Speaker 1: Hey everybody, Jim Cummings here. Welcome to my podcast, tuned
Speaker 1: In with Jim Cummings. We have a great guest for
Speaker 1: you today, but before we get to that, make sure
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Speaker 2: Do it now?
Speaker 3: How you doing out there? It's me Tigger I am
Speaker 3: Duc Wayne Duck.
Speaker 2: It's me Bunkers keep Bobcat.
Speaker 4: All right, y'all?
Speaker 2: Did it great?
Speaker 1: Your favorite firefly you desire?
Speaker 3: Hold no old knock guy.
Speaker 1: My name is Jim Cummings and welcome to tuned In.
Speaker 5: Welcome back, everybody to another episode of Tuned In with
Speaker 5: Jim Cummings. I am producer Chris, joined as always by
Speaker 5: the legend himself, mister Jim Cummings. How are you doing today, sir,
Speaker 5: and good morning to you.
Speaker 2: It's yet another day in paradise.
Speaker 3: It sure is. It's true.
Speaker 5: We have a very special guest for you today. But
Speaker 5: before we get to that, I just want to make
Speaker 5: some quick announcements. If you didn't know what, we're doing
Speaker 5: the podcast live in partnership with fan Expo this year,
Speaker 5: that's right. You can actually come and see us record
Speaker 5: the podcast live. And it's been going great, hasn't it.
Speaker 3: Yes, it has.
Speaker 5: I really had a ball. Yeah, like the energy that
Speaker 5: it brings when you do it live. It's it's a
Speaker 5: little different. We still try and you know, keep the
Speaker 5: same format, but you know, when there's audience engagement, you
Speaker 5: guys can come up and ask questions and everything like that.
Speaker 3: It's been cool.
Speaker 5: We just did the cast of Ed, Ed and Nettie
Speaker 5: Yes on Philadelphia this past weekend.
Speaker 6: It was very rewarding, it was. It was there's some
Speaker 6: funny beds. Yeah, a lot of special Ed, well, including
Speaker 6: you because you know Ed and the Wyan King. Well
Speaker 6: that's true. Yeah, that's true. I forgot about that.
Speaker 3: Wow. Four heads, four heads on one stage. You got
Speaker 3: to check it out.
Speaker 5: And I'll just give you the dates for the rest
Speaker 5: of the year, with more to be added to be sure.
Speaker 5: But the next one coming up is in Chicago Fan
Speaker 5: Expo August fourteenth to the sixteenth. Following that is Toronto
Speaker 5: August twenty seventh to the thirtieth, followed by Dallas September
Speaker 5: eleventh to thirteenth, and San Francisco November twenty seventh to
Speaker 5: the twenty ninth. Be there, Yes, if you want to
Speaker 5: get tickets, you can go to Fanexpo HQ dot com.
Speaker 5: You can find all the information there and there's more
Speaker 5: dates to be added, possibly Anaheim in a couple of
Speaker 5: weeks here, possibly Anaheim. So check that out all right,
Speaker 5: without further ado, Our guest today is a very talented
Speaker 5: man on camera actor, voice actor as well I think
Speaker 5: you have made You may have had more voices in
Speaker 5: Star Wars than any other actor.
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's true.
Speaker 7: There's so many, there's yeah, there's a few, but I
Speaker 7: mean there are a lot of people who have a few.
Speaker 1: Yes, well you have more than James Earl Jones, Hamil
Speaker 1: guys right right, Well, Hammil's been around as well.
Speaker 3: He hides his voice in certain Star Wars. Yes, he's
Speaker 3: in there. Oh yeah, but before we get into it,
Speaker 3: let me at least say your name, the incredibly.
Speaker 5: Talented sam Way where it joins us today. Thank you
Speaker 5: so much for being here.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much, Thank you. How are you doing today?
Speaker 3: Doing good? Doing? All right?
Speaker 7: I was driving around Los Angeles and I was like,
Speaker 7: you know, I was a little bright, and I was
Speaker 7: a little bit like, I want this drive to be cool.
Speaker 7: So I put on the bever the Hills Cop soundtrack
Speaker 7: and l A is never cooler when you're driving around without.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true. Was that the Neutron Dance was that? Well,
Speaker 3: there was that. I didn't go as far as Neutron Dance.
Speaker 3: You know where I was living. I was living in
Speaker 3: the in this sort of action beat that you know,
Speaker 3: so like you know when when Addie Murphy is sneaking.
Speaker 7: Around and checking coffee grounds and all this stuff. Oh yeah,
Speaker 7: that's what I was doing. I was running my errands.
Speaker 3: But like very it was very intense, very.
Speaker 7: Cool, you know, just trying to make l a cool.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it's working. Yeah, thank you job.
Speaker 1: By the way, it's much cooler now that you appreciate
Speaker 1: you started this campaign. Yeah yeah, yeah, Derek carrs and
Speaker 1: letters into saying.
Speaker 3: What Beverly Hills. That's that's all.
Speaker 7: You just need the Beverly Hills Cops soundtrack and your
Speaker 7: LA can be as cool as mine.
Speaker 5: Speaking of cool, one cool thing I learned about you,
Speaker 5: and I was doing my research for this episode, is
Speaker 5: that you're in a band called the crash Tomes.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, maybe not as cool as Beverly Hill's Cup, but yeah,
Speaker 7: it's kind of fun.
Speaker 3: What instrument do you play or do you sing? A
Speaker 3: little bit? All everything?
Speaker 7: I sing, and then I play all the instruments except
Speaker 7: for drums. For that I have a buddy named Tim
Speaker 7: Hibben who is my drummer. And yeah, so we record
Speaker 7: music when there was time. Unfortunately there has not been
Speaker 7: a lot of time recently, but there will be there.
Speaker 3: Always is is in this business. Well, that means you're busy.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we like busy, We like busy, we do like busy.
Speaker 7: But then when we're busy we go only I could
Speaker 7: be not so busy. And then when we're not busy,
Speaker 7: we go, God, what is going on?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Right?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Do you have that that actors thing? You get done?
Speaker 1: You wrap one series, you wrap one, shoot, you wrap one,
Speaker 1: this that recording session and go oh and now what
Speaker 1: I mean you're dug in? Oh no, that guy you're there.
Speaker 7: I'm the guy who whenever you're in a set or
Speaker 7: whether you're in a studio recording whatever.
Speaker 3: And people are like, hey, what's what's next for you?
Speaker 7: And I'm the guy who goes nothing, yeah, and then
Speaker 7: the day that ends, there will there. I'm sometimes lucky
Speaker 7: enough to there to be a next thing. I just
Speaker 7: never know what it is until I do it. So,
Speaker 7: so what's what'sn't as if as if there are actors
Speaker 7: out there who have this vast planned out thing.
Speaker 3: I find myself to be.
Speaker 7: At least for the past few years, it has been
Speaker 7: wall to wall, but never in a way that I
Speaker 7: can predict, you know, like soever, what's next?
Speaker 3: For you, I'm like, I think I'm unemployed.
Speaker 5: I think that's when people pull out the old. You know,
Speaker 5: I got some projects coming up, but I can't talk about.
Speaker 7: Them because they don't know about them. I don't have them.
Speaker 7: I have not gotten hired.
Speaker 3: But you know, yeah I got all this talk about it.
Speaker 1: But it's always I'm always gratified when that's true. Every
Speaker 1: now and then that's true. You know, like they had
Speaker 1: this thing for Hondo and Knockout wasn't allowed by Star
Speaker 1: Wars guy. Yeah, I wasn't supposed to talk about it,
Speaker 1: and all I did was talk about it everybody and
Speaker 1: that I could.
Speaker 3: That didn't make you sign an NBA.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they just didn't know I did. But yeah it
Speaker 1: didn't work apparently. Yeah, well I could still speak.
Speaker 3: You just for for Honda.
Speaker 7: You just did a whole refresh on the on the right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that'll be cool. I like to see that.
Speaker 3: I have you.
Speaker 1: What do you think about that ride when you see well,
Speaker 1: not just the ride, but I mean being part of
Speaker 1: that whole universe because you're all over Oh, that's got
Speaker 1: to be great.
Speaker 7: I'm a huge Star Wars fan, me too. For me,
Speaker 7: I'm just like, yeah, sure, I'll do stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, doing my research on you, I'm like, I was
Speaker 5: intimidated because I was like, I don't even know if
Speaker 5: I can talk about Star Wars, Like You're just gonna
Speaker 5: correct me on everything. Oh I'm not that kind, No,
Speaker 5: but you really are, Like you know so much about
Speaker 5: Star Wars it's actually so cool. And I a story
Speaker 5: about you, like literally like correcting you know the oh
Speaker 5: I'm going to.
Speaker 3: Yes. Much is made of that story.
Speaker 7: This is something that me and Ashley Eckstein, I think,
Speaker 7: talked about years and years ago, and and what needs
Speaker 7: the context that people need is that Dave has corrected
Speaker 7: me countless times. So the story needs to be recontextualized
Speaker 7: as like, yeah, I got him once. Yeah, I'm very
Speaker 7: proud of that I got him once, but he got
Speaker 7: me a million times.
Speaker 3: Telling her this story for the.
Speaker 1: I assume you mean the incredible Dave Colonel Delayed Delon.
Speaker 3: Yes, thank you. Yeah. What happened was it was the
Speaker 3: first time.
Speaker 7: I was working on Star Wars project for him, and
Speaker 7: there was this wonderful scene between uh Anakin Skywalker and
Speaker 7: the ghost of his mother, Shmi Skywalker, and he says
Speaker 7: to her, I have a wife.
Speaker 3: I want you to meet her. And they did this
Speaker 3: wonderful take and was about to move on, and I
Speaker 3: raised my hand.
Speaker 7: I didn't know David, I didn't know any of these actors,
Speaker 7: and I was the new guy, so I said, hey,
Speaker 7: I padme and Shmi met in Phantom Menace. I don't
Speaker 7: think he would say I want you to meet her.
Speaker 7: He'd say something else. And Dave was like, of course
Speaker 7: they did.
Speaker 3: Because the thing is, you're moving so fast on these things.
Speaker 7: This's a thing that fans don't understand, is that when
Speaker 7: you are going that fast and you haven't had a
Speaker 7: lot of sleep and you're.
Speaker 3: Moving, you're moving, You're moving like everything.
Speaker 7: You know, whenever they I'll see some criticism of something
Speaker 7: and I'll be like, I happen to know other people
Speaker 7: that did that and they had no time or resources
Speaker 7: to do that.
Speaker 3: You never do.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So this this, you know, this continuity error would
Speaker 7: have he would have discovered it, you know, ten minutes
Speaker 7: after he got back.
Speaker 3: To Northern California and be like, oh man, what was
Speaker 3: I thinking?
Speaker 7: You know, like is there are these are scripts that
Speaker 7: were given him that was the newest version of the script,
Speaker 7: this and that he was powering through it that morning
Speaker 7: and going okay, let's direct this.
Speaker 3: I've made the same types of mistakes. I've made some.
Speaker 7: Really like, you know, if they let me do what
Speaker 7: I wanted to do, it would have been a disaster.
Speaker 7: Then Brad raw or Dave Filoni or Matt mcdevitz would
Speaker 7: say like, no, no, no, no no. When we did
Speaker 7: maul in the episode, you know, this episode and this
Speaker 7: season four, yeah, this is what we establish.
Speaker 3: I'm like, right, of course, of course, you know.
Speaker 7: So it's a vast continuity and everyone is working really
Speaker 7: really fast, and the best you can hope for is
Speaker 7: that you just have a bunch of people around you
Speaker 7: are going to watch your back.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, well he does, he does, Yeah, he does. Well.
Speaker 5: I bring that up as a compliment to you, because
Speaker 5: if you're not a fan, you would have never noticed that.
Speaker 5: You know, if you were just in there, you know,
Speaker 5: for the paycheck or the job or whatever, if you
Speaker 5: weren't really invested in the universe of Star Wars, then.
Speaker 3: Most likely you wouldn't have noticed.
Speaker 7: My theory is that's why Dave liked having me around,
Speaker 7: because he's like, oh, he's a fellow nerd.
Speaker 3: He really likes this, you know.
Speaker 7: But he Yeah, there is no one that I know
Speaker 7: of that knows Star Wars.
Speaker 3: Better than him. That's right. It's very impairing because he
Speaker 3: would do these things.
Speaker 7: You'd get ready for a record, and you remember this,
Speaker 7: stand up in front of the cast, because oftentimes sometimes
Speaker 7: you show up at a job and they give you
Speaker 7: your lines and like say these and.
Speaker 3: You're like, great, what does this mean? What does anything?
Speaker 3: I'll just just say it in context. Ye say the words.
Speaker 2: You got to have context.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Dave would never do that to us.
Speaker 7: Dave would stand up and he would perform like a
Speaker 7: Star Wars monologue, describing exactly who these characters are, what
Speaker 7: they want, what are you doing, what's your your purpose
Speaker 7: in this story? Why is this story important for young
Speaker 7: people today? What does George want to get out of
Speaker 7: this story? What does George want from your character? And
Speaker 7: he would just weave this extraordinarily exciting narrative right in
Speaker 7: front of you that by the time he was done,
Speaker 7: we were like, oh my god, let's record. We're so excited.
Speaker 7: You just get everyone so excited about.
Speaker 3: What we were doing, get very passionate. Did you have
Speaker 3: that experience, Jim, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's well, he's extremely thorough like you were saying.
Speaker 1: He h you know, he say, well, of course, now
Speaker 1: you're gonna be going down and you're going to be seeing,
Speaker 1: you know, two wookies, not Chewbaca, not that these particular
Speaker 1: guys are from the southern side of you know.
