Ezekiel 25:17.
The path of the righteous man
is beset on all sides
with the inequities
of the selfish
and the tyranny of evil men.
In a world of cartoon voices,
animated, really annoying,
etcetera.
Blessed is he.
When the name of charity
and goodwill.
Shepherd the weak through
the valley of darkness.
Praise to his brother's keeper.
And the finder
of lost children.
And I will strike down.
Upon those
with great vengeance.
And with furious anger.
Those who attempt to poison.
And destroy my brothers!
If you will know
my name is the Lord.
You could call me Jesus,
you could call me Christ,
you could call me the Lord.
When I lay
my vengeance upon thee.
My sweet, sweet,
sexy vengeance.
You gotta watch this.
What's the name of it?
You need to
I think I'll have
some more martini.
Take two.
I know that voice!
I know that voice.
I know that voice!
I know that voice.
I know that voice.
And I know that voice.
I know that voice.
I know that voice.
I know that voice!
From beautiful
downtown Burbank.
I know that voice!
"I Know That Voice. "
Yeah!
Aaaah!
Turn around!
You scaled the heights
of adequacy.
You and your tower
can go to hell.
Nice.
Try again.
That was good.
Rolling scene 12X.
12X, action.
What about that
non hovering hover car?
Is that making the music?
Need just a little slower
for clarity.
What about that
non-hovering hover car?
Is that making the music?
That's good.
Everybody always
asks me questions about
what this job is like.
Why not ask all of my peers,
find out what they think,
so that...
so that we can show you.
You know, everything you always
wanted to know
about voice acting
but were afraid to ask.
You go to a dinner party
and say, "What do you do?"
I say, "I'm a voice actor. "
"Okay. Hey, they have dip. "
Just friends,
trying to explain,
"What exactly do you do?"
What do you mean
you're a voice actor?
"What does that mean?"
Well, I go into a room
and they give me a script
and you know when
you hear that,
"In a world, one man... "
that's me!
- "You're the one man?"
- "No, no, I'm not the one man.
I'm the guy
that says 'one man. '"
"Well, wait a second.
Well, that's just that voice. "
Yeah, but did you ever
stop to think that
there's actually a guy
in a room reading that?
We brought people in for...
for tours and to visit
and stuff like that
and you really see
that it's just,
"Had no idea this is
how you did this. "
I don't know what
they thought, but, yeah.
You know, I would say
that if people had any idea
how much work really went
into animation
they would look at it
with a lot more,
sort of, a sense of awe.
If you think about it
way back thousands of years ago
and the Chinese had silks
that they put
these rod puppets in front of
and they would project
these big images on the silks,
and these people would
come by the hundreds
and watch these shows
that would last for days.
I think probably
the tradition would have
come out of puppet shows.
God bless America
Land that I love
Small voices
for small characters.
Character voices
come from British musical
and vaudeville.
Silent movies.
The shorts that they did,
that Laurel and Hardy did
and Keaton did and Chaplin did,
those broad, wacky,
wonderful things.
Later when sound movies
came along, they died out.
What replaced them?
Cartoons.
Animated cartoons
did start in the days
of silent motion pictures
and they'd have
little bubble captions
with the dialogue in them
so when you'd be
watching the films you,
you know, that's how
they spoke to you
was through the dialogue.
And in the late '20s
is really...
after "The Jazz Singer"
was released which was
the first talking
motion picture
Warner Brothers produced,
animation then started
to move towards that trying
to get into sound.
Back in the early '20s,
1924 Max Fleischer
actually produced
the first cartoon series
with a soundtrack.
This microphone
changes the sound waves
into electrical vibrations
which are amplified here
and sent along these wires
to the mixer room.
The very first
talking cartoon was 1928,
was Paul Terry's "Dinner Time"
and he preceded Walt Disney's
"Steamboat Willy" by a month.
What happened was Walt
heard about,
"The Jazz Singer" came out
so there's sound.
Walt said, "We can take
this technology",
and make a sound movie,"
so they did.
Mickey didn't really
have a voice in...
in that early movie,
he just whistled
and the rest of it
was sound effects
and music effects.
But soon he could talk.
And then when he decided
to do features
and the first feature,
"Snow White" was called
Disney's folly, nobody
thought it would succeed.
But when he started
doing features,
and even before that when
he was casting voices
for the short films,
they were using radio talent.
Those are the great voices.
When I was a kid there was
no TV, remember,
no cell phones, no nothing
except radio.
You know, you'd sit
and you'd look at the radio.
Everybody would sit around
and look at the radio
even though there was
nothing to see there.
The radio not only prepped me,
it prepped everyone else
in early cartoons because
they were all from radio.
The first session I went on
with "The Jetsons"
I was terrified because,
you know, I thought,
"Oh, it's cartoons,
I've never done cartoons. "
I walked into the room
and all of my radio
friends where there.
Radio is... is very much
like an animation session.
You just borrow from whatever...
whatever experience you've
had as the radio actor
or animation person.
It all seems to work out.
Back in the days
of old time radio,
as they call it now, that was
essentially voice acting.
Strangely enough
when you do a cartoon
and they edit it all together
and get it ready
for the animators to animate,
they call it "the radio show. "
My first real gig was
being dropped on my head
in a church which
rendered my relationship
to the deity problematic.
The first one I ever did
where I went,
"Wow, these people
are reacting,
like, as if I was a baby
speaking my first words"
was Peter Falk, was "Columbo. "
I'd seen "Columbo"
the night before
and my teacher, Mr. Fraser,
was doing it in the schoolyard
for a bunch of my schoolmates,
and I don't know how I did it,
but I just went up to him
and said, "Mr. Fraser, Sir",
I'm sorry to bother you.
This is,
this is very embarrassing.
"You're murdering
a Peter Falk impression. "
And the eye went and everything
and I just, I discovered
I could do something well.
I remember I was 10 years old
and there was this woman,
Phyllis, who was running
the front desk
at Lee Strasberg.
And she was so funny with me.
I'd be at the 7/11
across the street
and she'd, you know,
run across and say,
"Alanna, I know you
across the street"
smoking marijuana
with the homeless.
You get your ass
over here right now
"and you learn how to act. "
And then the phone would ring
and she'd say,
"Lee Strasberg Theater
Institute,
may I help you, please?"
I never forgot that.
My parents are
from Buenos Aires
I can hear it.
And then my other,
my best friend's parents
were from Glasgow, Scotland,
so if I wasn't listening
to
I was listening to
"Carlos and Kevin,
get outside for Pete's sake. "
So right there I had
an early influence
of wanting to imitate people.
I always was doing voices
from the time
I was really small.
Um, my mom did
cartoon voices at me, like,
you know, she would talk
like a little baby,
"What are you doing
over there?"
And so I would
talk back to her.
And people would say,
"She's never gonna learn
how to talk normally
if you keep doing that. "
I knew about voiceovers
when I was little.
I did like, you know,
Burger King commercials
and stuff like that.
And then it wasn't
until later um,
that I discovered
that I could marry the two
with, you know, acting and
voiceovers, animation.
If you wanna do animation,
you have to be in LA.
This is the animation
capital of the world.
This is in every single
biography you ever hear.
Broke, lonely,
and no future in sight,
fame was right around
the corner.
And then they go to commercial,
then we come back
and they're famous.
Wait a minute!
I wanna know what they did
those mornings
when they couldn't
get out of bed.
What did you do then?
What did you do then?
I keep having
this recurring dream,
same thing, that I'm walking
down the street
and it says "fame"
and as I get closer
the street just keeps
getting longer and longer
and further away from me.
Just know that it's
a profession.
It needs to be taken seriously.
You gotta, you know,
have fun and never grow up,
but at the same time
you gotta really be where
the major markets are
and you need to have
access to the material.
And there's no right
or wrong way to do that,
it's your own journey.
You can't use
someone else's journey.
It's your own thing.
I slept my way
to the top, you know?
It's rampant
in this business, you know?
Before you move
to the big market
I think it's wise to
build up two things:
You need to build up your
well-deserved confidence
by doing professional
live performing
of whatever kind you want.
The other thing
that you gotta have
is you also have to
earn your armor.
You have to have uh,
a degree of armor to deal
with all of the rejection
that you're going to get
as an actor.
It's a huge commitment
to pursue
anything in the arts.
First thing I tell people is,
'cause everyone
will say, you know,
"I think I can
make some money at this. "
Never do anything
in this business for money.
Gotta do it because you get
a high at the microphone.
I took voiceover classes.
My animation guru, I mean,
off and on for 10 years
was Daws Butler.
The revolving door of talent
in Daws' class,
Nancy Cartwright, Corey Burton,
Greg Burson, Mona Marshall.
Daws.
I mean, he was brilliant.
When you look at
a piece of copy,
he was talking
commercial copy, of course,
you have to really,
even if it's a line or two
you have to be able
to pick it up and see
"What is this character?
Who is she?
What's the frame of reference?"
Okay, look at that
piece of copy.
Who's that speaking?
So, perhaps, if she's
a woman of elegance,
you know, you might have
some of that oral
happening there.
And if uh, you know,
she's really tight assed
you might have
a little bit more
of an oral nasal.
Then, you know combination
of that well it'll
then get you into
being, you know,
maybe somebody
who's kind of shy.
Project bad tidings.
Obviously it's the first step
to a successful career
in voiceover is you go
right to the steel mill.
You know, as soon as you're 18
you get a job on a blast
furnace, which I did.
And then I went to New Orleans
and uh, took the precaution
of becoming a deck hand
on a riverboat
which is another, I mean, duh,
clich, you know,
it's how you prepare.
And sell encyclopedias
and do Mardi Gras floats
and what else?
Sing in a rock
and roll band and uh,
it's all the stuff
that used to get
me kicked out of class
and it's great.
One of the first things
that I did was um,
"Back to the Future:
The Animated Series. "
I'm pretty sure
that I got that part
'cause I was the only kid
at nine that could say
"I'm computing
the logarithmic equivalents"
of the atomic weights
of certain isotopes found
"in the lanthonite series
of rare earth elements. "
So I kept it around,
never letting it
out of my sight.
