Talking With Director Mark Goffman: The Man Who Pulls the Strings of DUMBSTRUCK

(A waiting room of ventriloquist dummies, in Dumbstruck, above.)

by Terry Keefe

For any of our Hollywood readers who are struggling to succeed as a writer, actor, director, or musician, you already know that it's hard. If you've been at it for a while, you also probably love your chosen art form enough to continue to pursue it against some pretty long odds, because otherwise, it would be easier to just hang it up.

Now just imagine how long the odds of success would feel if the art form you loved so deeply, and were willing to give up everything else for... happened to be ventriloquism.

The world of ventriloquists, or "vents" in their own parlance, is the focus of director Mark Goffman's funny, and extremely poignant, new documentary, Dumbstruck, which is being released tomorrow (4/22) in New York and Washington, D.C., followed by a Los Angeles roll-out the following weekend (4/29).


Goffman, an accomplished television writer and producer who currently executive-produces White Collar, follows five different ventriloquists over a few years, and his subjects come from a variety of age groups, as well as success levels:

Dylan Burdette is 13-years old, living in rural Kentucky, and appears to have some budding vent chops, although it's clearly going to be a long road for him to master them; the highly likable and good-hearted Wilma Swartz is middle-aged, practices her ventriloquism most frequently for children and the elderly, and is also on the verge of eviction from her house; Kim Yeager is an energetic former beauty queen who is attempting to land a cruise ship gig, which is considered one of the plum positions of the vent profession; Dan Horn is a highly-skilled, multi-decade veteran who has, in fact, had a cruise contract for many years, and is considered to be near the top of the profession; and finally, Terry Fator, who during the course of the film becomes as successful as any ventriloquist alive when he wins "America's Got Talent" and lands a multi-million dollar headlining gig in Vegas.


(Dumbstruck producer Lindsay Goffman, superstar vent Terry Fator, and director Mark Goffman, above.)

Goffman quickly establishes the heart that underpins Dumbstruck by making it clear that he takes his subjects, and their dreams, as seriously as they do. Another director might have gone for the cheaper laughs that could easily be mined from watching individuals with varied levels of talent honing their acts with ventriloquist dummies, but Goffman allows his subjects the screen time to demonstrate just how difficult it is to be even a ventriloquist of average skill, much less one with the ability to achieve the Cinderella-level success of a Terry Fator.

Goffman never sugar-coats the reality that there is only room for a limited number of Terry Fators, and the chance of most ventriloquists sustaining a paying career at the art form is slim. But he also always shows respect for their passion, and consequently, so will the audience.

We spoke to Mark Goffman at the end of March.

Did anything in particular spark your interest in ventriloquism to the point that you became interested in making a documentary on the subject?

It actually started at my wedding [laughs]. My wife, Lindsay, and I were married four years ago, and at the wedding, her mother was asked to give a toast. Now, Lindsay’s mother is a bit shy, and so when she came up to the microphone, instead of doing a normal toast, she raised her right hand… and she was wearing this white glove. And her glove started to speak and give the toast [laughs]. Her lips didn’t move and she wound up giving this really charming, heartwarming, funny toast that I never would have expected from her.

So, in addition to wondering what type of family I had married into [laughs], I really wanted to talk to her about ventriloquism and how she had become interested in it. She’s a school teacher and she did ventriloquism to entertain her kids in class, but she also found that it was fun to do for people at parties, and she can express herself in this different way.

She told us about this convention ("Vent Haven") in Ft. Mitchell, Kentucky, where 500 ventriloquists gather every year, and share their secrets, and learn from each other. She said that it was a really vibrant community.

So then, Lindsay and I decided that we had to see this for ourselves. It was kind of like a Christopher Guest film in the making [laughs].

I was inspired by films like Spellbound and The King of Kong. I think there’s this really rich area of documentaries that explore subcultures, and I thought that this would be a really fun project for Lindsay and I to do together. So, she produced it. We went to the convention and we found five people who we just fell in love with… and followed for the next couple of years.

(Terry Fator, above.)

Had Terry Fator done “America’s Got Talent” already when you started following him with your cameras?

It’s interesting… when we went to the convention, Terry had never been to the convention at that point. He had known about it and had always wanted to go. But he typically worked during the summers, because that’s when the state fairs were. When we were at the convention, we were asking who some of the really talented ventriloquists were, that we could follow for the film. “America’s Got Talent” was just airing and I think his first appearance happened while we were at the convention. People told us that we should watch him next week, because it seemed like he was going to the next level. So, we saw him on the show and instantly thought that this was a phenomenal talent, and seemed like a terrific person. We contacted him and he was more than happy to invite us in and let us spend some time with him.

