JEFF DUNHAM AND HIS SUITCASE POSSE

Jeff Dunham never travels alone – and with good reason.  Dunham has put some new faces on comedy for the 21st century with his fast-talking, socially reckless “Suitcase Posse.”  On September 16, when his new hour-long special, Jeff Dunham – Spark ofInsanity, airs on Comedy Central, Dunham dive-bombs into the political arena with his new partner ‘Achmed the Dead Terrorist’, who has failed miserably in his suicidal tasks, thanks mainly to impotent anger, and a “premature detonation.”

The recent runaway success of this shrewd, contemporary, and cutting-edge comedy team has now moved Dunham and his three-foot tall sidekicks out of comedy clubs and into sold-out concert halls and performance arenas across the country. 

Numbers tell the story:  Dunham’s last Comedy Central airing, Jeff Dunham: Arguing with Myself, was one of the network’s highest rated hour-long standup specials ever, with multiple repeats every month for the past year.  The DVD of the same name has gone on to be one of the most successful comedy titles in history, going quintuple-platinum (500,000 in sales) over the last year.  Not bad considering the average comedy DVD sells around 25,000 units, and Dunham is a, (gulp). Ventriloquist.

Late night television has discovered Dunham as well, including Late Night with DavidLetterman and more appearances on The Tonight Show than any other ventriloquist in history.  Walter brought the house down by deadpanning after being invited back to The Tonight Show, “It’ll be a cold day in hell before I come back here.” Jeff and his posse feel equally comfortable on the sports, comedy and country couches and have guested on The Best Damn Sports Show, Blue Collar TV and CMT’s Fast Living among many others.

Dunham’s team consists of ‘Peanut’, a frenzied and fast self-described ‘comic genius’, who claims origin from an uncharted island in Micronesia.  In addition to Peanut there’s; ‘José Jalapeño’ who avoided his destiny to be eaten when he teamed up with Jeff after an accident in his home country of Mexico, which permanently placed him, ‘on a stEEK!’; There’s ‘Melvin’, a mild-mannered, no-real-power superhero who wants to save our country from evil, meanwhile he keeps getting locked inside the suitcase.  Jeff’s longest running member of the posse is ‘Walter’, the out-spoken elderly and non-PC curmudgeon, who reasons that his marriage has lasted for forty-seven years because, “That old bitch will NEVER die…” Dunham had the Warner Theatre audience of 2,000 in Washington D.C. earlier this month on their feet numerous times as he again raised the bar on standup comedy specials, as well as in a performance vein where he truly has no equal.

 On a side bar- Jeff was featured On Fast Living along with another passion, building and flying his own full-sized personal helicopter. “One of my oldest friends said to me once when he was in the passenger seat at 1200 feet, ‘I just realized I’m flying in a helicopter built by the same guy who built WALTER’.”  In the DVD extras of ‘Spark of Insanity’, we won’t see Dunham building a helicopter, but you will see Melvin the Superhero go from start to finish.   Says Dunham, “I would set up my video camera in each step of the process then talk about and show what it takes to create a dummy.  After editing all the footage to a nice little 30-minute extra, my manager said,  ‘It’s like Monster Garage with a puppet.’  I THINK that was a compliment!”

Jeff Dunham – Spark of Insanity goes on sale nation-wide on September 17, with his national tour of 2000-seat theatres and performance venues nationwide in more than 100 cities beginning at the same time, and going through the first half of ‘08.  If Achmed, Walter, Peanut and José Jalapeno have any say, this Posse has a monster future in store.

            We would like to suggest an interview with Jeff and one or more of his precocious partners in advance of the airing of his Comedy Central special.