The prank call business ain't what it used to be, but The Jerky Boys were able to parlay their heyday into a high-profile animation gig and a steady behind-the-camera career.
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00:00The prank call business ain't what it used to be, but the Jerky Boys were able to parlay
00:05their heyday into a high-profile animation gig and a steady behind-the-camera career.
00:11In 1993, Johnny Brennan and Kamal Ahmed became some of the unlikeliest celebrities of the
00:16decade when they released a platinum-selling album consisting entirely of prank phone calls
00:22under the name The Jerky Boys.
00:24In the rest of the decade, The Jerky Boys would go on to release four more albums, each
00:28one landing on the Billboard 200, with one going platinum and another going gold.
00:33At the height of their popularity, Brennan and Ahmed even wrote and starred in their
00:37own movie, but soon thereafter, the world hung up on The Jerky Boys.
00:42There have been plenty of famous pranksters in the 21st century, but not many of them
00:46have had their own theatrically released movie backed by a major studio.
00:50True, there have been streaming prank movies, including at least one that got so big that
00:54it dominated Netflix, but Brennan and Ahmed were so famous at the height of their success
00:59that The Jerky Boys the movie arrived in theaters in 1995 all across the country, and even co-starred
01:06future Oscar winner Alan Arkin.
01:08As Joe Roth, one of the film's producers, told Variety,
01:11"...the guys could be the 90s Cheech and Chong."
01:14That didn't exactly end up happening, though, as the movie was critically panned and flopped
01:18hard at the box office.
01:19Though it wouldn't mark the end of The Jerky Boys by a long shot, their popularity definitely
01:24saw a sharp decline in the latter half of the decade.
01:27It's hard not to consider the failure of the movie as one of the reasons for that.
01:31"...Johnny, you gotta be able to keep a job for more than one day."
01:35Johnny Brennan and Kamal Ahmed were childhood friends who eventually turned their mutual
01:39love of prank phone calls into an actual career, but that's when things started to get rocky.
01:45Ahmed said that Brennan always treated him more like a sidekick than a true partner,
01:48even claiming that Brennan's managers tried to replace him multiple times.
01:52Still, Ahmed stuck around, partly because he enjoyed what he was doing, and partly because
01:56he didn't want to abandon a lucrative career.
01:59But the cracks of tension were always there, and they eventually got too big for Ahmed
02:03to ignore.
02:04The timeline of when he officially quit being a Jerky Boy is difficult to pin down, though
02:08it was sometime in the late 90s.
02:10His last new material with Brennan was the 2001 album The Jerky Tapes, ending their partnership
02:16at six albums and a movie.
02:19Brennan wasn't exactly prepared to retire The Jerky Boys after his partner quit.
02:23He took some time off after the passing of his father, but then in 2007, he released
02:27the first Jerky Boys album composed entirely of his own material.
02:31Called Saul's Rusty Trombone, it featured six new prank calls, as well as a bunch of
02:36short voicemail messages and ringtones that were between 5 and 30 seconds in length.
02:41As for Ahmed, he initially tried to be a solo prank comedy act after leaving The Jerky Boys.
02:46In 2000, he released Once a Jerk, Always a Jerk, which mixed prank calls and comedy
02:50skits.
02:51Neither solo effort charted, and Ahmed didn't release any more albums.
02:55As for Brennan, he took another long break between releases, while keeping busy in the
02:58meantime with other ventures.
03:00It's funny how time flies, though, isn't it?
03:03As the 2000s rolled into the 2010s, comedy albums weren't exactly a hot commodity anymore.
03:08So Johnny Brennan needed to come up with new ways to keep The Jerky Boys viable that were
03:13more in line with current tastes.
03:15These podcasts hadn't quite reached critical mass yet, but they were a steadily rising
03:18form of entertainment that was worth exploring.
03:21And so, in 2011, Brennan launched The Jerky Boys Show with Johnny Brennan, a weekly podcast
03:26in which he played classic Jerky Boys calls and discussed the history behind them.
03:30Some of the episodes were recorded at live Q&As, where Brennan would take questions from
03:34fans.