Speaker 2: And I'm going, okay, and and I don't I don't,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: I took from it what I could because half the
Speaker 1: stuff I didn't know what he was talking about was
Speaker 1: I was just so impressed with when somebody's that into
Speaker 1: something and they have all that in depth knowledge and
Speaker 1: they impart that to you. And then what's nice is,
Speaker 1: you know, Dave has his counterparts in the audience that
Speaker 1: because you go to conventions and you know, I'm sure
Speaker 1: you know you've had the same experience like well in
Speaker 1: the fourteenth episode, in the second chapter of the fourteenth
Speaker 1: on Paige, I don't know what page was on in
Speaker 1: the script, but did you really mean that? And I'll say,
Speaker 1: what the hell are you talking? Sure, yeah, I didn't
Speaker 1: know what they're talking about, you know, but I don't
Speaker 1: you bet you?
Speaker 3: And I really I admire that.
Speaker 1: I admire that attention to detail because God is in
Speaker 1: the details.
Speaker 7: Yeah, right, And it's not only detail, it's enthusiasm. He
Speaker 7: has an infectious enthusiasm for Star Wars.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 7: And so when he would get into those I mean, dude,
Speaker 7: I was shooting some show that I will not name
Speaker 7: because they wouldn't answer a single question about what my
Speaker 7: role was, why was I there, what was this meant
Speaker 7: to be? And what does any of this mean?
Speaker 3: Which is not that usual.
Speaker 7: I've been lucky to work with people who will actually
Speaker 7: answer those questions and be like, Oh, he wants to
Speaker 7: get in, he wants to do a good job, so
Speaker 7: let's talk about this. So I was on this show
Speaker 7: and they would just like say the words. The words
Speaker 7: seemed utterly inconsistent. They didn't, you know, And nothing really
Speaker 7: gelled for me on that. And then I remember flying
Speaker 7: home because Dave needed three pickup lines for me for
Speaker 7: the finale of Clone Wars. And he walks out of
Speaker 7: the booth or the behind the glass and he goes, Okay, Sam,
Speaker 7: So where we last because we'd already recorded this episode,
Speaker 7: so you'll remember when we.
Speaker 3: Last left off.
Speaker 7: Your character's going through this, he's having these nightmares, he's
Speaker 7: doing these and he just goes into this huge Star
Speaker 7: Wars monologue to prepare me for three pickup lines. And
Speaker 7: let me tell you, there was no once he did
Speaker 7: your prep for you.
Speaker 3: It's he didn't have to prep at all. You were
Speaker 3: just excited.
Speaker 7: You knew exactly what he was aiming for, and he
Speaker 7: was excited to be there. You were excited to be there,
Speaker 7: and those lines for Star Wars fans out there, that's
Speaker 7: what resulted because we then started riffing on something and
Speaker 7: then me and Dave came up with the whole you're
Speaker 7: all going to burn, we're all going to die. You
Speaker 7: don't know what you're doing.
Speaker 3: It's all trying to be the guy. And Body Snatcher
Speaker 3: has been like your next, they're here, you're next. Oh yes, yeah.
Speaker 7: He has a moment like that in the end of
Speaker 7: the Far Wars where he's trying to warn everyone that
Speaker 7: the end of the world is coming.
Speaker 3: But that level of excitement was.
Speaker 7: Gifted to me me by our director Dave Filoni. So
Speaker 7: I truly love the way he does that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Dave, if you're out there,
Speaker 1: we love you and miss you.
Speaker 3: Hire us again. He's not busy at all. Yeah, to
Speaker 3: watch imagine.
Speaker 5: We'll sentially since you mentioned Maul you've been playing that character,
Speaker 5: voicing that character for fifteen years now, fifteen or sixteen,
Speaker 5: fifteen or sixteen years, and now you have the new
Speaker 5: show that just came out. Mall, shadow Lord, did you
Speaker 5: bring any new aspects to this character this time around?
Speaker 7: I better have if we're gonna do him after fifteen
Speaker 7: sixteen years, we're gonna do him again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, better have a lot of new aspects, you know.
Speaker 7: That's that's certainly what I've been aiming for the whole time,
Speaker 7: and what we what I.
Speaker 3: Hope we're continuing to him for with this character.
Speaker 7: Nice, you know, because it's it's with these characters, whether
Speaker 7: it's Hondo or Mal or any of these characters, it's like,
Speaker 7: you don't unless it's a fun little cameo. You can
Speaker 7: get away with some stuff there, but if you're going
Speaker 7: to put them front and center, you'd better learn something
Speaker 7: new about them otherwise why are you doing it. It's
Speaker 7: like when Hondo was with the kids and the younglings
Speaker 7: and you find out this guy's got a heart, this
Speaker 7: guy's there's some empathy there, he just keeps it covered up. Yeah,
Speaker 7: And when I saw that, I was like, yes, of
Speaker 7: course it would almost not be worth having Hondo here
Speaker 7: if you weren't going to discover something surprising about the character.
Speaker 3: So yeah, well I thank you for putting that out.
Speaker 1: Yeah that Yeah, he's one of my favorite all time guys.
Speaker 1: Did you ever have like for me when when I
Speaker 1: read long, long time ago they were sending out these
Speaker 1: breakdowns and blah blah blah, and and I just remember
Speaker 1: reading for him and and I thought, Okay, I really
Speaker 1: really really want to be this guy because he's not
Speaker 1: a good guy, and he's not a bad guy, and
Speaker 1: he's right there and and he skates around in the
Speaker 1: middle there, and he's like a sort of a paladin,
Speaker 1: sort of a you know, people have compared him to
Speaker 1: Captain Jack Sparrow, which I think, I mean, not not vocally,
Speaker 1: I would think, but he's a scoundrel, but he's a
Speaker 1: good scoundrel.
Speaker 5: He's self serving, self serving, but still with like a
Speaker 5: good heart, you know. Yeah, he still knows what's morally
Speaker 5: right from wrong. He knows what he's doing wrong. Yeah
Speaker 5: he knows, he that exactly.
Speaker 1: But you know, he's the kind of a guy who
Speaker 1: there's a certain robin Hood aspect to him.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: He Yes, I am a thief, huh.
Speaker 1: And I'm really good at it, so how about that.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, I won't steal from your grandma,
Speaker 1: right right.
Speaker 3: I'll never forget Hondo.
Speaker 7: When Mall and Hondo had a run in, Yeah, and
Speaker 7: he had this one wonderful line read where.
Speaker 3: I had commandeered some of your men and they were
Speaker 3: working for me, and.
Speaker 8: You said, oh you you've done this thing. Oh you
Speaker 8: you betrayed me. I'm so proud. Yeah, yeah, betrayed. It
Speaker 8: was like, get me wrong, Yeah, but he screwed me.
Speaker 8: But a pretty good job, right yeah?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's right. Well I like that.
Speaker 1: I like that aspect of him, kind of kind of rewarding.
Speaker 1: And do you when you see yourself, when you hear
Speaker 1: yourself this, is there a part of you that squirms
Speaker 1: a bit in anticipation because I get a little of
Speaker 1: that every now and then. Of course, I've been doing
Speaker 1: it for so long. I'm okay with it.
Speaker 3: But but you're on camera as well, And do you
Speaker 3: did you ever? You said you hate it? You really?
Speaker 3: I do? You?
Speaker 2: Just look he's coming.
Speaker 3: I know I don't even want to that's true. No,
Speaker 3: I I love doing it. I love telling the stories.
Speaker 7: I love also using whatever tools I have at my
Speaker 7: disposal to tell the story. I don't know that I
Speaker 7: always enjoy watching it when it comes to the.
Speaker 2: Vocals, well, this look you look like a rock star,
Speaker 2: a star.
Speaker 3: Looks like you're and you're sitting there like, yeah, I really.
Speaker 1: Can't stand it because I mean, after all, oh shut
Speaker 1: up and get over you know.
Speaker 7: It's it's well, but you know you it's it's all
Speaker 7: kinds of things. That's maybe you don't like something about
Speaker 7: how you look, but it's also you don't like something.
Speaker 3: About how you.
Speaker 7: Perform or behave, or you're like, what the hell am
Speaker 7: I doing with my hand there?
Speaker 3: What is that? You know?
Speaker 7: Like, so you know, and and it's not about with
Speaker 7: any of these things. It's not about having control for
Speaker 7: me over the craft. It's just I then have to
Speaker 7: confront what did I want to do versus what did
Speaker 7: I actually do? And the good news and the thing
Speaker 7: I always tell my friends is I'm like, the audience
Speaker 7: doesn't know what you want to do.
Speaker 3: They only know what you did.
Speaker 7: So if they enjoyed it and you got it done,
Speaker 7: mission accomplished, put it away. However, it is hard to
Speaker 7: you are I am confronting with that every time you're like,
Speaker 7: it's gone for that. But was the story told? Was
Speaker 7: it sort of told? Okay, it's told, Okay, I'll move on,
Speaker 7: I'll move you know.
Speaker 3: So it's that. But with the vocal thing, I think
Speaker 3: Mall is.
Speaker 7: So far away from my speaking voice that I almost
Speaker 7: don't recognize them.
Speaker 3: So I can watch Mall.
Speaker 7: And and maybe enjoy it more just as a fan,
Speaker 7: just be like, oh, look at starth Maul.
Speaker 3: I like that character. Oh yeah, yeah, that's good. Can
Speaker 3: you give us a little for the kids we need
Speaker 3: to gain Honda, Yes, we do. Yes, thank you for
Speaker 3: using my character's name in there. Problem. The characters are
Speaker 3: so interesting.
Speaker 7: What was it like to see Hondo as an animatronic
Speaker 7: oh figure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wow, that's a good question.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I I remember doing it, and and I've told this before.
Speaker 1: They they invited me over to imagineering Hisney imagineering, and
Speaker 1: and uh they're just kind of walking me through this
Speaker 1: incredible storyboard and it looked like what they do for
Speaker 1: a movie. And I go and and I said, so
Speaker 1: I was told that this is all on spec and
Speaker 1: you're not doing but look, you did this all this
Speaker 1: big rigmarole just for on spec and he goes, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: wait explained that what yeah, yeah, and and and that's
Speaker 1: what he said.
Speaker 3: And he and he and I got I forget it
Speaker 3: was with but he.
Speaker 1: Said, oh no, it's halfway done. It's already under construction.
Speaker 1: It's being built as we speak. And I go, and
Speaker 1: you're trying to convince me.
Speaker 3: To do it.
Speaker 2: You you couldn't let me. I would pay you to
Speaker 2: do this, could I would?
Speaker 3: You couldn't.
Speaker 1: And they think they think that they're pitching you. It's like,
Speaker 1: you're not pitching me. I'm dying to do this.
Speaker 3: Do you tell them that or do you Yes, I'd
Speaker 3: like to get my cars close to my chest and
Speaker 3: be like, wow, that's right. Interesting. Yeah, I think you're
Speaker 3: on the right track there, that's yeah, keep up the
Speaker 3: good to know.
Speaker 1: Internally, I'm just yeah, well, I figured I'll let my
Speaker 1: agent do the hard arm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the hard bargaining stuff, right, Yeah, unbelievable. That's did
Speaker 2: you ever?
Speaker 1: I mean, I remember how old was I was. I
Speaker 1: guess I was a teenager when Star Wars first came out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, I just thought it was the coolest damn
Speaker 1: thing in the world, because it was the coolest damn
Speaker 1: thing in the world, you know, and you know, to
Speaker 1: finish growing up and and now growing old, but and
Speaker 1: to be involved, and it is just a kind of
Speaker 1: a dream come true.
Speaker 3: And there's a distinction.
Speaker 7: Also, look any Star Wars, I think is because because
Speaker 7: there's a lineage at that company that comes from George.
Speaker 7: So many of the people that we've worked with were
Speaker 7: trained by George, and so many the people that work
Speaker 7: on these things. Dave Filoni trained by George, but not
Speaker 7: only him, so many people at that company. He went
Speaker 7: to the Lucasfilm Film School with George. But what is interesting,
Speaker 7: what is fun, is that the animation division of Lucasfilm
Speaker 7: that was created by George, so it became the moment
Speaker 7: he did that it became a core part of Star Wars,
Speaker 7: and the fact that it is still a core part
Speaker 7: of Star.
Speaker 3: Wars is so incredible.
Speaker 7: Lucasfilm Animation has been around for twenty years now, and
Speaker 7: you know, so we definitely have the fun distinction of
Speaker 7: having served under George Lucas on his animated show. I
Speaker 7: just saw this video and I wish they'd made more
Speaker 7: of these public because they have tons of this footage
Speaker 7: and it was George Lucas. Someone was interviewing him and
Speaker 7: we'd all seen interviews with George Lucas. He goes, well,
Speaker 7: you know, Han Solo is on health and he's trying
Speaker 7: to figure out how to get the falcon, and.
Speaker 3: He'll talk about something that happens in the movie and
Speaker 3: a good impression.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, I saw him discussing. He's like, well, you
Speaker 7: have to understand that Ventris being a night Sister comes
Speaker 7: from the planet Dathamiron, and that's a planet of witches,
Speaker 7: and the male female hierarchy is a different type of thing.
Speaker 7: They control the magic and the force there. And then
Speaker 7: the brother of Darth Maul and he goes into all
Speaker 7: these details about the Clone Wars, and I'm like, why
Speaker 7: didn't they put more of this out there? Because he
Speaker 7: was so involved in all those stories. A Hondo is
Speaker 7: an interesting guy because you know, because I don't know
Speaker 7: if you ever knew this when he played when they
Speaker 7: played the Young Ling arc, they cut together the me
Speaker 7: into one.
Speaker 3: Were you there in the theater when they watched it
Speaker 3: with the kids? Oh? With the kids?
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't think something.
Speaker 7: There was a presentation at one of the Star Wars
Speaker 7: celebrations and they cut together the young ling arc into
Speaker 7: a movie and they they actually just went to anyone
Speaker 7: that had small kids and said, you're invited to an event.
