Jeff Ornstein 0:01

Hi everyone, and welcome to Next Act with Jeff Orenstein. I am Jeff, and on this show we celebrate people on the cusp of greatness. Those building on past successes in some of the curious and inventive and sometimes unexpected ways they have achieved those, and stepping into moments that could define their legacy. We'll talk about current projects, lessons learned, and the extraordinary opportunities ahead. So the best is yet to come. Jonathan Gefner is a multi-talented writer, actor, and producer, known for his award-winning web series Trillo and Suede, and his new feature film, The Dummy Detective, which is on Amazon Prime. He combines ventriloquism, music, and absurdist comedy to create unforgettable stories that have captivated audiences around the world. Welcome, Jonathan. Thank you, Jeff. It's great to be here with you. Good. Well, I gotta say, all transparency, you are our first ventriloquist con comedian that we've had on. And it is, I've seen your work and you do a brilliant job. So before we get into like some of the more specifics, just so the audience can understand, how did you get into that and when did you start practicing it?

Jonathan Geffner 1:14

Because you're flawless. Oh, thank you. Well, long story. I've done a lot of things in my life, various roots, but I wound up becoming a ventriloquist as my main career for most of my adult life. But I was not a child ventriloquist. I loved ventriloquism because as a kid I saw the Paul Winchell Jerry Mahoney hour, and there's several permutations of the Paul Winchell show. He was a famous ventriloquist back then, the 50s and 60s was when he was famous. But famous fickle, when probably most young people don't know that name anymore, Paul Winchell. But he was my inspiration, but sort of retroactively, because I was a young man when I became a ventriloquist, and that was a moment of inspiration. I was walking in Manhattan in Central Park, Columbus Circle, and I saw a ventriloquist street performer. First time I've I'd ever seen a live ventriloquist performance, and I was so balled over, I was so inspired, it was an epiphany, really, that moment that this is what I need to do. And that day was very momentous because I had just decided to drop out of NYU. I had begun a doctoral program for piano. I was a serious pianist when I was young, off and on, but had dabbled with, made some attempts to become a concert pianist, was encouraged by some people to pursue that, but that's a very difficult road in and of itself because the competition is so fierce. But anyway, that's what I was doing at that point. I just dropped out. I was very depressed walking sort of aimlessly around the city because I I was making eking out a living, not making much of a living, eking out by teaching piano lessons, doing some accompaniment for other instrumentalists and singers like that, and also teaching Yiddish, because I was I'm fluent in Yiddish and have a degree in that from Queen's College, CUNY, City University, New York. And so teaching that, teaching some Hebrew. So between that, Yiddish translating to improv comedy. I would already begun doing some improv comedy, but making very little money from that and not making much from anything, but cobbling together something. But that's the place I felt like I was sort of hitting rock bottom, not knowing what to do. But I had that moment where I saw the ventriloquist and I figured I felt that is it. I have to do that. I made it my business to obsessively practice ventriloquism until very quickly I got the basic skills down, but developed an act over time. Of course, got better over time. But I was already performing as my main career within a year. That was my main career.

Jeff Ornstein 3:52

Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm a little speechless because you thought that earning a living as a classic pianist was a little too dicey, so you decided to go the safe route and be a ventilatist. Yeah. It is ironic sounding. Well, you know what it shows, and it's something that's been echoed by a lot of the other guests we've had on the show, that if you got a passion, nothing else matters.

Jonathan Geffner 4:14

That's the key to it. The passion, because I had such a passion and inspiration to do that, it felt like just the right fit for uh talents that I had, latent talents, to throw into that, that it became something which felt and then I actualized that it was actually realistic and as funny as that sounds, and as unlikely as that would be, that I found stability with an income through ventriloquism of all things.

Jeff Ornstein 4:43

It's a little remarkable, but it's a testimony to your talent. So before we move on, though, here they're your parents were thinking they're gonna have a classical pianist in their home and he's gonna be playing Carnegie Hall and invited to England to perform for the Queen. And then you come home one day and you say, I'm gonna be a ventriloquist, Ma. Were they happy for you or were they surprised? Or what was their reaction?