03:35The plan was to eventually transition into a paid podcast, at which point Brennan would
03:39record new calls exclusively for subscribers only.
03:43But that aspect of the program never came to pass, and The Jerky Boys Show ended its
03:47run in 2012 after just 17 episodes.
03:51Anything that's remotely popular eventually finds its way into app stores, and The Jerky
03:55Boys are no exception.
03:57In 2010, two different Jerky Boys apps were released for iPhones, The Jerky Boys Prank
04:01Caller and The Jerky Boys Pinball.
04:03The latter was exactly what it sounds like, while the former was essentially just a glorified
04:08soundboard of Jerky Boys character soundbites.
04:11As Johnny Brennan noted to the Tampa Bay Times,
04:13"...I haven't put out a CD for 10 years.
04:15It's a way to make these things come alive again."
04:17Alas, these apps didn't make any more of a splash than Brennan's podcast.
04:22Both of them have since been delisted and aren't currently available for purchase, nor
04:26have there been any other Jerky Boys apps or games released since.
04:30While Johnny Brennan was toying with various ways to keep the Jerky Boys franchise alive,
04:34that wasn't the only thing he was doing.
04:36Animation fans may recognize his voice as a recurring presence on the long-running Family
04:40Guy.
04:41He's played multiple characters on the show, including surly bartender Horace and local
04:45pharmacist Mort Goodman, the latter of whom is closely based on legendary Jerky Boys character
04:50Sol Rosenberg.
04:51To the end of season 22, Brennan has been credited on nearly 100 episodes of Family
04:56Guy.
04:57He was invited to join the show by none other than Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, a
05:02longtime fan of the Jerky Boys.
05:04As MacFarlane told Rolling Stone in 2014,
05:07He has this Jackie Gleason-esque set of characters.
05:09There's more to them than just a funny voice.
05:11They all come from a very honest place.
05:13That's why it's so easy for him to roll with any situation and stay in character.
05:18Brennan isn't the only former Jerky Boy branching out into new ventures, as Kamal Ahmed has remained
05:23busy since cutting the cord on his Prank Call days.
05:26He had several small parts in movies in the 2000s and 2010s, but his primary career path
05:31over the last couple of decades has been behind the camera.
05:34In 2003, Ahmed wrote, directed, and produced his first movie, Dodd Has a Rap Sheet.
05:40Since then, he's applied that same triple-threat approach to four more films, including 2018's
05:45The Martyr Maker.
05:46He was also a co-producer of the 2010 movie Circus Maximus.
05:50In addition, he's branched out into TV, as he wrote, directed, and produced the 2022
05:55miniseries Crash the System, which is available on multiple streaming services.
06:00During a 2014 retrospective on the Jerky Boys for Rolling Stone, Ahmed didn't mince
06:05words about how he perceived his own career trajectory versus Brennan's.
06:09As he put it,
06:10"...he's still doing the same thing like a 51-year-old idiot, and I make independent
06:14movies that deal with the struggles of man.
06:16I went on to more meaningful things."
06:19Much of that 2014 Rolling Stone feature on the Jerky Boys naturally focused on Brennan.
06:24At the time, it had been a while since anything Jerky Boys-related had been released, but
06:28Rolling Stone got him to revive his three most famous characters, Frank Rizzo, Sol Rosenberg,
06:34and Jack Tors, for three brand-new calls.
06:36Brennan was insistent that these calls were only the beginning and that he was planning
06:40a full-blown Jerky Boys comeback.
06:42The article also provided a current snapshot of Brennan himself that was quite different
06:46from the early Jerky Boys days.
06:48As the author of the article, Steve Heisler, explained,
06:51"...he's aged from a mullet-and-goatee-sporting outer-borough scamp into a clean-shaven,
06:55leather-jacket-wearing 51-year-old dad who drives an SUV and owns a little dog named
07:01Taco."
07:02By all accounts, the split between Johnny Brennan and Kamal Ahmed was nowhere near amicable.
07:07Ahmed certainly has made no secret of that.
