I Know That Voice Page #2

---

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

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes