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AP Photo/Nick Ut
Comedian Gilbert Gottfried goes through his monologue on masturbation during the Emmy Awards in Pasadena, Calif., Aug. 26, 1991.
SCRANTON — No-holds barred comedian Gilbert Gottfried is coming to town.
Kevin Lepka, of Laugh Out Lepka’s Comedy, convinced Gottfried to come to the Radisson Lackawanna Station Hotel in hopes of bringing laughs to the Electric City. The show starts at 8 p.m. on March 6. Tickets are $35 for general admission.
“I saw Gilbert back in October 2014 in New York City,” Lepka said. “A friend and I sneaked backstage after the show, and I brought up the idea of some of the acts coming to Scranton. While all the acts at the show were amazing, Gilbert stood out for me. I laughed the hardest while he was on stage.”
It only took a few weeks to start producing “A Night of Comedy with Gilbert Gottfried,” and Lepka couldn’t be happier.
“I can’t wait to share the stage with him in my hometown at such an historic place,” he said.
Gottfried’s show will be sans political correctness and contain jokes that might be — most likely will be — offensive. He isn’t known for his sensitive side.
Instead, he’s known as the “guy who told a 9/11 joke too soon,” when Frank Rich, of The New York Times, dubbed Gottfried’s joke at the Friars Club Roast as the first public 9/11 joke. It was only weeks after the World Trade Center attack when Gottfried told the audience: “I have a flight to California. I can’t get a direct flight. They said they have to stop at the Empire State Building first.”
After that, he was publicly fired as the voice of the Aflac duck after composing jokes on Twitter regarding the Japanese tsunami in 2011. One tweet read, “I was talking to my Japanese real estate agent. I said, ‘Is there a school in this area?’ She said, ‘Not now, but just wait.’”
Gottfried is still getting fired from jobs, most recently from the seventh season of “Celebrity Apprentice.”
“It wasn’t the first time I heard, ‘Gilbert, you’re fired,’” he said. “I’m surprised Trump didn’t fire me as soon as he introduced me. It’s just crazy. The celebrities on the show really believe that if they sell more donuts that Donald Trump will actually hire them.”
Gottfried also lends his humor, and his iconic voice, to the film industry.
He voiced Iago, a parrot in Disney’s “Aladdin,” and in true Gottfried fashion, said his best memory of the film was the complaint letters.
“One of my lines was, ‘What the…,’” he said. “People called and wrote in to tell us how inappropriate the line was because everyone knew what was coming next. Don’t these people have better things to do with their lives?”
Apparently not, because he also got complaints regarding the “Aladdin” television series. He remembers the scene with Aladdin, the princess and the parrot running from a tiger.
“I yelled, ‘He’s going to eat us like kitty chow!’” he said. “And this one women complained so much because she thought I said ‘titty chow.’ They had me re-dub the line.”
These days, Gottfried interviews other celebrities on his weekly podcast, the “Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast!”
“I wanted to call the podcast ‘Before It’s Too Late,’” Gottfried said. “But then I thought it might be hard to get guests to come in if the show insinuates they might be dead in week. I try and find older Hollywood. On the show, I’ve had Henry Winkler, Bob Saget, Weird Al, and Dick Cavett. I talked to the old Batman, Adam West. As I say that, I realize people now think of the old Batman as Michael Keaton and Adam West as the guy on ‘Family Guy.’ These guys are old Hollywood, I mean, I interviewed Larry Storch, who is 92 years old, and he isn’t the oldest person I’ve ever interviewed.”
NEPA can experience old and new bits of Gottfried’s act when he’s in Scranton. He can’t quite remember if he was ever in the Electric City before, but, then again, he said he can’t remember most places.
“There are places I swear I have never been to and have actually been there like 50 times,” Gottfried said. “Then there are places I swear I have been to and have never stepped foot in. So I may or may not have been to Scranton.”
Gottfried is on stage for the laughs and applause, so “any audience will do.”
“I am not going to be holding a sing-a-long or anything,” he said.
If you’re you’re expecting a night of political correctness and tame fun, Gottfried said, “For the love of God, stay home!”