Yakov Smirnoff

Yakov Smirnoff
Born	Yakov Naumovich Pokhis (1951-01-24) 24 January 1951 Odessa, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union
Website	http://www.yakov.com/default.html

Yakov Naumovich Pokhis (Russian: Яков Наумович Похис, Ukrainian: Яків Наумович Похис; born 24 January 1951), better known as Yakov Smirnoff, is a Ukrainian-born American comedian, painter and teacher. He was popular in the 1980s for comedy performances in which he used irony and word play to contrast life under the Communist regime in his native Soviet Union with life in the United States, delivered in heavily accented English. He has a theatre in Branson, Missouri, where he performs year-round. Yakov is also a professor at Missouri State University and Drury University where he teaches "The Business of Laughter."

Life

Smirnoff was born to a Jewish family in Odessa, Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. He was an art teacher in Odessa and continues to paint. He came to the United States in 1977 and became an American citizen on 4 July 1986. Smirnoff spent a portion of his early days in the United States working as a bartender at Grossingers Hotel in the Catskill Mountains of New York and living in the employee dormitory.

He appeared in several motion pictures, including Buckaroo Banzai and The Money Pit. Among his numerous appearances on television, he was featured many times on the sitcom Night Court as "Yakov Korolenko". He also had a starring role in a 1986-87 television sitcom titled What a Country. In that show, he played a Russian cab driver studying for the U.S. citizenship test. In the late 1980s, Smirnoff was commissioned to provide educational bumper segments for Saturday morning cartoons, punctuated with a joke and Smirnoff's signature laugh. Since 1993, he has been a fixture in Branson, Missouri.

He has continued to amass accomplishments including books, CDs, movies, T.V. appearances, a successful Broadway show, As Long As We Both Shall Laugh, and is currently working on a humorous self-help book. He is a featured writer for AARP magazine and gives readers advice in his column, “Happily Ever Laughter”. He guests at the Skinny Improv in Springfield, Missouri on occasion.

In May 2006, Smirnoff received a master's degree in positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. He has taught classes at Drury University along with Missouri State University on this topic. He is reportedly developing a new talk show that is based on the important role that laughter plays in healthy relationships, a concept which he had envisioned years earlier and has been developing the pilot.

Comedy style

"America: What a country!"

• Misunderstanding of American life and custom through the eyes of a new immigrant. For instance:
  • "I go to New York and I saw a big sign saying 'Smirnoff' and I said to myself, what a country! 'America Loves Smirnoff'!"
  • Reading employment announcements of "Part-Time Woman Wanted": "What a country! Even transvestites can get work."
  • Upon being offered work as a barman on a "graveyard shift", he remarks, 'A bar in a cemetery! What a country! Last call? During Happy Hour the place must be dead.'
  • At the grocery store: "Powdered milk, powdered eggs, baby powder ... what a country!"
  • At the grocery store after finding "New Freedom" Maxi Pads: "Freedom in a box! What a country!"
  • "The first time I went to a restaurant, they asked me 'How many in your party?' and I said 'Six hundred million'."

• Bizarre comparisons between the U.S. and Russia.
  • "We have no gay people in Russia — there are homosexuals but they are not allowed to be gay about it. The punishment is seven years locked in prison with other men and there is a three-year waiting list for that."

He once told Johnny Carson, "You have such nice things in the U.S. — like in Russia the police didn’t have warning shots"

Russian reversal

Russian reversal or "In Soviet Russia" is a type of joke originated by Smirnoff, and is an example of antimetabole. The general form of the "In Soviet Russia" joke is that the subject and objects of a statement are reversed, and "In (Soviet) Russia," or something equivalent, is added, and the verb is often left unconjugated and articles are omitted, mimicking perceived Russian-accented speech. The original was:

In America, there's plenty of light beer and you can always find a party.

In Russia, party always finds you.

Other examples include:

In America, you watch television.

In Soviet Russia, television watch you.

In America, you drive car.

In Soviet Russia, car drive you.

In America, you listen to radio.

In Soviet Russia, radio listen to you.

In America, your job determines your marks.

In Soviet Russia, Marx determines your job.

In America, you assassinate president.

In Soviet Russia, the president assassinate you.

All of Smirnoff's original "In Soviet Russia" jokes made use of formulaic wordplay that carried Orwellian undertones. For example, two well-known jokes of this type run "In America, you listen to man on radio. In Soviet Russia, man on radio listen to you!" and "In America, you watch television. In Soviet Russia, television watches you!" The joke alludes to video screens that both reproduce images and monitor the citizenry, as in the novel 1984. Smirnoff's use of English allowed him to smooth over grammar differences in transitioning from the setup to the punchline. For example, he omits the articles "a" and "the" in the first reversal joke above, to better preserve the congruence. Also, verbs are often left unconjugated.

At the peak of Smirnoff's celebrity in the mid-1980s, he did not say "Soviet Russia" — he said simply "Russia", as the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic had existed since 1917, still existed, and showed no signs of imminent collapse. Smirnoff may have added the Soviet qualifier after the fall of the USSR to specify that he was referring to the communist regime and not the present state, although the phrase "Soviet Russia" has seen occasional use in the West since the beginning of the Soviet Union.

The joke form has become a staple of Smirnoff's humor, and is widely referenced in television parodies and online communities, especially in the form of double entendres. One of the best-known examples of this comes from an episode of Family Guy, wherein the GPS unit on the family's car has a number of language settings, including the "Yakov Smirnoff" mode that gives directions such as "In Soviet Russia, car drives you!" The widespread reference to the jokes has led some linguists to consider the phrases to be snowclones.

See also: Transpositional pun

9/11 mural

Smirnoff is also a painter and has frequently featured the Statue of Liberty in his art since receiving his U.S. citizenship.

On the night of the 11 September 2001, terrorist attacks he started a painting inspired by his feelings about the event, based on an image of the Statue of Liberty. Just prior to the first anniversary of the attacks, he paid US$100,000 for his painting to be transformed into a large mural. Its dimensions were 200 feet by 135 feet (61 m by 41 m).

The mural, titled "America's Heart," is a pointillist-style piece, with one brush-stroke for each victim of the attacks. Sixty volunteers from the Sheet Metal Workers Union erected the mural on a damaged skyscraper overlooking the ruins of the World Trade Center. The mural remained there until November 2003, when it was removed because of storm damage. Various pieces of the mural can now be seen on display at his theater in Branson, Missouri.

The only stipulation he put on the hanging of the mural was that his name not be listed as the painter. He signed it: "The human spirit is not measured by the size of the act, but by the size of the heart."

External links

• Official website
• Yakov Smirnoff at IMDb
• Branson Missouri news article re Smirnoff