Gilbert Gottfried

Gilbert Gottfried
Gottfried at GalaxyCon Richmond in 2020
Born	Gilbert Jeremy Gottfried (1955-02-28) February 28, 1955 (age 66)[1] Brooklyn, New York, U.S.[1]
Occupation	Stand-up comedian actor
Years active	1970–present
Spouse(s)	Dara Kravitz ​ (m. 2007)​
Children	2
Relatives	Arlene Gottfried (sister)
Comedy career
Medium	Stand-up film television
Genres	Satire crude humor blue comedy improvisational comedy black comedy insult comedy
Subject(s)	Religion race relations racism pop culture sex
Website	www.gilbertgottfried.com

Gilbert Jeremy Gottfried^[1] (born February 28, 1955) is an American stand-up comedian and actor. Gottfried's persona as a comedian features an exaggerated shrill voice and emphasis on crude humor. His numerous roles in film and television include voicing the parrot Iago in Disney's Aladdin animated films and TV show, Digit LeBoid in the PBS Kids Go! show Cyberchase, and Kraang Subprime in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Gottfried was also the voice of the Aflac Duck until 2011. He appeared in the critically panned commercial hit Problem Child in 1990.

Since 2014, Gottfried has hosted a podcast, Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast, which features new episodes each week featuring discussions of classic movies and celebrity interviews, most often with veteran actors, comedians, musicians and comedy writers.^[2] Gilbert, a documentary film on Gottfried's life and career, was released in 2017.

Career[]

Early life and career[]

Gottfried was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Lillian (Zimmerman), a homemaker, and Max Gottfried, who ran a hardware store with his own father, above which the family lived.^[3] At age 15, Gottfried began doing amateur stand-up in New York City and, after a few years, became known around New York as "the comedian's comedian."^[4] In 1980, Saturday Night Live was being retooled with a new staff and new comedians; the producers noticed Gottfried and hired him as a cast member for season 6.^[5][6] Gottfried's persona in SNL sketches was very different from his later characterization: he rarely (if ever) spoke in his trademark screeching, obnoxious voice and never squinted. During his 12-episode stint, he was given very little airtime and seldom used in sketches. Gottfried recalls a low point was having to play a corpse in a sketch about a sports organist hired to play inappropriate music at a funeral. Despite this, he had one recurring character (Leo Waxman, husband to Denny Dillon's Pinky Waxman on the recurring talk show sketch, "What's It All About?") and two celebrity impersonations: David A. Stockman and controversial film director Roman Polanski.^[7]

Gottfried also played accountant Sidney Bernstein in the 1987 film Beverly Hills Cop II which reunited him with friend and fellow SNL alumnus Eddie Murphy.

Although not a regular, he also appeared in The Amazing Live Sea Monkeys, as well as voicing the crazed dentist Dr. Bender and his son Wendell in The Fairly OddParents and the voice of Jerry the Belly Button Elf on Ren and Stimpy. Three of his most prominent roles came in 1990, 1991, and 1992, when he was cast as the adoption agent Igor Peabody in Problem Child and Problem Child 2 and the parrot Iago in Aladdin. When asked how he prepared for the role, Gottfried said, "I did the whole DeNiro thing. I moved to South America! I lived in the trees!" Gottfried reprised the role in Aladdin: The Return of Jafar, Aladdin and the King of Thieves, the television series and various related media, such as Kingdom Hearts and House of Mouse. However, the character was ultimately recast to Alan Tudyk for the 2019 remake. Gottfried also voiced Berkeley Beetle in 1994's Thumbelina.

Gottfried was the host of the Saturday edition of USA Up All Night for its entire run from 1989 to 1998.

Voice acting, television and films (1999–present)[]

Gottfried was a recurring guest star during the Tom Bergeron era of The Hollywood Squares and became the central figure in a bizarre episode that aired October 1, 1999. In this episode, the two contestants made nine consecutive incorrect guesses, six of which were to be game-deciding questions asked to Gottfried. Penn Jillette, who, with his partner Teller was a guest on the same episode, berated a contestant earlier for giving an incorrect guess by shouting "You fool!", which Gottfried himself then began to use, with most of the other stars including host Bergeron himself eventually joining in with every successive wrong guess. As a consequence, it took the entire half hour to play only one game. Appropriately, the episode became known as the "You Fool!" episode.