Jonathan Geffner 5:07

My parents thought it was another mishigas. I'm gonna use a Yiddish word because I just speak Yiddish and teach it, which I've done on the side through the years too. But that means craziness, another one of your crazy ventures. They weren't too convinced that I'm gonna make a living out of it. But my father, to his credit, though, was very supportive because when he saw how passionately I was practicing this and getting involved in it, he was all for helping me and he helped me go or travel around to shows like to help me bring my equipment and set up shows and even do some mailings for me and stuff like that for publicity. So really he was very good. But I was hell-bent on doing it one way or the other. Right.

Jeff Ornstein 5:52

And I'll tell you the reason why I act it, asked it, because that was the facata story. I said that right, I don't know. Is because the other thing that comes into play when people are thinking about their next act or how they're gonna take the jump and really pursue a passion, is there a support network there? And it's so key for people to say, I can do this, and I know I've got my parents, my husband, my wife, my children, my whomever behind me to help me get through the challenging times, for which, of course, we all have them. So God bless your dad. He sounds like a great guy. And my father always wanted me to be a painter, and I was like, That's great, Dad, except for when I want to pay my rent, you know. Okay, I want to understand a little bit. I I know you're a writer, creator, and executive producer and lead actor for the dummy detective. I'm assuming that you played sort of the same roles for Trillo and Suede.

Jonathan Geffner 6:45

Well, I created the Trillo and Suede characters way back in the 1990s, like the late 1990s. There's the concept of an alternate universe of that combines film noir and ventriloquism. So these are detective characters, a detective slash ventriloquist and his wooden partner, Trillo and Suede. Suede is sitting right here in the house. I noticed that. Yeah. That's Ezra to his side there. And both of them are in the movie, but primarily Suede, my detective partner. And so these characters were a whole venture of in the direction of production of things that are produced. I wanted to do movies and the TV series. I had tried to, I wanted to go in that direction. But eventually I did the web series. I eventually did produce two short films, all featuring Trulo and Suede, and now culminating in finally, after many years, and law I could tell long stories about all the near misses of how I almost got these feature films. Finally, the dummy detective, a feature film. But all the time, that was kind of a separate venture from performing, because as a performer, Ventriloquist, I rarely use Suede and I rarely perform in character. I mean, I'm out of costume, but I usually dress like him. We're twins. So I have kind of the dichotomy in there that to earn a living to do shows, I have a number of characters. In every show, I have four or five characters, sometimes more, because altogether I have about a dozen different puppet characters, and so I use a few of them in every show, but not suede. That's a sort of separate thing from the live shows. But it was the thing that I was most intensely interested in pursuing, or to sort of break out of the mold, to break out of the box, think out of the box with doing something different that hasn't been done before. That's why I was intent on pursuing the Trillo and Suede concept and universe, but to make a living, because there was no immediate money in doing any of that type of produced stuff. So I got on the stage with my various other partners.

Jeff Ornstein 8:52

All right, so who writes these? I mean, I know you're a writer, but do you have co-writers that work with you? Because the episodes I saw, I was cracking up and so well performed. I also have to say, kudos to your casting agent.

Jonathan Geffner 9:06

Yes, thank you. All me. I've written everything I've ever performed. That means all the shows that I do for different kinds of audiences. I have different shows, different scripts that I've written, and for my short films and for the web series and the dummy detective feature film, it's all on the Soul Rider.

Jeff Ornstein 9:26

And what we've also heard from some of our other guests is that you develop a community. You'll find actors or writers or directors that you enjoy working with, and sure enough, you finish a project a couple weeks or months later, your phone rings, it's the same folks, we're getting together, we're doing this project. Where are your actors coming from? Are these artisans that you know for a long time and that you're reworking roles for them frequently? Or where do you find your talent?

