Think about the movie Police Academy for a second. What’s the first thing that comes to mind? For most people, it’s that sound effects guy. That guy who could turn his voice into a helicopter or machine gun. We all watched that movie, and somehow that’s the part that stuck out the most.
The same thing happens with Spaceballs. Michael Winslow is on screen for a little over a minute, and still, you know exactly who he is and what he does.
Winslow is coming back to the Black Hills. What he’s doing on stage now has moved well beyond those early impressions. The show isn’t constructed around a single bit or a recognizable trick. It’s been developed over time and carefully crafted into what it is now.
I had the chance to speak with Michael ahead of his return to Rapid City, and the conversation moved like his work does. One idea bent into another, and the conversation was fluid, filled with stories from a different era.
I came prepared with some pretty well-crafted questions. It didn’t take long to realize I wasn’t going to be able to follow them down the page. What I got instead was a glimpse into how he thinks, how he tells stories, what shaped him into the person he is, and how he uses his abilities to craft a truly unique experience. After our brief chat, I started to understand how what once felt like a novelty had etched itself into our collective consciousness all these years later.
What he’s bringing on stage now isn’t quite what those of us who know him from those earlier films might have in mind. When I asked what people could expect, he said, with a hint of a grin, “it’s a surprise.”
Long before any of that, before the stages and the films, he was already playing with different ways to compose sound.
When cassette tapes came, he started experimenting with recording his own sound effects. He described it almost like a system. One recorder playing back while he added another layer on top, then feeding that into a second recorder, adding more, and sending it back again. He described it as a fight scene assembled out of nothing but sound. Layer by layer, passing it back and forth until it felt full, like a room filled with people who weren’t actually there. The method hasn’t really changed. Only the scale has.
Winslow’s biggest asset is still his voice. The sounds are still there, but the performance has grown into something closer to a concert. Only, he is the band, creating the instruments himself, recording and looping them in real time until the song comes together. Along the way, he threads in stories that become part of the entire experience.
His rise didn’t come from nowhere. Early on he was living out of his car, bouncing between opportunities, eventually landing at a radio station in Pasadena, KROQ. At the time, it was a strange mix of surf, punk, and new wave, the kind of place where things weren’t fully defined yet. Even then, he didn’t arrive there in any traditional sense. Someone needed a voice on air, and he stepped in. There, he’d layer his sounds over songs live on the air, adding effects and bending the music as it played.
He was cast in Cheech and Chong’s Next Movie after a casting director saw him in the San Francisco Big Laugh Off, where he made the finals. The production ran on improvisation, and they found a way to work him in. Not long after, while opening for Count Basie, the sound cut out mid-set. Without much hesitation, he pushed a small orange amp and microphone into Basie’s piano and kept it going. Moments like that seemed to lead him to his next adventure. From ther it was on to Police Academy, where most people first remember him.The work kept building, and to date he has more than seventy film and television credits. He appeared in all seven Police Academy films as well as Spaceballs, where he first worked with the legendary Mel Brooks. Now, he’s returning to that world, and to Brooks, with Spaceballs 2.
When I asked about influences, he didn’t list the names I had in mind. He talked instead about the people he’d been around.
“There were a lot of folks,” he said. “I don’t even know where to begin. So many people helped me along the way.”
He talked about watching careers unfold in real time, Kim Cattrall moving into bigger roles, Steve Guttenberg into Cocoon and Three Men and a Baby. In Back to the Future Part III, he became Michael J. Fox’s footsteps for a scene. It wasn’t framed as influence so much as exposure. He was in the room while things were happening, taking what he could from it each time. “They weren’t all gems,” he said. “But that’s life.”
Over time, you can see that instinct in how he works. Winslow talked about sound like someone might talk about dialects; learned, and slightly different for everyone. One sound leads to another. You might start chasing a guitar tone and end up somewhere else entirely, closer to percussion, in a place you wouldn’t imagine things to go.
“It’s a language,” he said. “Some sounds stay fixed, recognizable, tied to a specific place or identity, but most of it is in motion.”
That same instinct carries into how he approaches a room. Every space has its own personality, and each experience is crafted for that moment. It doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s a few hundred people or tens of thousands, what matters is whether the connection happens. He recalled seeing Tracy Chapman for the first time, just her and a guitar on a massive stage, and the whole place settled, like the heartbeat slowed down together. That’s the standard for him, not scale or production, but connection, and the ability to customize each performance for the space you’re in rather than bringing the same set from place to place.
Right before we wrapped up the conversation, I asked if there was anything I had missed, anything he wanted people to know that we hadn’t covered.
“no, but I do have some music for you.”
He told me to listen to two songs.
Romantic Warrior by Return to Forever.
The Seduction of Claude Debussy by The Art of Noise.
I took that seriously. When someone gives you a song, it’s usually for a reason.
I put the songs on as I started going through my notes, and it didn’t take long to feel like he wasn’t just sharing music, he was inviting me to follow it somewhere. Romantic Warrior builds and shifts constantly, never settling into a single idea for long, while The Seduction of Claude Debussy takes what you think you know and blends it into something else entirely.
After a while, it clicked. The songs moved like our conversation did. He crafted that conversation just as he creates his sound, bending it, and letting it unfold until everything came together.
Throughout the interview, he stayed just out of reach of the obvious answers. Questions like what the audience can expect or whether he has a favorite sound never really landed cleanly. He moved around them, letting the idea drift instead of pinning it down. But at the very end, he gave me two songs, and suddenly the answers were there, just not how I was asking for them.
And that’s the point. It isn’t meant to be explained. It’s meant to be experienced. The songs were a way in, but the real thing happens in the room, in real time. If you want to understand what he does, you’ll have to be there when it happens.
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Michael Winslow returns to Rapid City on March 27 at 707 Sports Bar & Nightlife, with a show that starts at 7:30 PM. The performance leans more toward a live concert than a traditional comedy set, with Winslow creating and layering sound in real time, shaping each piece as it unfolds in the room.
The night also features host Morgan Preston and a lineup of local Black Hills comedians, with a social hour beginning at 6:30 PM.
General admission tickets are $25, with VIP available for $45.
Tickets are transferable but non-refundable. This is a 21 and over event.
Tickets and additional details are available here:
https://thepark.ticketspice.com/michael-winslow-2026