Gottfried fed by Larry King's wife, Shawn Southwick in 1999

Gottfried has provided the voice of the duck in the Aflac commercials and Digit in Cyberchase, as well as Mister Mxyzptlk in Superman: The Animated Series. He reprised his role as Mxyzptlk in Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham, Justice League Action, and Lego DC Super-Villains. He also voiced a nasty wisecracking criminal genius named Nick-Nack in two episodes of Superboy (he also co-wrote an issue of Superboy: The Comic Book, which featured Nick-Nack's origin). On The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Gottfried has made regular appearances.

In 2004, Comedy Central featured Gottfried's stand-up material for Shorties Watchin' Shorties.^[8] Gottfried was part of an online advertising campaign for Microsoft's Office XP software, showing, in a series of Flash-animated cartoons, that the Clippy office assistant would be removed. In 2006, Gottfried topped the Boston Phoenix's tongue-in-cheek list of the world's 100 Unsexiest Men. In April 2006, Gottfried performed with the University of Pennsylvania's Mask and Wig Club in their annual Intercollegiate Comedy Festival. Also in 2006, he made an appearance on the Let's Make a Deal portion of Gameshow Marathon (as a baby in a large high chair, he says "Hey Ricki, I think I need my diaper changed!"), and in the Dodge Viper in the big deal (where he tells the contestants "What were you thinking?!" because neither one picked it). He also guest-starred in The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy as Santa Claus in the one-hour Christmas Special. He voiced Rick Platypus in an episode of My Gym Partner's a Monkey entitled "That Darn Platypus".

Gottfried at the Writers Guild of America East Solidarity Rally in Washington Square on November 27, 2007

He appeared as Peter's horse in an episode of Family Guy entitled "Boys Do Cry" (in which Peter Griffin is enthused to learn that Gottfried is providing the horse's voice). He also guest-starred in Hannah Montana as Barny Bittmen. In January 2009, Gottfried worked again with David Faustino for an episode of Faustino's show Star-ving.^[9] In 2011, Gottfried appeared in the episode "Lost Traveler" on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as Leo Gerber, a sarcastic computer professional working for the NYPD's Technical Assistance Response Unit, which producer Warren Leight said could become a recurring character.^[10] Gottfried read a section from the hit book Fifty Shades of Grey in a June 2012 YouTube video, which was created with the aim of using Gottfried's trademark voice to make fun of the book's graphic sexual content.^[11]

In 2013, Gottfried became a member of "Team Rachael" on the second season of Food Network's Rachael vs. Guy: Celebrity Cook-Off. In March 2013 he appeared on ABC's Celebrity Wife Swap. He swapped wives with Alan Thicke.^[12] He is also a commentator on truTV Presents: World's Dumbest....

On May 28, 2014, Sideshow Network premiered Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast, an interview series where Gottfried and his co-host Frank Santopadre discuss classic movies and talk to "Hollywood legends and behind-the-scenes talents" who shaped Gottfried's childhood and influenced his comedy.^[13] His first guest was Dick Cavett.

Gottfried was the third contestant fired during the fourteenth season of the NBC reality show The Celebrity Apprentice. In 2016 he played the 'Pig Man' in a comedy/fantasy film Abnormal Attraction.^[14]

In 2017 he appeared as himself in Episodes, where a contestant on a fictional TV endurance gameshow is penalised with "48 hours of Gilbert Gottfried".

On June 10, 2018 he appeared in a special segment of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver where, for UK viewers only, a segment about the UK's law restricting broadcast of debates from the Houses of Parliament was replaced by five minutes of him reading "3 star Yelp reviews", along with host John Oliver telling the audience "you brought this on yourself because of your stupid law". He returned on November 18, 2018 in the show's last episode of the year to read out extracts from the Brexit agreement, again for UK viewers only.^[15] He had previously performed as "the real voice of Jared Kushner" in dubbed film clips on the show.