Jonathan Geffner 9:54

Well, the first short film that I produced it was Oxford Park, and that was in England back in 2005. So that was cast by my partner in that production, who led a small production company called Farnum Films. And so he did the casting. Well, I mean, I helped also by you know giving my input in it, but uh primarily relying on him because it was local UK talent for that. Then going ahead to oh, was it more recent years that when I did the the web series 2021-2022, I believe those were the years around then. So there were 10 episodes in each season that I did, and that was a casting call in New York City, just local talent, and there's a lot of talent in New York City in backstage, and also I forgot the name, there's another one, the breakdown, something breakdown, they're casting. So open calls, we got audition tapes to start with, and then narrowed it down to in-person callbacks, where we eventually cast people, and then so having done the web series first, then the year after that I did Casa Noir, which is my 22-minute short film parody of the famous iconic 1942 movie Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart. And that's one of my favorite movies, and so it's a both a sort of parody and also tribute to that, which I shot in black and white to to keep it uh as close to the original. So and then so I used some of the same actors who I had used in the web series, but I also did a casting call for a couple of the couple of the roles there. And then it was another casting call for the feature film for the dummy detective, because I needed certain characters that I was looking for particular ones. And in fact, one of the main characters, one of my co-stars, is Sean Young, who plays the innkeeper, which is a major role, lead role. Harriet Hubbard is the character's name. And she was not for my casting call because she is a famous actress who older people, maybe our generation will probably know her. Most younger people don't know the name, probably because fame is very fickle, but she was a big star in the 1980s and 90s. Then she kind of disappeared from acting for a number of years and from movies, and so it was through a mutual friend. Actually, it was through Deborah Twiss, who I cast to be the femme fatale, my other leading role. The redhead? Yes, the redhead. So I cast an impression. Yeah. And since I hadn't cast the other role yet, as soon as I cast Deborah, she said, Did you cast Harriet Hubbard yet? And I said, No, still looking. I actually wasn't happy with the casting call so far. I was thinking, what else I'm gonna do? And she said, Well, I might be able to get Sean Young for that. Would you like her? Yeah, I think that was she'd be great. And it's be because she's a personal friend. They were personal friends from other movies. They are acting on some in some other movie or a couple movies together. So anyway, she sent the script to her. I wouldn't have had access otherwise or ever thought of Sean Young, but got a call shortly after that from Sean on the phone saying I read the script, I love the script, I'd love to do this. And I won't charge much either because I had this is a shoestring budget in the budget. She knew she's that so she was willing to do it for a very low fee that I could work out in the budget, and that's how I got Sean Young.

Jeff Ornstein 13:20

Well, I mean, I asked because I was wondering if it's like to quote Costa Blanca, round up the usual suspects, or you're no, you're gonna like open up the gates and say, guys, here are the characters we've got, because your characters are so colorful. I think anyone who's seen any of the episodes or may see them after this podcast would say, That looks like fun. I mean, that's what I kept saying. I had a smile on my face whenever I was watching them, so that looks like fun. I want to be part of that cast. So these are both the non-union and union roles, or how does that work?

Jonathan Geffner 13:49

It was non-union. Everything was non-union. For the the movie, though, the dummy detective, the feature film, we had some SAG actors, sag meaning union. Obviously, Sean Young is union, and so ever twist. But they got, I forgot what the technical term, maybe you know, in the industry when you get micro budget. Well, it was micro budget, but it was the term for sag when they give and make an exception. Like you can apply like a waiver. A waiver, yeah. I got a waiver. So I made some other term, but basically that's what is a waiver. So Sean is able to get a waiver, and Deborah, I think one other person was union, and so you know, they got waivers, permission to uh to act uh in a non-union movie, which they normally wouldn't.

Jeff Ornstein 14:33

Well, I think anyone who saw in the films would say, I'm gonna answer one of those because I just it looks like the cast is having a ball. And I'd want to just get into also the film noir, because it's really well done. Is that like something like in your household growing up that was on the TV all the time, and you knew that was gonna be your genre when you started crafting films?

