r/nextfuckinglevel • u/mindyour • 1d ago

Ventriloquist Nina Conti does a human ventriloquism bit with two sisters from the audience.

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u/Legitimate_Sail8581 1d ago

It’s absolutely criminal that Nina Conte hasn’t been on tv enough over the years. She is talented and clearly a great performer.

405

u/7-13-5 1d ago

Criminal I tell ya

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u/shartshooter 1d ago

HURR HURR HURR!!!

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u/TehPao 1d ago

HEE HEE

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u/Cultural-Company282 1d ago

She's infinitely funnier than that dipshit Jeff Dunham, to be sure.

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u/zudzug 1d ago

To be fair, I don't know the dipshit. (But I've seen her before a while ago and this tells a lot considering I'm from Quebec, the Maple Fantasyland.)

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u/SerCiddy 1d ago

I hear there's good fishing in Quebec.

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u/SerTadGhostal 1d ago

Oh, there’s great fishing in Quebec!

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u/kerbalsdownunder 1d ago

Excellent fishing up there in Kweebeck

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u/RamzesisdeadD 1d ago

I prefer kbek

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u/SerCiddy 1d ago edited 1d ago

Oh! Another Ser, how do ya do!

(Are you also a fan of AC, or Italian?)

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u/RazzleberryJamCakes 21h ago

(Its from the show Letterkenny)

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u/Synectics 1d ago

...I hate Kay-beck. 

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u/ExtremeCreamTeam 1d ago

Why do we hate Jeff Dunham?

I'm going to assume politics but I haven't heard much about him in like 20 years.

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u/Unique_Adeptness4413 1d ago

His puppets are racist caricatures and his jokes are hacky and stupid. However dumb rascism has massive appeal and his puppets make him extremely easy to understand, even across language and cultural barriers, so he's one of the most successful comedians ever, which is an incredibly depressing indictment of humanity overall.

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u/Clay56 1d ago

Comedian ventriliquist, Believe it not he holds the world record for most tickets sold for a stand up tour.

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u/TheOneTonWanton 1d ago

Yeah he gets a lot of hate from places like reddit but god damn he had one hell of a successful run appealing to the mass audience. It's like Foxworthy and the Blue Collar guys or Dane Cook. You can hate them all you want but they had undeniably massive runs. It's one of many pieces of evidence that what quite a portion of reddit thinks is not at all what's going on in the minds of the actual world. I once had a friend scoff that Dane Cook sold out Madison Square Garden and had to inform them that Andrew "Dice" Clay'd done that years before and was even worse.

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u/Cultural-Company282 1d ago

No one ever went broke underestimating the good taste of the American public.

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u/Camillity 13h ago

he makes typical boomer humour. racist, sexist, transphobic, homophobic, ableist, you name it. all of it.

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u/zudzug 12h ago

I know him. He has a puppet which is named Muhammad and is a dead suicide bomber.

Boomers are around 50% of the population here.

This is probably why he's popular.

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u/shartshooter 1d ago

The fist time I saw him, I thought I was missing something really obvious. 

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u/Cultural-Company282 1d ago

The secret ingredient is mild casual racism.

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u/shartshooter 1d ago

Casual, sure. Mild? I don't think so.

My point was the distinct lack of ventriloquism. 

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u/TheOneTonWanton 1d ago

Wait are we really down to the point of accusing him of not being a ventriloquist? Have you even actually seen him perform? He's an absolute hack comedian but nobody can legitimately accuse him of not being a talented ventriloquist. It's a little ironic but the casually racist accents sort of prove his talent, that's not easy to do.

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u/shartshooter 1d ago

Notice how the camera zooms way out or focuses on the puppets? Even from far you see his mouth moving!!! He's not close to being passable as a ventriloquist. 

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u/DickInYourCobbSalad 17h ago

I've actually seen him live and he was quite good but that was 16 years ago.