Where is it, dammit?
Quit goofing off!
You may be asleep,
but you're not on break!
One of my friends
was listening to WBCN FM
and they did a lot
of wacky things
and they were having a contest
to who could sound
like Mel Blanc.
So I kind of sheepishly called
and they go, "Hello, BCN,
you sound like Mel Blanc. "
And I... and I didn't
know what to do.
I was put right on the spot.
And I was like, "Um" click.
And I said,
"I'm gonna call 'em back. "
And uh, so I get 'em
on the phone,
I got busy and busy
and then I was like,
even getting angrier
and I just let 'em have it
once he said, "Hello, you
sound like Mel Blanc"
and I was like
"What do you think, idiot?"
And, "Of course I do, doc. "
You know, and,
"You're despicable if
you don't put me on the air. "
You know, just all junk
like that and he went,
"Hold on. "
Next thing you know
I was on the radio.
They called me and said,
"We would like you to play
SpongeBob SquarePants'
grandma. "
Well, I thought that was...
that was a good idea.
I had no idea
how important that was.
It turns out to be one of
my best credits.
You know, you can mention
all these things,
nothing happens.
And so I mention that I'm
SpongeBob SquarePants' grandma,
all excited,
little children will
show me their underwear.
You know, as with many
people it was just
so many dominos
had to fall, you know,
and you have to find
a way in somehow
in some weird niche.
Walla is the voiceover
equivalent
of being an extra, essentially.
So they have four people,
generally,
they'll have two men
and two women,
then they'll come in
and they'll do, you know,
this background kind of thing...
So I did that, that was my
very first animation gig.
Actually got into animation
by being a designer.
And one day I happened to go
to the recording session.
And in about
two seconds I went,
"Oh, no, no, no,
this is the job.
This is the job you want. "
Hi, I'm Ed Asner.
I love to act, I don't care
what form it takes.
Be it improv,
voiceover, narration,
anything that requires
my pretending to be
someone else I leap at.
To be a good voice actor
you have to be
an actor, that's all.
I think you're born
with that talent.
You can't teach anybody to act.
You can, you can teach them
techniques of getting closer,
or whispering,
but it comes from the heart.
The good voice actors
are so good
the cartoons don't even
have to be that good.
I gotta tell ya,
that's the sad truth.
When you get started,
when you really start,
start listening to what people
are actually doing.
A lot of actors get into it
and they don't know
how to act for voiceover.
It's a very different
style of acting.
It's much bigger,
it's much more theatrical.
It is not about I can say,
"Eh, what's up, doc"
better than anybody else,
you know, no.
It's can you read anything
as that character,
can you become that character.
It's about hearing
all those little voices
in your head beforehand.
When you look at a script
and you have to give an A,
a B, and a C take.
When you look at a script
you have to give an A,
a B, and a C take.
When you look at a script
you have to give an A,
a B, and a C take.
All of 'em have
to be different.
Voiceover's about creating
characters who may be funny
or may be dramatic,
or may be scary or whatever.
It's the same as acting
it's just you don't have
to get up at six o'clock
in the morning,
which is why I'm interested.
Even before I knew
it was Mel Blanc,
I would have told you
it was Bugs Bunny
was my hero and then,
and Daffy Duck
and Foghorn Leghorn,
I really loved Foghorn Leghorn.
I didn't know who I was
listening to back then
except for guys like Mel Blanc.
- Mel Blanc.
- Mel Blanc.
- Mel Blanc.
- Mel Blanc.
Mel Blanc.
Mel Blanc, of course,
is the name you have
to kind of throw out first
because he lit the way
for just about everybody else.
I remember what really
astonished me was
that Mel Blanc did everything.
That's what I thought
was pretty magical,
was that Roadrunner,
and Tweety, Wile E. Coyote,
and Bugs, and Daffy,
and Elmer Fudd.
You break down the voice.
It's New Yorky, it's nasally,
and he's a smart aleck.
That could be such
an unappealing voice
and yet endearing,
timelessly endearing.
Well, he told me that he was
a tough little stinker.
So I thought maybe Brooklyn
or the Bronx.
So I uh, put the two of them
together, doc,
that's how I got
the voice for Bugs.
In the episode uh,
"Wabbit Season, Duck Season",
that episode of Bugs Bunny
where they're sort of
arguing as to which season it is
and who Elmer should shoot.
Bugs come out dressed as Daffy
and Bugs does
a Daffy impression
and then Daffy comes out
dressed as Bugs
and does a Bugs impression.
And they're,
they're different voices.
One sounds like Bugs
trying to be Daffy
and the other sounds
like Daffy trying to be Bugs,
and that's... it's unbelievably
impossibly hard to do.
Basically it was Bugs Bunny
stepping in to do
an imitation of Daffy Duck.
It wasn't Mel Blanc
doing Bugs and then Daffy.
In fact I remember Lou Costello
writing on a picture,
it says "To my favorite actor. "
So Mel actually
was a great actor,
and that's why he was so good
in all the characters.
He was a method actor.
He became the characters.
I was going to
a recording session
and we were waiting
for Mel and he's usually
right on time.
And I turned on the radio,
they said "Mel Blanc",
the famous voice,
had a terrible auto accident. "
He was in a coma
for about 14 days.
And the doctor got an idea
and he went over to Mel
and clapped his hands and said,
"Mel, can you hear me?
Can you hear me, Mel?"
And Bugs Bunny was on the air.
And he... it didn't do anything
and so the doctor
thought "Bugs. "
So he said,
"Bugs, can you hear me?"
And Mel goes,
"Eh, what's up, doc?"
He said, "Porky,
can you hear me?"
"I c-c-can hear. "
So he came out of the coma
doing the voices.
The characters
saved Mel's life.
He was in the hospital
and so they wanted me
to take his place
at Warner Brothers Cartoons,
and I said, "No,
I don't wanna do that. "
Wait'll Mel comes back. "
He broke practically
every bone in his body.
And so he would record
at his home,
and I would go to his home
in Pacific Palisades
and we'd record there.
June Foray is
Rocky the Flying Squirrel,
Rocket J. Squirrel,
from "Bullwinkle and Rocky. "
Hokey smoke, they remember
Rocky the Flying Squirrel.
She's Natasha Fatale.
Of course Natasha, darling.
When you trace her back,
she was on, like,
back in the '40s.
She's 90 plus years old now
and still working.
And still working.
So I started with Granny,
oh, it was like, 1956
that I started with Granny,
and I'm still doing it.
Approaching a legacy voice
it uh, it can depend.
It'll depend on who's
running the show.
Kinda have to have an ear
for do they sound the same,
is it the same,
is on the same timbre?
Um, but then from there,
can they actually
deliver the performance?
There's much more
to a character
than just the voice.
Eh, what's up, doc?
Of course, you all know Goofy.
Marvin the Martian
from the Loony Tunes show,
isn't that lovely?
Sir, how dare you?
I used to do, like,
a Winnie the Pooh for my kids.
Oh, it's a smackeral of honey.
And then Jim Cummings walks in,
you're like
"Oh, that's real good. "
Job one, you gotta
sound like the guy.
You gotta do that right away.
And then you, then you dive in
and you get all the aspects
of the personality and...
but the first thing is
you have to go,
"Oh, that's Pooh Bear,"
or "That's Tigger. "
He bounces, he bounces,
and he kicks!
All of this
not kicking the ball
has made me quite tired.
Count out the sounds.
Eh.
Eh buh.
Eh buh beh.
Eh buh beh eh boy, okay?
So it's four sounds
in the word.
E chch eh chair.
Eh dede eh desk.
Now you wrinkle your nose,
you make it kinda nasal.
Eh buh beh eh boy.
And then for the third sound
you push it more.
Eh beh beh eh boy.
Eh ch ch eh chair.
Eh de de eh desk.
Then you have to put together
full sentences.
The eh beh beh eh boy
sat in the eh ch ch eh chair
next to the eh de de eh desk.
And nobody can do that
and that's why
I have job security.
When I got the gig
as Fred Flintstone
I was the least likely
guy to get it.
Five foot four,
115 pounds soaking wet.
"Hi, I'm here to do
Fred Flintstone. "
They literally looked over me.
Henry Corden, who was the voice
of Fred Flintstone,
he took over
after Alan Reed passed away,
was there and he yelled
to the director "Would you stop"
looking at him
and just listen?"
And Henry Corden is,
you know, Fred Flintstone,
was more nasal.
To the moon, Alice,
it was more Jackie Gleason.
Alan Reed was more,
Eh, Wilma, Barney,
it was smoother,
and oh brother.
So I tried to kinda
combine 'em both
and there you get
Fred Flintstone.
Every single actor
that's worked for me
playing the Joker,
and there have been many,
brings their own twist to it.
And that's what you want.
You want someone to just
do Mark Hamill,
then you bring Mark Hamill in.
Everybody sort of knows
the Joker here
when he's up and exuberant.
You can't do it quietly.
Okay, here's how he laughs.
You have to really let it rip!
I always approached
each script like it was like
the first time
I'd ever done it.
I mean, there either had
to be continuity
that he had to be
exactly the same Joker,
and I figured he has
multiple personalities anyway.
There'd be the traditional
where he's wildly exuberant
and gleeful and maniacal,
and there'd be others
where uh, sort of much more
sinister and menacing.
I really love
all the other Jokers
except for
Kevin Michael Richardson.
I was feeling a bit screw loose
so I checked myself in.
And you know I'm kidding
because I love
Kevin Michael Richardson
so much,
he's a wonderful actor,
but I'm just jealous because
he got an Emmy nomination
and I never did.
I gotta give Mark props,
I don't want him coming
after me going,
"Did you really say that?"
'Cause I don't
think it's funny.
"I was the best Joker, not you. "
Mark never said that.
Mark's Joker is broad and
terrifying at the same time.