Speaker 7: You're invited to an event, and they played it and
Speaker 7: no one knows this. This is not of record, but
Speaker 7: I know this.
Speaker 3: George hid in the back watching it with the kids.
Speaker 2: How cool is that?
Speaker 1: I found out that that that's a common practice, George
Speaker 1: or producers and they sneak around and go in the back.
Speaker 3: He was in the back. He wanted to watch it
Speaker 3: with the kids.
Speaker 7: He wanted to see what they thought of this of
Speaker 7: these younglings trying to traverse the galaxy far far away
Speaker 7: with Hondo in the middle of it.
Speaker 3: And uh, yeah, well if you didn't know that, you
Speaker 3: know that.
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's good stuff. So cool.
Speaker 1: If you're a fan of everything we do here at
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Speaker 1: slash Jim Cummings podcast Do It.
Speaker 7: Now, George, I believe wanted to be an animator, so animation.
Speaker 7: I think he went to USC So he's basically a
Speaker 7: failure animation.
Speaker 3: Yea, he failed spectacularly. By failing, he changed the world
Speaker 3: seven times over.
Speaker 7: Yes, but you know, it's it is interesting to think
Speaker 7: that people like George Lucas or Walt Disney or whomever,
Speaker 7: animation was a core interest and in fact, when you
Speaker 7: watch say the Prequels and stuff, I mean it had
Speaker 7: better be a core attress because some of those characters
Speaker 7: are in fact animated.
Speaker 3: That's what they are.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and you know, the large chunk of those prequels
Speaker 7: are actually kind of animated films, the clones and the
Speaker 7: droids and the features and.
Speaker 3: All that stuff.
Speaker 7: So you know, I never had a chance to ask George,
Speaker 7: although I had some nice run ins with him, I
Speaker 7: never had a chance to ask him what he loved
Speaker 7: about that so much. But but people did sort of
Speaker 7: share with me that that for him, who you know,
Speaker 7: we had to spend years and years and years making
Speaker 7: these films, but with the animated thing, he could put
Speaker 7: an idea on the table and within a year start
Speaker 7: seeing that be finished.
Speaker 3: And that that was I understand, a real thrill for
Speaker 3: him and like, wow, look at that.
Speaker 5: Yea, yeah, well, I was just about to say that
Speaker 5: that makes sense to me because I feel like animation
Speaker 5: is like a very direct outlet of your imagination. You know,
Speaker 5: even with you know, cameras and different mediums, there's still
Speaker 5: you know, the lighting and there's a whole lot of
Speaker 5: other factors that you have to consider and able to
Speaker 5: in order to be able to bring a vision to light.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, animation is kind of you know, it's like direct
Speaker 5: it's a direct link, you know, especially when you're doing
Speaker 5: it by hand. Of course, people do it by you know,
Speaker 5: computer and everything these days.
Speaker 3: Our show is all of the above.
Speaker 7: You know, the paintings on our show are real Matt
Speaker 7: paintings in real life, real paint on you know, canvas
Speaker 7: or glass.
Speaker 3: You're talking about shadow shadow, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 7: Where our map paintings are real Matt paintings made in
Speaker 7: the physical world that.
Speaker 3: We see that we photograph.
Speaker 7: You know that some of the pyro attacks, I pyro
Speaker 7: effects are I think are there's there's quite a bit
Speaker 7: of live action photography that we sneak in their spaceship
Speaker 7: or two.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 7: And then when it comes to the character animation, they
Speaker 7: I'm I'm a.
Speaker 3: Consulting producer on the show.
Speaker 7: So I get to to flit around like a butterfly
Speaker 7: between these different.
Speaker 3: Divisions and bother them.
Speaker 7: And what it's sort of what it's sort of resulted
Speaker 7: in is I get to hang out with the animation
Speaker 7: department and and and shoot reference.
Speaker 3: Not with the.
Speaker 7: Idea that I would dictate what it is that they're
Speaker 7: supposed to do because they've been animating mall for successfully
Speaker 7: for fifteen years, but it's throwing more ideas into the
Speaker 7: pop Have you thought about this?
Speaker 3: And like, you know, I come from live action, so
Speaker 3: let's you know. So, so when they they will choose
Speaker 3: the scenes, there will be key scenes.
Speaker 7: They're like, we'd like to know what you would do
Speaker 7: with this, So they would set me off, they'd give
Speaker 7: me direction. They we'd talk it over and they say
Speaker 7: we want this, we want that, we want that, and
Speaker 7: they'd show me the animatic and then.
Speaker 3: I'll show out we will shoot.
Speaker 7: Reference and and what's fun is is how they mix
Speaker 7: and match. I'll be watching them all performance and be like, oh,
Speaker 7: that little thing he did with his eyes right there,
Speaker 7: that was something that we came up with when we
Speaker 7: were doing that reference. Okay, now that's interesting. Oh they
Speaker 7: did a really cool thing there. Oh that's totally different. Okay,
Speaker 7: there there's a little thing that we've thought. So it's
Speaker 7: just adding more.
Speaker 1: Ideas to the nice. Well that's nice. Well God is
Speaker 1: into details, right sort of, I mean kind of.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's that's Everyone on that show has been thinking
Speaker 7: way outside the box in terms of how we make
Speaker 7: that wow so so.
Speaker 1: Well and then and then you reap the harvest.
Speaker 3: It's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 7: Yeah, when it works, it's it's a it's a great thing.
Speaker 7: It's just you know, with Star Wars, the standard is
Speaker 7: sky high, so you feel like there's a pressure there
Speaker 7: then always yeah, I don't. I never when we were
Speaker 7: well received, I had to be reminded by our producer,
Speaker 7: Athena Portillo, who you probably know from you.
Speaker 3: Know, she's our fearless general, and she had to remind.
Speaker 7: Everyone like me and Brad raw who is the head
Speaker 7: of the show, the show runner, you know, filmmaker extraordinary.
Speaker 3: He's the Dave Filoni at this show, George Lucas of
Speaker 3: our show.
Speaker 7: And so he hands down the big ideas and then
Speaker 7: Brad and his directors implement that, and then the writer.
Speaker 3: The writing team is.
Speaker 7: Led by Mac mcnivitz, who goes way back with us
Speaker 7: with clone wars and all that stuff. But uh, Athena,
Speaker 7: who's I mean a nuclear power producer. She had to
Speaker 7: tell us, certainly tell me more than once. She's like, hey, Sam,
Speaker 7: we're airing, and yeah, I understand, we're still working on stuff.
Speaker 3: Put it away.
Speaker 7: Enjoy this, enjoy this, have fun with the fact that
Speaker 7: people are having fun with this.
Speaker 3: And she had to tell me that a few times.
Speaker 3: She's like, this is a special thing. Enjoy it.
Speaker 7: Put your worries aside, and then let's get back to
Speaker 7: work some days after we do that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So yeah, But for.
Speaker 7: Me, if left to my own devices, I would have
Speaker 7: just brooded the whole time. I would have been like,
Speaker 7: what we have to do now? In season two?
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, did you ever get that message in
Speaker 5: your career? I mean, with so many successful characters, and
Speaker 5: I mean you've voiced so many, you know, hundreds of characters,
Speaker 5: did you ever have a chance to just like kind
Speaker 5: of sit back and be like, yeah, I'm enjoying this
Speaker 5: now or was it always just one after another, let's
Speaker 5: look at the next thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a little of both, it's a little of
Speaker 1: both and the thing that kind of turns it around. See,
Speaker 1: like guys like me, you know us, we spend our
Speaker 1: life lives most mostly alone in recording studios and uh
Speaker 1: and of course with COVID forget it.
Speaker 3: But but there'd be a producer, there's the writer, there's
Speaker 3: a producer.
Speaker 1: And recording engineer. So you don't get the feedback. You
Speaker 1: don't get that. It's not like you're in a play.
Speaker 1: And and so because you know, you get that automatic feedback,
Speaker 1: and that's why that's another thing I like. But going
Speaker 1: to conventions, you can see people come up with you know,
Speaker 1: in the third episode of The Mask when you were
Speaker 1: played the Swedish organ grinder. You know, it's so nice
Speaker 1: to know that that there is an impact out there
Speaker 1: because you don't get it.
Speaker 2: You don't get and.
Speaker 1: It's because when you're when you're in a play or
Speaker 1: something like that instant feedback.
Speaker 3: Oh they laughed, Oh that was great. Old Now they're crying.
Speaker 1: And you don't get that, you know, with animation or
Speaker 1: or or for that matter, TV.
Speaker 3: In general.
Speaker 2: You know, you do it, you go home, do you.
Speaker 5: Find do you find filming on that boring? I'm an
Speaker 5: actor myself. You said, you don't. I know you're being facetious,
Speaker 5: but you don't like acting. But I just think it's hard.
Speaker 5: You know, I was. I was a theater actor in college.
Speaker 5: You know, I really was in love with theater and
Speaker 5: being on stage and everything. And I remember when I
Speaker 5: got my first TV role. I remember sitting in the
Speaker 5: green room like, oh my god, this is just like
Speaker 5: waiting all day. Yeah, can we can we do something?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 5: You know, everybody, every team has their turn, you know,
Speaker 5: the graps, lighting, camera, get everything set up. Rehearsal is
Speaker 5: literally like I mean not every case, but it's like
Speaker 5: sitting there reading your size to each other. It's not
Speaker 5: really performing.
Speaker 3: It's Yeah.
Speaker 7: I've had moments where the tedium made me ask myself
Speaker 7: whether I enjoyed it or not.
Speaker 3: But I did come to the conclusion that I did.
Speaker 7: The the massive professionals that are all doing their job
Speaker 7: and creating the image and lighting it and making sure
Speaker 7: that there is something really exciting about that energy, and
Speaker 7: there is something exciting about the whole Yeah.
Speaker 3: Hurry up and wait. You're waiting. You're waiting, you're waiting,
Speaker 3: you're waiting, you're waiting, and they're like okay, good, all right,
Speaker 3: we need you to cry now show time action Yeah yeah,
Speaker 3: oh okay.
Speaker 7: And when you see actors that can pull that off
Speaker 7: and do whatever performance they need to on like you know, wait.
Speaker 3: Wait wait, and now you know, Yeah, it's exciting.
Speaker 7: I actually absolutely love being on a set provided it's
Speaker 7: a good group of people, and I've.
Speaker 3: Been it' very It's a challenge, isn't it. Yeah.
Speaker 7: I've been lucky to work with mostly really really nice,
Speaker 7: great people, and if they're funny, then you're you're dead
Speaker 7: because between all the setups, you're just cracking each other up,
Speaker 7: you know. I mean those are if you're a regular
Speaker 7: on a show those days there's anywhere from sixteen to
Speaker 7: eighteen or nineteen hours typically a day. If you're like
Speaker 7: one of the leads, you're there every day. So if
Speaker 7: you have a good group of people, then at least
Speaker 7: you have some sort of social life because you're talking
Speaker 7: to people.
Speaker 3: Wow, there's setups happening, and.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you're kind of living a little bit of a
Speaker 7: life on that stage. But I've done shows that were
Speaker 7: so all encompassing that my brain identifies the set or
Speaker 7: the locations as having really happened and I really like
Speaker 7: I kind of was that person. Yeah, on some I
Speaker 7: know the difference obviously, but like it's a little bit like,
Speaker 7: you know, there are certain sets that I'm like, that
Speaker 7: was my home lived there.
Speaker 3: It's a place that I lived.
Speaker 5: So I know exactly what you Yeah, I know exactly
Speaker 5: what you mean. I worked crew on the CW's Arrow
Speaker 5: You're an Arrow, Yeah, for a couple of years, and
Speaker 5: it got to the point, you know, we're working You've
Speaker 5: worked in Vancouver, you know, on Riverdale and a couple
Speaker 5: other series, if I'm not mistaken up in Vancouver, and
Speaker 5: everybody knows each other up there, and just to what
Speaker 5: you were saying, you know, it becomes such like a family,
Speaker 5: Like it's like a work family, but you're there literally,
Speaker 5: you know, all day, Like you go home, you sleep,
Speaker 5: and then you're back. And we used to refer to,
Speaker 5: you know, like, oh, today we're in Felicity's apartment. You know,
Speaker 5: it's not Stage A three, you know, it's like we're
Speaker 5: in Felicity. Yeah, and then it just kind of like
Speaker 5: it's that blending of like what you're fantasizing imagining, you know,
Speaker 5: and what's really.
Speaker 7: Very attached to those spaces you know. Yeah, we on
Speaker 7: this one show I did called Being Human are set.
Speaker 7: Not to spoil it for anyone that watches the show,
Speaker 7: but at the end, the place burns down. So I
Speaker 7: remember we toured the set after the art department. It
Speaker 7: had their way with it where they burned down chunks
Speaker 7: of it. There were green screens where you were supposed
Speaker 7: to be able to see through the wall and stuff
Speaker 7: like that. That was traumatizing to walk through that set
Speaker 7: and be like, lived here for years, this was our apartment.
Speaker 7: Now it's it's it's burned down. Yeah, and we're going
Speaker 7: to shoot some scenes on us burn down set, and
Speaker 7: then they're going to take down the burn down set.
Speaker 1: That was yeah, saugh a little rough, little and that's
Speaker 1: after how many years?
Speaker 3: How many years of that show got four years?
Speaker 7: And and those those days were so very long that
Speaker 7: we we lived there. They did let us take home
Speaker 7: pieces of the set. I have a chair that was
Speaker 7: very proudly featured.
Speaker 3: In the in the show, and that share is mine now,
Speaker 3: so oh that's good. It's not burned down. No, no,
Speaker 3: they took it out a yeah, they put some wood
Speaker 3: there to represent it. They left, they didn't burn it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but it's I know, I I do love the
Speaker 7: live action stuff. And what I don't love. What I
Speaker 7: don't I just don't love it is being on the
Speaker 7: road all the time. I don't love that. That's that's
Speaker 7: why I veered more heavily toward voiceover and other entertainment jobs, because, uh, look,
Speaker 7: I met a dog and that dog was like, bro,
Speaker 7: you travel too much.
