Giving Good Voice

Ok Grandma, I'm going to explain it to you one more time. You know when you're watching TV and the commercial comes on? Well, in the commercial, I'm the dog's voice. The dog that says, "Pet Fresh. Woooorks till the cows come home. Pet Fresh!"

"But I don't see you in that commercial. When do I see you? It's a commercial with animals dressed like people, right?"

"Right."

"But where are you?"

"You don't see me. You hear me."

"Are you the one knocking on the door?"

"No, that's a pig. I'm the one who talks. Over the music? You know, the voice-over."

"I didn't see you in that commercial."

"Grandma, nobody sees me in that commercial. You hear me. I'm the guy who's talking while the dog vacuums the rug. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"I don't see you?"

"Right. You hear me."

"Ohhh. ... [She thinks about it a bit.] Well, when am I going to see you?"

I try to think of some word that will make her understand. "You'll never see me. I read the commercial."

By a stroke of luck, Pet Fresh comes on the TV a few minutes later. In my grandmother's apartment, the TV is on constantly.

"See, Grandma! That's me! That voice. That's my voice you're hearing!"

"Where? Where are you? I don't see you. Damn it! Where?"

Oh, dear God.

•

I talk for a living. One of an elite clique of voice-over artists throughout the country, I pull in a decent yearly salary by being invisible. I am the words behind the close-up of the chewing gum on your television, the goofy growl in the throat of the cartoon animal your kids adore, the English dialog coming from the mouths of foreign film stars. I've played a hamburger, a toilet and a spleen. I'm having the time of my life.

Admittedly, explaining this unique career choice to my grandmother is a challenge, but it's nothing compared with the real problem I face these days: My professional turf is being invaded. Every celebrity in Hollywood, it seems, is clamoring to get into voice-overs. Why? According to Jeff Danis, a talent agent at International Creative Management in Los Angeles, stars want to do voice-overs for two simple reasons: "It's great money and it's minimal work. I get calls every day from big names who are suddenly realizing how lucrative these jobs can be. Then again," he adds, "not all stars can do voice-overs. They're tough to pull off---it takes a certain way of talking, a special ability."

I discovered I had this "special ability" ten years ago, when I bought a telephone answering machine. I was performing in a play at the Folger Theater in Washington, D.C., and once a week, for no particular reason, I would record a different funny message on the machine---one day I was a Southern redneck, the next I was Dracula. My friends loved calling my home (I once counted 200 calls in one day), but then something bigger began to happen: Professional people started calling---people in a position to pay me for my voice. One of those calls came from a woman at an ad agency who wanted to know if I did voice-overs. "Sure I do," I said, not having the slightest idea what a voice-over was but fully aware that actors never turn work down. Eventually, the ad woman hired me, and I began my career selling Chevrolets in the nation's capital. Since then, I've worked nonstop.

So, how decent a living do I make? you ask. Well, let's just say I haul in more than some lawyers but not as much as my plumber.

But enough about money. Follow me through my day and see if you can absorb what Grandma can't---or won't.

•

8 A.M.: Get up. Head for the bathroom. Turn on Good Morning, America. Nice show, network commercials. When a spot runs on a network, you make a little money each time it plays. This morning, I hear myself on a Drãno spot. My line: "Drãno. It clears and deodorizes!" It's not even breakfast and I've made my lunch money.

8:40 A.M.: Finished in the bathroom. Into the bedroom to get dressed. Turn on the TV. My wife, Laura (also an actor), wakes up. We continue to watch G.M.A. No more of my spots air. Bummer.

9:11 A.M.: Get on the bus to Manhattan. I'm the only nonsuit. I'm the only one smiling.

10 A.M.: Get off the bus, head for my first job of the day, at Eastside Film and Video. It's a TV commercial for Pizza Hut. I usually do three or four spots a month for Pizza Hut through its ad agency, B.B.D.O. I say good morning to the producer, Dale Bramwell. We've worked together on this account for a while, so I know the session will go pretty smoothly.

Bramwell sits in a large control room with the account rep, Adina Wachtel. The room is well appointed---soft couches, telephones, a filled candy jar and a huge TV screen. Dennis Meiners, the film editor, is there; so is Glenn Laredo, the recording engineer. He sits behind a huge console and manipulates a sea of knobs and buttons. His work area looks like the cockpit of a jet-liner. I have no idea what any of the buttons do except three---Record, Stop and Play.

In contrast to the control room, the area I'm in---the booth---reminds me of a small meat locker with a picture window. I have a stool, a music stand, a script, a microphone and a small TV monitor before me. Over the headphones, I hear Laredo "slate" the spot: "Pizza Hut, five-minute guarantee," he drones. "February nineteenth. Take one!" Suddenly, my TV monitor lights up; images of pizzas and happy faces dance across the screen.

My job is to talk when Bramwell tells me to. He informs me that I have four and a half seconds to say, "So come in and get a Personal Pan Pizza in just five minutes, guaranteed, or your next one's free." Four and a half seconds is not a lot of time, but I'll fit the words (continued on page 167) Giving Good Voice (continued from page 106) in. I'm not sure how it happens, but when you've done voice-overs for a while, you develop an inner clock---an ability to know just how long four and a half seconds is. Most of us voice-over artists can tell instantly if we're running long or short or right on the money. (What's really uncanny is when a group of us work together on a spot. I remember live of us in the same booth being told that we were running just a little long. Together, we shaved exactly one and a half seconds from the spot---precisely what we were told to do---without saying a word about it to one another.)

10:10 A.M.: I finish my first read. Bramwell pipes in over the headphones, "Great take, Chip. You're about a second long." So much for inner clocks.

