How to go
What: Michael Winslow
Where: Funny Bone Comedy Club, One Levee Way, Ste. 2125, Newport, KY
When: November 9-11; 8 p.m. and 10:30 p.m., Friday; 7:30 p.m. and 10 p.m., Saturday; 7:30 p.m., Sunday
Cost: $17-$20
More Info: (859) 957-2000, or www.funnybonecentral.com
Back when Michael Winslow, a.k.a. “The Man of 10,000 Sound Effects,” was starring as Larvell Jones in the Police Academy movies, he could hardly go in public without people asking him to reproduce the sounds that so often humiliated Lt. Harris and his other fictional superiors. Today, he said, the tables have turned.
“I don’t know if it’s because of ‘American Idol’ and ‘X Factor,’ but now people demonstrate sounds for me,” Winslow said recently by phone at the Radisson Hotel in Green Bay, Wisconsin. “It’s odd, but I don’t mind.”
Are any of these impromptu petitioners any good?
“Oh yeah,” Winslow said. “Especially the beatboxers. I was surprised to see that it become an art form, because back when I did it, I was just kidding.”
Nowadays, Winslow has his hands in many different mediums. In addition to continuing work in music, film and video games (his soundtrack for the smartphone/tablet video game, “Wizard Ops,” is the first to be entirely comprised of human noises) and touring the world as a stand-up comic, Winslow has also done motivational speaking and even some corporate work. His motivational speaking philosophy seems to involve a great deal of self-actualization, which could be tied to his lonely childhood as an Air Force brat.
“We moved around a lot so I couldn’t have a lot of long-lasting friends,” he said. “So I had to invent my own, or listen to the radio, and imagine the sound that would result if James Brown and Robert Plant stepped on each other’s feet at the same time. I just try to pass the formula that’s in my head. If you can see it, you can do it. Everything starts as a thought. I tell people to be careful what you wish for, or what you wish for other people because what happens to them can happen to you. That’s enough reason to stay positive.”
Winslow also said that new sounds crop into his act while others drop out.
“Some sounds retire themselves,” he said. “I’m not interested in doing what everybody else is doing, like back when everyone was doing Ronald Reagan and Michael Jackson. I was just at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and I learned a lot about bagpipes.”
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Although he’s mildly embarrassed about his stint on “The Gong Show,” his first national appearance, he doesn’t, as is often posited, regret any of the seven Police Academy movies.
“Some people get bent out of shape, saying they don’t want to do certain things anymore,” he said. “But I have no complaints. It was a great vehicle that gave me a lot of opportunities. It allowed me to do what I’m doing now.”
He does have a number of fond memories of his single scene in the popular 1986 spoof, Spaceballs, however, much of which was improvised and reworked, which might explain how his original two-day schedule ended up lasting two weeks.
“Mel (Brooks) saw Police Academy and said he wanted to use me but he wasn’t sure how yet,” he said. “A lot ended up on the cutting room floor that will never be seen, and I wish I could see those outtakes. One day, this young, fresh-faced exec came in and told Mel that he was ‘five pages behind’ or something like that, and Mel grabbed the script, ripped five pages out at random and said, ‘There’s your five pages, now get off my set!”’
Hearing this last part, this writer could’ve sworn Winslow had handed off the phone to Mel Brooks.
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