Speaker 3: You know, this dog showed up.
Speaker 7: You know, I moved into my house eleven years ago
Speaker 7: and this dog turned up in my backyard two months
Speaker 7: oh after I moved in and suddenly.
Speaker 3: And this was the plan, was, oh, foster this dog
Speaker 3: or whatever.
Speaker 7: But I just I fell in love with him very quickly,
Speaker 7: and it took me a while to admit how in
Speaker 7: love with him I was. And he he's like he
Speaker 7: was this American bulldog boxer pit bull mix, or perhaps
Speaker 7: he was in a Lapaha bulldog. We don't really know.
Speaker 7: It's depending on the DNA test. I have no idea
Speaker 7: what his history was. But his effect on my life
Speaker 7: was he just he just took command in a very
Speaker 7: real sense that this dog like he claimed my house.
Speaker 7: He made me completely reconceive of my life, being like, hey,
Speaker 7: you've you've done all the traveling, been in any city,
Speaker 7: but where you live, you know, which is just what
Speaker 7: I did for I don't know, a better part of
Speaker 7: twenty years. And he's like, don't you think it's kind
Speaker 7: of cool to be here in one place, waking up
Speaker 7: in the same house, drinking your coffee.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a little kimble being.
Speaker 3: With my dog, you know yeah?
Speaker 7: And he you know, suddenly it was more important to
Speaker 7: me to see his face every morning. I did do
Speaker 7: a few jobs where I was gone one point better
Speaker 7: part of a year, But the part that sucked about
Speaker 7: it is like I'd rather be home with my dog,
Speaker 7: and then he he rescued another dogs than I had
Speaker 7: two dogs, and then eventually three dogs like this guy. Wow,
Speaker 7: this guy made all the calls.
Speaker 3: And sold them a nagerie. Right. So for me.
Speaker 7: It reconceived of my work life balance, really, and so
Speaker 7: what I don't what I unabashedly don't like about film
Speaker 7: and TV is we don't do it here anymore. If
Speaker 7: it was here, yeah, and I could go home to
Speaker 7: my dogs, great, and then I would then I'd be like,
Speaker 7: I'm going to pursue the hell out of it. But
Speaker 7: the fact that I've lived in Vancouver. I think three
Speaker 7: separate occasions. I've lived in Montreal, I lived, I've.
Speaker 3: Shot in every city conceivable. I'm tired of it. I'm
Speaker 3: tired of all that travel.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I always say, I completely agree, like La is
Speaker 5: not really like a film and television city city anymore.
Speaker 5: I really think it's more of like a social media city.
Speaker 3: Now, you know, explain it to me, because I don't
Speaker 3: know what La is. So yeah, I don't know. I
Speaker 3: came to this realization.
Speaker 5: I did a little like skit for a YouTube channel
Speaker 5: a few years ago, and I show up to set
Speaker 5: this during COVID.
Speaker 3: So yeah, a few years ago. It still counts.
Speaker 5: And I show up and it's an entire sound stage
Speaker 5: and I was like, oh, this is interesting.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: I thought like maybe they rented out or something. No,
Speaker 5: this one YouTube channel owned the sound stage just for
Speaker 5: their one channel, and that was like eye opening to me.
Speaker 5: I was like, oh my god. And then another time,
Speaker 5: I'm driving down Sunset Boulevard and I see a billboard
Speaker 5: for a YouTube channel and I was like, I've never
Speaker 5: seen that before, you know, And you walk down Hollywood Boulevard,
Speaker 5: you go to Santa Monica, Venice wherever West Hollywood. You know,
Speaker 5: the night scene, it's all influencers, you know, that's like
Speaker 5: who's in the VIP this. I mean when I was
Speaker 5: a teenager, you know, running around doing my thing in
Speaker 5: la like, it was always like actors, you know, it
Speaker 5: was always actors or musicians. And you know, now you
Speaker 5: go out at night and you see people you know
Speaker 5: doing street interviews and you know, and that's all the
Speaker 5: you know, attraction and what people want to be around
Speaker 5: and at least in this city in my.
Speaker 1: Opinion, Yeah, but it's so true, and it's something that
Speaker 1: wasn't even there before. Oh yeah, it's a brand new thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, everybody's diving in. Everybody and their dog has
Speaker 1: a podcast.
Speaker 5: But then even you know, even further, how I say,
Speaker 5: I don't really think it's a film and television city anymore,
Speaker 5: is because the only real things that film here are
Speaker 5: like the massive budget things you know, with the A listers,
Speaker 5: either that or Indy you know, very indie, and the
Speaker 5: cost of the permits to film, you know, to be
Speaker 5: able to use any any kind of recognizable area in
Speaker 5: l A is just shooting, yeah, astronomical and so a
Speaker 5: lot of the times, you know, the indie guys are
Speaker 5: doing it gorilla style, getting what they can, you know,
Speaker 5: to try and put in a friend festival or whatever.
Speaker 5: And then you know, obviously you still have you know,
Speaker 5: the shows, like what's that Steve Carrell show where they're
Speaker 5: on the news. No, no, no, no, it's like the
Speaker 5: Morning Report, The Morning Report with a girl from Friends.
Speaker 5: I'm drying such a blank.
Speaker 3: We're doing great.
Speaker 5: And the girl from Friends, Yes, Jennifer Aniston.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, they filmed that. Like that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Good for them. Man, I'm glad someone is shooting here.
Speaker 7: I mean, I just I'm I'm kind of deeply resentful
Speaker 7: about it at this point because it's like when I
Speaker 7: first I moved here for this mm hmm, isn't that
Speaker 7: it whack? This year we're talking about like we flew
Speaker 7: in and we saw blankets of stub over the city, right,
Speaker 7: and we put up with the time that it took,
Speaker 7: and then the city cleared up and the smog went away.
Speaker 3: But so did the movies. Yeah, what the I mean?
Speaker 3: I coincidza, dude, Maybe the movies make smuck. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 5: We need tax credits, that's what we need. Everybody just
Speaker 5: goes wherever the tax credits are.
Speaker 7: I'm I'm actively angry about it, because the thing is
Speaker 7: is that I mean I got the I when I
Speaker 7: was conceiving of being an actor.
Speaker 3: The idea was I would live in Los Angeles and
Speaker 3: maybe go from show to show.
Speaker 7: And I had that experience for just a few short years,
Speaker 7: and then suddenly I was in anywhere.
Speaker 5: But Ella, when did you get that urge in you,
Speaker 5: as like in your childhood or adolescence. When did you
Speaker 5: know that you wanted to do that.
Speaker 7: I did plays and stuff when I was in high school,
Speaker 7: but I never took it seriously. I was always like,
Speaker 7: it's for fun. I was coerced into auditioning for Juilliard
Speaker 7: and that's what gave me the first idea of about, Okay,
Speaker 7: well maybe there's something that I can pursue here.
Speaker 2: Well you must have impressed somebody.
Speaker 7: Well, I think the reason I got in is that
Speaker 7: I wasn't trying to impress anyone.
Speaker 3: I guess I was like, I'm just some kid, what
Speaker 3: are we doing here? You know?
Speaker 7: I had like long hair. I think that irreverence got
Speaker 7: me got me far. But you know, when I eventually
Speaker 7: was like after I was invited.
Speaker 3: To leave Juilliard after two years, and I accepted their invite.
Speaker 1: Uh huh, you're invited to I was invited to leave,
Speaker 1: and I accepted.
Speaker 7: Yes, I had to go to Chicago and seek out
Speaker 7: camera classes because I knew that I didn't know a
Speaker 7: damn thing about it acting in front.
Speaker 3: Of a camera.
Speaker 7: And and that's when I was like, yeah, I want
Speaker 7: to go to LA I want to I wanna. Really
Speaker 7: my ambition was to just like, maybe I can guess
Speaker 7: on a bunch of different shows.
Speaker 3: That was all I thought might happen.
Speaker 7: And that took me a while, but I started living
Speaker 7: that life and it was great. I was, you know,
Speaker 7: affordable rent, and you would get a job and you'd
Speaker 7: go like, dude, I just paid three months rent with
Speaker 7: this job and expenses and utilities.
Speaker 3: That's that. I just bought myself three more months of
Speaker 3: auditioning for the next job or then maybe the next job.
Speaker 7: You're like, oh my god, that that was three or
Speaker 7: four or five more months rent.
Speaker 3: But also, this show airs all the time. I'm going
Speaker 3: to get residuals that are going to keep me alive
Speaker 3: a little bit longer.
Speaker 7: And just kept stringing hope to hope to hope.
Speaker 3: I think it.
Speaker 7: Sucks that that there's no central location where actors can
Speaker 7: do that anymore. I think that's I also think that
Speaker 7: the city has become ridiculously expensive, and.
Speaker 3: So you are right about that.
Speaker 7: So when you say, like, oh, it's really a social
Speaker 7: media city, I'm like, tell me about what LA is, because,
Speaker 7: like I said.
Speaker 3: I'm playing the Beverly Hell's Cop soundtrack just to try
Speaker 3: to give it some shape, just to it's fine. What
Speaker 3: it is for myself is this is it? Jim.
Speaker 5: I think you've said the same thing about voiceover as well.
Speaker 5: You know, it's yeah, you know, I mean we've had
Speaker 5: so many people on this podcast alone where you know,
Speaker 5: we're all talking about recording, you know, just all in
Speaker 5: this area in Burbank. You know, you guys are sharing
Speaker 5: memories of studios that you all used to check out.
Speaker 7: In here by the way. But yeah, yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 7: voice cross paths.
Speaker 5: But I mean voiceover is also moved in a very
Speaker 5: similar direction where you know, it's it's like a give
Speaker 5: and take, you know, it's it's it broadens the opportunity
Speaker 5: for people outside of LA, you know, to be able
Speaker 5: to participate in this industry. What you know, you can
Speaker 5: audition from wherever. You can record voices from wherever. Yeah,
Speaker 5: but also it increases the amount of competition, right, yes.
Speaker 3: I agree.
Speaker 1: But you know, I remember, you know, I had this
Speaker 1: place in Missouri and I couldn't I couldn't spend much
Speaker 1: time there because there was no isd in line, there
Speaker 1: was no record there was no recording facilities there.
Speaker 2: Well, now you can.
Speaker 1: You can carry arounding that shaycase or a gym bag
Speaker 1: and you there's your studio.
Speaker 2: So you know, I'll take it. I love that part.
Speaker 3: Would you rather be in Missouri?
Speaker 2: Yes, Well, it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Well, it was this big, huge acreage and there's three
Speaker 1: lakes and a lot of fish and a lot of
Speaker 1: deer and where the deer in the envelope play, that's
Speaker 1: they're playing there, and so you know, that's that was
Speaker 1: just kind of heavenly.
Speaker 3: We're actually stopped in.
Speaker 1: For a visit just just recently, and it was very rewarding.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of life out See. The
Speaker 1: thing about California is the weather.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, my gosh, is that why people come here? Well?
Speaker 2: I think, well it's why. Yeah, that's why they stay.
Speaker 1: And all you have to do is like I'm I'm
Speaker 1: born and raised in Youngstown, Ohio. If all I need
Speaker 1: to do to reaffirm my love for California is to
Speaker 1: go to Youngstown, Ohio in January.
Speaker 3: So you hate winters, well, I get.
Speaker 2: It, But if you're not skiing in it, what's the point.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, make one snow man, got it,
Speaker 1: got that out of the way.
Speaker 3: Maybe a snow angel. Maybe a snow angel.
Speaker 1: But only if you fall down and you're already on
Speaker 1: the ground, So you might as well make it there.
Speaker 1: You might as well make it work. But no, I
Speaker 1: like to visit snow. I don't like snow to visit me. Interesting, see,
Speaker 1: I become a wither snob.
Speaker 3: I guess I don't know. I grew up in a
Speaker 3: suburb of Chicago, so I know.
Speaker 7: Oh, well, you understand the concept, but weirdly, and tell
Speaker 7: me if I'm out of my mind, you're out of
Speaker 7: your mind. But also tell me if I'm wrong about this.
Speaker 7: I kind of miss it. I missed seasons.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you know now I do miss the seasons,
Speaker 1: you know, spring and fall.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I love it. Yeah, incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I bet you did the same thing when
Speaker 1: you know you're in third grade, there was this thing
Speaker 1: that when the leaves started to turn, you had to
Speaker 1: go out and pick out a really, really good one,
Speaker 1: then take it back home, put it on wax paper,
Speaker 1: then you fold it over very carefully. Then you put
Speaker 1: a towel on top of that, and then you iron it,
Speaker 1: or you have your mom iron it, and then you
Speaker 1: take it to school. Look that mine's orange and yellow.
Speaker 1: And it was, it was, It was wonderful. And I
Speaker 1: do miss the fall because just driving around through Milk
Speaker 1: Creek Park for those of you who know where that is,
Speaker 1: both of you, and it was just I missed the seasons.
Speaker 2: I just don't want to be forced to sit and
Speaker 2: snow all day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's all. Well.
Speaker 5: When I moved here as a kid, it was a
Speaker 5: culture shock to me to not have seasons. I grew
Speaker 5: up in Vancouver, and when I first moved here, I
Speaker 5: was I remember telling one of my friends. I was like,
Speaker 5: I didn't know this place was a desert and they
Speaker 5: started laughing and they were like, this isn't a desert.
Speaker 5: Like look at all the you know, the trees and
Speaker 5: the grass. I was like, that's all irrigating, Like that's
Speaker 5: not naturally growing. Yeah, and the other thing that culture
Speaker 5: shocked me was the Christmas lights with like no weather.
