Paste: Would you call people back and tell them it was a joke?įlorentine: Yeah, but you wait, ‘cause the person’s pissed that you just messed with them. We had to call the South or the Midwest, where people were a little more patient and nice. Paste: How hard was it to find people who would fall for the pranks?įlorentine: We noticed early on that if we called places on the East Coast, people had no patience and would hang up in two seconds. That kind of stuff is just found, that’s manna from heaven. We would never anticipate something like that. Then there’s stuff you can never plan, like when Jim was belching into the phone, and the guy on the phone was convinced it was someone in his workplace burping on the other line. had some great misunderstandings, and it was perfect.
You need someone to get mad.Ĭarolla: Sometimes you run into spun gold with the other person’s reaction, like when Dave Chappelle was calling the bed and breakfast asking if the Wu-Tang Clan could stay there. There’s a lot of calls where the other person’s like, “OK, sure. Paste: How important was the reaction from the person on the other line?įlorentine: They’re the star of the call, because they have to create the tension. I didn’t know I was wrong.” So they’re like, “OK, maybe there’s just something wrong with him, so I’ll stay on the line.” I’d be calling for a job interview, burping a lot, saying, “I have to burp. My personal strategy was to try to set up a semi-believable scenario, set the hook and then start doing the jokes.įlorentine: My whole strategy is, “Hey, I’m just trying to get the information. A lot of it is keeping the person on the other line engaged and believing everything. Paste: Is there a certain strategy or approach that makes a call work well?Ĭarolla: Everyone had their own techniques from a tactical standpoint. We’d have an idea like, “Let’s pretend I’m giving my grandfather a bath and I drown him,” but other than that, I’d just listen to what they say. You don’t know what the person on the other line would say, so you have to play off of them. We’d sit around in a circle with a dry erase board and hold up jokes during the calls.įlorentine: A lot of the calls were off the top of the head. Then we’d call from a pretty nondescript strip mall in Vegas and we’d start mowing through the businesses. Then we’d think, “It would be funny if this guy was calling some business to apply for a job.” We’d get a list of businesses that we could call in various states that it was legal to call them in. Paste: What was the process of doing a prank call?Ĭarolla: We would figure out what character we’d do, maybe me doing Mr. They would fly us first-class to Las Vegas, they’d put us up in the Bellagio, I’d make prank calls for four hours, then go out to strip clubs in Vegas. I thought everything was going to be like that, and nothing has been since.
Crank yankers special ed pics tv#
It’s funny, because Crank Yankers was my first TV job, and it was by far the best experience I’ve ever had in TV. Paste: How does it feel that the Crank Yankers debut was 15 years ago?įlorentine: Oh yeah, 15 years… Wow.
Paste spoke with Carolla and Florentine about Crank Yankers’s 15th anniversary, the art of the perfect prank call and the unaired calls that went too far. Birchum, a crotchety Vietnam War veteran who berated anyone who spoke with him. Carolla, who produced the show with Kimmel, voiced Mr. The show was a huge hit, running for four seasons-three on Comedy Central and one on MTV 2.Ĭrank Yankers featured some of the biggest names in comedy, including Dave Chappelle, Sarah Silverman, Tracy Morgan and Dane Cook (before he became a household name).
It’s been 15 years since comedians Adam Carolla and Jimmy Kimmel introduced the world to Crank Yankers, the hilariously offensive show where puppets, voiced by comedians, harass unsuspecting people with prank phone calls. “Maybe there’s a nostalgic feel to them because you can’t do them anymore, says Jim Florentine, one of the stars of Comedy Central’s Crank Yankers and the voice of fan-favorite character Special Ed. They’re the product of a bygone era, and if you were born before the invention of caller ID, they were likely a part of your childhood. There’s something nostalgic about prank phone calls.
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