07:09In an August 2003 interview with the website Dean's Planet, he was asked how he felt about
07:14the newest Jerky Boys release, The Jerky Tapes, to which he replied,
07:17"...that CD sucks, just like Johnny's mouth."
07:20And then he quickly added,
07:22"...Johnny Brennan has no talent.
07:23Been saying it for years."
07:25And this was one of the few occasions when Ahmed was even willing to discuss the topic
07:29publicly at all.
07:30However, it seems as though he's since mellowed out a bit, and he's now able to recall his
07:34time as a Jerky Boy with a bit more fondness.
07:36"...You know, we're just trying to make people laugh."
07:38For example, in that Rolling Stone article from 2014, Ahmed was willing to dig deep into
07:43his history with Brennan and the Jerky Boys.
07:45His memories were actually mainly positive, particularly regarding the early days when
07:49it was just for fun, before fame and money got involved.
07:52At one point, Ahmed even admitted,
07:54"...we were better together than apart, that's for sure."
07:57In 2019, five years after Johnny Brennan teased new Jerky Boys material, Comedy Dynamics announced
08:03that it would release a full Jerky Boys album of all new tracks.
08:06That release date ended up being delayed a little bit to 2020, but when the new decade
08:11began, the world was finally able to listen to this fresh collection of pranks that was
08:15simply called The Jerky Boys.
08:17Kamal Ahmed unsurprisingly didn't return for the venture, but Brennan was ready to
08:21bust out his classic characters as well as introduce a few new ones.
08:24It's tough to say whether this release was successful or not.
08:27Albums don't do the kind of business that they used to back in the 90s, unless you're
08:31a megastar like Taylor Swift or Beyoncé, of course.
08:34But the fact that 2020's The Jerky Boys didn't make it to the top of the Billboard charts
08:39or go platinum doesn't automatically mean that it was a flop.
08:42Some of the calls from the album were posted to the official Comedy Dynamics YouTube channel,
08:46and the view counts as of 2024 are in the tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands.
08:51Furthermore, there weren't too many major music outlets that bothered to give it a formal
08:56review.
08:56However, the website Comedy Cake decided to cover it, proclaiming in their headline,
09:01the longer-awaited, self-titled Jerky Boys album was totally worth the 20-year wait.
09:06So what has Johnny Brennan been doing in the years since the last Jerky Boys album,
09:10other than voicing various Family Guy characters?
09:13Like a lot of other entertainers working to keep their legacies alive, he's active
09:17on social media, and he has a cameo account that's mostly dedicated to people paying him
09:21to roast their friends as his Jerky Boys characters.
09:24And in 2024, Brennan went on a small tour of live theater dates billed as An Evening
09:29with Johnny Brennan of The Jerky Boys.
09:31It's a fairly stripped-down affair, mostly featuring Brennan sitting on stage and discussing
09:36the history of The Jerky Boys, performing as his various characters, and taking questions
09:41from the audience.
09:42Even without a steady stream of new Jerky Boys material, the franchise has certainly
09:47left a lasting impression on the pop culture landscape.
09:49It's been referenced on a variety of popular TV shows, including Arrested Development
09:54and How I Met Your Mother.
09:55And in 2023, on the first season of the Peacock series Twisted Metal, Anthony Mackie as the
10:00protagonist John Doe reveals that he still listens to Jerky Boys CDs.
10:05"...Hmm, how about some tunes?"
10:09Then there are the celebrities who have spoken highly of The Jerky Boys as an inspiration
10:13for their own careers.
10:14These include the likes of comedian Amy Schumer, filmmaker Paul Feig, musician Sheryl Crow,
10:20and actor Russell Crowe.
10:21Tobey Maguire has even managed to sneak multiple Jerky Boys references into some of his movies,
10:26including the first Spider-Man.
10:27And alternative rockers Radiohead even named their first album Pablo Honey after a skit
10:33from the second Jerky Boys album.
10:34It's safe to say that The Jerky Boys' place in pop culture history is well-secured,
10:39even if Johnny Brennan or Kamal Ahmed never make another prank call.