Crank Yankers

Crank Yankers
Created by	Adam Carolla Jimmy Kimmel Daniel Kellison
Starring	Tony Barbieri Adam Carolla Jim Florentine Jimmy Kimmel Tracy Morgan Kevin Nealon Sarah Silverman Wanda Sykes Biz Markie
Theme music composer	Adam Schlesinger Steven Gold[1]
Opening theme	Adam Schlesinger, Steven Gold
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	4
No. of episodes	70
Production
Running time	21–22 minutes
Release
Original network	Comedy Central (2002–05) MTV2 (2007)
Original release	June 3, 2002 (2002-06-03) – March 30, 2007 (2007-03-30)
External links
Website

Crank Yankers is an American television show produced by Adam Carolla, Jimmy Kimmel and Daniel Kellison that featured actual crank calls made by show regulars and celebrity guests and re-enacted onscreen by puppets for a visual aid to show the viewer what is happening in the call. The show premiered in 2002 on Comedy Central and returned to MTV2 on February 9, 2007, running again until March 30, 2007. The show screened in Australia on SBS Television and The Comedy Channel between 2003 and 2008.

In 2011, there was a pilot for a traditionally-animated spinoff called Birchum featuring Dick Birchum as the main character. He was redesigned to look younger and had a mustache. The pilot was made for FOX but was not picked up as a series.^[2]

Behind the scenes

The performers are given a basic outline of a premise by the writers, and call telephone numbers from a list of selected targets (known as "marks"). Using the basic premises, the performers improvise most of their lines, playing off of the responses of their marks, with the intention to keep them on the phone as long as possible.

With the exception of a few outside sources (including previous material from Jim Florentine and the Touch-Tone Terrorists), all the calls are made from Nevada. The Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 makes it illegal in most states to record telephone calls without both parties' consent. Under Nevada law, only one of the parties has to give consent (i.e., the caller), so prank calls can be recorded without the consent of the prank victims. One result of this was the series' schedule of creating and airing new episodes was fairly sporadic due to most of the celebrities living in Los Angeles, having Los Angeles-based jobs, and so were only periodically able to go to Las Vegas to make calls. Adam Carolla, for example, took his radio program to Las Vegas once or twice a year, and while there would record new calls for the program.

The puppet designs were drawn by artist Todd James before being constructed based on the various marks' voices, and, along with a series of stock characters (such as "Niles Standish", "Bobby Fletcher", and "Special Ed") based on the performers' character voices, the calls are re-enacted for the skits.

The main character puppets for the first season were constructed by Bob Flanagan's company Den Design with additional puppets built by BJ Guyer, Carol Binion, Rick Lyon, Ron Binion, Jim Kroupa, and Artie Esposito. An in-house puppet shop was set up for the following seasons to accommodate the fast-paced schedule of the show and the sheer volume of puppet characters required for each episode.

The puppets are puppeteered by Ronald Binion, Rick Lyon, BJ Guyer, Victor Yerrid, Paul McGinnis, Alice Dinean Vernon, and Artie Esposito.

Originally, the show was titled Prank Puppets; it was renamed after Comedy Central lawyers deemed that it implied malice.^[3]