Jonathan Geffner 14:54

No, it wasn't really childhood influence. Humor was because my my father loved Laurel and Hardy in particular. We used to watch a lot of Laurel and Hardy films, but also we watched the Three Stooges and the Marx brothers whenever we happened to get on TV, because back then there was no internet when cable was before pre-cable dinosaur days and stuff. But on the regular TV channels, occasionally we'd see these. So I used to watch comedies of various sorts with him. And so that was part of my influence for wanting to get into comedy, but not film noir. That was something as a young man, or maybe even teenager, I began to get interested to watch some of those old detective movies. I mentioned Humphrey Bogart being my favorite among them, but there are a lot of others. The old black and white, dreary and the shadowy world of film noir. There was always something that appealed to me once I became sort of aware of it. So I love that genre. And then when I became a ventriloquist a few years later, then I started to think about how can I create my own thing that takes place in that kind of a world, a neo-noir world. Right.

Jeff Ornstein 16:00

Well, it's a perfect fit. The detective and the I almost said dummy, and I don't know if that's an insulting phrase in your industry. Well, it's okay with me.

Jonathan Geffner 16:09

There are some ventriloquists who are sensitive about that. So the puppets, or the technical term is ventriloquial figures. Between us, dummies is fine, puppets are fine.

Jeff Ornstein 16:20

Okay, sorry. I gotta keep up with something. I want to be PC. So you've done the piano, you've taught people languages, you've created this skill that very few people can master. I'm sorry, I uh you said it came too quickly. I don't think that's a common story. And now you've written these series and you're lending your hand with directing and producing. Is all of it equally creatively fulfilling? Or do you is there if you could just do one of them, which one would knock the others off the pedestals? Or is that not true?

Jonathan Geffner 16:50

Well, in a perfect world for me, uh I would continue to do feature films and I would do a TV series. And what I would do is I would write of as much as I could, depending on how much I'm doing and how fast things are being produced, but I'd be the writer or the primary writer, and I would be the performer as playing the role of Trillo. I would not be doing any of the producing or directing because that is so draining and it's so hard to do everything. I did hire directors for these things, but I was really kind of co-director. But I would just leave it to some if I have somebody who I really trusted and relied on the judgment and all, but may let him or her do it. And so I could just focus on my role and I would first love to write it and then shoot it and not have to worry about production or marketing. Oh, that's the biggest thing I would love to never have to do. Marketing. I'm not good at that. I that's not my strength, but I've had to market myself just as a performer all these years. I've never a manager or I've worked with agents once in a while, but but not primarily. But primarily, I've just booked myself. Luckily, most of my shows after a certain number of years in the business are just word of mouth. Right. Of course. I don't have to do that much marketing, but I had to initially, and I still have done some marketing through through the years, but I always hated that. I hate I hated selling myself, pitching myself, bargaining with people, and but I had to do it. So, anyway, to answer your question, I would love to never do any marketing, never doing any producing. Just write and perform and shoot.

Jeff Ornstein 18:29

Okay, so I hear you. Marketing is not easy, it's a hump you got to get over. And sometimes if you get over, then it doesn't make a difference. But it's something that if you could check it off your list, I completely agree. We had a little talk before the show about the shift in attitudes and sensibilities per each generation. And I think you've had, if I recall you you mentioned you had 20 episodes of Trello and Swaede, and but you'd love to do a TV show. What traits, because they're real strong personalities, at least from what I've seen, what traits do you think could you foresee having them morph and become more like or less like they are now if they were to go on a TV show and they were in your living rooms for five, six years in a row?

Jonathan Geffner 19:13

Oh, okay. Well, at this point, I'll settle for one year, one season. But still, I think of the characters, all my puppet partners of uh being fairly constant in their characters by now, but I'm sure over time there would need to be character arcs, as you're alluding to, I think, that people change. So the thing that comes to my mind is mainly a mellowing out. Because I think that Suede in particular, who would be the my primary partner, he's a very intense guy. He's very confident and kind of hard-hitting, a little kind of hard-edged, but I I see his character arc mainly as becoming more nuanced and mellowing out over time.

