I Know That Voice

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.

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,