Speaker 5: It was like sunny and like people putting Christmas lights
Speaker 5: and snow snowmen out on their I was just like,
Speaker 5: that's kind of weird, Like why are you putting a
Speaker 5: snowman up?
Speaker 3: Like there's no snow here.
Speaker 1: If you're a fan of everything we do here at
Speaker 1: tuned In with Jim Cummings, you could support the show
Speaker 1: on Patreon for bonus exclusive podcasts, as well as early
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Speaker 1: slash Jim Cummings podcast.
Speaker 3: Do it Now. I grew up in a sort of
Speaker 3: John Hughes territory. That's where's that. Well. He went to
Speaker 3: a high school called Glenbrook.
Speaker 7: North in Northbrook, and I was one town over at
Speaker 7: Glenbrook South being gle and so, and I knew a
Speaker 7: lot of the kids that know, our high schools were
Speaker 7: sister high schools. So if you think about Home Alone
Speaker 7: or Ferris Peeler's Day Office, you know, Sixteen Candles, any
Speaker 7: of those movies they were all shot around there. So
Speaker 7: that's sort of that's what it looked like, you know,
Speaker 7: when I grew up. So when when a John Hughes
Speaker 7: movie came out, I helped the breakfast club. High school
Speaker 7: is within a mile of the house that I grew
Speaker 7: up in. Oh yeah, it's like a police station hour
Speaker 7: or something. But it's yeah.
Speaker 3: I you'd see those movies and I'm like, yeah, that's
Speaker 3: that's life, that's how it goes. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: but but yeah, I do miss the seasons because I
Speaker 3: felt like feelings felt different in every different season. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 3: I think so, Like you know, name and emotion.
Speaker 7: There's a variety for that in fall, in winter, in
Speaker 7: summer and spring, and.
Speaker 2: Plus the smells.
Speaker 3: I love this, you know.
Speaker 1: You know, Autumn smells a certain way, not smells like
Speaker 1: bad odor, but it's got its own fragrance.
Speaker 3: And spring yeah obviously you know. So yeah, I know
Speaker 3: what you mean. I know it.
Speaker 7: To me, I will say this, if I hadn't grown
Speaker 7: up in Chicago, I found myself so cold on so
Speaker 7: many sets. For whatever reason, I just the luck of
Speaker 7: the draw. The jobs that I've gotten, they're like, hey,
Speaker 7: you're you're gonna you know, it's like Vancouver.
Speaker 3: Yea, Vancouver. Who I am in Vancouver, And They're like,
Speaker 3: we cleared out this patch of street.
Speaker 7: You'll be laying there naked and we're gonna get all
Speaker 7: these shots and I'd just be shivering the whole time.
Speaker 7: Or like I remember this one time where we were
Speaker 7: shooting something and there's all this snow, and then they
Speaker 7: but it was supposed to be not at that time
Speaker 7: of the year, so they cleared out an area the
Speaker 7: alley and pretended it was warm and pretended it was warm.
Speaker 7: And I'm wearing like a button down shirt. Yeah, And
Speaker 7: I'd never been so cold in my life. And I
Speaker 7: remember thinking like, wait a second, hold on, but I'm
Speaker 7: from Chicago.
Speaker 3: I should be able to weather this.
Speaker 7: And I was like, wait, no, in Chicago, I spent
Speaker 7: most of my time in the winter indoors, not outside, not.
Speaker 3: For fifteen hours.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And so I remember drawing a bath for myself afterward,
Speaker 7: so cold, and I'm laying in the.
Speaker 3: Bath and it's it's like four am or five am.
Speaker 3: I've gotten home. I'm in the bath and eventually I'm like,
Speaker 3: something's wrong. I feel the water.
Speaker 7: I'm like the water's cold, and the reason it was
Speaker 7: cold is my body had leashed all the heat.
Speaker 3: My body was an ice cube. So I had to
Speaker 3: get rid of all the water, draw another bath. Oh Jesus,
Speaker 3: because it had gotten in there. It was so yeah,
Speaker 3: I know what you mean.
Speaker 2: It was just defrosting.
Speaker 7: Oh god, it was Yeah. I know what you mean
Speaker 7: by it can be unpleasant, But yes it can if.
Speaker 3: You have heating, if you're lucky enough to do that.
Speaker 7: I think there's something wonderful about coming out from the
Speaker 7: cold into a.
Speaker 3: Warm house or apartment and I'm like, oh h how's
Speaker 3: it going beating? Oh god? You all you know been
Speaker 3: from Mixtent.
Speaker 1: I can remember going down and stoking because we had
Speaker 1: a coal furnace when I was We little took years
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden we had this magic
Speaker 1: gas furnace that produced heat.
Speaker 2: But you would have to go down and.
Speaker 1: Boy, we're boring the hell out of certain people like that,
Speaker 1: and you'd have to get to shake the thing to
Speaker 1: get the clunkers out because the coal would not cut you.
Speaker 1: Guys don't even know what that hell I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: But the coal doesn't burn completely. It just get turns
Speaker 1: into clinkers, and then you got to grind those up,
Speaker 1: let those fall, put in more coal, and then you
Speaker 1: go stand over the heater and you burn your feet.
Speaker 1: And when your feet are burning, you have to leave.
Speaker 1: So it's either you're freezing your ass off or being burnt.
Speaker 7: Okay, so you see, I maybe this is why I
Speaker 7: liked winter. I didn't have the coal experience.
Speaker 3: And oh yeah, I there was heating, it was eating.
Speaker 3: Have to worry about.
Speaker 7: It always a good thing. The only thing we had
Speaker 7: to really do is just like make sure the water
Speaker 7: is running a little bit of the pipes, don't freeze.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there's that, I remember that. Ye.
Speaker 7: So, but maybe what if I you know, the interesting
Speaker 7: thing is I've I've I played with in my head,
Speaker 7: like what if I moved back to Chicago and see
Speaker 7: if I could work remotely.
Speaker 3: Or something like that.
Speaker 7: And I wonder if I went back, if I would
Speaker 7: just be like, oh, I'm a whimp. I can't handle
Speaker 7: this because I used to. I used to when I
Speaker 7: was in school in New York. We would be going
Speaker 7: from building the building and we were doing movement classes
Speaker 7: and voices, speech.
Speaker 3: All the stuff.
Speaker 7: So we were always like in sweatpants and like a
Speaker 7: tank top or like we were in pajamas the whole time.
Speaker 7: But my classmates would put on their jackets when they
Speaker 7: would move between buildings, and I would just be going
Speaker 7: and I'd be wearing like just a tank top, and they're.
Speaker 3: Like, how are you it's it's it's there's snow. How
Speaker 3: are you so okay with this?
Speaker 7: I'm like, I'm only outside for a lot from that
Speaker 7: building of this building is four minutes walk.
Speaker 3: It's not a big deal, but you get past the
Speaker 3: threshold of you know, stay out there for twenty minutes,
Speaker 3: and these kids twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: They're from Florida, so they really don't know what they're about.
Speaker 3: That's right. And so I had some resistance, but I
Speaker 3: wonder if I still have the resistance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I have a resistance to going going there.
Speaker 3: You've built up a resistance to no, I'm not doing that.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 5: Well, we've talked about voiceover, We've talked about on camera work.
Speaker 5: Another aspect of performance that you're familiar with is motion capture,
Speaker 5: which is kind of new to this whole, you know,
Speaker 5: entertainment industry. And you did a great job. I'm days gone,
Speaker 5: Oh thank you. Yes, it's a very good game. Underrated
Speaker 5: game in my opinion.
Speaker 7: I'll tell you, you know, we talk about cons and
Speaker 7: stuff like that. That game broke through. So many people
Speaker 7: want to talk about that game. So whether whatever the
Speaker 7: media narrative is, you as it. When we do jobs,
Speaker 7: you lay out the pictures from all the jobs. You
Speaker 7: learn real quick what's broken through and what happened, and
Speaker 7: what people care about, what people have remember years later
Speaker 7: all that stuff.
Speaker 3: Day's gone.
Speaker 7: Is one of those people all want to bring their
Speaker 7: game or they bring the stuff. You know, it's yeah, yeah,
Speaker 7: the we're talking about, you know, like I guess the
Speaker 7: half the life, the whatever, what are we're talking about.
Speaker 7: I think if there's there's one thing I'd love to
Speaker 7: bring up is the fact that all of those performers
Speaker 7: in that game, if you look at IMDb, their their
Speaker 7: voice credits, and it's like, well, that's not the totality
Speaker 7: of what they did. We shot all of that, right,
Speaker 7: you know, we shot for four years and and those
Speaker 7: performers all delivered really really good everything performances. Their faces
Speaker 7: there there you know, everything is that you're wearing a
Speaker 7: helmet with a camera on your face. Yeah, you got
Speaker 7: the dots on the suit and you have a microphone.
Speaker 5: So that you're sorry interrupt. Was that your first experience
Speaker 5: with motion.
Speaker 3: Capture performance performance capture? Yeah, it is not. I don't remember, no, no,
Speaker 3: I guess my first experience with that type of thing
Speaker 3: would have been the Force on Leash. So, oh, there
Speaker 3: you go in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 7: Very primitive by today's standards, but that's what they were doing.
Speaker 7: And it was this weird thing where they were like
Speaker 7: casting for a Star Wars video game, but they wanted
Speaker 7: my headshot, my resume and all this and real and
Speaker 7: I'm like, why why.
Speaker 3: Would you need my real and because they're like, well, they're.
Speaker 7: Going to make it look like the actors and they're
Speaker 7: going to use performance capture to capture the performances.
Speaker 3: And that's the theory. The theory is is and I'd
Speaker 3: never this was like maybe the first time.
Speaker 7: It's had ever really been done in video games to
Speaker 7: do it all the time now, but they're like, our
Speaker 7: theory is is that the actors are linked with their likenesses,
Speaker 7: are linked with their movements or linked with everything, so
Speaker 7: we're going to try to bring that actor more more
Speaker 7: into the process.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 7: So I'm very grateful that they did that because that
Speaker 7: was my intro to Star Wars on that did.
Speaker 3: You ever work with David Collins? With David Collins.
Speaker 7: Voice actor but also sound designer, musician, I don't think so. Yeah,
Speaker 7: he was the in fact, you know what I'm going
Speaker 7: to say, I'm going to venture to guess. I'm certain
Speaker 7: he's probably directed you. Oh, he's He was working at
Speaker 7: Lucas Arts at the time as and he was the
Speaker 7: lead sound Unforced Unleashed. But he also he snuck my
Speaker 7: headshot under the pile so that I get an audition.
Speaker 3: Wow, Okay, let's go Dave. Yeah. Yeah, And he's on
Speaker 3: Shadow Lord.
Speaker 7: He's the lead sound there. He's also a character, he's Spybot.
Speaker 3: He's the way the jerk droid who Maul loves very much.
Speaker 3: So yeah, wow. Anyway, friends are important in this industry, Yes,
Speaker 3: yes they are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well you know, I you know, I'm sure
Speaker 1: you know Frank Welker.
Speaker 3: Know of Frank Welker. He certainly I don't know him.
Speaker 3: You know of him very Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, he's he's an amazing guy and he one of
Speaker 1: the coolest things ever happened to me came directly from him.
Speaker 1: He was into he was in for a job for
Speaker 1: a job and he was given it. Hell and he
Speaker 1: and he's known for his sound effects and animal sounds.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's.
Speaker 1: Everything anything and uh and you know, he said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, and he's like the only guy who could
Speaker 1: who would have even thought of doing this, you know.
Speaker 1: And he told him, he goes, well, I'm not that
Speaker 1: I'm really not feeling this. I'm sorry, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't think i'm your guy, which it said, no one
Speaker 1: ever and and uh and he said, you know what,
Speaker 1: just a shot in the dark hair, Why don't you
Speaker 1: call Jimmy Cummings up see see if get him in here,
Speaker 1: give him a shot and see what happens.
Speaker 3: And so they did.
Speaker 1: And I went in there and all I did was
Speaker 1: for about an hour or so was laugh and and
Speaker 1: it was for Lion King, Oh my god.
Speaker 2: And that's how I got into the Lion King.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And that to you, yeah, he just said, oh and
Speaker 1: and I went, oh, you freaking kidding me. So I
Speaker 1: sent him roses and champagne and just all this, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, it really is one of the things that
Speaker 1: one of the landmarks in my life, in my career.
Speaker 2: Crazy, that's insane, and all I did was laugh.
Speaker 3: That's incredible. Yeah he yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh and it also led because you know, I'm kind
Speaker 1: of known, I guess as a singer.
Speaker 3: Without him.
Speaker 1: I also wouldn't be in the soundtrack because I think
Speaker 1: be prepared for Jeremy I see for Thank You Frank again.
Speaker 3: Yeah me. Yes.
Speaker 7: For people like me and a lot of the the
Speaker 7: younger actors in Clone Wars that our generation, it was
Speaker 7: always a thrill when we would sort of cross paths
Speaker 7: with you or Corey Burton or whomever. We would just
Speaker 7: be so I was just like, oh my god, you
Speaker 7: know the real guys are here, you know, because we're
Speaker 7: just the pretender kids'ing yet. But I certainly I've snuck
Speaker 7: into I never had an opportunity to sneak into one
Speaker 7: of yours, but I've snuck into sessions with people like
Speaker 7: Corey Burton where I'm just like hiding out in the
Speaker 7: back watching how does he do that?
Speaker 3: You know? He's amazing? Yeah, I mean it's it's for me.
Speaker 7: The voice acting thing was always like how do you
Speaker 7: how do you get into that club?
Speaker 3: How do you do that?
Speaker 7: And now now I feel like I'm maybe I'm not
Speaker 7: a voting member of the club.
Speaker 3: But I'm in the club sort of a little bit.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
Speaker 7: But I was always just so astonished, you know, because
Speaker 7: all of those characters, that's our childhood. Dude, I I
Speaker 7: I adventured with you.
Speaker 3: You were Minsk in Butther's Gate.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. I spent a lot of a kick out
Speaker 2: of that that I'm had to hear.
Speaker 3: That for the eyes, Yeah, the ice get the Heapster
Speaker 3: of justice. Wow, he's shown up. You know.
Speaker 7: I'm I guess somewhat of a D and D A story,
Speaker 7: and I've I've written some books on it. Mink shows
Speaker 7: up and supplemental material for the tabletop game. Really it's
Speaker 7: a famous character, but it's it so for for me,
Speaker 7: it was always just so very very cool too. To
Speaker 7: see you gentlemen come and go and do whatever. It's
Speaker 7: very very cool. I regret greatly that I I was
Speaker 7: in I think I was in Montreal when we were
Speaker 7: doing our episode of Clone War, so I don't think
Speaker 7: I got to actually work across from you, but I
Speaker 7: certainly cursed your name in the spirit.
Speaker 3: Of you when when Maul was shaking his fist at Hondo. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: because I knew who I knew your care I knew
Speaker 3: exactly who I was dealing with. Yes, you so, but
Speaker 3: you know because ultimately, when you do it right, you
Speaker 3: have all the actress together, and of.
Speaker 1: Course you bet you know, yeah, I so prefer that,
Speaker 1: and you can all kind of tell you can't, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: when they're when they're all in the room, because otherwise
Speaker 1: you end up doing every line like four times, just
Speaker 1: in case it doesn't fit following the line before, and
Speaker 1: just in case it doesn't fit for setting up the
Speaker 1: line the next line, so you have to cover all
Speaker 1: the basis. Whereas, if you get which I really love,
Speaker 1: having the whole cast in the one big room, do
Speaker 1: it all together, and it's like doing a play, and
Speaker 1: then it's organic, as they say, it's much more organic.
Speaker 3: It just feels better. It does. It's you know, it flows,
Speaker 3: you know, you can just tell I don't know.
Speaker 7: It's true, it's true. It's on Shadow Lord. I just
Speaker 7: basically like where we cannot be doing these scenes. I
Speaker 7: need Gidy in there to work off of. Otherwise I
Speaker 7: have no idea where this scene's going to go, you know.
Speaker 7: And what's interesting with with Shadow Lord because sometimes we
Speaker 7: have a bunch of live action actors in it and
Speaker 7: people are flying all over the world and can't always
Speaker 7: get people even even connected remotely, so I end up
Speaker 7: being just the reader. I know, I'm in all of
Speaker 7: the sessions, so I know exactly what that actor did,
Speaker 7: so I try to do an approximation of what that
Speaker 7: actor did for the other for some other actor and
Speaker 7: stuff like that. But it's you know, there's no comparison
Speaker 7: from when you can have the actors all.
Speaker 3: Working together in the room.
Speaker 5: Did you guys get the opportunity to do ensemble for
Speaker 5: some of it some.
Speaker 7: Of it When we didn't, I try to make up
Speaker 7: with reading with the other actors, but but we did at.
Speaker 5: Times, you know, to do that. Yeah, I'm excited. I
Speaker 5: haven't seen it yet, but I'm excited to check it out.
Speaker 3: I hope you like it.
Speaker 7: We made it with the intention of maybe you don't
Speaker 7: know Star Wars.
Speaker 3: That's okay, we got you. We'll explain our version of
Speaker 3: Star Wars.
Speaker 5: One question I wanted to ask you on the subject
Speaker 5: of mal Just the character, was if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 5: you were the first person to give him a voice
Speaker 5: correct incorrect, incorrect.
Speaker 3: Shoot.
Speaker 7: He was voiced by Peter Sarah Finowitz and very well
Speaker 7: by the way, in Star Wars episode one of the
Speaker 7: Phantom Matas, he had three lines.
Speaker 3: There wasn't. I don't remember him talking in that. Yes,
Speaker 3: my master, he did that. It was as yes, it
Speaker 3: was yes mama. No, no, he has one though. There
Speaker 3: was one line where.
Speaker 4: He sponsibly populated if the tricks was correct, that will
Speaker 4: find them quickly. Master a lasts, we will reveal our song,
Speaker 4: so the Jedi at last, we will have revenge.
Speaker 7: It's the way that he did it. Peter your checks
Speaker 7: in the mail. Yeah, so he that was the building block.
Speaker 7: That was the foundation for what Mike, So, did you
Speaker 7: work off that voice to develop my character? You needed
Speaker 7: to believe that that was his voice ten years before
Speaker 7: you met him, because he went through a whole awful
Speaker 7: experience for ten years and you meet him ten years older.
Speaker 3: So we thought there was some wiggle room there too.
Speaker 2: Was he doing time he.
Speaker 5: Basically yeah, yeah, doing dirt appeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so hard time squad. So there needed to be
Speaker 7: a sense that that was his voice when he was
Speaker 7: a young man, and specifically that was.
Speaker 3: His voice when he was going yes sir, no, sir,
Speaker 3: You know yes sir no, sir, you're just standing on ceremony,
Speaker 3: and then me and Dave devised that his actual voice
Speaker 3: that if you get him eating Dorito's and sipping on
Speaker 3: a mountain dew in a basement playing contra, he might
Speaker 3: be like, oh, come on, this game cheats. You know.
Speaker 2: That's a good visual.
Speaker 3: Damn your got.
Speaker 7: Very specific there, longing for the basements of my youth.
Speaker 3: I suppose did you know you were always going to
Speaker 3: do this? When? When? Did you know? When? Did you know?
Speaker 3: That's a better question.
Speaker 7: Perhaps I wanted to be an actor red, Like I said,
Speaker 7: I thought I would just sort of like go from.
Speaker 3: Well, now, wait a second. There was some were you
Speaker 3: eat a lot of plays as a kid, great school
Speaker 3: it was, but it was always for fun. I never
Speaker 3: took it seriously.
Speaker 7: Wow, So it's some But at some point there was,
Speaker 7: at some point there was some notion that I would
Speaker 7: because that how did this all work? I guess on
Speaker 7: some level I was always I had the belief that
Speaker 7: I'm like, no, I'm going to get some really cool experiences.
Speaker 7: I'll get to do some movies, I'll get to lead
Speaker 7: my own show, I'll get to do all these things.
Speaker 3: Somehow those things came to pass. I don't know if
Speaker 3: it was lucky, guess, but certainly luck had a lot
Speaker 3: to do with it. I'm not one of those people
Speaker 3: who goes, you know, I mean, you know, I worked
Speaker 3: really hard and this, and then I just climb the
Speaker 3: ladder and I worked hard.
Speaker 7: But yeah, you think you worked all Yeah, oh, because
Speaker 7: they didn't work hard. No, everyone works hard. Everyone who
Speaker 7: gets anywhere works hard. It's just that some people work
Speaker 7: hard and then also.
Speaker 3: Get to be lucky. And I'm one of those people.
Speaker 7: So I don't I don't take credit for the entirety
Speaker 7: of what's happened to me. I've been very, very fortunate
Speaker 7: to be in the right place at the right time.
Speaker 1: It's several Ok, there's nothing wrong with that, you know.
Speaker 1: Harrison Ford, of all people, was asked, he said, what
Speaker 1: what do you It was one of those entertainment Tonight
Speaker 1: things and they said, so to what do you contribute?
Speaker 3: I mean, were you just dedicated and this and that?
Speaker 2: Because I mean, you know, Indiana.
Speaker 3: Jones Hans, so, oh my god, could could you be
Speaker 3: any bigger?
Speaker 2: He goes, I was just lucky.
Speaker 3: It was just sucky. What Yeah, that's how he said it.
Speaker 3: It was just lucky. It was in the right place.
Speaker 3: At the right time.
Speaker 7: Again, that's charlish and Jordan at the casting office and
Speaker 7: George said, hey, Harrison, you want to read for he
Speaker 7: and solo?
Speaker 3: And like, what the hell is that? Yeah? He was
Speaker 3: the reader. That's great. He was the reader.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so Mark, Carrie Fisher and Kurt Russell and a
Speaker 7: whole bunch of people came in to read for.
Speaker 3: The role, including I think walking.
Speaker 7: And and uh and I think Paccino might have even
Speaker 7: read for it.
Speaker 3: And oh my god, there's a skit. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 3: skit for you. Okay, So Michael Corleone's here. Great, Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's really good.
Speaker 7: So so but Harrison Ford was the reader, and and
Speaker 7: it was. It was after a few seconds, I guess,
Speaker 7: after they he'd been reading with various people, They're like,
Speaker 7: we should pair him up with the group of his own,
Speaker 7: because Lucas wanted to hire a group. These reactors work
Speaker 7: really well together. These reactors work really well together. These
Speaker 7: reactors work well together. And and then he paired Harrison
Speaker 7: up with Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill, which is, you know, seemed.
Speaker 3: To have worked out.
Speaker 7: Might be on disres but it's it's rings a bell, fascinating.
Speaker 3: That's the way they did it.
Speaker 7: And you know, and they they really those three actors
Speaker 7: just had their their territory.
Speaker 3: You know, and and and all three of them, speaking of.
Speaker 7: What we're talking about today, had extraordinary vocal mechanisms. And
Speaker 7: you can't you can't tell me that Harrison Ford, even
Speaker 7: though he was born with this amazing mechanism.
Speaker 3: You see what he does with it. You're like, no,
Speaker 3: that guy knows exactly what he's doing with his voice.
Speaker 7: That's what you know. There's never a moment where you
Speaker 7: don't understand Harrison Ford. You know, Cherway, take the professor
Speaker 7: in the back and plug him into the hyperdrive.
Speaker 3: You know. He he's you know.
Speaker 7: And then Mark Hamill gifted great ear, extraordinary, really good.
Speaker 7: And Luke Skywalker's vocal performance is totally underrated because he
Speaker 7: goes from you know, but.
Speaker 3: I was about to take to take the power converters.
Speaker 3: He goes from that. That's the line I always think of.
Speaker 2: That was it was in my head.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so you go from that performance to the joker,
Speaker 7: I'm not afraid You're weird, and he's he's sort of halfway.
Speaker 3: He's springboarded from that. Luke this you know, oh you
Speaker 3: bet I could I'm not such a bad pilot. Stuff.
Speaker 3: We have to sit here and listen to. It goes
Speaker 3: from that to I'm not looking for a friend, I'm
Speaker 3: looking for a Jedi master.
Speaker 7: A little bit of the kid, but that's different. That's
Speaker 7: an older guy right there. He's been fighting in the
Speaker 7: war for a few years. And then you go to
Speaker 7: a return of the Jedi.
Speaker 3: He goes, soon I will be dead, and you with
Speaker 3: me saying to the emperor announcing.
Speaker 7: Like, you know, your over confidence is your weakness, and
Speaker 7: you're just like, this is a guy who knows exactly
Speaker 7: what he's doing in terms of the trajectory of the
Speaker 7: character of the performance, the physical performance, the voice. Then
Speaker 7: of course you have Carrie Fisher, who has one of
Speaker 7: the most epic voices in cinema history, just like who
Speaker 7: sounds like that. She just had this extraordinary depth and
Speaker 7: gravitas to her voice, and yet she was also, you know,
Speaker 7: so charismatic, soft at times, very very driven at times,
Speaker 7: the natural leader of the three, you know, so much
Speaker 7: was just how those actors use their voices, you know,
Speaker 7: And I have this thing with actors where I'm like,
Speaker 7: if you can't do a halfway decent, it doesn't matter
Speaker 7: who you are, just a regular person on the street.
Speaker 7: You'd be like, do Christopher walking. They'd be like, well,
Speaker 7: it's crazy, you know, or they would do some approximation
Speaker 7: and they would say it's crazy, you know, you know, wow,
Speaker 7: Yeah it starts off like that. But he always that's
Speaker 7: in the same place. But if you or you know,
Speaker 7: the FBI is going to pay me how to sif
Speaker 7: you know, like, if you can't do an impression of
Speaker 7: an actor, even a bad one.
Speaker 3: It's possible that that's not a very interesting actor. It's possible.
Speaker 7: There are exceptions, people who's you've got something really crazy
Speaker 7: going on here or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean Marty Feldmann eyes.
Speaker 3: That's right. Maybe not that much, but yeah, a little
Speaker 3: too much character, right, but but no, maybe just the
Speaker 3: right amount.
Speaker 7: But the actors who have interesting voices, they they give
Speaker 7: you something that solidifies them in your brain and and
Speaker 7: and do they bring character to it, which is again
Speaker 7: unfortunately a little bit we've swayed too far into the
Speaker 7: ultra naturalistic world in terms of film and TV.
Speaker 1: Yeah, can tell you how many times, what do you mean, well,
Speaker 1: I know John there, you know.
Speaker 7: Yeah, right, they're like just just be man, just be
Speaker 7: and then you know, so these people are just stay
Speaker 7: in lives like this, and.
Speaker 3: Then everyone turns on the subtitles.
Speaker 7: Because they're just talking like this and there's no real
Speaker 7: voice and there's no real ability, you know, and what
Speaker 7: what how?
Speaker 3: How I was trained by my.
Speaker 7: Voice and speech teacher for two years was don't think
Speaker 7: of it as you're.
Speaker 3: Putting on a voice to be to put on a
Speaker 3: Don't think of it that way.
Speaker 7: Think of it as you really need to get that
Speaker 7: person to understand you right now. You need them to
Speaker 7: whatever it is you're trying to get them to do.
Speaker 7: You're trying to convince them of something and trying to
Speaker 7: express something that's really important to you. And that's why
Speaker 7: your character's voice sounds like that, That's what that is.
Speaker 7: And so I was always you know, speaking of being human.
