Mouthing off hysterically

Comedian's 10,000 sounds and characters mean you never know who'll drop in.

When he was growing up, Michael Winslow didn't have many close friends - but he sure had some famous ones. People like Marlon Brando, Mick Jagger and even Flipper the famous dolphin were part of his world.

It was, of course, all in the young lad's head. Because Winslow - perhaps best known as Sergeant Larvelle "Motor Mouth" Jones in the 1984 film Police Academy and now known as "The Man with 10,000 Voices" - started doing impressions and sound effects at a young age.

"I didn't have a lot of friends so I had to make them up myself," he says in that characteristically snappy yet casual style made famous by Sergeant Jones.

"That was the thing, I could have Marlon Brando hanging out with me, and Mick Jagger too, and Flipper, so that's what I did."

And these days people like Snoop Dogg pop over every now and then, too.

"Who says we can't have Snoop and Flipper hanging out (he puts on his best Snoop voice). 'Yo, yo, what's up sushi?"'

Winslow, who is in New Zealand this week on his stand-up comedy tour, has come a long way since his breakthrough role in Police Academy. Though he says he never gets sick of "the guy from Police Academy" tag.

"Oh no, are you kidding me? That part meant I'm able to do things like go to New Zealand," he laughs. "And I'm looking forward to Police Academy 8 starting production," he says of the next instalment of the long-running franchise, due out next year.

From that starring role he's built up a successful comedy career, and he's diversified, too, making a video game - Wizard Ops Chpt 1 - a series of "noizy" apps, and plans to wind down his live shows in the next year to make a documentary drawing on footage he has shot of his shows over the past four years.

"If you want to be relevant you have to evolve, not necessarily like a Pokemon but pretty close. And I would love to do some hip-hop anime noises. I wonder how they'd like that in Japan?" he says.

One of his highlights of the year was appearing at the Bonnaroo music festival in Tennessee doing the Jimi Hendrix version of Star Spangled Banner (with his mouth, obviously), as well as performing with everyone from arty New Yorkers the Animal Collective to unlikely collaborators Billy Idol and R Kelly in a jam session.

"I'm like, 'Okay, this is getting interesting'. ZZ Top were there too. It was wild, man. There were 90,000 people there. It was kind of surreal, but fun," he says.

Not bad for a guy who makes sounds - any sound you want, in fact - with his mouth. He does barking dogs and jet engines (those were the first things he learned to do because he grew up on an air force base), and while on the phone to TimeOut he does everything from impressions of Snoop and Flipper to the wailing guitar of Hendrix and bagpipes.

His comedy show is "a bit of a kitchen sink approach" with sound effects, story telling, scenes from his films and music that ranges from Louis Armstrong to Led Zeppelin.

"My job is to help them forget about the rent for an hour," he says. "That hour of release is therapy.

"I hope it will help somebody and I hope that you'll leave in better shape than when you came in. Unless you've had a pint or two, and that's fine too."

Comedy preview

Who: Michael Winslow
Where & when: Founders Theatre, Hamilton, Aug 11; ASB Theatre, Auckland, Aug 12; Municipal Theatre, Napier, Aug 13.