Gilbert Gottfried’s Final Comedy Album Is Helping Explore Treatment for the Rare Condition That Led to His Death

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Gilbert Gottfried’s widow Dara, as well as director Neil Berkley (behind the 2017 documentary Gilbert) and friends of the late legendary stand-up comic and actor have come together to release Still Screaming, an album of his best bits and impressions — which will aid research on finding treatment for Myotonic Dystrophy Type 2, the rare, progressive disease that led to his death in 2022.

Multimedia producer Dara Gottfried, who was married to the comic’s comic — known for his manic, squinching delivery, and voiceovers as the parrot Iago in Disney’s Aladdin and the duck in AFLAC Insurance Company commercials — for 15 years, says a portion of proceeds from sales of the album will benefit the Gilbert Gottfried Myotonic Dystrophy Type 2 Research Fund at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, NY. “They are leading the way in research for treatments and hopefully eventually a cure,” she says. “Right now, there is no cure, and they’re working on developing treatments with the money I’m raising.”

Dara, who previously ran top 40 promotion for Interscope Records, says the album will be the last recording of Gilbert’s comedy released, in part, because her husband “didn’t update his act much… He was still doing jokes about Molly Ringwald, Gary Coleman and O.J. Simpson, and he refused to put out an album [because] he thought it would jeopardize his act,” she explains. “That’s why we didn’t put it out while he was alive.”

Still Screaming is a collection of jokes that Dara says was Gilbert’s “main act.” They were culled from Berkley’s documentary, who filmed two years of the comic’s performances. The album is available in digital and physical formats, including a limited-edition deluxe double album. The gatefold packaging was designed by art director Grammy-nominated art director Perry Shall, a close friend of the comic. “Perry went through all of Gilbert’s archival material and scanned everything,” Dara says. “The track listing is Gilbert’s handwriting.” In addition to photos of Gottfried over the course of his career, there is a reproduction of a Super 8 motel notepad. “Gilbert was so cheap, he collected soaps and perfumes from the hotels and motels where he stayed when he was on the road, and that notepad was one of the things he brought home,” she says.

Comic and illusionist Penn Jillette also contributed a biographical essay about his close friend, and another pal, roast specialist Jeff Ross, came up with the album title, and one side of the double album is etched with a reproduction of Gilbert’s artwork, Chico Needed the Money. “No one knew that he drew,” Dara says. “Underneath his bed, I found all these incredible R. Crumb-esque drawings. Her discovery led their then-15-year-old daughter Lily Gottfried to make the documentary The Hidden Talent of Gilbert Gottfried.

In October 2001, Gottfried made headlines when three weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he told the crowd at a Friars Club roast of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner in New York, that he couldn’t get a direct flight from New York to California because “they said they have to stop at the Empire State Building first.” After cries of “Too soon” — which Dara had inscribed on his tombstone — Gottfried redeemed himself by telling his version of “The Aristocrats,” a classic joke (and arguably the filthiest in comedy), which is personalized by the darkest thoughts of the comic telling it. Gasps of prolonged laughter followed at a time when few people were laughing at all.

The performance inspired Jillette and comic Paul Provenza to direct The Aristocrats, a documentary in which a cavalcade of funny people told their versions of the joke.

It was a big reason, Dara says, that “people didn’t realize Gil was actually a clean comic. When we started dating, he would say it’s lazy and cheap to work blue. If you listen to all of his old jokes, they were all clean.” She adds that after The Aristocrats, which also featured Gottfried, her husband began ending his show with a series of dirty jokes “to fill time, because he was bored with his act.” That’s when, Dara says, she convinced Gilbert to put out his only other recording — a collection of classic dirty jokes called, appropriately, Dirty Jokes.

Almost 10 years after his Friars roast performance, Gottfried lost his job as the voice of the AFLAC duck after tweeting jokes about a deadly earthquake that hit Japan. Gottfried may have avoided working blue, but, Dara says, “He said whatever he wanted, and paid the price for it.”

In addition to raising money to fight Myotonic Dystrophy Type 2, Dara says Still Screaming is another way for comedy fans to revisit — or discover — and enjoy the comedy of her husband, who didn’t archive his jokes. “Unlike Joan Rivers, who had her note cards and filing cabinets, Gilbert never wrote anything down,” she explains. “All I have is three pieces of notebook paper, where he scribbled the name of each joke he knew.”

“I wanted to share his genius,” she says.

A link to donate to the research fund can be found at gilbertgottfried.com