Bringing it back to good old-fashioned vulgarity
Comedian Gilbert Gottfried to deliver abrasive brand of comedy at Massey Hall
There is only one comedian who is best known for voicing a talking parrot in a Disney cartoon and delivering the filthiest rendition of the joke at the centre of the documentary The Aristocrats. That’s Gilbert Gottfried, a man who turned screeching his most offensive thoughts into an art form.
At 61, he’s an elder statesman of comedy. Yet, he’s also the comedian most likely to get in trouble for saying something outrageously inappropriate following an international tragedy.
This week, Gottfried hosts an April Fool’s comedy evening at Massey Hall in Toronto and even that is little more than the setup to a punchline while speaking to the Star: “April Fool’s is kind of like amateur day for comedy,” he says. “My April Fool’s joke will be the fact that the show isn’t funny, but people still paid for it.”
Gottfried first took the stage at the astonishingly young age of15 and has been spitting out nasty absurdity ever since. However, anyone hoping for advice on starting so young or maintaining a career for so long should look elsewhere. Even Gilbert is perplexed.
“When you get older, you tend to think more rationally,” he says. “At the time, I was totally unrealistic, so I didn’t realize the amount of work and time that it took. All those years that I spent at the clubs for no money are crazy to look back on. Had I been more realistic, I’d likely be working in a Kmart.”
Throughout those decades, Gottfried appealed to a select group of like-minded social rejects and cynics. His act is rooted not in social observations or insightful commentary, but in delivering good old-fashioned vulgarity and nightmarishly dark thoughts through classic joke structure and one of the most piercing voices in the history of show business. It’s certainly not for everyone.
As Gottfried puts it, “I’m very good at clearing rooms. I’ve heard that a lot of club owners used to put me on late at night to clear the room so that they could close up.”
Yet, for those audiences who can tune into Gilbert’s abrasive pitch, there are few comedians as gut-bustingly hilarious. His cult of supporters eventually grew large enough that he was cast in the massive 1992 animated Disney blockbuster Aladdin, a project that brought him a new generation of fans even if that crowd needed at least a decade to avoid being permanently scarred by what the guy said when left to his own devices.
Looking back on that time, Gottfried laughs (piercing, of course) and recalls, “I’m sure there are a few recordings that they burnt. They would let me improvise a lot and then they’d stop to remind me, ‘Oh, this is a family film.’ ”
This isn’t Gottfried’s first trip to Canada. He’s performed here many times and once even flew up to play a role in the cult YTV children’s horror anthology series Are You Afraid of the Dark?
“Oh that’s right,” Gottfried recalls through another giggle. “That was me and Ryan Gosling, the two sexiest men on Earth. When I was working with him, he was like 3 or something. I’m sure he remembers me fondly.”
Gottfried also worked with one of our country’s finest exports, Alan Thicke, on several occasions and would like to make one thing clear about their collaboration: “I consider Canada sending Alan Thicke to the U.S. to be like a terrorist attack.”
Gottfried has been the best possible bad influence on several generations of young minds, Canadian and otherwise. Now, he has his own children and admits it’s difficult to juggle his stage and parenting personas. In fact, he deliberately keeps his jokes away from his children.
“I think when they are both in their 90s, they’ll be old enough to hear my act but even then, they won’t get most of the references,” he says. “That’s the problem with having kids, if one of them says a dirty word, I can’t with a straight face tell them not to.”