On July 31, 2019 he appeared on episode 170 of the Angry Video Game Nerd YouTube channel Cinemassacre. The title of the video is "Life of Black Tiger with Gilbert Gottfried (PS4) - Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN)". Quoted from the description of the video, "The AVGN is playing the most modern game he's ever played before on the PlayStation 4. But, of course it might be one of the worst games he's ever played. Life of Black Tiger is a mobile game ported to the PS4 where you play as an emo tiger fighting the wild and humanity to save his cute baby. Gilbert Gottfried guest stars as a certain game designer that's never been seen on the show before."^[16] James Rolfe invited Gottfried as a guest to be in the episode in order to play a made-up developer of the game Life of Black Tiger.

Personal life[]

In the late 1990s, Gottfried met Dara Kravitz at a Grammy Awards party. They were married in 2007 and have two children together: daughter, Lily and son, Max.^[17] They reside in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. Gottfried was raised in a Jewish family, but he has commented on his podcast that he did not have a bar mitzvah.^[18] One of his sisters was Arlene Gottfried, a New York street photographer who died in 2017.

Comedic style[]

Danny Gallagher of the Dallas Observer wrote that "Gottfried has one of the most original formulas in the history of comedy", adding:

You don't just laugh at the punchline when Gilbert Gottfried tells a joke. You laugh at the setup. You laugh at his comments about the joke. You even laugh at the segues between his jokes.^[19]

Gottfried is known for speaking in a loud and grating voice, which is not his natural speaking voice.^[20] Mark Binneli of Rolling Stone described Gottfried as a "squinting, squawking mass of contradictions", noting his status as "one of America's filthiest stand-ups and one of the most successful voice-over artists in children's entertainment."^[21] Gottfried is known for joking about recent tragedies. In a July 2012 op-ed for CNN, he wrote:

I have always felt comedy and tragedy are roommates. If you look up comedy and tragedy, you will find a very old picture of two masks. One mask is tragedy. It looks like it's crying. The other mask is comedy. It looks like it's laughing. Nowadays, we would say, 'How tasteless and insensitive. A comedy mask is laughing at a tragedy mask.'^[22]

Controversial jokes[]

1991 Emmy Awards[]

At the 43rd Primetime Emmy Awards, Gottfried made "an endless series of masturbation jokes" in reference to Paul Reubens' arrest for masturbating in an adult movie theater.^[23] Viewers on the East Coast saw the entire set live, but Fox censored the broadcast for the West Coast delay.^[24] Fox issued an apology, stating that Gottfried's jokes were "irresponsible and insulting".^[23] Gottfried said that producers stated he would not be invited back,^[25] and Rolling Stone wrote that the monologue resulted in his being "blacklisted".^[21]

September 11 joke[]

During his monologue at a Friars Club roast of Hugh Hefner three weeks after the September 11 attacks, Gottfried joked that he had intended to catch a plane, but could not get a direct flight because "they said they have to stop at the Empire State Building first". This was one of the first public examples of 9/11 humor. Audience members responded with hisses and a cry of "Too soon!" Gottfried then abandoned his prepared remarks and launched into the venerable Aristocrats joke, winning back the audience.^[26] Penn Jillette and Paul Provenza used Gottfried's monologue as a segment in their 2005 film The Aristocrats.^[27]

Japanese tsunami jokes[]

In March 2011, Gottfried made a series of jokes on his Twitter account about the earthquake disaster in Japan.^[28] Aflac, which does 75% of its business in Japan, responded by dismissing Gottfried from voicing its duck mascot on March 14, 2011, and announced a casting call for his replacement as the voice of the duck.^[29] He was replaced by Daniel McKeague (who did an impression of Gottfried) on April 26, 2011.^[30]

Filmography[]

Film[]

Television[]

Video games[]

Web[]

Commercials[]

References[]

External links[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Gilbert Gottfried.

• Official website
• Gilbert Gottfried at IMDb
• Gilbert Gottfried at the Internet Broadway Database