It's a shot for the family album: Snoop, in Converse sneakers and baggy Snoop Dogg Clothing sweats, with a little white boy in a wide-eyed grin. The boy is comedian Andy Richter's son, and Richter's wife wants a photo of him with the world-famous hip-hop star, the man synonymous with the term "gangsta rap." Snoop - who's making talk-show rounds to promote his latest album, "Paid Tha Cost to Be Da Bo$$," and his MTV comedy sketch show, "Doggy Fizzle Televizzle, " which wraps its first season this month - scoops up little Richter. I am very, very persistent," he laughs.Snoop Dogg is backstage at "Late Night With Conan O'Brien," and he's cradling a little blond boy in his arms. "We get clearances on all the calls we put to air," Kellison says, "and we have an excellent clearance department. After all, not everyone who is pranked laughs about it afterwards. If making the calls sounds like a monumental task, getting permission from the victims to air them is even harder. We put them up in the Four Seasons Hotel and they have a great time." As it turned out, it was, and we had a stroke of evil genius, in a sense, in that we could talk comedians into coming to do this trip because we could make a Las Vegas junket out of it. "There were all these cameras recording people without people knowing," Kellison explains, "and it occurred to me that Nevada might be one of those states.
The breakthrough came on a visit to Las Vegas. He stays at home all day and answers his phone."Īt one point they considered laying an ISDN line to Minnesota, hoping it would allow them to call "through" the state from outside. "He has 39 (freecall) numbers in his house that are similar to (real) businesses. He's "a lunatic", Kellison says affectionately. We might make five different calls and choose a call from those."Ĭrank Yankers also takes material from two outside sources - New Jersey comedian Jim Florentine, who likes to vent his phone rage on telemarketers, and a shadowy figure who goes by the name of the Touchtone Terrorist. "We'll get a list of pet stores or vets, write gags for the comedian and then put the comedian in the sound booth, with writers linked by headphones, so while the comedians are making the calls the writers are in there. "Our writers write the premises - and a packet of elements that go with them, like sight gags - but the comics choose the ones they want for example, calling a pet store and saying my dog is going crazy and humping everything in sight," Kellison says. Finally, the comedians are handed the phone and sent off to play. The writers develop scripts for specific characters while the producers investigate potential targets - anyone from customer-service departments to local video stores and sex shops. How do they set up these prank calls? According to Kellison, the process is fairly straightforward. Special Ed, for example, is developmentally disabled and repeats a single phrase over and over.
The material is funny, although you need something of a high-school sense of humour to relish every gag. "Oh, my Lord," gushes the shop assistant as Gladys describes the film in detail. "I got child protective services up my ass and now they think I'm a pervert!" she complains.
#Crank yankers record store series
Gladys Murphy - a favourite from the first series after her turd-in-the-back-seat complaint - returns with a complaint to a video store about a pornographic tape that found its way into her VCR.
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