A penis replica was waved across the Emens Auditorium stage, the Impractical Jokers’ Joe Gatto airplaned across the stage, eventually breaking the microphone stand and a couple got engaged. The four stars of the show, Brian “Q” Quinn, Gatto, Sal Vulcano and James “Murr” Murray got personal with the crowd and explicit with their material, unafraid to laugh at one another and themselves.
The Impractical Jokers peformed in front of a large crowd of local residents, students and out-of staters in Emens Auditorium on Saturday.
“I’m surprised that people have come from far and wide,” Gatto said. “It’s been the best audience we’ve had yet, I think.”
Tracy Nunley traveled 14 hours from Lindsay, Okla., to see the Impractical Jokers, and got to meet the four men after the show.
“It has been a major rush,” Nunley said. “It’s the craziest thing we’ve ever done.”
Ball State “balls” jokes were made throughout the night and the men debated the origin of the name, as in: “It’s that Tupperware, right?” Sal settled the discussion with the theory of President Richard Nixon visiting the campus in 1922 and pulling his groin. Quinn was quick to point out he was wearing red and white from head to toe and exclaiming the Ball State staple, “Chirp, chirp.”
On entering Muncie, Gatto saw a Ball State billboard that had the university’s well-known chant.
“‘Chirp, chirp’ isn’t so good for trash-talk, Ball State,” Gatto said, proposing that possibly a hawk or some other bird of prey could be a more intimidating mascot than a cardinal.
The men didn’t get to sight-see much before their show, only seeing Muncie during their drive from the airport.
“It seems like a whole lot of nice crops,” Vulcano said.
Other locations have proved more dicey. The guys have been picking up stories along their journey that they talked about for the show. One of their most recent shows led them to Joliet, Ill., where the four men had been booked to stay in a cheap motel. The first thing that Quinn, Gatto, Vulcano and Murray witnessed was a transvestite hooker in the lobby; what Murray described as “strike one.” Strike two came when Quinn walked into his small, dingy room and found a crack pipe on the floor. In the slideshow, there’s a photo of Quinn holding the crack pipe giving the thumbs-up.
Among the other visuals were comparisons of the cast members with a ferret and Rosie O’Donnell and a sex-ed slideshow. In one episode, Quinn had to give a presentation of “the sex talk” to his parents, where the slides were prepared for optimal awkwardness by Gatto, Vulcano and Murray. While the majority had to be censored on the show, Quinn gave the uncut slideshow presentation to the crowd.
“When we film shows, it takes the viewer six to eight months for them to see it,” Gatto said. “On stage you get to see their reactions, whether they laugh or don’t laugh, either way we have fun.”
The four were constantly in interaction with the audience. The Q&A was a sliding spectrum of oddity that ended in an unexpected way. The question as to who is “Larry,” a phantom perpetrator that has become a catchphrase among the four in their skits, was finally answered. Gatto said that Larry was actually a crew member who was constantly in a hurried, panicked state and the men used to yell his name to further fluster him. As the Q&A came to a close, a couple was pulled on stage and Steve Hedrick proposed to Dawn Waymare in front of the audience.
In the show, if one of the guys doesn’t win the challenge, the points are tallied against them and they have to comply with whatever embarrassment the others come up with. While the four go at great lengths to win, each man has a breaking point.
Murray said that any prank that has to do with a woman or the elderly is a weakness. According to Murray, Vulcano is a germophobe. For Quinn, he can’t embarrass himself in front of a pretty woman. Gatto, however, Murray deems as “shameless.”
One challenge that has pushed Murray to edge further than before is yet to be aired on television. Murray said in this particular dare, the men had to pretend they were pedicurists.
While Murray was giving one woman a pedicure in a footbath, he was instructed to look behind the seat by the other men. It was a brown paper bag filled with giant barbecue ribs that he was supposed to eat during the foot massage.
“So I start eating these ribs with one hand while I’m trying to massage her foot with the other hand and they tell me to drop the rib into the footbath,” Murray said. “Then they tell me to pick it up from the foot bath and start eating it. You’ll see what happens.”
The future of the Impractical Jokers looks bright. Murray said he hopes to do as many seasons as possible and put out a full-length Impractical Jokers movie.
“That’s definitely on the near horizon for us,” Murray said.
As for the plethora of jokes, banter, dares and pranks; Murray isn’t worried about inspiration running dry.
“We haven’t come close to running out of ideas,” Murray said. “We’ve got plenty more.”
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