Everybody who's ever
played the Joker since
really has tried to come up
to that benchmark,
and everybody brings
their own twist to it
and has their different thing.
The trick is for people not
to do an impression of Mark.
So um, you know, John DiMaggio
did a stunning version
in "Under the Red Hood. "
That was completely different
and terrifying in its own right.
It was just
a very dark place, you know?
It's just allowing yourself
to go to that really,
really awful place in your mind
and everybody has one.
I tapped into it for that,
you know, vocally
and tried to make him
as evil as possible,
and it worked.
Does anybody realize
how brilliant
these voiceover "actors" are?
Who are,
let's just call 'em actors
because they have to get
every cryptic expression
that you would do on camera,
on mic.
They're storytellers.
That's their gift.
And man, nobody gets it unless
you're sitting in my seat.
Actors wanna go,
"It's so easy!"
It's like, yeah,
it's easy for you
'cause all you gotta do
is read out loud
in your own voice.
You know, this...
there is a misconception,
I think, that voice acting
is just "reading aloud. "
And it's not.
At the end of the day
it's two different job
descriptions.
Their job is to be
movie stars or TV stars
and sound as much
like themselves as possible,
and our job is to be
voice actors
and character actors,
and sound as little
like ourselves
or as little like
the last thing you did
an hour ago as possible.
People find out what I do
and like,
"I can do Donald Duck.
Do you want me
to do it for you?"
I'm like, "Please, don't. "
It's my dentist or, you know,
it's the guy at the bank
and he's like, "I can do
the greatest Donald Duck"
and I'm like,
"I will give you five dollars
if you do not do that. "
And I don't wanna be mean,
but the soul
of this business is acting.
And the voice, the funny voice
that they put on,
if that's what
you wanna call it,
is secondary to the heart
of the character
that they develop.
You always hear people like,
"Hey, my friends say
I do great voices. "
But they're not actors
and then they think, like,
"Well, you guys
just go in there"
and like make a crazy voice
"and then you
get lots of money. "
Like, no, we have to act
and then we get lots of money.
And make a crazy voice.
But it's gotta have stuff
behind it.
So it's not about "I can do",
I can do Christopher Walken,
I can do Johnny Depp,
"I can do Michael J. Fox,
I can do whoever," that's great.
Can you do anything as them
and can you stay in
that voice for four hours?
Can you scream in
that voice for four hours?
Can you get electrocuted
as Michael J. Fox?
Can you get punched
in the stomach
as Michael J. Fox?
If you can, great.
And can you do it without
going, "Hang on",
wait a second,"
just right then.
Whenever I get an audition
for a new character
I'll look at the drawing
of the character.
If they have a show bible
I'll read the show bible
so it says, you know,
what city they're in,
what time it is,
maybe it's a different planet.
And all those factors
come into play.
I don't necessarily
go into a role thinking
"Cartoon" I think,
"How would this being sound?"
It starts from the moment
you go in to audition,
when you look at the drawing,
when you see the script.
And then you look
at the character and you see,
if it's a little girl,
how old is she?
You know, is she,
is she five years old?
Is she really tiny?
'Cause then their equipment's
gonna be little
itty bitty, right?
But if she's eight she,
her voice box is bigger,
she knows more,
she's a little more
confident in the world.
For me it really starts
with the artwork.
I like to see a picture.
I like to see, you know,
how tall, how short,
how heavy, how light,
you know, could be Skeeter,
you know, mighty skinny,
ain't got no teeth so he's
got a little bit of a whistle
in it when he talks.
Like with Tommy, like, he's
got these funny lips, right?
He's... he's got this big
kind of slurry sort of thing,
you know, he's got this thing.
So when I first saw him
to me there was some
kind of speech thing.
I'm not really so sure about
what's going on around here,
but uh, I guess it's okay.
You know, here's a picture,
here's where he lives,
this is, you know...
he's half a child,
half a man, you know,
kind of Peewee Herman,
a little bit of Stan Laurel,
a little bit of Jerry Lewis,
little bit of munchkin,
and uh, you know,
it's not really a kid voice
like a Charlie Brown
realistic kid voice,
but it's not really
an adult either.
So, you know,
if the character has
really big buck teeth
you may do it differently
or if they have a very,
you know, big tongue
and they lisp a lot, you know,
if there's a lot of spit
involved in the picture
then you may do
something different.
If you sound like you
have a large chest,
they will animate you
with a very large chest.
Say that there's
a character and, you know,
he's a deep voiced character
and they want something
like a giant,
he's a giant and uh,
this is...
they want him like this,
but, you know,
they wanna keep him bright
and they want it, you know,
they wanna have him
very intelligent.
So, you know,
he's this kinda guy,
and you know, or maybe,
maybe he's got some tusks,
you know, so when you
put that in there or maybe,
maybe he's not that bright
so maybe he
would talk like this
a little bit.
That's the kind of thing
you're able to do
with a character.
You ready, man?
Yeah, dude.
Put your pants on.
Okay.
On "Futurama" we didn't know
what Bender the robot
should sound like.
A robot, what, you know.
'Cause the tendency
and what most people did
when they came in,
"I am Bender,
I talk like a robot. "
You know, there was all that
and variations of that.
I auditioned for Bender.
I just played him like
a construction worker.
Let me just bend that for ya.
We were really going through
a lot of people and then,
then uh, somebody said,
"Hey, Dave, you sound"
kinda like a robot.
"Maybe you should do the part. "
I chose to take that
as a compliment.
So he tried,
he tried, tried out.
No, no good.
He agreed, no good.
Uh, and then Don...
John DiMaggio came in
and John did this, you know,
kinda drunk, aggressive,
belligerent but not scary.
Just kind of over the top,
you know,
guy had one too many, right?
And that was it.
It just made us laugh so much.
Slim Pickens.
What in the hell
in the wide, wide world
of sports is going on?
The drunk at the end
of every bar.
I'm gonna tell you something.
And then there was this guy,
a friend of mine,
Ralph Columbino from college
did a Charlie
the Sausage Lover.
Sausage,
you got all kinds of sausages.
You got dry sausage,
you got sweet sausage,
you got wet sausage,
you got hot sausage.
So I... you put those three
in a blender
and you get Bender.
Then I do this.
Okay, sure.
Thanks to you I went
on a soul searching journey.
I hate those.
Now give up the free will!
Now hand it over.
You want it?
Come and get it.
Why you lousy...
In my mind that's the voice
that Bender should have had
and always w... but we didn't
know, we didn't know.
So John nailed the character
and actually pushed
the character
in that direction.
Da-da-da-da-da-da
Wap
You know, Billy West
and Jim Cummings
and Jeff Bennett,
I always say they have
this Rolodex in their head
and they just flip through it
and it's like, okay,
like, by decade, you know,
'40s weird accent
or whatever and just,
you know, they have
all these references.
Dr. Zoidberg who uh, when they
showed me the drawings,
he had all this cool meat
hanging off his mouth.
And I thought,
"Well, he's gotta be
impaired somehow. "
And I thought
"What marble mouthed
peripheral actors
were there in history?"
And I put two together,
one was a vaudevillian
named George Jessel and he had
a marble mouth, like this.
But then there was also
an actor named Lou Jacobi
who came out
of Yiddish theater.
And he was a marble mouth, too.
To have this voice who
was just Dr. Zoidberg
like, "Young Lady,
bring me a sandwich"
from the dumpster.
"And leave the maggots on it. "
Oh, Danny Boy
The pipes,
the pipes are calling
Who-y boy?
We come from radio,
stand up, improv,
the stage, and music.
You have to have an ear.
You have to hear yourself
in your head.
You have to have command
of your instrument.
It is kind of like
conducting, isn't it?
You know,
I've got my score here
and I've got the actors there,
and you go boom
and the band starts playing.
A musical ear is invaluable
to you in animated work.
The music part of it helps you
'cause every character
has a rhythm.
Like if you're thinking of
Yogi Bar it was like music.
There's a certain musicality
if I kind of go
all over the place.
It's interesting, although
I'm speaking right now
and I'm going up
on my questions
it's kind of the nature
of this guy.
Like, I don't know,
should I really do it,
but if I stay
on one particular spot
of all of sudden...
singing a note, you know?
And I think that musicality
is... is sort of
part and parcel about
what voice actors do.
The characters that I do,
they each have their own
kind of, they have
their own rhythm,
their own kind of beat board,
their own kind of...
I mean, you know,
Nelson Muntz,
that's pretty rough.
Kind of maybe
akin Nelson Muntz too...
The thing about
huckleberries is
once you've had fresh you'll
never go back to canned.
It's forceful, right?
And then you get
a Ralph Wiggum and his
is sort of lilting, right?
And kind of lifting.
And you could sort of,
if you were to sort of
graph it out in the hospital,
you know how you have
a heart rate?
Ralph's would be all
kind of wavy and light
and Nelson's would be...
There's a cadence
and there's an intonation
and a rhythm to characters.
And I think that's
the music in them.
The bad guy walks in...
into the saloon or whatever,
you'll notice that the theme
from the movie shifts
into a minor key.
And bad guys have minor keys.
A lot of us are musicians.
Some of us are singers.
Some of us can play
beautiful piano like this.
I, unfortunately
am not one of those guys.
I heard directors trying
to tell actors, you know,
how to do a line
and they'll say, you know,
"No, Mike,
you don't understand. "
Okay, now musically that's
ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba, okay?
And the guy will go, "No, Mike,
you don't understand. "
And it's like, no, no Mike,
you don't understand.
And if you're musical
you give 'em
what they want
that much quicker.
It also just enables you
when you're taking apart,
like an impression, you know,
you can do it musically,
you know, like you, you think,
like, guys, you know
if you're doing Walken
the first thing you gotta
do is think of like,
where he sits in the scale
and that's like:
aaahhhh
That's the note,
so you got that.
Then you start putting music in
and it's like,
on the ends of the words
you go down, see, like this,
and you get fun,
you go up and it's like
notes on a staff,
you know what I'm saying?
