From his Milwaukee home, funnyman Frank Caliendo has moved beyond just doing a few John Madden impersonations for his buddies. Even though Caliendo turned down an opportunity with “Saturday Night Live,” he has slowly generated a buzz for the cornucopia of personalities that he brings to his comedic routine. Caliendo’s act returns home to the Summerfest Comedy Pavilion on Thursday, July 27th before embarking on a comedy tour that will lead into his first season as a regular on Fox’s “MadTV.”
The Badger Herald got the chance to catch up with Frank on his day off to discuss Madden, “Monday Night Football,” “The Price is Right,” and how he plans to dance on stage, all the while discovering he’s no different from any Lloyd or Harry.
Badger Herald: We’re huge fans of your work.
Frank Caliendo: I would be. I’m pretty awesome. Is this going to be the sickest interview ever?
BH: Probably that the paper has seen. Definitely.
What are you up to right now, where are you and are we taking you away from something important?
FC: I am actually at home (in Milwaukee). I actually just got back from Houston yesterday. Have you gone up to the web-site at all?
BH: Yeah, we like the way the new site looks by the way.
FC: Yeah my brother did an awesome job.
BH: Your brother does that?
FC: Yeah, he does that — he’s trying to do different things with it.
Yeah, I’m in town today, I’m actually picking up a friend from the airport believe it or not later today, who is coming from Madison, believe it or not. Today’s kind of a day off. I have two dogs so I am kicking them around. Put in parenthesis just joking.
BH: So what can we expect from your Summerfest performance?
FC: Uhh, a lot of dancing. Just a lot of main stuff, I’ve been working on some new stuff, some more Al Pacino stuff. I’ve got a lot of new call backs, a little more Adam Sandler and a lot of goofing around. I tend to goof around more than I’ve ever did before.
BH: How does the Wisconsin audience compare to other audiences in different cities or states?
FC: Uhh, the Midwest is fairly similar. The Wisconsin audiences are pretty good. They’re somewhere in between hip and not too hip, so they get a lot of the stuff. It’s a good reason to be in Milwaukee and Wisconsin in general. Madison tends to be a little hipper than Milwaukee, just because I think of the college and Madison is more of a go-out kind of town than Milwaukee. Milwaukee is one of the better, smarter audiences around. It’s not as reference-crazy as New York, where they just get everything and then they shoot you. And it’s not like California where they are like, “Oh god, is he doing another physics joke, that’s so perfect.”
BH: What are you doing during the week of Summerfest, are you taking a break to catch some bands?
FC: I’m there for the first day (of the festival), but I’m two-thirds of the way sold out for Minneapolis, because I’m in Minneapolis in early July. I’m going to (go) do radio there for one day, and then I’ll be back. So that week I’m going to whore myself out even more.
BH: You said that you’re going to Minneapolis, and that coincides with this year’s Major League Baseball All-Star game held in Milwaukee, so any chance you got tickets to that and we can have them then?
FC: What day’s the All-Star game?
BH: July 9th, your first day up in Minneapolis.
FC: Yeah, I completely forgot about that.
BH: Did you get a chance to check out Miller Park at all?
FC: No, I have not been there yet. My brother has been there and loved it, but I have not seen it yet.
BH: It’s a really great place.
FC: Yeah, I’ve only been back in Milwaukee maybe three or four times in the last couple of years, for maybe a day or two at a time.
BH: Other than pushing forth a little Adam Sandler, is there anything that might surface on “MadTV?” Or any new impressions?
FC: I don’t know, you never know what’s going to get through. I did this Rod Roddy thing a couple times last year and I had no idea that I shouldn’t do Rod Roddy. Why would you even want to do Rod Roddy? That’s the way it ends up. I was doing the last episode of the year, and that’s the one I did Rod Roddy on — the Lance Bass show. Which sounds wrong, and it was.
BH: Have you ever met John Madden or any of the other personalities you do impressions of?
FC: Uh, no. Well, a few like Pauly Shore and stuff like that, but Madden doesn’t like me. I was supposed to do something with Fox Sports for the Superbowl last year and he didn’t really want it to happen. But I talked to Troy Aikman a couple weeks ago, because he’s good friends with Madden, and I told Aikman, “Can you just tell him not to hate me.” And he said, “Yeah, I’m sure he doesn’t hate you.” No he hates me.
Jimmy Kimmel does these skits on Fox Pregame, and I told him that I did that thing of Madden, and he said, “Oh yeah, he hates you. But the rest of Fox Sports loves you.” It’s kind of funny. But I actually had Aikman fooled for a little bit, he thought it might actually be Madden on the phone.
BH: Does that discourage you that John Madden is not a fan of yours?
FC: No, because he has never met me. He might just think that I’m a guy who is out for money, which I am. Once somebody meets me, they know that I don’t do these impressions to be mean to people. I do them to have fun with stuff. But sports egos are different. Think of making fun of Joe Paterno or Barry Alvarez — it’s an episode of the Sopranos.
BH: Are you pretty upset with Pat Summerall retiring, who you also impersonate, and Madden moving over to Monday Night Football? Does that change anything?
FC: No, not really. I’ll have a reference to Summerall in Madden because the people know them so well from the video games and stuff. But the new thing is that Al Michaels is becoming the new “and man” because, as the play-by-play man “and” is the only word he can say after Madden states the obvious. He’ll just say it and over and over until Madden finally makes a point. Because Madden will say, (in his Madden voice) “And that guy right there has mud on his jersey,”
“And…”
“And… uhh … and now there’s mud on the field.”