Jeff Ornstein 19:59

All right. Well, since the boys are there, can we meet them?

Jonathan Geffner 20:03

Oh, sure. The leading man. Yeah. So this is Suede. Again, set here, he usually wears a fedora as I usually do when I'm in costume. So there you go.

Jeff Ornstein 20:18

How's your day going, Suede? Oh, it's great now that I can meet you. You look very comfortable behind the camera. Oh, I I'm used to it by now. Yeah, I would say so. So, what's it like working with Jonathan?

Speaker 2 20:33

Well, he's kind of the pain in the toughest. No, no, I'm just kidding. I'm half kidding, but half we do get tired of each other like all partners after a certain amount of time. It's uh it's inevitable. But we we have a certain uh je ne sais quoi, you know, this feeling of the connection. We don't even have to verbalize a lot of stuff. We know what we're thinking, we can second guess each other, finish each other's sentences. So it's a kind of a symbiotic and neurotic relationship.

Jeff Ornstein 21:03

Okay, so I have to ask you if you weren't an actor or a detective, what would you be? Have you ever dreamed to ever be dreamed being anything else?

Speaker 2 21:12

Oh, I'd be a writer. Because I I already write a lot of our stuff. You do? Yeah, I mean okay, look. Jonathan here has this illusion that he's written everything. He kind of conveniently forgets that I'm the main writer of what we do. But uh, we'll let you remember it the way you'd like. Okay.

Jeff Ornstein 21:32

Zen quite like he gave you a great compliment before you came on. He said you were intense and focused and had a laser beam kind of approach to things. So happy to have met you. I can't wait to see what trouble or whatever predicaments you get into the next time, if that's the word. I loved your work that I was able to see so far. I want to see more of it. And Jonathan, if you come up with a new project coming out in the future, I hope you'll call us up, come back up, tell us a little bit about it. Maybe we'll run a clip and let the listeners get a little inside scoop as to where you're taking it.

Speaker 2 22:06

I'd be happy to. And so would I. By the way, Jeff, all the listeners, the viewers out there, if you want to watch a lot of the stuff that we've done, the two short films, Oxford Park, and then also Casa Noir, you mentioned that. I did. And also the web series. That's all three for everybody to watch on the YouTube channel.

Jonathan Geffner 22:26

The Dummy Detective movie is the name of our YouTube channel. All that stuff is up there for free now, plus hundreds of other videos. Little stuff, little videos too.

Speaker 2 22:34

But the uh in the the movie, the main thing now, recently released the dummy detective, the feature film.

Jonathan Geffner 22:40

That is available on on Amazon. That's Amazon Prime Video and Tubi. Tubi free on Tubi as well, free with ads. Amazon Prime, free with subscription, except in the U.S. Well, yeah, in the U.S., right now, currently it's rental or purchase on Amazon Prime. In other countries, it's free with subscription. Don't know who knows what Amazon does. That's their marketing decision. But it's also on Plex TV in 130 countries.

Speaker 2 23:08

So no matter where you're listening or watching this right now, you can watch our movie on Flex TV.

Jonathan Geffner 23:14

Yeah, just go there. Another option. We've got several other channels. Oh, last thing I'll tell you, every most important place to go for everybody, the dummy detective movie.com. That's the Lanceide. It has all the links to all this stuff. All the channels are linked right there.

Jeff Ornstein 23:29

Excellent. Well, and I encourage everyone who's listening to tune in because I had a great time when I spent doing a little of my research on Jonathan, and it was very entertaining. I loved every second. So, gentlemen, I wish you have a good day. Thanks for joining us, and I hope you'll give us a call when something else is percolating. Absolutely. Thank you, Jeff. So you're welcome. Thanks for tuning in to Next Act with Jeff Orenstein. Follow, subscribe, and stay connected to your favorite socials at www.nextdackpodcast.com. Keep chasing your next act. The best is yet to come.