And I see
that he's taking his time,
he's pausing, yes,
and ending up
on minor notes sometimes.
No punctuation.
Mary.
Had a little lamb.
Wow!
He said suspiciously.
I like my James Gandolfini.
He's one of my favorites
because "The Sopranos"
was a good show.
Marlon Brando is.
Oh, I do "The Wizard of Oz. "
I wanna go home,
I wanna go home,
Uncle Henry, I'm frightened.
Rosie Perez.
infinity plus infinity.
Sometimes when you win,
you actually lose.
Singing George Bush.
This land is your land
This land is my land
I'm a Texas tiger
You're a liberal wiener
Even if you don't really
do the impression well
you're still doing a character.
You're still doing, you know,
your version of that character.
I was reading
that "Family Guy" script,
I'm gonna go on
that audition I was like,
"Man, this is such
a good script,"
how am I gonna get this part?
What if it sounded like
Buffalo Bill from
"Silence of the Lambs"
and they're like
'What does that even mean?'"
So I did all the lines
like that.
Can I interest you
in a 16 piece?
Maybe with some extra honey?
Would you like a Pepsi?
And it started there.
So I did all
the lines like that
and it just sounded
so weird.
And I think they liked it.
Initially this was basically
a Phil Hartman impression
so uh, so, yeah,
it's a great skill to have
because you can then
take that voice and...
and twist it or put
a different accent on it
or... or do the bad impression
of it and it might even
be funnier, you know.
I think Hank Azaria said
that, you know,
he's just doing
bad impressions.
They're wonderful voices,
he's amazing, you know,
and they fit the characters
so perfectly but he, you know,
they're basically kind of
a little off impressions.
Lou... Lou the cop, for example,
is a pretty bad Stallone,
pretty lazy Stallone.
Chief Wiggum is sort of
almost Edward G. Ro...
it's kind of
Edward G. Robinson-ish.
Or anyway,
or the Mel Blanc imitation
of Edward G. Robinson.
Moe is a bad version
of Al Pacino.
Uh, so yeah, but you know,
they... they're imitations to me
but they come out
as character voices.
I was just thinking
what a good parking job
I did with it.
Yeah, hey, that is nice.
Hey Lou.
Lou, check out
that park job in 7A.
Woo-hoo, that's sweet.
There's always
that fun game of going
"Who is that? Who is that?"
or listening to commercials
and hearing a voice and going
"I know who that is. "
"You're on SpongeBob?"
I love that, I love the fact
that they don't know it.
I'm Mr. Krabs,
what do you mean,
you don't know?
I love, like, the look
in the little kids' eyes
when they find out
and they say, you know,
"Can you do the voice?"
Which happens nearly every day.
And sort of the way
their eyes pop.
Bobby kinda sounds
like this, Larry.
Are you a Jewish fellow?
That's so interesting.
I do love the fact
that Nancy Cartwright
is a woman and she plays
Bart Simpson.
And it freaks kids out.
Kids'll say to me,
"Do Bart, do Bart!"
And if it's a little guy
I'll say, "Close your eyes"
because, come on, I'm a chick.
I don't have nine spikes
on the top of my head,
I'm certainly not 10 years old,
but, you know,
for a little kid,
close your eyes,
"Hi, I'm Bart Simpson.
What's happening, man?"
All you hear,
all you need, really,
is the sound, right?
I think it's great.
On camera I'm pretty
much limited to,
you know, what you see here.
I mean, you could put me
in old age makeup
and I could play
an older version of myself,
but uh, you can't put me
in young makeup and make me,
you know, 10 years old again,
but I can play 10,
you know, in a cartoon.
I can easily do that.
I can play, you know,
an older version of myself.
You know, I could play...
I could play
a female if I wanted to.
Doing a show
like "American Dad"
we have such enormous casts
every single week
and because we can't, you know,
be using 20 or 30 actors
we have to do a lot of...
we have to fill in and do
a lot of different characters.
So I've gotten over
the last eight years
to really be able
to stretch my range
and really get
an opportunity to do things
that I wouldn't
normally have gotten to do.
Animation I think, now for me
takes the place of stage.
Because stage I could do
lots of different characters
that I would never
get cast on on film,
but it's like, stretching.
You know,
you can stretch on stage
and do, you know,
very bizarre old men
or young... young women or boys
or whatever you wanna
do on stage,
you do the same thing
in animation.
Everyone's kinda got
a little... a little bag
of tricks, a little cart
that they bring
around with them, actually.
At least, that's how
I look at it.
You know, occasionally
someone needs a...
Like a pig, but...
but that could be...
You can open up
the chambers in your throat
to make it larger.
And you can... you can modify
the column of air.
You can just squinch it up
there in all these
just horrific kinds of ways.
What, you want
a Jewish baby? Right?
What do you want,
an Italian baby?
Say, that works swell.
The dolphin.
The dolphin-esque laugh.
I always loved Droopy.
He's always a very
fascinating character for me.
Isn't that rather
fetching, cap'n?
And yes, I have to do that.
It hurts after two hours,
but that's all.
Well, I can do him
sort of like that,
but it's a little,
it's a little easier
if I take my jowls and go...
And then Jamie Thomason,
the director at the time,
he said, "Try one. "
And I, you know,
I remember laughing, going,
Well, it does sound a little
better with just one
and it's not too much that way.
Not too bubbly and yet
just bubbly enough.
Aye-aye cap'n.
Set 'er down, boys.
Daws also talked
about physical.
When he did Yogi Bear,
he would stick his chest out.
That's how he did it.
What I teach my students is
if you physically play
the character
the voice will follow.
When I do Joseph
my fingers always go out.
And the sound guys
you can hear this because
there's this noise
in my fingers,
and I never do this
in my daily life.
A lot of it comes out
of, you know,
"Bobby, I'm not... "
and it just happens.
And we do Ackbar on
"Robot Chicken" it is this.
It's because, you know,
Ackbar's always,
"It's a trap"
and he's doing this.
I remember with Rocko
to get into character
it might be, "Oh my"
I'd sort of literally
put my hands together
because that's how
they animated it, "Oh, my. "
You don't necessarily
have to cross your eyes,
because nobody will see that,
but for me, it helps
to get into that real dumb
kinda guy.
You're not separated
from your voice.
Your body's do... your body
does the work as it will.
You see them all doing,
you know,
you're in the character,
your body can't help
becoming the character
and you can't sit there and go,
my voice is doing this.
You know, it's like
I see Doofenshmirtz up there,
I record the voice,
he comes out there
and as soon as the voice
is attached to those drawings
that's just his voice to me.
And the first time I saw
a video of me doing it I...
my first thought, literally,
was, "That's not what"
I pictured that guy
looking like. "
Volition is our ability
to choose what
we are going to do.
Whereas evolution,
that's got something to do
with monkeys, I think.
To be or n-n-n-n...
the opposite.
Tha-the-that is
the question, folks.
They got a dime a dozen
people who can say
"What's up, doc",
"I tawt I taw a puddy tat,"
"That's all folks. "
If you can do Shakespeare
as Porky Pig
or Sylvester the cat
and stay in character,
you probably can handle
the script for the movie.
I'm not trained in this
so forgive me.
All the world's a stage.
And all the men and women,
merely players.
They have their exits
and entrances.
And one man in his time
plays many parts.
His acts being seven ages.
At first the infant.
Mewling and puking
in the nurse's arms.
Doesn't sound good
to me, folks.
And then a whining
schoolboy with this satchel
and shining morning face.
Creeping like snail
unwillingly to school.
And then the lover.
Sighing like furnace.
With a woeful ballad made
to his mistress' eyebrows.
I don't know why he's
talking to the eyebrows.
It's a strange place
to talk to.
But there you go.
And a soldier.
Full of strange oaths
and bearded like the pard.
Oh, a bearded pard.
Jealous in honor,
sudden and quick in quarrel,
seeking the bubble reputation
in the cannon's mouth.
And then the justice
in fair round belly
with good capon lined.
With eyes severe
and beard formal cut.
Full of wise saws
and modern instances, yes.
And so he plays his part.
Sixth age shifts into the lean
and slippered pantaloon.
How would you like to slip
into a slippered pantaloon?
That's very naughty.
With spectacles on nose
and pouch on side.
His youthful hose.
Well saved, a world too wide
for his shrunk shank.
Oh, that's a small shank
he's got there.
And his big manly voice.
Turning again to
a childish treble pipes
and whistles in his sound.
Last scene of all.
What, what, what?
There ends this strange,
eventful history.
Is second childishness
and mere oblivion.
- Sans teeth.
- Sans eyes.
- Sans taste.
- Sans everything.
Scene. Where's my check?
The thing I love
is when people find out
that this, you know, SpongeBob,
and the lottery scratcher guy,
and the guy from the kids' show
that their three
year old watches,
and the guy saying "side
effects may include diarrhea"
are all the same guy.
I freaking... that, to me,
that's the payback.
They go, "That's all you?"
That's all the same guy?"
you go, "Yeah. "
They go, "You're like
Where's Waldo, man",
that's like, incredible.
"You're everywhere,
yet nowhere, man. "
It's really important
in animation
to not just have one voice.
There are certainly people
that can maintain careers
with a kitsch voice or sound,
but for the people
that work a lot,
it's because they're versatile,
it's because they can
change their voice.
For the most part people
wouldn't guess that Bubbles
is the same as Terrence
from "Foster's Home"
because one is like
a very high pitched
girl like this
and the other is a dude.
I'm not a chubby cry baby.
Ooh, that's even better.
All the way in Malaysia.
They're gonna pick people
that, "Hey, can you throw in"
a cheerleader or a little boy
"or a little girl
or an old lady"
and you're just going
to work more
if you can bring another
character to life.
Versatility is the name
of the game.
The more changes
that you can make,
the more nuances,
the more characters
that you can come up with,
the better chances are
that you're getting cast.
Sign falling on Randy, action.
Ow!