His presence in the film really changes the dynamics of your story quite a bit, because he demonstrates that a struggling vent can make it huge. Unlike a top singing star, the niche of a top ventriloquist isn't necessarily one that the entertainment world needs filled, but Fator does rise to that position. And you have it on film.

We really feel like we caught lightning in a bottle. We feel that we captured this incredible moment in time, one that was really rare. As we’ve been saying: the most unusual year in a very unusual art form. If we were shooting any other time, it would have been hard to capture this. But it [ventriloquism) is really on the rise, and Terry gave everyone in the whole community hope. And it was just a phenomenal success to see him go from playing the state fairs, and really struggling… to his talent really being recognized, and getting to play larger and larger stadiums. And finally, getting the headlining deal in Las Vegas, which has been a dream for much of his life.

Did success change Terry Fator’s personality at all? He seems to have handled it pretty well from what we see in your film.

The whole time we filmed… what you see in there is what we got. He was able to ride it really well. What you see in the film is a very accurate representation of his life at the time.

(Kim Yeager, above.)

Something that struck me is that the different strata of the characters in the film felt like a microcosm of the larger entertainment industry. Some of the ventriloquists have a lot of talent, and are then dependent on getting an elusive break. Others aren’t quite as talented, but continue practicing the art form anyway, and are willing to struggle maybe indefinitely, because they really love it. You could say the same thing about the different strata of struggling actors, writers, and musicians out here. I’m sure as someone who has worked in show business for a long time that you noticed those parallels pretty quickly.

Yeah, I definitely related to it in that way. It’s very hard to make it in any form of entertainment. It’s a dream. And these are people who are following their dreams. Their ability to persist, and their determination… I think it’s inspiring.

Some of them do it in spite of their family… or with the support of their family. And that’s really one of the things that we tried to capture: the support systems that some people have, for doing something as brave as this art form.

They all seem stable, and even-keeled in personality, for people who are pursuing what many would consider an off-beat art form.

Well, up until the 1950s, this was one of the most popular art forms in America. Paul Winchell, Howdy Doody… this was mass entertainment. Then, it kind of disappeared. And then, with movies like Magic and The Twilight Zone, it became something that wasn’t really in the mainstream, and the people that did it had dummies that they thought were alive [laughs].

And, I hope that one of the things this film does is to show that the people who practice this art form are entertainers, and performers... and people. That’s what the film is about. It’s them and their families. It just happens that their careers are in ventriloquism, which we found fascinating.

Another theme in the film that we found, with ventriloquism, was because it was so popular in the 50s… it’s almost this throwback art form where the people who do it are all very family-orientated. Their shows are family entertainment. It kind of takes people to a simpler time. I think people are responding to that now, the way that they wouldn’t have a few years ago, and I think that’s partly why Terry has become so popular. And other ventriloquists: Jeff Dunham has become enormously popular; Jay Johnson just won a Tony for The Two and Only, his show in New York; and Ronn Lucas. There are a number of vents who have broken through.

In terms of the shooting schedule for the documentary, how did you manage it with your other professional writing and producing obligations?

This became part of my “strike project” back in 2007, when I was working on “Law & Order: SVU” at the time. I found myself with a lot of time on my hands, and not able to write, so this was a good time for Lindsay and I to start the project. So, we started the film back then, and we just kept following these people… I worked over hiatuses, weekends, and nights. It became our joint project together, aside from our 1-year old [laughs].

You have a terrific soundtrack.

Yeah, we’re really proud of it. Bird York, who did the end credit music, she’s an Oscar-nominated composer. I knew her from “The West Wing” and invited her to come to a screening of a rough cut of the film, and she just fell in love with it and said that she wanted to write the music for the ending. And she wrote the song “Special Friend,” which is an incredible gift.

And Daniel Licht, who is the composer for “Dexter,” he did an original score for the entire film.

His score is just the right tone, understated but also animated.

Yeah, it’s beautiful, it’s playful, it’s heartfelt at the right moments.

Okay, the secret everyone in Hollywood wants to know: how did you get Elon Musk (co-founder of PayPal and Tesla Motors) involved as an executive producer?

[laughs] We had been working for some time on the film, about a year into the project, and we knew we had something amazing, as Terry was just starting to really hit. I had been telling Elon about the project, and he’s just an amazing person, and he really responded to the material. And the more I told him about it, the more he seemed to enjoy it. We thought we had the whole thing financed, and then, unfortunately, one of the doc financing companies backed out at the last minute. And so, Elon stepped up, and said he believed in the project, and we couldn’t have been more grateful.

Dumbstruck opens theatrically tomorrow in New York and Washington, D.C.

A FEW LINKS:

- The official Dumbstruck website.

- SHOW TIMES IN NEW YORK AT THE CINEMA VILLAGE

- SHOW TIMES IN WASHINGTON, D.C. AT THE LANDMARK THEATRES