ENTERTAINMENT: Gottfried outtakes more relevant now

Sometimes, what you leave out of a story becomes more relevant later.

I talked to Gilbert Gottfried for a half-hour in January for his stint at the Hilton, well before he was back in the news: getting fired as the voice of the Aflac duck for gross jokes he made about the disaster in Japan.

There is only so much room in a given story, and part of the conversation didn’t seem so important then as it does now.

I told him then that I had always been amazed how his raunchy stand-up  never seemed to put him in jeopardy with his corporate advertising work or with his animated children's programming voices for Disney and PBS.

“Has it ever cost you a gig or has one ever come into conflict with the other?” I asked.

“I lost some jobs through going on the Howard Stern show. I lost a couple of commercial endorsements there,” he noted. “Tiger Woods has lost less money,” he added with that patented Gilbert laugh.

Aflac is trying to capitalize on the publicity over Gottfried’s dismissal by holding a contest to find its new duck voice. The press release says Las Vegas is one of the cities for live auditions, but doesn’t say when. Apparently, you have to apply online first at quackaflac.com.

Gottfried’s comment on that gig may or may not help you if you want to audition:
“They’ll say, ‘Can you make it angrier?’ And I’ll say it pretty much the same way the next time. And then they’ll say, ‘Make it more happy.’ And then I’ll say it the exact same way. Eventually they’ll go, ‘Oh, perfect.’ ”