Sal infuriated by
this loud space noise.
Ah, quiet!
I can't hear myself
jack hammering.
Ryan's dad.
You mean before the Y2K
turns our computers
and waffle irons against us?
I've played black guys,
I've played transvestite
prostitute robots,
I've played women aliens,
I've played so many
different kinds
of characters through
voice acting.
And it's f... it's so freeing
and it's so much fun
and I get to be broad
and I get to perform,
I get to act,
I get to live this out.
On camera... playing...
playing a black guy?
There's no way.
There's no way.
I have a project called
"Off the Curb"
it's with Mondo Media,
it's a web show that
the whole cartoon itself
is improv and it's four...
four guys on a street corner
of African-American descent
talking about whatever subject
they're talking about.
Frankenstein would whoop
Dracula's ass.
- Ah, hell no.
- No, it's the truth.
- That's ridiculous.
- That is not ridiculous.
Here's why it's ridiculous.
How is the only thing
Frankenstein got from it,
he got some metal bolts
in the neck
where Dracula would
normally bite him,
but Dracula would suck
Frankenstein dry.
Willie, that's bullshit, man.
Frankenstein would
come up on Dracula
and punch him
right in the mouth.
Gentlemen, I just need
to correct you,
it's not Frankenstein.
That's Frankenstein's monster.
The monster's name is Tomas.
You can't suck the blood out
of a man who already dead.
That's right, it's green blood.
Green blood?
So that how it started
and I thought,
about a year later,
I should get an all star cast.
Why not get black people?
Why not get real black people?
Basically that stuff
is um, animated jazz.
Nobody's louder
than John DiMaggio.
The policemen are having
the sirens ripped out
of the car
and just replaced with
John DiMaggio saying
"Slow down!"
He plays... he plays
a black character
in this thing than
we're doing and like,
there are people I love
to be mad with like,
"Man, don't do no black
character, you're insulting"
But him it's like,
"Respect, respect. "
So I've gone out
and gotten him several
black girlfriends
just off the power
of his throat alone.
He has what they call
an anteo-negro throat
in the business.
Very negro throated.
He's the blackest
white guy I know.
Hey, listen, I'm...
for one thing I'm gonna
tell you right now,
white people,
with they dogs and they yoga,
man, frustrating.
That's all I gotta say,
frustrating.
White people are frustrating.
Coming out to Hollywood
you're like, "You know what?"
No, you're not gonna do
anything and everything.
"Not all of it is... is for you. "
But with animation
you can become anything
and everything you want.
Now I love animation.
I love animation because
in the world of animation
you could be anything
you wanna be.
If you're a fat woman,
you could play
a skinny princess.
If you're a short wimpy guy,
you could play
a tall gladiator.
If you're a white man,
you could play
an Arabian prince.
If you're a black man
you could play a donkey
or a zebra.
And if you're a Filipino
Canadian,
you could play Chris Rock.
I don't know which
staunchy guys
you've had in here
that said it's difficult
I'd like to punch them all
in the throat
for saying such a thing.
It's not.
Anyone can do this immediately.
Get in your car
and drive to Los Angeles.
Get here right now
and get on the microphone,
you'll make millions of dollars
and have both white
and Asian women.
You know, we spend
98% of our time
doing the business
of doing business
like tracking down
the opportunities,
doing the auditions,
sending in the mp3s,
blah, blah, blah.
But the 2% of the time
we get to actually play
and have fun,
that's why I do it.
The hardships with
the voiceover business
if you're talent, number one,
is getting an agent.
A good agent is somebody
who's gonna get out
and try to get your name
and your voice track around
so people pay attention to you.
Hey, Don Pitts, just callin'
in to see how Casey's doing.
He was my first agent.
He'd be, "Okay, here's a spot
for Target, Jeff,"
and he'd have a little thing
and he'd have a timer
and he'd say, "And you got
60 seconds and go!"
You know, so all my...
all my readings were like,
"At Target" you have, you know?
When we cast a series
our casting director
goes to the agents and asks
them to submit their clients.
And that's how...
that's actually,
that is how it works.
Primarily my job
is to find the talent
and to narrow it down
to the top choices of people
that I feel would be best
for a part,
pass them onto my show runner,
my creator, my director,
whoever is making
those final choices,
and then work with them
to get the best people
in the booths.
We do tons and tons
and tons of auditions.
I remember back when we
were at Disney we had to do
a PowerPoint presentation
and we calculated that,
you know, we did somewhere in
the neighborhood of, you know,
5 to 15,000 auditions a year.
And I'd been there at
the time for over a decade.
I'm not a math major.
But uh, that's a lot
of auditions.
Auditions are
our chance to shine
and to really show the writers
and directors and producers
we're the right person
for the job.
The directors bring
voice actors in
because they know
they'll perform
and they'll do it
right on the spot.
You gotta be able to do it
or you'll get the heave-ho.
The union standard
is a four hour session,
it's either nine to one
or two to six and uh,
they've also gotta record
an 11 minute episode
or a 22 minute episode
plus a whole bunch of ADR
from an episode that you did
a couple weeks ago,
and then the animation came
back on this other episode
and some of the lip
assignments aren't right,
we had to change the lines
and these jokes weren't clear
so we rewrote some of these.
So, you know, and that's all
in a four hour session.
You don't really have a job.
So you could be going
to Cartoon Network all the time
and you feel like
you have a job,
you feel like
you're involved there,
but you actually don't work
at Cartoon Network.
You were hired for an hour,
like, every other week
for eight weeks and then
maybe you'll be able
to go back there,
but it's kind of
a very tenuous thing.
You know, it's this
vagabond kind of lifestyle
and you go in and, you know,
you hang your shingle
in different little places
and then it's time
to be moving on.
CD complete, Skipper.
Excellent, Kowalski.
Now all we have to do
is blow up your hard drive.
Yes, of course... what?
I'd just like to say
that today is the last day
of "Penguins" record.
So that's what
we're shooting today,
and it's a very sad day,
but it will be
a very funny day,
so that's that.
All right, we're gonna
look at cue one,
this is show 327.
Here we go.
It's got everything.
You got laughs,
you got villains,
you got people just
having a good time,
cracking each other up.
That's what we have to
get as well is, like,
the behind the scenes
because usually the show
is the show behind the show.
I get to sit here and watch
these guys goof off.
Explode!
Excellent.
And here it comes, cue 39.
Oh, oh.
Oh.
Good.
That's good.
See you at the pool party.
There's a bunch of us
that literally say
we get fired after every job.
And that sort of mentality
to live by
in your day to day thing
when you've got bills to pay,
that fear and that terror
that comes with that,
I think sort of subsides
when you're so grateful
every day for when
that job does come,
and I didn't start doing
voiceover full time until
I was 40 years old.
Spike Spiegel from
"Cowboy Bebop"
that became a huge benchmark
because right around
the time that recorded,
and none of us really
knew how big that thing
was gonna be,
and as it turns out that was
one of the biggest things
that ever happened
in my career.
And fans pointed out to me that
that was the first anime
that was their gateway
into that whole genre.
With foreign dubbing
or anime shows like "Pokemon,"
"Naruto," it's already been
completely created,
animated, released
somewhere oversees.
You go into a studio
by yourself
and you sync it up
to the picture.
So they will take
each sentence line by line
and you will sync it
to fit the lip flaps
of the preexisting picture.
You literally watch TV
and talk at the TV all day
and hopefully you've got
good writers and on that
fourth imaginary beep you
try and bring this character
to life, you try to lift it
off the page,
with the constraints of...
of time because it's already
been animated,
the flaps are already there
and you wanna try and make it
sound as natural
as possible so it's not
one of these
"You have destroyed my village"
kind of a thing.
I never really knew
this world existed until,
I mean, I grew up watching
"Speed Racer" and everything,
but I never, I don't know,
it's weird,
you never sort of
make that connection with,
"Oh, I can do this
for a living?
That's pretty awesome. "
People knew I was
a fan geek way before
George Lucas' movies.
But, to me, you use
your imagination
whether you're playing
Robin Hood
or you're playing Zorro,
Superman, whatever it is,
it's not that different.
It really isn't.
With voiceover,
I'm just telling you, I said,
"Where has this been
all my life?"
Because it's the ultimate
kind of fun job to do.
This iteration of
"Star Wars: Clone Wars"
came out, not only was
the artwork tremendous,
not only was the writing
outstanding,
not only was
the voicework great,
but it was also in a world
that had evolved
from, you know, my little
17 year old boner life
to... to this really
super sophisticated comment
about what's been going on
and what could go on
and how it should go on.
I mean, it's...
it was kind of outstanding,
and yet had this
nostalgic feel.
Currently I'm um,
I'm the voice of the clones
on "Star Wars: The Clone Wars. "
The trick and the fun of it
is to flavor them
a little bit differently
each time we do them
to... to make one
a little bit younger,
to make one a little bit older,
to... to make one, you know,
with a little bit
more swagger to him
so they all sound
a little bit different.
That's the fun acting part.
The hard part is just making it
straight ahead, honest, real.
He'll strike a crippling
blow to the republic.
Something has to be done.
We can't risk the possibility
that he might escape.
As long as Krell's alive,
he is a threat
to every one of us.
I agree.
George Lucas and Dave Filoni
have said,
"Look, this character,
Alec Guinness"
will never be
Obi Wan Kenobi again,
Ewan McGregor will never
be Obi Wan Kenobi again.
You're the representation
of Obi Wan Kenobi,
"so make it your own. "
So I take a little,
"These aren't the droids
"you're looking for," a little,
"I have a bad feeling
about this"
and I combine them
into my own, you know,
Obi Wan Kenobi.
Prepare yourself.
The real fight
is about to begin.
With the force all things
are possible, yes.
Find a way, we shall.
We all grew up
"Star Wars" fans,
we know these characters
like the back of our hands.
You know, Dave is the same way.
Dave was a fan before he was...
was an employee.