Speaker 7: I I the character's voice is not my own, but
Speaker 7: I'm like, oh, I think he expresses himself like this
Speaker 7: and did it the way that I did it.
Speaker 3: But I wish we had more latitude to do that
Speaker 3: in film and TV. Where I mean, where's the James
Speaker 3: Cagney's of today? They don't exist? Where's you know?
Speaker 2: But I thought that was you?
Speaker 7: Yeah, a lot, but you know, it's I there's so
Speaker 7: much possible that you could do with film and TV.
Speaker 7: There's so much and and because they wanted to be
Speaker 7: so naturalistic, which.
Speaker 3: Hey, look go ahead and do that. That's great, But
Speaker 3: does everything have to be like that? You know Orson Wells.
Speaker 7: There was this great interview I saw with Orson Wells,
Speaker 7: or maybe I heard it from Rson Wells.
Speaker 3: I mean it was remember when he did the War
Speaker 3: of the World's thing. Oh yeah, so yeah, he did
Speaker 3: this thing. He did a radio play of War the
Speaker 3: worlds and they played.
Speaker 9: It like the Humanity, the Tripods of la They did
Speaker 9: a sort of faux fake.
Speaker 7: News reporting whoever that was, yeah, of aliens landing the Earth,
Speaker 7: and it was so well done that people it created hysteria.
Speaker 7: People thought they were listening to the radio and there
Speaker 7: were news reports of aliens attacking the planet Earth.
Speaker 3: And so there are these wonderful Oh there was these
Speaker 3: wonderful energies with Orson Wells where he's just he's well,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I truly it wasn't our intention to create
Speaker 3: a hysteria. And and you could see that he's sitting there.
Speaker 3: You can see that the guy inside him is going,
Speaker 3: this is so ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, guys, he said he was really got
Speaker 1: a kick out of it doing it. Probably, yeah, like
Speaker 1: we but but it was, like we said, it was
Speaker 1: a radio play. There were even like little station breaks
Speaker 1: where we called it the War of the World and
Speaker 1: that's an HG. Wells thing and and okay, so a
Speaker 1: bunch of people.
Speaker 7: So you could see that he's he's really trying to
Speaker 7: feign as if he's really sorry that people were so upset,
Speaker 7: and certainly wasn't our intention.
Speaker 3: We were just trying to it's the young Arsenals.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, the younger Olsen Wells.
Speaker 3: You know a remote farm. Oh, let me tell you something.
Speaker 3: That was what we did. You know, this is a
Speaker 3: younger Orson Wells and stuff like that. At some point
Speaker 3: he bring the mask falls, he gets fed up.
Speaker 9: So sorry, I'm so very very apologetic, and they're like, well,
Speaker 9: aren't you worried, mister Wells, that that when you performed that,
Speaker 9: that it could be mistaken for real life? Are you
Speaker 9: worried that I could be mistaken for real life? And
Speaker 9: he's like, well, I should hope not. He's just got angry.
Speaker 9: I should hope not. I should hope that nothing that
Speaker 9: I do could ever be mistaken for real life, because
Speaker 9: people live real lives. They have a you know, they
Speaker 9: go to their jobs, they.
Speaker 3: Have the same thing, and this and that.
Speaker 9: What we're trying to do is something extraordinary, something that
Speaker 9: couldn't happen in real life, something that is so extraordinary
Speaker 9: that it's meant to be put in front of you.
Speaker 9: Is a dramatic work because it happened. What we're creating
Speaker 9: is something absolutely above and beyond heightened that it's worth
Speaker 9: telling a story about. So if we're I'm sorry, if
Speaker 9: we're people are mistaking us for real life, we've really failed.
Speaker 9: We've absolutely failed. He's just like, he's like.
Speaker 7: You know, but I love that point the point of
Speaker 7: view of like, no, Like, if we're telling a story,
Speaker 7: shouldn't We're not going to tell the story about a
Speaker 7: guy eating cereal and that's it.
Speaker 3: Something extraordinary has to happen in order for that.
Speaker 7: To be worth telling a story that's so true. So
Speaker 7: so that's where I come from.
Speaker 3: I often I've had directors have to, you know, maybe
Speaker 3: pull me back a little bit.
Speaker 7: You know, And and look, I really do love the
Speaker 7: very internal subtle I love that I've done that. I
Speaker 7: became good at that. But I'm I'll tell you what
Speaker 7: I'd like to do is like look at Christopher Lloyd's career.
Speaker 7: Look at what he did, you know, like back to
Speaker 7: the future, right the word is. And I've you know,
Speaker 7: we've heard interviews. I've even talked to a couple of
Speaker 7: the people that were the leads of that, and and
Speaker 7: essentially what you know, Eric Stultz was kind of is
Speaker 7: Marty mcflood right, and what was he well, he was
Speaker 7: playing it very serious, very real, like oh my god,
Speaker 7: what I'm trapped out of time? And then he surrounded
Speaker 7: my performances like, oh hey, Biffa, guys, christ why do
Speaker 7: you keep following me around?
Speaker 3: And you know, a butt head?
Speaker 7: And you know, you know, yeah, it's like if that's
Speaker 7: the world you're living, Yes you can be the every man.
Speaker 3: Yes you can be kind of smaller, but you'd.
Speaker 7: Better you better keep the laughs going, you better keep
Speaker 7: the interest in the spark.
Speaker 2: Of this, the neutral in the middle of a scene.
Speaker 3: You don't want to be a hole of energy, you know.
Speaker 7: And I suspect, not that I was there, but I
Speaker 7: suspect that that was the difference in style that caused
Speaker 7: them to go, we got to get so I miss
Speaker 7: that type of thing, and we get that. One of
Speaker 7: the things I like about voiceover is we get that
Speaker 7: in voiceover. You know when we when we did Darth
Speaker 7: Maul for the solo show, I remember Ron Howard and
Speaker 7: you know rightly. So he said, okay, so your you
Speaker 7: know the voice for moll it's a little out there.
Speaker 3: It's a little out there, and.
Speaker 7: I'm like, it is, but I think that it's that
Speaker 7: it's also Star Wars and he goes interesting, He's like,
Speaker 7: so do you think we do it any different for
Speaker 7: this movie.
Speaker 3: I'm like, look, look, I don't think so.
Speaker 7: I think we do it the same way now now
Speaker 7: mind you, And I said, this is what I'll grant
Speaker 7: you because what we had me record the voice. Then
Speaker 7: then Ray Park went and he shot lip syncing me,
Speaker 7: and then we recorded the voice again over that, and
Speaker 7: and when we recorded the voice it all felt right
Speaker 7: and I was expressive and stuff like that. Then when
Speaker 7: we shot with Ray, He's like, I feel like it's
Speaker 7: a little too much. I'm like, I'll tell you why
Speaker 7: it's too much, if you don't mind, Ron, it's because
Speaker 7: Ray is really he.
Speaker 3: Was like putting in all this physical stuff. That was great,
Speaker 3: by the way, it was really good. If he's going
Speaker 3: to go that far and move and this that and do,
Speaker 3: then I am a man.
Speaker 7: I got to match the juice. But I have to
Speaker 7: anchor it. Yeah, you know, it's like Patrick Stewart right
Speaker 7: sitting there talking like this. Patrick stood, you know that
Speaker 7: the first beauty if any staff leet all of a
Speaker 7: sudden is to the truth. That works better if he's
Speaker 7: still and the voice does the work right. But if
Speaker 7: he's going the first dirty if any stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah too much. Yeah, it's do smoo Joe for sure.
Speaker 7: However, there are also other actors in opposite they're just
Speaker 7: like kind of talking like this, and they're just fucking
Speaker 7: I can't.
Speaker 3: I can't believe that you do because their voice is
Speaker 3: now anchoring it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Patrick Stewart, he's completely still on his tests. I
Speaker 7: will tell you exactly what we're doing, make it so,
Speaker 7: you know.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 7: So with with with the Ray Park thing, the only
Speaker 7: thing I did different was I'm like, no, if Ray
Speaker 7: is the more physical Ray is being, I will anchor
Speaker 7: it by keeping the voice steady if he holds. But
Speaker 7: I'm like, but originally there was another they reshot it
Speaker 7: there was originally Ray was perfectly still.
Speaker 3: Oh so when he was perfectly still, I took my voice.
Speaker 3: You were the directions, and I did this to keep
Speaker 3: it buoyant. Then when he was less still, I kept
Speaker 3: it here. You know.
Speaker 5: So that's incredible. I'm curious as an actor myself, how
Speaker 5: much like script analysis do you do to get to
Speaker 5: these points.
Speaker 7: I'm a little bit of a nerd for this stuff,
Speaker 7: you know. It's it's yeah, there's and I'm the first guy,
Speaker 7: like on Shadow Lord, when we're watching a cut, I
Speaker 7: am the first guy to go, I played this whole
Speaker 7: thing wrong.
Speaker 3: Let me eighty or it not the whole thing wrong,
Speaker 3: you know, like it should be now that we're seeing it.
Speaker 7: It should be this. Yeah, I'm the first guy to
Speaker 7: do that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well you're not alone with that one. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: You think, oh god, oh jeez.
Speaker 2: You know you think and then you're guilty.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you think about it, I mean, there's
Speaker 1: three or four ways that any given line, any given
Speaker 1: scene can go and still work.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It's just that and I've I've over the years, I've
Speaker 1: discovered that I it's not that I could have done
Speaker 1: it differently and it would have been better. It's just
Speaker 1: that you could have done it differently and just as good,
Speaker 1: maybe a little better. But hindsight is twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Well, so in my case, I feel like I've saved
Speaker 7: the show from some bad performances.
Speaker 3: I mean legitimately where I'm like.
Speaker 7: I don't think that works. I don't think that works. Yeah,
Speaker 7: he's a tough character to nail, especially when he's kind
Speaker 7: of like the central force.
Speaker 3: Of the show.
Speaker 7: But you're right, No, you're right, And most of the
Speaker 7: time you're like, no, it's it's good.
Speaker 3: It's works. We're not able to ask, but I guess,
Speaker 3: I guess.
Speaker 1: And if everybody else is okay, the directors okay, the
Speaker 1: writer's okay, the audience is okay, you know what, Okay,
Speaker 1: let it go. Yeah, yeah, exactly, I guess that's all
Speaker 1: I needed anyway.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's what you were looking for.
Speaker 3: Now, Yeah, but I wanted you to love it for
Speaker 3: this reason. Wow.
Speaker 7: Well, you know, for me, it's it's it's never about like,
Speaker 7: oh I wanted a certain thing. It's it's more like, Okay,
Speaker 7: I'll give you an example. In Shadow Lord, I'm gonna
Speaker 7: call myself out here. There's this whole thing in episode
Speaker 7: two where he's talking to this character named Devon. Devon
Speaker 7: is a young Jedi padawan. He's been living a very
Speaker 7: hard life and Maul comes in, going, I see that
Speaker 7: you're struggling, and I offer to train you, I offer
Speaker 7: to help you. And he has these wonderful lines like,
Speaker 7: you're operating under the premise that I'm somehow the villain here,
Speaker 7: but it's not as simple as good and evil?
Speaker 3: How can I prove to you that we're on the
Speaker 3: same side?
Speaker 7: And that's a hell of a line, it is, And
Speaker 7: the way that we did it the first time, this
Speaker 7: is absolutely wrong, absolutely wrong.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'll do it for you. Are you ready?
Speaker 2: Okay, get ready for the wrong.
Speaker 4: You're operating under the premise that I'm somehow the villain here,
Speaker 4: but it is not as simple as good and evil?
Speaker 4: How can I prove to you the bell I'm the
Speaker 4: safe side?
Speaker 3: And I was like, how did I ever think that works?
Speaker 3: Because Al he's saying he's not the villain, he sure
Speaker 3: sounds like the villain to me. Yeah, that's what I was.
Speaker 7: I was like, what am I doing? I I went
Speaker 7: to Brad. I'm like Brad Brad, Brad, Brad, what have
Speaker 7: I done?
Speaker 3: And so we did it again. We did because we
Speaker 3: weren't dude.
Speaker 7: We were trying to figure out Yeah, we were trying
Speaker 7: to figure out who who this character was specifically for
Speaker 7: this show.
Speaker 3: So we were bracketing a target, doing kinds of stuff.
Speaker 4: And where we ended up with was, you're operating under
Speaker 4: the premise that I'm somehow the villain here, but it's
Speaker 4: not as good as it's not as simple as good
Speaker 4: an evil. How can I prove to you that we
Speaker 4: are on the same side, you know, And.
Speaker 7: I'm like, no, I buy him now, I buy him
Speaker 7: that he's trying to communicate with this person the other one.
Speaker 3: I'm like, what is he doing? He was hiding something, right,
Speaker 3: like oh mus twisted. Yeah, he's going to say cartoon.
Speaker 7: So yeah, there there are legitimately things that I have
Speaker 7: caught on in my own performance that I'm like, we are.
Speaker 7: I had steered us toward oblivion, and I must now
Speaker 7: ask us to do it again.
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah, well, you don't be too hard on yourself.
Speaker 3: It seems to be working out. You know, it can
Speaker 3: always not work out. It can always you can always
Speaker 3: mess it up.
Speaker 1: I think if you're a fan of everything we do
Speaker 1: here at tuned In with Jim Cummings, you could support
Speaker 1: the show on Patreon for bonus exclusive podcasts, as well
Speaker 1: as early in ad free access to the show itself,
Speaker 1: prize drawings, and more. You'll feel the difference, so go
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Speaker 1: dot com slash Jim Cummings Podcast.
Speaker 2: Do it now?
Speaker 3: All right?
Speaker 5: Well, I think we're to the point of the Oh yes,
Speaker 5: Oh sorry, I didn't mean so.
Speaker 3: I agree.