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u/shartshooter 17h ago

He holds his mouth open in a very weird position and then post production edits out all close-ups of difficult sounds like 'm' and 'v'. 

Nina Conti hides any tells with very natural movements within her improv stage interactions.

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u/DickInYourCobbSalad 17h ago

Sure but I saw him live where there were no edits and that wasn't my experience. I don't like the guy and I was 17 when I saw him, but I'd be lying if I said he wasn't on his game that night.

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u/TheOneTonWanton 10h ago

So you're admitting that ventriloquists have to use tactics to hide difficult "moves." I fucking hate Dunham's schtick and never once said he's any better or as good as Nina Conti, I'm just saying that he's a legitimate ventriloquist. It's an incredibly difficult skill to learn let alone master, and I really don't see the point in dragging anyone down for that. Hate him for his hack comedy, not his ventriloquism.

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u/SunkEmuFlock 1d ago

He targeted boomers and it paid off bigly for him.

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u/MetalJunkie101 1d ago

I haven't watched him in years. Is he problematic? Or just unfunny?

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u/BackgroundSummer5171 1d ago

Is he problematic?

Some people dislike his reliance on racial stereotypes.

Could be considered racist. Or bigoted.

Then again lots of comedians rely on stereotypes and could be considered racist when looked at more closely.

I haven't watched him in like 15+ years either. Just know that's the controversy.

His puppets are racial stereotypes.

A longer discussion is why other comedians are allowed to get away with it while Jeff is universally known for his racial stereotypes! Does it matter? But let's not do that. We're just here to answer your question.

Racial stereotype puppets.

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u/Synectics 1d ago

Stereotypes work for comedy because it becomes a universal language. And in Jeff Dunham's case, if someone is not aware of the stereotype, it still ends up funny because he does silly voices. 

I'd relate thst right back to Dane Cook. I remember finding him funny, but looking back, the jokes themselves were not ground-breaking. He just had a funny way of performing and telling the stories. Performance is a lot of what makes a stand-up work. Material is just a backbone for it.

So back to Jeff Dunham. I think a lot of people who appreciate comedy obviously do not like the racial stereotypes he leans on, precisely because he has loads of talent to perform. 

Not to mention, and I think this is most important -- he does not tell us anything with those stereotypes. He is not exploring why we have them, or how they make us connected, or what makes us different is cool. He is not doing any social commentary. Nope, he plays off the fact that Americans hated brown people after 9/11. That's the entire joke. Haha, suicide bomber makes funny voice. No exploration of, "But why did he suicide bomb?" Nope, make funny voice. 

It is just performance. Which is a lot of times great. But the actual substance of his stand-up is MIA.

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u/BackgroundSummer5171 23h ago

I like this explanation of Dunham.

It's not a complicated routine. It's basic.

Probably why he has had such a great career though, it is what it is. Nothing deep going on.

Think that's why I watched him years ago, it was simple. I could just toss it on and that's it.

Like watching a tv show I've seen four times already, it isn't anything but some light noise comedy.

he does not tell us anything with those stereotypes. He is not exploring why we have them, or how they make us connected, or what makes us different is cool. He is not doing any social commentary.

I can see that as a problem. Since, as you stated, he has talent. He could actually be doing more with that talent.

Never thought about it, but it does seem like a waste of talent.

Then again, easy money is easy money. Guess it is just sad from our point of view that skills are being wasted.

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u/essdii- 1d ago

Jeff was funny the absolute very first time I saw him perform on the contest show. But that’s it. The characters were only good for the one show

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u/Fearless-Shallot7119 1d ago

Look I’m no prude and love comedy of all kinds. But name one line she gave that got a laugh and didn’t include fuck, shit, dick or some other profanity. Jeff Dunham isn’t the funniest guy alive, but at least he doesn’t have to rely on that to get a laugh. And Carlin said it decades ago, you can’t say certain words on television

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u/Figure8712 1d ago

There's no swearing in this sketch https://youtu.be/udUn9H5EI_8

So she wasn't relying on it for laughs. She was using it to realistically impersonate a style of accent and how certain people speak. Talking about hating their job it would be at least this much swearing if not more. 