It's my job to get
the best out of them,
to get their greatest
performance,
to get their greatest part,
what makes them creative,
into the episodes um,
and you just,
you can't disturb them while
they're being part
of that creative process.
Just like there's... there's
an actor for every role,
there's a director
for every project.
You usually start out
with a table read where
we just hear the script
for the first time
and I am beginning to tune in
on what the different actors
are doing and making notes
about what we might
fix or adapt.
Come in with a plan,
right or wrong,
and uh, if it's wrong
you'll fix it,
and if it's right
you're a hero.
Gordon Hunt was, yeah,
like the godfather
of all of us.
And this was passed on,
by the way,
to Ginny McSwain,
to Andrea Romano,
who followed in his footsteps.
This was the, the core
team of individuals
who sort of set a precedent.
Gordon Hunt was
the voice director
at Hanna-Barbera
for many, many years.
And so it was just
a real actor's director,
and because of the nature
of the way we make cartoons,
which is we record
the voices first and then
animate to that,
you affect the entire process
if you don't get a good
performance from the actors.
Being from the theater
I was envisioning
the characters as I might
cast them for a play
rather than just
looking down at the page
and listening to the voices
coming in.
So I think inadvertently that's
how we came on that style.
Gordon was really
an actor's director
and so um, he instilled in me
the fact that these people
on the other side of
the glass are actors.
They're not mimics,
they're not puppets,
they're actors.
It's almost like their voice
is their movie star face
and that's what they're
really bringing to the party.
Just being on the other
side of that glass,
I know what it feels like
so I'm really sensitive
to making people feel
comfortable and getting them
loose enough that we can
just play around.
Actors love to play,
especially voiceover actors,
you just wanna, like, play.
But I... I will credit
Andrea Romano
for essentially teaching me
how to voiceover direct.
She just has a very casual,
easy, keep it going,
only get as much as you need,
playful style.
And I... I adopted that when
I started directing people.
I probably use as many
different styles of directing
as I can and I...
I try to deal with
every specific series
differently because, you know,
I'll direct a "Batman"
episode and then go to
a "SpongeBob" episode
and they couldn't be
more different as far
as the energy
and what we're doing.
They also have to be honest,
and real, and genuine,
and so I always deal
from that point of view.
To be a good voice director
you, you know,
you do research on the story
and you have to know
the story you wanna tell.
To be able to give direction
without line readings...
"Say it like this, and I'm
walking through the door,"
I mean, because it's not
my performance anymore,
it's the director's
performance.
So you're on a boat
and you're...
and they're doing
the character for you,
they're doing
the character for you,
they're in the story going,
"So you're in a boat
and you're swimming along
and you say... "
and I peter out at that point.
They sense whether the actor
will be happy
with a line reading
or won't be.
I don't mind
line readings at all.
I will do anything
to get a performance.
I will do anything
and have, almost.
Charlie's the fastest
director ever.
He'll give you a line reading
because it's the best direction.
He is an exception to the rule.
Can we show Charlie right now?
Charlie, I love you.
This is so spontaneous
and part of what makes
the work so thrilling
is not squashing the energy
and keeping the actors
engaged and excited,
and spontaneous and still
being able to balance
what's being said in the room,
being able to deliver it
as quickly as possible,
as clearly as possible
and without having anybody
feel like they're being
dishonored.
With computers now anybody
can sit at home and make
a little animated piece.
And you can get that out there
and people can see it
and so many folks
are getting, you know,
the invite either
to come and create
or to do a show
of that little bit
that they created
on the internet,
some little YouTube film,
and that's how
they're getting word out.
That's really great.
As far as getting your work
out there to be seen
by industry professionals,
I think the game
has totally changed.
At one point it was
friends of friends.
You could only get
your foot in the door
if you knew someone else.
But now when I'm
searching for talent
I'll go on the internet.
Technically from...
as a guy who has
his own podcast
and a producer side of things,
it's great
because I take my laptop
or my iPad
and a plug-in USB mic,
and I go to Johnny D's house
and we sit down.
Boom, here's the mic,
get a drink of water
and we just talk about stuff.
I am actually quite astonished
at who I was lucky enough
to find for my podcast
this week.
- That's right.
- Tracy.
- Tracy Morgan.
- Genius.
That's what they told me
I had in the Bronx.
I had genius in my mouth.
Nice, I got you goin' on it.
So now I got, what,
6 or 7,000 people
that listen to it every day,
costs them nothing,
costs me nothing to produce,
except my time
and I'm literally talking
to people who are all
my personal friends.
- Who's your friend?
- You.
You're my friend
and you're my friend.
I love this guy.
- I'm a moron!
- Don't worry.
I've got a plan
that's gonna solve this biz.
Homies help homies, always.
I'm ready to hear
your plan, homey.
You know, I do a lot
of on camera gigs
where everyone does
the shtick and the b-roll
about how they love each other.
It's such a bullshit.
The truth is in voiceovers
you really do love each other.
And they're...
it's just good people.
And I don't know if it's
because you're not seen
and you don't get the...
the acclaim,
I don't know if that's
the component
that makes everyone so kind,
but they really are good people.
This is one of the rare mediums
where people do
refer you for jobs.
Most of the jobs I get
are references
from other voiceover actors;
that never happens.
Or you don't get a job
and you say,
"You know who would
be good for this?"
Not me, but, you know,
Nika Futterman would be better
"or so and so would be better. "
That never happens,
but it happens here.
Jim, I challenge you
to a Tyson fight.
It will be indubitably good.
In a sense what we have here
is a failure to exacerbate.
Don't look at...
don't laugh at me.
I'll crush you like
a Hostess Twinkie.
I will get truly righteous
and put hurts on him
that will show up
in his grandchildren.
I think Jim's, Jim's Tyson's
a lot better than mine.
He's amazing,
he's like the everyman,
he's all over the place.
And you know what?
He's so talented
you can't even stand it.
Jim Cummings, I know,
I forfeit.
I gotta forfeit because
Jim would win, I think.
I think the camaraderie
stems from the fact
that no one ever
sees our faces.
In voiceover you find
a lot of people have
a little bit less of an ego
because if you...
if you love what you're doing,
you don't need that validation.
We've seen... we grew up
on these cartoons,
we think this can be
an art form
as well as entertainment.
The future of animation
and voiceover has expanded
into so many realms.
Now it's all over.
There's Adult Swim,
there's flash animation
with "South Park" where it's
two guys doing everything.
Or there's video games
where it's 17 guys
from the Bay Area, you know,
screaming their guts out
making these characters
that people are gonna play
for nine hours straight.
The big thing about
the progression in voiceovers
is video games.
But at last, the whole of
Azeroth will break.
The actors play
a very crucial role
in video games, especially,
with casting and recording
because we will spend a lot
of time on the front end.
We'll have lots
of brainstorming meetings,
we'll look at lots
of concept art,
we'll do all this
extensive work.
We work on our story,
we do everything
we possibly can,
and then we come to the booth
with our idea
and knowing what we want.
And then this magical equation
walks through the door
and that's the actor.
Right now video games
is really dominating
entertainment in general.
It does take a huge
group of people
to create these,
probably to a certain degree,
maybe more than some movies.
If you've ever seen
the making of "Avatar,"
that's how games are made.
I can't know the whole picture
doing a video game.
I mean, I can't know
the whole story line.
It's impossible for you to...
and sometimes it's like,
"Oh, my God, how am
I gonna explain this?"
The universes are just
so huge and the amount
of information that they
need to record
is so massive because
there are so many variables
in the course of game play.
Go, go, go!
A lot of people
might know that one.
Uh, get down!
Frag out!
Grenade!
That... that's me.
You can't teach that,
you can only hope
to duplicate it.
There's been an evolution
of video games, of the visuals.
You know, the visuals were
very primitive in the beginning
and they're getting better
and better and better,
especially as we get
more MoCap and stuff.
The acting has evolved
as the visuals have evolved
and we're allowed to be
much, much more true.
You know, thousands of lines,
you know, session after session.
Gandalf was,
he went to the north.
He went to the south.
He went to the northeast.
He went to the southwest.
He went, you know,
you have to do
every freakin' possibility.
You'll spend four hours there
with scripts that big
screaming your guts out.
"Well, we want a scream
when you're bleeding. "
We want a scream
when you're hot.
"We want a scream
when you're sad. "
"Give us now a 10 second fall. "
Okay, a 20 second fall.
Okay, now you've been shot.
Okay, now your leg's
been hacked off
"and somebody's shoving it
down your throat. "
We have pages and pages
of reactions.
I mean, when you're
going through the game
and you're playing
and you hear this:
Like, you're recording every
single one of those things.
You'll have short hit reaction,
medium hit reaction,
long hit reaction,
short taking damage a...
you know, so we actually
go down and.
For pages.
I knew you'd make it, Marcus.
Normally you try and get
video games scheduled
at the end of the week
because there's so much to do
within a video game
voiceover-wise
that you'll need the weekend
to recover.
So, remember, this is where
you're gonna just
totally peak at this point.
You just lost Dom.
You're done?
Everywhere you go,
everything you do,
it's always nothing but death,
pain, and misery.
I just lost my brother!
You hear that!
My brother!
You and your tower
can go to hell.
Nice.
Let's try one where you're
peaking right at the end.
Got it.
One second.
It's always nothing but
death, pain, and misery.
I just lost my
brother, all right?
You hear that!
My brother!
You and your tower
and all this emulsion
can go to hell.
Literally I've had
friends of mine who've
done that stuff and
come out of there going
"Oh my God, that session
was impossible. "
I don't know how
I'm gonna work tomorrow.
The Batman sound when I first
started producing it
and I just scrunched down
on my vocal cords
and I made this sound,
it was really sexy
and really tough
and really great.
Well, after a few weeks
of that my voice was goin'.
I go, "Wow, this is...
this is a problem. "
So I had to figure out a way
to create the same sound
but supporting it.
Which is what you do on stage,
but I hadn't thought
it would really be an issue
because there wasn't
any projecting involved.