Regular characters

• Karl Malone: Jimmy Kimmel's impression of then-NBA star Karl Malone. He regularly refers to himself in the third-person. "Don't hang up on Karl Malone."
• Gladys Murphy (Wanda Sykes): A boisterous black woman who makes embarrassing announcements, generally of a scatological or sexual nature. Her many children do things like gluing her buttocks to the toilet and stealing money from a malfunctioning bank machine.
• Niles Standish (Tony Barbieri): The British Earl of Yankerville, he is a rich and eccentric middle-aged pervert with homosexual tendencies. He frequently calls various services and asks for their price, then orders them to "double it." (Once even confusing someone by telling them to "cut it in half, and double it!"). He has an assistant named Cavendish.
• Special Ed (Jim Florentine): Bobby Fletcher's mentally challenged younger cousin who constantly repeats himself, makes random comments, and shouts his catchphrase "Yay!" until the other caller gets frustrated. He makes a cameo in one of Bobby's prank calls, the "Let Me Put My Brother on the Phone" call. In two prank calls of his own (one to a movie theater and one to a video store), Ed reveals that his favorite movie is Air Bud. In the video-store call, he works in several references to The Shining.
• Dick Birchum (Adam Carolla): A psychotic Vietnam War veteran whose hobbies include carpentry, Shotokan karate, spying on women in their beds or bathrooms by drilling holes or a hidden camera, and gun ownership. He has a 600-pound wife and conjoined twin daughters. He lost part of his right leg in the war and 3 right-hand fingers in a carpentry accident. He frequently refers to his time in Vietnam and "smoking hash out of a human skull."
• Jimmy (Jimmy Kimmel): A Kimmel-based grown man who lives with his mother. He also has 2 young children who use foul language and play juvenile pranks.
• Bobby Fletcher (Jim Florentine): Ed's drug-using underachiever older cousin. He is extremely rude and insulting, and known for belching into the phone.
• Elmer Higgins (Jimmy Kimmel): A crabby, elderly man (based on Kimmel's grandfather). He makes complaint calls and frequently goes off on unrelated, long-winded tangents about his younger days and various irrelevant subjects. He sometimes mentions his brother Charlie, as well as his gay grandson, Terrence Catheter.
• Helen Higgins (Susie Essman): Elmer's beautiful wife of over 60 years, she is an elderly woman who likes to proposition young men. Her son gave her a pet parrot who is well-versed in curse words. In a late-in-the-series sketch about Elmer wanting driving lessons, he mentions that she has died.
• Landalious "The Truth" Truefeld (David Alan Grier): A former football player who likes to rap.
• Spoonie Luv (Tracy Morgan): A smooth-talking African American hip hop-type character who makes lewd and suggestive comments. He often refers to himself as "Spoonie Luv from Up Above." In one particularly noteworthy prank call, he attempts to sell a video store tapes of himself masturbating.
• Hadassah Guberman (Sarah Silverman): A Jewish female college student who works various part-time jobs, including conducting surveys for O magazine. She frequently asks intrusive questions and makes veiled passive-aggressive insults. Her sexuality and sanity seem highly questionable.
• Terrence Catheter (Jimmy Kimmel): Elmer Higgins' grandson is an effeminate redhead who acts as spokesperson for various celebrities, such as Tom Cruise, Bill Cosby, Jared Fogle, J.K. Rowling, Mr. T, and the Olsen twins. He calls various places of business to book appearances and asks them to comply with the celebrities' ridiculous demands.
• Tony Deloge (Bob Einstein): A loud-mouthed, fast-paced politician who calls random people to pander for votes as "district selectman." He occasionally tries to use his political power to get things for free.
• Cammie Smith (Lisa Kushell): A nymphomaniac, she is a somewhat conceited, condescending 23-year-old exotic dancer.
• Boomer and the Nudge (Jimmy Kimmel and Patton Oswalt): Two obnoxious morning-radio disc jockeys who call people to make "on-air dares."
• Junkyard Willie (Touch-Tone Terrorists): An obstructionist in the form of a gravelly-voiced black man who is actually an import from the Touch-Tone Terrorists where he is a regular character. He appears in two sketches as a supervisor at YPS ("Yankerville Package Service").
• Jim Bob the Handicapped Hillbilly (Touch-Tone Terrorists): A mentally challenged hillbilly who works with Junkyard Willie at YPS.
• Sav Macauley (Dane Cook): The overly enthusiastic host of a phone game show, "The Phone Zone," where he calls people and asks ridiculous random trivia questions for cash prizes and interjects his own sound effects.
• OCD Ken (Kevin Nealon): An accountant with obsessive-compulsive disorder who prefers cleanliness and even numbers. He often requests people to press the pound key as part of his disorder.
• Danny (David Alan Grier): A man who repeatedly gets nervous or disgusted causing him to vomit over the phone. The vomit is depicted as an Exorcist-like liquid shooting out of the puppet's throat.
• Chip Douglas (Fred Armisen): A Mexican immigrant who is perpetually building a house with minimal supplies and poor command of the English language. He makes two prank calls to newspaper offices, one to attempt to sell cartoons and the other (a prank call in Spanish) to inform a Spanish-language newspaper that he has not received that day's edition.
• Katie (Katie Kimmel): Jimmy Kimmel's daughter made occasional appearances from 2003, initially with a few short lines but later making entire crank calls herself (notably pretending to be a drunken 9-year-old trying to order alcohol by phone).
• Kevin (Kevin Kimmel): Jimmy Kimmel's son made occasional appearances from 2003, including as Elmer Higgins' grandson.
• Foreign Guy (Dane Cook): A nameless immigrant who calls various places looking for assistance or to purchase something.
• Gene Winterbuck (Dane Cook): A young man who uses a wheelchair, who calls libraries requesting books with titles referring to disabilities in an offensive manner, such as "Johnny NoodleLegs".
• Lou Vilman (Kevin Nealon): An easily impressed guy who responds "Wow!" to everything.
• Dick Rogers (Seth MacFarlane): He'll often call to complain about issues that would make someone from the 1940s uncomfortable, such as being hit on by men at a gay bar or getting a haircut from a female hairdresser. He also calls the YMCA for help with his alcohol problem.

Performers

Chief artists working for the show include:

Episodes

DVD releases

There are currently no plans for a DVD release for seasons 3 & 4

CD releases

• The Best Uncensored Crank Calls, Volume 1 (2002)
• The Best Uncensored Crank Calls, Volume 2 (2002)
• The Best Uncensored Crank Calls, Volume 3 (2003)

References

External links

• Official website from Comedy Central
• Crank Yankers on IMDb