Hey, No Joke, These Records Are Hot! : Hollywood Answers the Jerky Boys’ Prank Calls With a Movie Deal

Kamal has learned a lot about making prank phone calls pay off since he first tried it out on his father on a cold night in New York City.

“I told my father that if he didn’t turn up the heat, we were going to break his son’s legs,” Kamal recalled. “He said, ‘Go ahead.’ ”

Although Kamal spent the night shivering in his father’s house, America has since warmed up to his brand of irreverent humor. The latest example is the signing of Kamal and Johnny B., a.k.a. the Jerky Boys, to a movie deal with Joe Roth’s Caravan Pictures based on nothing more than their first cassette of prank phone calls--an underground classic that is bucking for Gold-record status and a Grammy nomination.

“I think we hit a nerve with the public,” said Johnny B. “It’s so weird. Everyone can relate. We had an autograph session in Boston where a 90-year-old woman waited in line two hours to get an autograph.”

More queues to see the Jerky Boys are guaranteed with the just-signed movie deal. According to sources close to the project, the film marks the first time audiences will see the true names and faces of the 20-something Boys, who so far have worn masks in public. No release date, director or script has yet been considered for the film, but sources say the Boys will wield some creative input on the project.

This will serve as good news to the Jerky Boys’ fans, who have established a cult-like following from locales as varied as Israel and North Carolina. An untold number of underground tapes have been made since 1986, when construction worker Johnny B. first spent a half-hour taping his crank calls on a rainy day.

Kamal, who was studying to be a culinary chef at the time, teamed with his former neighbor about a year later to finish the product. The tapes were passed on to friends and then began showing up at colleges, radio stations and a 900-number in New York before the pair released the tape on the Select Records Label, which is distributed by Atlantic Records.

Since hitting the record stores last December, “The Jerky Boys” has sold nearly 500,000 tapes and CDs.

“The unusual thing is that these guys are not comedians,” said their attorney, David Chidekel. “This is the thing that makes America great. A couple of guys who go from relative obscurity to stardom.”

Whether this stardom will translate successfully to the silver screen is the big question. Much of their humor is based on the unsolicited responses from their 21 prank call victims, whom they refer to as “jerky.” The victims include receptionists, talent agents, attorneys and even a piano tuner who is called to extract a Rottweiler from a piano.

An example: Johnny B. phones a car dealership in search of work, setting the manager up by telling him he’s willing to trek to the job from Upstate New York.

“Why you want to drive 60 miles to go to work?” the puzzled manager, Paul, asks.

“Hey. That’s my business,” Johnny B. replies. “You want to sell cars through me or what? See, I had problems up there in Middletown and I gotta get the hell out of that area. I grabbed some guy, he’s uh, you know, he don’t know if he wants to buy, I push his face right in the bleeping hood. I tell him, ‘You buy this bleeping car or I break your bleeping head.’ I had problems up there, Paul.”

The manager pauses: “Sounds like you would have problems anywhere.”

Caravan’s Roger Birnbaum, who will co-produce the project with Roth, believes the film will have no problem making movie audiences laugh.

“We do certainly plan on sticking to the integrity of what they’ve already done,” Birnbaum said. “By that, I mean stick to the honesty and the raw nature of their humor. We’re not going to try and reinvent them for a movie, in other words. I think they are very, very funny guys. I think in a way they are working-class heroes.”

While an Oscar for the Jerky Boys may still be further away than Pacific Bell can reach, they are keeping their ears open for a possible Grammy nomination for best comedy album. And their next album is due in early 1994.

“‘There are very many people who believe they deserve to be nominated for what they’ve accomplished,” said Wyatt Cheek, vice president of Promotions at Select.

Local fans agree.

“It’s taking on the hallmarks of a classic,” said Larry King, a buyer for Tower Records in Hollywood who has sold out of the cassettes on several occasions. “Other comedy acts have quick burns, like Andrew Dice Clay and Sam Kinison. It comes out and sells for three weeks and it’s dead. I would say, when the year is out, the Jerky Boys will be close to the head of the class. It’s a word-of-mouth thing.”