So you do have to keep
your voice in shape.
Unique New York,
unique New York,
unique New York.
Okay.
I sing.
I sing on the way to work
and I sing on the
way home from work.
If you... if you warm up properly
you're not gonna get hurt,
and if you warm down properly
you're not gonna get hurt.
It is an instrument,
so just like anything
you wanna keep it warmed up
and have your session when
your voice isn't too tired
'cause you can't do,
you can't curl
the heaviest weights
if your muscle's fatigued.
The same with your voice.
You can't go to
a football game and scream
and then expect to get
behind a microphone
and have your instrument
work for ya.
I've known guys
with bleeding vocal cords
because of the work
they've had to do.
There are guys that have
lost their voice
and weren't supposed to talk
for a month.
If I've injured my throat,
if I've overworked my voice,
there's something called
entertainer's secret,
it's just an herbal thing.
You spray, you breathe,
it feels good.
Alcolol.
Not alcohol, alcolol.
It's been around since
the late 1800s,
it's a throat rinse.
Well, I have at least
half a bottle of whiskey
every night, two cigars,
and a pack of cigarettes.
I see the words
"blood curdling scream"
in front of me
five times a day, for real,
on a good day; sometimes 20
times a day, okay?
And when they say
"blood curdling scream"
that's what they want.
I've figured out a way to yell
that isn't
as strenuous as it seems
and it's all about
working the mic, you know?
It's like, as opposed to,
you know, if I yell,
it's like aaahhh,
it sounds like it's really loud,
but it's not,
I'm kind of containing it.
And it's the same with like,
movie trailers when I do
movie trailers
and you're doing that whole,
you know, "Rated R.
Coming to a theater near you. "
It's like, it doesn't sound
that big,
but when you're on a mic
it sounds huge.
There's nothing wrong
with your television set.
Do not attempt
to adjust your picture.
We are controlling
the transmission.
This is my voice...
...on TV.
Dad, you're ruining the mood!
There's a certain
distance that you wanna be
and if you're too close
it's gonna be...
but there's an awareness
of what that mic can pick up.
And you can,
I can learn sensitivities
to that so I can do,
play around with my voice
a little bit more,
get more out of it.
If I go, "Pah,"
see how that moves?
It hits the microphone
really hard.
That's called a P pop.
If you're recording
and you get a P pop
you take a pencil
or your finger,
"Pah, pah, pah, pah. "
It splits it.
It makes the air go that way,
instead of that way.
Locust!
Hit it, Dizzy!
Omega two is online.
We're pinned down
near the museum.
Request evac.
Omega two is online.
We're pinned down
near the museum.
Request evac.
Each of us have our own
particular bits.
Some riff on particular
things that are funny.
I mean, like, I like to...
You can always put
a cricket in somewhere
and it seems funny.
Fred Tatasciore is
really good at that too.
He goes, "Uh... so I w... "
You know, it's like...
We love doing
that kind of stuff.
Sorry, man.
That's when I just
take 'em off.
Then when they're actually
trying to perform
just hit the button.
Voiceover acting
is the best kept secret
in Hollywood that's now
sort of starting
to get out there.
It's great... it's a great gig.
And people are...
people are onto it, you know?
For a while people didn't
really know that
it was such a big industry
out there, but now the uh,
competition... the competition
is getting tough,
and more and more people
are going up for...
going up for those jobs.
I think it should
definitely be more
about talent and skill.
I mean, I think the person
should obviously bring
something to the piece.
I've relied several times
"Oh, maybe they'll know my name"
because I've been too lazy
to do a great job in there,
and that doesn't really work.
I understand that in
the selling of the thing
they're trying to do,
the powers that be
always want celebrities.
But the fact is celebrities
can be good, can be bad.
But when you're doing
something as fast paced
as the animation that we do
for "Futurama"
and for "Simpsons,"
just slowing down enough
to say a celebrity's name,
"Oh my gosh, it's so and so"
slows things down.
Generally these days
if we have a celebrity
we try to have them
play a character.
Like, that's my preference.
And... and um,
you know, I'd rather work
with the regular
voice actors, myself.
Somewhere or everywhere
there's a 19 year old firebrand
who's sitting there going,
"Wait a minute, I wanna do"
what Rob Paulsen does,
I wanna do what
"Jimmy Cummings does. "
And it's like,
"You mean I have to go"
be a celebrity first
and maybe win a few Oscars
or Emmys and then
they'll let me audition
"for a cartoon?"
You know, so it seems
weird to me.
I have seen
what it's like, you know,
I've hung out with
the absolute pinnacle
of you know,
somebody who's famous
pretty much every square inch
of this planet.
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey,
there it is,
there's Tom right there.
I'm Tom Hanks.
I've traveled with Tom
and stuff like that
and I see the crap
that he goes through,
but he's incredibly
gracious about it,
I mean, it's mind blowing.
But not being able to go to
Third Street Promenade
without getting mobbed?
That's...
I think at times these people
regard voice work as kinda
like being Clark Kent.
You don't know that
I'm really Scooby Doo,
you don't know that
I'm really Superman.
You have that little thing
tucked away,
you have that little confidence
and you bring it out
if you need to.
When you step into that booth
and you activate these
superpowers
that you may have,
which could be acting,
it could be, you know,
making funny sounds
or it could be dialects,
it could be singing,
but suddenly you're transformed
into this super being that um,
that nobody knows,
it's the secret
superhero life,
and then once you're done,
you know, doing your show,
saving the world in the show,
then you go home.
You step out of the booth
and you put back on
your Clark Kent glasses
and you go back
to your normal existence.
It's pretty cool.
It's really nice to be,
to just be out amongst
and just be anonymous.
'Cause you really are
a part of the world.
Shut up!
Stop talking, puny man!
Voiceover people are,
for the most part,
different people because
we're people that like
to be anonymous and so
it isn't about ego.
And it maybe for some people
that kinda sounds like BS,
but I really mean it,
I really mean that it's about
a bunch of people
who are really psyched
that we get paid to have fun.
I love it because
I have friends that are,
you know,
I have a lot of friends
that are recognizable,
so I'm really cool.
No, but, you know,
we can't go to Disneyland.
I was like, "Hey, do you wanna
go to Disneyland with our kids"
and they're like, "I can't
really go to Disneyland. "
And it's like, "Oh, yeah,
that sucks. "
Disneyland is awesome. "
So I went to Florida
where my mom is and said,
"I'm gonna take you
to Disneyworld. "
And this little boy's
standing there
and he's wearing
an "Animaniacs" shirt, right?
And I go, "Yeah, I you know,
I like 'em too. "
It's funny that you,
you know, you have that shirt
"'cause uh, you know,
I do the voice. "
Right?
And he goes, he goes...
"What? What do you mean?"
And I go, "I do the voice
of Wakko" right?
And he goes, "So what?
So do I."
For real.
And I go, "Oh, no, no, no",
I don't mean, like, for fun,
"I mean I do it on
the show," right?
And he goes,
"Pft, no you don't. "
And I go, "Hey, wait a minute,"
I go, "Look at this. "
And I had this card
at the time that had
me and Wakko because
it was my first series,
I was very excited,
it had me and Wakko.
And I go, "Look at that, huh?"
And he goes, "Oh, yeah,
you got a picture"
of the character,
so, obviously,
"I'm so sorry
I didn't believe you. "
And I'm like, I wanna,
now I wanna kill him, right?
And I go, "What will it take
for me to convince you?"
He goes, "Well, let me
hear you do it," right?
And dude, I never get
nervous about anything.
I was so nervous now
'cause this little bastard!
And I'm like, oh uh, okay,
and I go, "Well," I go uh,
"Boy, it sure is great
to be here in Disneyworld.
"Happy Thanksgiving," right?
And he looks up at me
and he goes,
"I do it way better than that. "
I live in New York
and um, I uh,
after the uh, the attacks
on 9/11 we're getting
all these, you know,
hundreds of meals ready
and this one guy
in the middle of the night
like, three nights into this
he goes, "So, my day job is"
I'm an architect. "
He says, "What's your day job?"
I said, "Well,
I do voices mostly. "
"I knew it!"
He said, "You're the guy
who does Batman!"
You're that Kevin Conroy. "
So he goes into this dining hall
and this is, you know,
the first week after the attack
and there had been
just this somber sadness.
And you hear him go,
"Guys, guys,"
you're not gonna believe who's
been cooking your dinners.
"It's Batman!"
There's this long silence
and you hear, "Bullshit"
from the back of the place.
And he said,
then someone else says,
"Make him prove it"
so, "Oh, this is good. "
So I'm in the back kitchen
and I do from the back kitchen,
"I am vengeance. "
I am the night.
"I am Batman. "
There's this long pause
then you hear from
the back of the place
"Holy that is Batman!"
And suddenly people
were laughing.
And the architect who
had recognized me said,
"What's it feel like
to be Santa Claus?
'Cause that's what
just happened here. "
I used to think I needed
to have heads snapping
as I walked into a restaurant.
"It's him.
It's the guy from that show. "
It just isn't that important
'cause it isn't real.
I'll never see
those people again.
And when I come to something
like Comic-Con, you know,
the place is loaded
with people who are
into the work, know what we do,
know what we look like,
and it's like getting
to turn off and on that,
that fame thing
that my famous pals
can't turn off
during the rest of the year.
I say it here
and it goes out there.
Um, you don't know
how many people
are actually watching
at any given moment, you know,
and to see that at least
a little bit of that
at Comic-Con and all the people
who truly are inspired.
You go to Comic-Con
and you realize
you're doing something
and these are peo...
they're grownups,
they're people that you
grew up with laughing
as well as five year olds.
And uh, it makes it...
it makes it really special.
If we go down to
the comic book store today
we'll get free comics
from everybody and then
I'll have six comics
instead of seven!
I've been going to Comic-Con,
this'll be my 16th year.
Like me and Comic-Con
are old friends.
But Comic-Con is like the place
where nerds commune
in their natural habitat
without fear
of exterior persecution.
