Comic Gilbert Gottfried walks tightrope between worlds

Everyone knows Gilbert Gottfried's voice. Now if only they got his jokes.

That signature squawk travels the long road from Disney animation ("Aladdin" parrot Iago) to TV commercials ("Aflac!") to the filthiest telling of a dirty joke in a movie ("The Aristocrats") where dozens of comics attempt it.

Bruce Bielenberg, the box office manager at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace even recalls being driven slowly to the brink by Gottfried's voice coming from a slot machine on the outlying casino floor.

Yes, he is everywhere. But when you actually pay to see him, Gottfried says he's not sure audiences always hang in there.

"People are laughing, but then they'll turn to the people they're sitting next to and go, 'Who's he talking about?' And the people who do get the references appreciate it even more," says Gottfried, who is parked at the Las Vegas Hilton's Shimmer Cabaret for a two-week stint through Jan. 30.

What? They didn't get that impression of Bernard Gorcey, who played Louie the sweet shop owner in the Bowery Boys movies? Or Maria Ouspenskaya, who gave Lon Chaney's "Wolf Man" his last rites?

At least Howard Stern listeners know "Dracula Gottfried."

"I think there are certain people whose memories are kept alive just through me," he says. "I don't think the majority of people out there have seen a (Bela) Lugosi film. They just know me as Dracula."

The 55-year-old comic says that when he was growing up, "the best film school in the country was in your living room. TV at that time played everything."

But he's still doing research. Except for a day of doing some voice work for Disney this week, Gottfried says, "My wild Vegas life is waking up in the morning, going to the buffet for breakfast, going back up to my room, watching TV and looking at my watch until it's time for lunch, and going there.

"Not exactly Frank, Dino and Sammy," he adds with a big Gilbert laugh.

That's not the reason he is rare to these parts. (His explanation? "I think because Vegas likes comedy.") He is admittedly willing to perform anywhere that will pay him. "My career always walks the tightrope between early morning children's programming and hard-core porn."

Though he was always a "comic's comic" among peers, Gottfried perhaps confused the public for the first 20 years of his career. It took hours of airtime with Stern, "The Aristocrats" movie in 2005 and the stealing of several cable-TV celebrity roasts to collectively make Gottfried dangerous enough for Vegas.

"The funny thing is, most of my act that I've done over the years has actually been clean. A lot of times with my bits, I've gone out of my way to not say a dirty word just to make sure the bit actually worked. I'll say 'have sex,' " instead of the obvious expletive.

He does that because he's seen comics bomb on TV with jokes that must have been funny in clubs. The TV producer "heard it get a laugh and said, 'That's a great line, we'll just cut out the dirty word.' "

But the price of ubiquity? Sometimes he gets in trouble for being too dirty. "And then you get some audiences where I work dirty, and I have people come up and say, 'I didn't think that was dirty enough.'

"Right now, I pretty much have to sacrifice animals onstage."

In April, he has a book coming out called "Rubber Balls and Liquor," the title "based on an old children's dirty joke."

He says it's "kind of a memoir, kind of autobiographical. But I don't go that deep into it. The minute I find myself talking too seriously, I immediately throw in a filthy, stupid reference."

Kind of like talking to him on the phone, where he just can't help himself.

Working the same room as Andrew Dice Clay, whom he famously mocks? "I ran into him not too long ago, and it was fine, I guess. But then, he was my cabdriver."

Does he have any new film or TV work coming up? "I'll be working at Fotomat."

Whatever happened to those, anyway? "See? That just shows, right there, my reference points. God, Fotomat." (Big Gilbert laugh.) "One day I'll have to make references to talking films."

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.