Speaker 5: I think we're at the point of the show where
Speaker 5: we do a little game. I don't know if you
Speaker 5: know this game or not. It's a little voice swap
Speaker 5: that game that we do. If you're up for it, sure,
Speaker 5: I'll explain how it works. So Jim will start off
Speaker 5: doing a voice line of one of his characters, let's say,
Speaker 5: like dark Wing Duck you know, I'm the tear of
Speaker 5: their flaps in the night, and then you will repeat
Speaker 5: that line but in one of your character voices, so
Speaker 5: like Mall or Palpatine or whoever, and then we'll switch
Speaker 5: back and forth a couple of times. If that sounds
Speaker 5: good to you, yeah's sound good?
Speaker 3: Okay? All right, let's think of a good one here.
Speaker 5: Well, why don't we do a Star Wars crossover with
Speaker 5: Hondo right right off the back?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, all right, all right, all right, here's here's
Speaker 1: a Hondo for you. I made not to be as
Speaker 1: young as I once was, but I'm older.
Speaker 3: Okay, here we go.
Speaker 10: I may not be as young as I once swap,
Speaker 10: but I'm old.
Speaker 2: Wow. That was some good cackle work.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: You've cackled before.
Speaker 3: I grew up on Transformers, man, Frank Welker.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3: That's told. Is Palpatine? Palpatine's up there? Yeah he is hundreds, right,
Speaker 3: he's fifty three.
Speaker 7: No, he's God, you know Palpatine. That's a good question.
Speaker 7: Is he has he used.
Speaker 10: The power of the false who bring his life unnatural length?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I always you know Palpatine. That's there's a
Speaker 1: what is it palpitating? You know, I've often thought that
Speaker 1: George Lucas names his characters after maladies. Oh sure, you
Speaker 1: know Han Solo or you know, Flying all by himself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: mal he's got mall built right into it. And Darth
Speaker 1: Vader sounds I mean the first time I heard it,
Speaker 1: I'm a dark vad, dark invader. What's a nafe dark?
Speaker 1: And I mean, you know, subconsciously, I think we get those.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 7: He never said this, but I've always thought that the
Speaker 7: Sith names were mockeries of who they once were. For example,
Speaker 7: Count Dooku, you know, he's.
Speaker 3: This, he's this refined man.
Speaker 7: Yes, uh, and he's he's a political leader and and
Speaker 7: he says that he wants everything to work out for
Speaker 7: his people and all this.
Speaker 3: Stuff, and and and Palpatin goes.
Speaker 4: No, you're death Tyrannis.
Speaker 3: You know, death Tyrannics, You're you're at Tirrant. Actually, screw you.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 7: Darth Maul wishes to be this sophisticated like, no, I'm
Speaker 7: well read, I'm I'm very smart.
Speaker 3: I'm educated.
Speaker 7: And he's like, no, you're a you're a mall, You're
Speaker 7: a weapon, go and go and be a weapon. You're
Speaker 7: a sledge. Yeah, I don't need you to be all
Speaker 7: of that, you know, And he does, but he's like, yeah,
Speaker 7: but screw you.
Speaker 3: Also there's uh, Darth Vader is the saddest one. He goes,
Speaker 3: you are.
Speaker 7: You are the dark Father, and you have no children
Speaker 7: because your wife died.
Speaker 3: That's what he's doing.
Speaker 7: Never forget you're the father, you're the childless father, and
Speaker 7: live with that. That's the the you know, that's going
Speaker 7: to give you the the sadness, the anger that you
Speaker 7: need to do my bidding.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I always felt like Palpatine named his apprentices, or even hell,
Speaker 7: it even happened to Palpatine that he's.
Speaker 10: He's very refined, and he does all of these things,
Speaker 10: and he takes care of these people, and he's a
Speaker 10: wonderful publicis as a chancellor of the Grand Public.
Speaker 7: But his master is like, no, you sneaky, you'r darth citious,
Speaker 7: you sneak ye?
Speaker 2: Yeah, insidious written right into it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh. And then of course his master who used the
Speaker 3: Midichlorians to safe.
Speaker 7: You know, he could keep people alive that he cared about,
Speaker 7: and he was you know, it was all about life
Speaker 7: and keeping the people he cared about alive.
Speaker 3: But his name is Plaguis, which is quite the opposite.
Speaker 7: So you're like, so I think that they had a
Speaker 7: way of sticking it to their apprentices when they named them.
Speaker 3: I think it's that, you know, can we do another
Speaker 3: voice swap here? Yes?
Speaker 2: Yeah, give me one of your characters one of your lines,
Speaker 2: and one of.
Speaker 3: My characters one of my lines. Okay, all right, all right,
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 4: I was robbed of my destiny by the Jedi by
Speaker 4: Ubi Wan Canooby.
Speaker 2: I was robbed of my destiny by the Jedi by
Speaker 2: Obi one Kanoby.
Speaker 3: That was. That's terrific. That's terrific, because don't bother. Okay,
Speaker 3: that really works. I think you have the job man.
Speaker 2: You want to Yeah, like please Winnie.
Speaker 3: The Pooh and the Anti Pool. Oh my god, that
Speaker 3: would be prollyd there you go. Well, do we have
Speaker 3: another one? I don't know. Should we do one more?
Speaker 5: Yeah, let's do one more. Who's like a who's like
Speaker 5: a mumbling character of yours? Because I'm gonna ask you
Speaker 5: to do Deacon Saint John and I feel like a
Speaker 5: very a very something that characterizes him a lot in
Speaker 5: the Yeah, talking to himself and mumbling.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know, who would you think.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I had any true mumblers. I
Speaker 1: mean ed, all he did was laugh. Yeah, that's not
Speaker 1: that's well.
Speaker 5: What about trouble that he fumbles?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I can't see.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's a hard quote.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he doesn't he doesn't.
Speaker 3: He's not really quotable, you know, he's like, that's tas
Speaker 3: like water.
Speaker 5: What about like what about bonkers? Like when he gets
Speaker 5: caught up in like a frenzy kind of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true, that's true.
Speaker 1: Uh oh gosh, it doesn't really have it.
Speaker 3: He didn't have a good catchphrase.
Speaker 2: It's always good to have a good catchphrase.
Speaker 3: Bonker's de bocat original tune detective. Isn't there one? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that that could be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. Here we go.
Speaker 1: I am Bunkers D Bombcat, the first and only official
Speaker 1: tune detective. I started the turn Division of Hollywood PD
Speaker 1: in Tonetown. Now you'll never be able to remember that,
Speaker 1: and I won't either, But I am Bunker's d Bobcat,
Speaker 1: the first toon detective in Tunetown.
Speaker 3: D Bobka bonkers d.
Speaker 2: It stands for.
Speaker 3: The you want to miss Deacon.
Speaker 7: I'm bonkers, I'm bonkers the Bobcat, the first tone detective
Speaker 7: in Tonetown.
Speaker 3: Is that? Yeah? That's kind of john.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: One of my favorite things about this podcast and watching
Speaker 5: people due not only their voices but impressions, is always
Speaker 5: just the physical transformation of getting into a voice, Like
Speaker 5: how you shifted in everything.
Speaker 3: It's just, you know, it's always so cool to see
Speaker 3: with the peakap stuff.
Speaker 7: You know, So you're standing there looking like a complete bozo. Yes,
Speaker 7: And I remember the director he said to me. He's like,
Speaker 7: he said, don't stand like that, like why you look
Speaker 7: really goofy. And I'm like, look, and I pointed at
Speaker 7: the screen and the screen had all his gear and
Speaker 7: the biker he's a biker, and he's like, oh, you
Speaker 7: actually don't look a.
Speaker 3: Look like a tool at all. That looks really good
Speaker 3: on Michael things.
Speaker 7: I'm just going to try to not be self conscious
Speaker 7: while I'm dressed like a you know, it's shifted in
Speaker 7: a spandex suit trying to be a biker. But you know,
Speaker 7: like because you could, you know, you could practice the
Speaker 7: swagger in the move while looking at the screen.
Speaker 3: But yes, for.
Speaker 5: Anybody who doesn't know they're showing your render to you
Speaker 5: on a screen showing a rough version in the stage
Speaker 5: yet Yeah.
Speaker 3: And John Garvin, John Garvin.
Speaker 7: Was hilarious on that because he was he'd give the
Speaker 7: kind of direction like, Okay, why did you do it
Speaker 7: like that?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: Perfect? But he was, but he meant he made sincere.
Speaker 3: He meant it. I'm like, oh well, and he's like, no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 2: Explain you weren't being chastised.
Speaker 3: Explain it to me. Yeah, And then we would talk.
Speaker 7: He's like, Okay, interesting, I think I needed to do
Speaker 7: it like that, but bring a little bit of that
Speaker 7: into that and do it like that on this line.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, oh, so we had a really successful
Speaker 3: working relationship on that, and that's great.
Speaker 2: That really matters, doesn't it.
Speaker 3: Yes, so great. That guy was great.
Speaker 7: And at first though he would he would when I
Speaker 7: was trying to find Deacon's voice, he was like, I
Speaker 7: sort of did him like this, and he's like, what's
Speaker 7: what the John Wayne thing? He's like, get rid of it.
Speaker 7: He's like, I don't know, figure something else out. So
Speaker 7: I actually started just kind of copying him because he's
Speaker 7: from Oregon. It was supposed to take place in Oregon,
Speaker 7: so I sort of I sort of took my voice
Speaker 7: and and kind of copied his dialogue, his hard ours
Speaker 7: and his you know anyway Oregon.
Speaker 3: I didn't even know they had an accent up there.
Speaker 1: I just thought they were cold, gorgeous out there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true, that's true. Oh man, very cool man.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 5: It's really fun, really fun.
Speaker 3: Can you let people know where to where to follow you? What? Yeah? Uh?
Speaker 3: S what we're one on Instagram? Uh? Number one? Or
Speaker 3: oh any just one number one? Okay? S what we're
Speaker 3: one Instagram? And uh? And I think Sam, would we're
Speaker 3: on Twitter? Something like that.
Speaker 1: You're not a fan of yourself, you don't clock it? Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah understood. I don't like that guy, Yeah understood. Yeah
Speaker 1: what am I doing?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah? And of course go watch mall shadow Lord
Speaker 3: out now the whole season's out of the whole season z. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, wow, that's exciting stuff. Anything coming up that we
Speaker 5: can look forward to.
Speaker 3: What do we learn about me? No? No, I mean
Speaker 3: I actually actually there are there are some things, but
Speaker 3: who knows, who knows how they go?
Speaker 7: And you know, a friend of mine, you guys is like,
Speaker 7: unless you're eating off the craft service table, you don't know.
Speaker 3: If you have a job, yea, even even then, even then.
Speaker 5: That's right, even then they might just cut your part.
Speaker 5: Yeah I've felt that before.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, well, thank you so much, thank.
Speaker 5: You, thanks for having me man, really appreciate it absolutely.
Speaker 5: Sam witward, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you and thank thank
Speaker 5: you guys all out there for watching. Really appreciate you
Speaker 5: guys as well. I mean I say this every episode,
Speaker 5: but this podcast really couldn't happen without you guys. If
Speaker 5: you you know, like I said at the beginning, if
Speaker 5: you guys want to come and check out the podcast live.
Speaker 5: We're doing a partnership with Fan Expo this year. We
Speaker 5: have about I think we have five shows left. Hold on,
Speaker 5: I'm going to pull it up really quick, just to
Speaker 5: reiterate where we're going to be. Yes, Yes, the next
Speaker 5: live podcast that we're doing will be in Chicago Fan
Speaker 5: Expo Chicago August fourteenth to the sixteenth, followed by Toronto
Speaker 5: August twenty seventh to the thirtieth, Dallas September eleventh to thirteenth,
Speaker 5: and San Francisco November twenty seventh to the twenty ninth.
Speaker 5: And they're still adding dates. I know Anaheim is up
Speaker 5: in the air for a couple of weeks from now,
Speaker 5: and we have some good guests coming on as well. Yes,
Speaker 5: got a lot of good episodes coming out for you guys.
Speaker 5: I believe Chicago Fan Expo. I don't want to jinx it.
Speaker 5: But there's a good chance that we'll be interviewing mister
Speaker 5: T in Chicago live, so that will be pretty cool.
Speaker 5: Don't make us pity you, and be sure. YouTube's a
Speaker 5: weird website. It's literally possible to be watching this video
Speaker 5: right now. If you're not subscribed, it could never be
Speaker 5: recommended to you ever. Again, it's bizarre, So if you
Speaker 5: don't want that to happen, be sure to like and subscribe.
Speaker 5: It helps us, it helps you find more content like this,
Speaker 5: and you like it so much. Good news. We're on
Speaker 5: Patreon as well. Tuned in with Jim Cummings. On Patreon,
Speaker 5: you can find bonus episodes. Why do I sound weird? Well,
Speaker 5: you can find bonus episodes that are not aired anywhere else.
Speaker 5: You get extended interviews, a whole bunch of good stuffs, contest,
Speaker 5: good boys, all that good stuff. So be sure to
Speaker 5: check us out there. And with all that said and done,
Speaker 5: once again, I am producer Chris the Legend himself, mister
Speaker 5: Jim Cummings, Thank you, sir, and thank you again so much,
Speaker 5: Sam Whitworth for being here. Thanks love, We will see
Speaker 5: you in the next one.
Speaker 3: Didja boom? Thank you gentlemen, Thank you.
Speaker 2: This was great, great great.
Speaker 1: Our podcast has partnered with the largest comic con in
Speaker 1: North America, fan Expo, the Juggernaut. We're touring all over
Speaker 1: North America live, so get your tickets and come be
Speaker 1: a part of the live audience. It'll be fun. Go
Speaker 1: to fanexpohq dot com for the tickets. We'll see you
Speaker 1: in a city near you or a little bit away,
Speaker 1: but you can drive. Thanks for tuning in to tuned
Speaker 1: In with Jim Cummings