Dunham is no dummy
His career keeps rising
By Cathalena E. Burch
cburch@azstarnet.com
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 01.08.2009
Fifteen minutes.
That's how much fame Andy Warhol said everyone can expect to experience in their lifetime.
Comic ventriloquist Jeff Dunham's 15 minutes are now entering year 19 with no sign that the clock is ticking down.
"Like I've said at every step of the way, you never know how long your 15 minutes are going to last," he said in early December as he was catching the biggest wave yet in his career — a national arena run that will take him and his cast of unruly characters to audiences normally reserved for platinum-selling rock stars.
The tour pulls into the Tucson Arena next Thursday.
"It's kind of fun. You know, it's been 18 years on the road and then in '06 when the first DVD came out, it felt like it was just sitting on the launch pad and you could see the smoke billowing as it started coming off the pad. And now it's like holy crap, what happened?" he reflected with a genuine sense of disbelief.
What has happened is a classic story of perseverance.
Since the late 1980s, when the Texas native decided to pursue his comic ventriloquism as more than a pastime, Dunham has built his career one laugh at a time. He packed Peanut the wise-cracking purple woozle, Walter the acid-tongued curmudgeon and José Jalapeño on a Stick, Peanut's go-with-the-flow punching bag, into a roomy trunk and trekked to any smoky strip-mall comedy club that would have him.
He's had breaks along the way. Johnny Carson gave him his first national audience in 1990 on "The Tonight Show." Carson's successor, Jay Leno, invited him on the show a few years later. He's been on David Letterman and dozens of daytime variety and talk shows; he's done the morning shows and radio.
With his first Comedy Central special/DVD, "Arguing with Myself" in 2006, the tide shifted. The phone started ringing. The fee for corporate gigs shot through the ceiling. The comedy clubs were too small to handle the audience demand so he moved his show to midsize theaters.
Then came Achmed the Dead Terrorist and Dunham's 2007 Comedy Central special, "Spark of Insanity."
"Spark" blew Comedy Central's ratings and started an international buzz, most of it centered on the skeletal figure of Achmed, a faint-hearted suicide bomber who didn't really have the stomach to kill Americans or anyone else.
"Achmed is what really ignited the fire. And it's not just on a national level. It's on a worldwide level. He is huge in South Africa, Australia, Norway. We sold like 150,000 ringtones ('I'll keel you') in Sweden," he said.
Dunham introduced Tucson to Achmed on the same night "Spark" premiered on Comedy Central.
"That's right!" Dunham said when reminded that he played a sold-out show at Fox Tucson Theatre that night. "Then the next night I had to do a horrible, horrible corporate gig (somewhere near Tucson). I won't say it was horrible; where I had to stay was horrible."
The resort where he was booked was apparently vacant except for him; they upgraded him to a suite that took up a whole floor. The golf course was brown; no one was rushing to play it so the resort hadn't yet reseeded it for the fall.
"I was standing there with my trunk and my suitcase, all alone," he said. "It was like, 'How did this happen? I just had a huge, huge special on Comedy Central and now I'm standing alone at a godforsaken resort in the middle of nowhere.' "
He had experienced that kind of moment before, the night after his 1990 Carson show.
"The next night I had to fly and do some tiny little community college out in the middle of nowhere out in Arkansas," he recalled. "One of the kids came up to me and said, 'Why are you here? Weren't you on "The Tonight Show" last night?' "
In November, Dunham ratcheted up his comic currency with "Jeff Dunham's Very Special Christmas Special," which brought in Comedy Central's largest ratings to date — 6.6 million viewers compared with the previous record of 6.2 million that tuned in for the 1998 "South Park" cliffhanger about Cartman's mother.
"To have beat (Dave) Chappelle, to beat 'South Park' — holy crap! I'm sure ('South Park' creators) Matt Stone and Trey Parker woke up the next day and said, 'Who did what?' " Dunham said.
Dunham's recent success has led to offers for TV series, movies and other projects, but he's sitting tight.
"In all honesty, it's hard to beat the money from the live shows. It's just more fun, too," he said. "My goal a few months ago was let's see if we can hit 10,000 people (per night). We did Hershey, Pa., last week and we were at 9,700. It's getting close. Everything we're doing now is 5,000 and 10,000 seats."
Some people in Dunham's position wouldn't bother to worry about the fate of their 15 minutes. But Dunham is not so cocky.
"I don't take anything for granted. I know I have to work hard because audiences can be fickle. They can be loyal, but it can turn in a matter of weeks. I just have to keep making it funny and more interesting so they get their money's worth when they come to our shows."
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