crank yankers special ed calls hillbilly episode

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. 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.

Crank yankers special ed calls hillbilly episode