“And …”
“And … I don’t know. Pat never said that shit to me.”
BH: Are there any other people you would like to meet that you haven’t got a chance to?
FC: Robin Williams, Jonathan Winters — I love those guys. I guess I met Jay Leno. I was talking to Leno in a Green Room one time, backstage at the Comedy Magic Club in Hermosa Beach, CA and it was me, Jay Leno and Roseanne. It was crazy.
BH: What do you do when you are on tour? What gets you through the day?
FC: It’s called promotion. I’ve been doing radio all day and TV and stuff like that and at the end of the day, I’m doing interviews. I’m at the level of comedy where if people see my name they don’t know what I’m doing. Once they hear me on the radio or see a TV interview, then I get them to come out to the club. So I end up doing probably an average of 8-10 radio and TV stations in every market I go. I get up at 6:00 in the morning and going to radio stations, and doing stuff all day. Whereas a regular road comic might do one interview per weekend or a really famous person might not do anything and they can draw on their name alone. Like if Jay Leno was coming to town, everyone knows about it, so he doesn’t have to do radio. But if Frank Caliendo is coming to town, I need Santa Claus. I’m more of a Prancer. I’m coming along, but without Santa Claus’s name, no one is coming. For Summerfest, people know what’s going on comedy wise and they go see those shows, so that’s always cool. I was lucky, because the guys who were putting it on were very supportive of getting me back in here. There have been some reasons why I haven’t been in there and these guys made a push to get me back.
BH: Do you think the direction of comedy has been changing from stand-up to these trend comedians like Johnny Knoxville on MTV?
FC: The thing about Knoxville is it is just morning radio taken to TV. Look at all the crazy, you know Howard Sterns, the Mancows, they all have a guy who does all that stuff, and really he’s an intern and not getting paid.
My big thing is that I don’t think that comedy is all that funny. Sometimes there’s genius behind it, but sometimes it’s over-the-topness for the sake of being over-the-top. My take on it is “Something About Mary.” The stuff on his ear, that’s what everyone is talking about, but without Ben Stiller making all those funny faces and being crazy in that movie, it’s not that funny. So you need subtlety within all that over-the-topness. My take on all that reality stuff is that they aren’t all that funny by themselves, they are usually funny because of the reactions around them. Without all the people screaming around him, or the parents yelling at him, then he just looks like the guy in school that you wanted to hit all the time.
BH: Do you think it’s the same as Jack Black with his acting and musical career or is that something different?
FC: Oh, I think Jack Black is awesome. I usually get a script about four times after Jack Black passes, and three other guys pass it. Then they give it to me to look at it. He’s great. He’s been around forever. He’s been doing stuff in Hollywood for 10-15 years. He came in and did “MadTV,” so I met him. He’s really skinny now too, which blew me away. He must have lost 30-40 lbs.
BH: What advice do you have for aspiring comedians, following in your footsteps?
FC: Don’t try and do this comedy that everyone else is doing, you got to find your own thing. I don’t know anyone else who really does comedy the way that I do it. That’s because it’s just me, it’s how I am. Just kind of jumping around from voice to voice, playing around making references to “Diff’rent Strokes,” the TV Show, not the movement you guys seem to be thinking about right now. And go for it. My manager called me out of the blue, I didn’t have him yet, and he says, “I want to bring you to LA and get you on a show.” So I met with NBC. MTV offered me a show that got cancelled since then. Warner Brothers offered me a deal, and “MadTV” offered me a show. In the office at NBC, the president at NBC asked me if I wanted “Saturday Night Live,” and I told him, “It would be an option.” I didn’t really want to do it just because it is such a tough show to do anything you want to do on, but it was funny because my manager asked me, “Why did you say that? You walked out of the office and said it would be an option to do ‘Saturday Night Live’!?”
He represented Jay Mohr on the show and Jay just hated it. I said, “Well, you told me not to show my cards.” And he goes, “Well I didn’t think you’d fucking do it. I have never seen anybody turn down “Saturday Night Live” in a room before.” I like “MadTV” just because we get a little more of a chance to do certain things. There isn’t (the worry) of getting all the way to the end of the show and a minute before air time and have something you’ve worked on all week (get cut) just because they didn’t think it would be funny that day. I met somebody who runs the Chris Farley Foundation, or part of it, one of Chris Farley’s cousins. I met her at a function outside of L.A, and she said something about the Chris Farley Foundation Show. So maybe I’ll be involved in something like that in the future.
BH: So what’s on tap for Frank Caliendo?
FC: “MadTV” is what I’m doing right now, and I’m touring. My agent sent me over a movie script today, yesterday or something like that, when I got home. I said, “I don’t want to look at this.” I’m just doing this stuff, working on my acting and working with an acting coach and stuff like that. Just trying to go little by little and after a few years of getting known with all this radio and TV and “MadTV,” just trying to get on different talk shows and build a fan base, and then go with that. If you go too early then you just get lost as another actor who nobody knows. And I want to be a hot and sexy actor. I want to be Tom Cruise Missile. That would be a great porn name. Tom Cruise Missile. And Asia Carrera……
Frank Caliendo will perform at 6:15 and 9 pm at the Comedy Pavilion on the Summerfest grounds, June 27, 2002.