But I vividly remember at that moment thinking, ‘This woman’s an idiot! She has no idea what she’s talking about.’ ”Īnd after dropping out of Baylor U. “I wasn’t some jerk - I was a fairly quiet, respectful child in the presence of adults. Lutz,” he tellingly remembers) later questioned his choice “and rolled her eyes a lot at the idea, saying I needed a serious career,” Dunham stuck to his guns.
They really laughed and believed that the dummy was talking, and by the fourth grade, I had no doubts - this was what I was going to do for a living.”Įven when his eighth-grade counselor (“Mrs. “I knew very early on that this is exactly what I wanted to do, and the first show I ever did, I was astounded that all my classmates bought the routine. It’s a philosophy of comedy and life - coupled with an innate talent - that appears to have sprung almost fully formed from the Texas native, whose parents’ gift of a ventriloquist’s dummy when he was 8 kick-started a career that has spawned a global brand. His latest international tour further confirmed that “all these different countries and societies have much more in common than it often seems, and it just makes me feel that all the ridiculous problems in the world are caused by a handful of idiots, and that most people are good people who do care about the same things - family, friends, health, jobs, a nice home and a safe place to live. I thought, ‘Will they drag me off the stage and make an example of me?’ I honestly thought that was a possibility, as you never know how strict and real these laws are.” “It was Achmed with a beret and mustache, and the audience loved it, thankfully. “He wasn’t even allowed to come on stage, and I was prohibited from even mentioning his name or making any sort of religious references.”ĭunham cleverly side-stepped the issue by introducing a new character “Who knew that Achmed had a French cousin - Jacques, the dead French terrorist?” he says. Of course, despite his act’s universal appeal (according to Pollstar, Dunham was the top-grossing touring comedian in the world in recent years) he isn’t guaranteed a hero’s welcome - at least from governments. Two nights later, Dunham was performing in Tel Aviv, and an equally enthusiastic reception made him feel “even more emotional, as there’s so many differences between these cultures and their histories, and there’s all the fighting over the centuries, and then this idiot from America with a doll gets up on stage, and everyone’s laughing at the same stuff. “They all howled with laughter at the jokes, and when I brought Achmed out, it was like a homecoming! They all went crazy,” he recalls. Dunham may have been nervous walking out of stage, but the reception he and his puppets - including Achmed, the manic Peanut and beer-swilling Bubba J - received was anything but traditional.
0 kommentar(er)