Comic-Con isn't just
this grassroots
marketing opportunity,
it is a place where people
who live and breathe
and bleed for this stuff
go to be passionate
with one another.
The cons are great.
It's like I'm a Beatle,
it's nuts.
This is gonna be fun.
All right, big day, Comic-Con.
I should have put some
of that eye stuff on my face.
I have to get my boxed lunch.
Going to San Diego Comic-Con
or Dragon Con in Atlanta
or any of these places,
it's like a company picnic.
You see people you work
with all the time.
You know, it's really...
it's really fun.
Anything you're a rabid
fan of is cool, man.
And I think that
the Comic-Con thing
did something really great
because it gave these people
who are so into comics,
and cartoons, and fantasy,
and anime,
and all these mediums,
it's like it gave them
a place to go.
Yeah, conventions are a trip,
it's really amazing
to see the fans.
Isn't that ridiculous.
These people are that sick,
they're super fans.
When we do a signing
and we get to interact
with the kids and fans,
and that's always great.
And I'll put the date so
we all know where we are.
Yes, thank you.
It's a chance for...
for somebody who
you really like something
and you get to actually
meet the people who do it.
It's a place where fans can
completely be themselves.
You know, where they can
live out their fantasy
with people that are
of like mind.
Good for them.
Oh, my dog, I'm dyslexic.
These people know who we are
and it's really lovely,
we're treated like rock stars,
and these characters have
such a profound effect
on many people's lives.
And that's a very special
thing to be part of.
It's also cool
to meet all the people
who actually wanna see you.
It's like, fun.
I like doing panels and stuff.
I love doing Comic-Cons
and comic book shows
where they are gracious enough
to have voice people come
and talk about the craft.
There's so many people
that light up
that are interested in it
and I've been blown away.
Still better than your cooking.
What's wrong with my cooking?
The best part, and this
is gonna sound so cheesy,
but it's the truth,
is you meet the fans
and you go, "Thank you,
thank you. "
Thank you for being into it,
I'm glad you like that. "
It's worth doing and it's fun.
If you can get through
the sea of people.
Comic-Con you walk around
like a baby
'cause you can't move
faster than a baby can
and you're just like waddling
and everyone's like,
bumper to bumper,
that's why you can't...
everyone's just
clustered together.
Celebrities at Comic-Con,
they escort them through
these back alley ways
throughout co...
they escort them like,
basically through
the garbage area, which is rad.
They sort of sneak you
in the back, you know,
where the loading dock is
lead you all these
dark corridors.
I know.
Gotta hustle, man.
This is Comic-Con for me.
Voice of Jake the Dog,
John DiMaggio.
I wanted to make
this documentary
because I wanted
to honor these people.
I wanted to show that my peers
are really incredible.
They're an incredibly
talented bunch.
I wanted to show those people,
I wanted to show their face,
I wanted to show them as
champions of the industry.
On the count of three,
one, two, three!
I know that voice!
You guys are the best.
You are kind.
Is this the Bible
or Shakespeare?
I was Mr. Weed
from "Family Guy. "
Peter, you're fired.
Only you can prevent
forest fires.
I played a character
called Granny Good
who is an androgynous creature.
Moe the bartender.
Apu the Quicki Mart attendant,
and Police Chief Wiggum.
This isn't my home,
actually, I just rented it.
I didn't really rent it,
I'm just hoping nobody shows up.
Klaus on "American Dad,"
little fish in a bowl.
Hello, Swing Heil.
Foop on "Fairly Odd Parents. "
Hey, baby, this guy right here,
Johnny Bravo.
I've done Tweety
for Warner Brothers.
Grimlock, Dinobot leader.
Eh, what's up doc?
Wolverine from
"Wolverine and the X-Men. "
Kids will come up and ask you,
"Can you do the voice?"
I'm Mr. Krabs, what do
you mean, you don't know?
I don't do it for kids
who come up and say,
"Do it, do the voice,
do it, do it,
you were Mr. Krabs, do it. "
Shockwave was
a favorite of mine.
And I'm Bart Simpson,
who the hell are you?
Flame Princess
on "Adventure Time. "
Whenever I hear one of my
Best Buy commercials come on
I'm immediately the first
one to stand up
and hush the whole room.
I do the voice of Batman
for Warner Brothers,
for 20 years.
I am Darkwing,
did you get my good side, Duck.
I do the voice
of Tommy Pickles and Babe.
Emily Elizabeth
on "Clifford the Big Red Dog. "
I'm Jimmy Neutron.
Bender from "Futurama. "
Oh, yeah.
The screaming
for four bloody hours.
Pluto, so I get paid
to bark for a living.
I'm a very caring,
soft-spoken Helia.
Jokey Smurf.
Worm guys, "Men in Black. "
Gotta hava java
cafe latte grande.
Which way did he go, George,
which way did he go?
Stretch sort of
sounds like this,
squeeze sort of
sounds like that.
Neil is always like,
"Oh, hello, Meg,
this, that and
the other thing. "
The noise of Maggie's pacifier.
Daddy I wanna be
a Powerpuff Girl
but they said I couldn't!
The teeth reminded me
of the Blue Meanie
from "Yellow Submarine. "
Those teeth, those teeth,
those teeth!
The best thing
about voiceovers,
when you're in
this little thing
and you see everybody
in the control room going...
You're going,
"There, I just did my job. "
Wakko on "Animaniacs" that was
one of the first big ones.
Roger Rabbit, that was even
before "Animaniacs. "
I am Iron Heart
in "Transformers. "
I talk like this.
I couldn't say anything
without rage.
Billy from
"The Grimm Adventures
of Billy and Mandy. "
Tee-hee! I like pie.
King Julian,
"The Penguins of Madagascar. "
I'm going to teach
Kim Possible the power
of
monkey Kung Fu.
Megatron.
It's excellent, yes.
AKA Spiderman
and AKA creepy promo guy.
SpongeBob and uh,
his snail Gary.
Lrrr, ruler of the planet
Ominicron Persei 8.
Can I crash on your couch?
Hermes, the Jamaican
bureaucrat on "Futurama. "
Judy Jetson on "The Jetsons. "
Olivia on "Family Guy. "
Oh, Stewie, what are you doing?
Chester McBadbat
ace photographer and friends
of Timmy Turner
on "Fairly Oddparents. "
It's a perfect day
It's in the mid 70s
Humidity is 60%
I know all there is to know
about computers.
Just ask me anything.
My name is Izzy.
Yahoo!
I'm coocoo for Coco Puffs.
I play Hotaru in Naruto
she's old.
Based her on
Pepperidge Farm Remembers.
You, quadruped.
Sprecken zie English?
Forgot what I was
supposed to say.
When I do George Bush
can't remember the next line.
What was it?
Stay tuned?
Coming up next.
Member FDIC.
They hand you
a sketch of the guy
and they can do that thing
where it's like,
"Well, I think
he'd sound like this. "
I look at it, I'm like,
"I guess he sounds like me. "
Is that cool,
can he sound just like me?
"'Cause I can do that. "
It's really hot.
This is awesome.
Queen Jipjorrulac
on "Fairly Oddparents. "
I'm a chief and a little flea.
Dr. Richtofen
from "The Call of Duty:"
"Black Ops" zombie levels.
That's true, that's one there.
Polly McShane from
"The Kids From Room 402."
She collects spoons.
Space Ghost, Blue Falcon,
Powdered Toast Man,
Roger Ramjet, I can't remember.
Pinky from
"Pinky and the Brain. "
Narf.
Yakko from "Animaniacs. "
Cleveland Junior on
"The Cleveland Show. "
Daddy, will you wipe me?
William Fontaine
de la Tour Dauterive.
SpongeBob SquarePants' grandma,
and Mrs. Lopart
on "Handy Manny. "
I do the voice of Master Shake
on "Aqua Teen Hunger Force. "
Phil is kinda like this.
You know, he's just a boy,
he's a little guy
and he's a lot of fun.
And Bubbles was,
"First I thought Mojo
was a nice monkey,
then I kicked in his face. "
Elmira from "Tiny Toons. "
Obi Wan Kenobi on
"Star Wars: The Clone Wars. "
Fred Flintstone,
yabba-dabba-do.
The Hulk, or as Damon Baird
in "Gears of War. "
Oh, pinky-head, your feet,
they look like boats.
Strudel who's um,
she's uh, German.
Little Suzy in
"Phineas and Ferb. "
Captain Qwark
from "Ratchet and Clank. "
Hello, space cadets.
Lumpy Space Princess.
Will you button me, Ren?
I play Uncle Ruckus
on "The Boondocks. "
It's "The Tonight Show"
with Jay Leno.
Look at this face.
I don't think...
I don't know why I launched
into Aaron Neville right there.
So to you I say,
"Tha-the-that's all folks. "
A one, a two,
a one, two, three.
Stagger downstairs
on that Saturday morn
Hey brother, hey sister,
hey say it again
Hear my old
familiar friends
Come out of that
speaker horn
Hey brother, hey sister,
hey say it again
From Bugs to Daffy
From Stimpy to Ren
Hey brother, hey sister,
hey, say it again
I seen 'em all once
And I'd watch 'em all again
Hey brother, hey sister,
hey say it again
I love a million faces
Lord, I made my choice
Well, hey there friend
Would you say that again
'Cause I swear
I know that voice
I know that voice
Either coming home
from school
Or as a late night snack
Hey brother, hey sister,
hey, say it again
You know
your cartoon buddies
Man, they always
got your back
Hey brother, hey sister,
hey, say it again
Be it Dudley then to Elma
Be it moose or squirrel
Hey brother, hey sister,
hey, say it again
Bringing joy,
bringing laughter
To every boy and every girl
Hey brother, hey sister,
hey, say it again
I love a million faces
Lord I made my choice
Well, hey there friend
Could you say that again
'Cause I swear
I know that voice
I know that voice
I know that voice
I know that voice
I know that voice
I know that voice
I know that voice