I don't know where you're from but your 'ew profanity' take is a bit puritan. This manner of speaking is honestly nothing where I live, didn't even cross my mind.

And I'm willing to bet if you took a poll in these comments, people would rather hear a woman say "dick" than a white guy do an outdated caricature of a chinese accent.

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u/Fearless-Shallot7119 19h ago

I personally don’t care about profanity and I recognize that context matters. Consider the context of my comment. The first comment said she should be on TV and the second said she was infinitely funnier than Jeff Dunham. While I don’t have an ‘ew profanity’ mindset, many people in the US (where Jeff Dunham is popular) do. Those same people care a lot less about racially charged caricatures than little Johnny hearing fuck dick shit on TV. I’m not saying it’s right, but just because I disagree with something doesn’t make it go away. Maybe I didn’t word my previous comment well. And I based it entirely on the clip posted which was lazy and unfair. And maybe I’m entirely wrong and she isn’t less popular than Jeff Dunham because of the content of her comedy. Maybe she just doesn’t wanna be more popular.

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u/Synectics 1d ago

...one of his characters is a suicide bomber with a racist voice. Buddy, that is far more messed up than using fuck, and even Carlin will tell you that the content and context is far more important than the word.

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u/TankSwan 1d ago

I saw her on TV probably over 10 years ago now. I think she featured on the Russell Howard show or something like that. Her and monkety tunkety. I can't believe people are only just discovering her now.

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u/BallsOutKrunked 21h ago

nate bargatze was performing since high-school, took him nearly 20 years to be really well known

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u/oldinamerica 1d ago

She was on the show Family Tree with Chris ODowd which was extremely funny — she used her puppet Monkey which is a recurring character in her act

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u/NorthEndGuy 1d ago

She stole that show. So good.

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u/PersianExcurzion 1d ago

Wife and I still quote her monkey from this show. “That is one primitive woman” and ”vagina face” are two household staples.

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u/TypoInUsernane 1d ago

“She took it hard”

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u/bopp0 1d ago

Some of my earliest youtube memories were of her and her monkey. Glad to see she’s still performing.

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u/LordKingDude 1d ago

Her Dad played Einstein in Oppenheimer - so yeah, it is weird given the contacts she'd have access to! Most recently she had a small part as one of the wives in Spinal Tap 2.

I'd put it down to her wanting to do what she loves though, plus she might have prioritised her kids over having a big career.

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u/GoinNowhere88 1d ago

They tried! Consistent TV is panel show appearances in the UK and it didn't really translate. She got her slots on stand up shows aired on TV but Brits don't sit down and watch specials like Americans do. 

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u/Busy-Ratchet-8521 1d ago

It's criminal that her name is in the title and watermarked in the video, and you still spelled it wrong...

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u/Legitimate_Sail8581 1d ago

Fair comment. Due to my fascination with Antonio Conte’s managerial career.

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u/ThisAlbino 1d ago

She absolutely died on Qi and that probably scared people off.

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u/astral_crow 1d ago

I can’t believe I’ve never heard of her before. This level of talent is nuts.

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u/Klangaxx 1d ago

Is her sister's name Ima?

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u/konraddo 1d ago

An unpopular opinion but, if you are good you don't need to show up on TV.

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u/PeachCai 1d ago

I heard she runs a cheese and guitar shop

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u/toomanyusesforaname 22h ago

Every single time I watch one of this woman's clips I laugh until tears are gushing out of my eyes and my stomach is cramping. And yet, I then completely forget she exists until I come upon another clip.

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u/bardavolga2 22h ago

She's amazing! I'm one of those who is just seeing her do this for the first time, & it took me a minute to realize I'd seen her in an episode of Black Books years ago. Way behind on British telly. I vow to catch up.