It’s a dirty job…

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This article was published 30/09/2010 (5765 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

He provided the voice for one of the most memorable cartoon characters of all time; he’s also renowned for having delivered perhaps the dirtiest version of the dirtiest joke ever told.

You might say Gilbert Gottfried appeals to a broad audience.

During a career that has spanned almost four decades, the New York-born comedian has been an A-list standup performer, a Saturday Night Live cast member, a supporting player in such movie titles as Beverly Hills Cop II and Problem Child, the voice of Iago the parrot in Disney’s Aladdin, a key contributor to the coarse-comedy documentary The Aristocrats and, for the last decade, the voice of the AFLAC-quacking TV-commercial duck.

“I say this as a half-joke, but it’s true,” Gottfried offers in explaining the diverse list of credits in his resumé. “Whoever waves the cheque in my face, that’s what I do.”

Gottfried, 55, is bringing his standup act to Winnipeg this weekend for a quartet of sold-out shows at Rumor’s Comedy Club. It isn’t his first foray into this city’s comedy-club scene; Gottfried made several stops during the ’80s at another standup venue, The Comedy Oasis, which was owned by controversial city councillor Al Golden.

“It’s been many years, but there was a club there I played a lot,” Gottfried says in a telephone interview from his home in New York City. “There was that guy who ran it who was a councilman. He was a very interesting guy, involved in a lot of different things. I think he was arrested, wasn’t he? And then there was another guy, a younger guy, who always carried a gun. It was an odd place.”

Gottfried started performing comedy at open-mike nights in New York City when he was 15 years old; within just a few years, he was a headline act who had gained a reputation as a comics’ comic. His skill as a jokewriter continued to develop, and Gottfried’s onstage persona — loud and unforgettably grating — just sort of evolved into what it is today.

“There was never any conscious decision; it’s not like I can say that on such-and-such a date I decided to talk this way,” he explains in a calm, quiet tone that bears almost no resemblance to his onstage voice. “To me, it’s like the way people’s personalities are — you don’t decide what you’re going to be like; it evolves over a number of years, and the next thing you know, you wake up and that’s how you act.

“There was just never a conscious thought about it. I guess if I’d thought consciously, I’d have had a much better career.”

That voice, however, was such an attention-grabber that it led to a seamless transition into TV and movies. And when Disney came calling with an offer to do voice-over work in the 1992 cartoon Aladdin, Gottfried’s career headed in a new and quite unexpected direction.

“Even when I was starting out, I thought it would be fun to do voice-overs and cartoons and things like that, but never pursued it because I didn’t even know how,” he says. “It just happened — one day I got an audition for Aladdin, and it branched out from there.”

In addition to doing more than a dozen animated films and TV shows, Gottfried has also lent his voice to those impossible-to-ignore AFLAC insurance commercials — a gig that, it turns out, has been more labour intensive than the comic might have imagined.

“You’d think it would be the easiest thing to do,” he said, “but every time they have a new commercial, they have me come in and re-record. It takes hours — they say, ‘Can you say AFLAC a bit angrier?’ and I’ll say it, then they say, ‘Can you pull it back a little?’ and I’ll say it exactly the same way, and they’ll go, ‘Oh, that’s a bit better.'”

The most controversial chapter in Gottfried’s career came in 2001 when, just three weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York, he took part in a Friars Club roast of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner. When an offhand quip about catching a plane drew boos and catcalls from the audience, Gottfried shifted gears by telling a long, raunchy version of the joke known in comedy circles as The Aristocrats, reportedly bringing the house down and saving the show.

The joke, a simple bait-and-switch gag that includes a description of a downright filthy family talent act with an oddly classy name, was immortalized in the 2005 big-screen documentary The Aristocrats, in which dozens of well-known comedians tell their own versions of the mostly improvised dirty joke — with Gottfried’s towering above the others for its jaw-droppingly offensive content.

“It was very peculiar how that came about,” he recalled. “Penn Jillette (one of the film’s producers), of Penn & Teller, asked me to do a segment for the movie; of course, I didn’t get paid for it, making it one of Penn’s greatest magic tricks. I did it, and then basically forgot about the whole thing because I didn’t think this was something that anyone would pay to see. I was very surprised by what happened when it came out…. My favourite review said, ‘Of the more than 100 comics in it, no one is more disgusting than Gilbert Gottfried.'”

To capitalize on the notoriety created by the film, Gottfried has released his own comedy DVD, Gilbert Gottfried: Dirty Jokes, which was filmed in New York and includes a version of The Aristocrats. The comic said he’ll be autographing copies of the DVD at this weekend’s shows.

“I guess I can no longer act like I’m offended by other comics,” he laughed.

brad.oswald@ freepress.mb.ca

COMEDY PREVIEW

Gilbert Gottfried

Rumor’s Comedy Club

Friday and Saturday, 7:45 p.m. & 10:30 p.m.

Tickets $25 (sold out)