simultaneously, Dunham has been out on his 60-date Identity Crisis tour, which comes to the Honda Center in Anaheim on Nov. 22 premiere of “The Jeff Dunham Show” scored an all-time record for the cable network with 5.3 million total viewers. Something like that is bound to happen, however, when you’re touring nonstop and debuting an immensely popular half-hour sketch variety show on Comedy Central.
But I ran off stage and asked the guys: ‘Please! Tell me what’s next!'” We went to some of the clips from the TV show right away because I just couldn’t remember what I was doing, so the audience didn’t really know the difference.
“I was, like, drunk on stage because I hadn’t eaten anything, and I had the hiccups – and when I pulled out the Jack Daniels to get rid of the hiccups, I had 12,000 people yelling for me to drink it. “I put the character I had away and I pulled out Peanut (another of Dunham’s puppets) – and for the life of me I couldn’t remember what was coming next,” he admits, laughing. But the extremely jetlagged Dunham, just back from an Australian tour and on one day’s rest, took those shots on an empty tank. Jeff Dunham brings his ‘Identity Crisis’ to Anaheim – Orange County Register Close Menu
0 kommentar(er)