10:35 A.M.: I head to my next appointment. It's a booking for Dunkin' Donuts at Howard Schwartz Recording. I walk there, since it's only a few blocks away. This one's a radio spot, which means there's more leeway to be creative but less money to be made: Union scale for recording a TV commercial is $275.65 for a session; in radio, it's $142.

11:05 A.M.: I'm at the mike again, this time playing a husband who has just shaved with the new Schick razor---the one I got for free at Dunkin' Donuts when I bought a Big One coffee. Mary Elaine Monti plays my wife, who can't keep her hands off my face.

"Sooo smoooth," she purrs as she runs her hands over my skin. I ask her to stop, because we're at a restaurant and people are watching. But she doesn't care---she just keeps cooing, "Sooo smoooth," while caressing my stubbleless cheeks. I try to tell her about the free-razor deal, simultaneously asking her to please control herself. She does not.

What's funny about all of this is that, in the booth. I'm the one who's actually squeezing and pulling my face. Monti is standing about eight feet from me, reading into her own microphone. We can't even see each other.

11:15 A.M.: Onward. Next, an audition. It works like a booking except you read the spot only once or twice and you don't get paid---yet. This agency, N. W. Ayer, is in a building on Eighth Avenue that looks like an elementary school pencil. The fat kind. I like coming here. The audition is for an AT&T radio campaign. The agency wants a young, smooth announcer to talk about the Richard Marx concert tour that AT&T is sponsoring.

My read is good. I may book this one. (Usually, within seconds, the producer and the actor know if they're going to work together: They hear it in our reads; we see it in their faces.) This producer, Gary Delemeester, is still smiling after I finish. I'm pretty sure my agents will hear from him.

Speaking of which, my agents at J. Michael Bloom & Associates in Manhattan do all of my scheduling for me. They arrange bookings, set up auditions, negotiate contracts. They are extremely important---without them. I'd be standing on subway platforms, spitting. Before I actually met an agent, I pictured them as crusty, squinty-eyed hucksters in soiled, mildewed clothing who sat around all day in small rooms, champing on cigars, yelling into telephones in loud, guttural voices about their "talented clients." Luckily, my agents are nothing like that. None of them smoke.

12:10 P.M.: I stop at a grocery store and walk through the condiments aisle, looking for the mayonnaise section. I find it. Carefully, I pull all the Hellmann's mayonnaise to the front of the shelf, where it can be more easily seen by shoppers. See, I'm the voice of Hellmann's. I wonder if advertisers are aware of how loyal we are.

12:15 P.M.: Break for lunch. What'll I have? Hmm---Personal Pan Pizza with sausage and ... ah, yes, a Dunkin' Donut for dessert. I do hope to work for Jack La Lanne soon.

1 P.M.: OK, this is fun. I'm dubbing a movie for producer Peter Fernandez (also a top voice-over artist). Fernandez gets copies of films from bigwigs in Hollywood who want him to excise the profanity so that the movies can be shown on television. Today, we're working on a film called Race for Glory. I'm doing the voices of the lead---a long-haired motorcycle guy---and two minor characters, an Italian and a German. Dubbing films demands extraordinary concentration, because, as you read from the script, you must match the actor's lips, voice and emotions---all at the same time.

You must also learn to keep a straight face: Each time I dub, there are always a few lines that make me laugh---make me wonder how I can possibly replace the dialog I'm reading. In Race for Glory, the killer line is "Un-fucking-believable!" I have to change it to "You finished building the bike!" How this new line will fit the actor's lips on film, I don't know. But it does---almost exactly.

I leave the studio, grateful that today's gig went smoother than the job we did for the movie Knightriders. That time, I was asked to change "Why don't you suck my cock?" to "Go ahead and eat my socks!" I was laughing so hard it took half an hour to get it right.

2 P.M.: Another audition. TV. I'm reading the voice of a tree. The audition is at G.S.S. Casting, where one of the casting directors, Billy Serow, does a great impression of Billy Crystal doing his great impression of Sammy Davis Jr. As soon as I arrive, I coax Serow into his act. I sing, "Who can take a rainbow?" Serow shakes his head, crooks his mouth, takes up the song: "Sprinkle it with dew." Two other actors in the room moan, "Oh, no. Not again." I smile and throw Serow the loose change from my pocket.

2:30 P.M.: Donna DeSeta Casting. Radio audition. My pal Patti Kelly is running this one. Every time I read for Kelly, I remember the day she brought me in for a local newspaper's radio campaign. The client was looking for a hip announcer to do several spots. It was high summer and I was wearing plaid shorts. Kelly told me the clients were in the other room and that they wanted someone really hip. As she spoke, she was eying my plaid shorts. She looked worried.

I took a deep breath, walked into the studio, sighed and said, "Look, you guys, I'm very hip. Search no more. You gotta be hip to pull off this outfit, right?"

At first, there was silence, then they smiled. They bought it. "Well, he says he's hip," one client said to Kelly, "so, OK---he's very hip."

The lesson here: You are what they want you to be, even in plaid shorts. I booked the spots.

3 P.M.: Booking. TV. It's a rerecord of the commercial I've been trying to tell my grandmother about---Pet Fresh. I am, as I discussed, the voice of the dog. Today I have to add the words "between vacuumings" to a version we did several months ago. I've gotten to know this pup pretty well by now, so it's easy work.

The tape recorder rolls and I begin. I tuck my chin against my chest, throw my jaw forward, think Saint Bernard and out comes a deep and bellowing voice, an occasional bark thrown in for emphasis. I nail the line on the third try. The entire process takes roughly six minutes.

3:20 P.M.: Call home and ask Laura if there's any mail. I do this because I get paid by mail---fees for my session work and residuals for spots currently running. She tells me I got 20 checks today.

"Twenty?" I shout into the phone. "All right!"

"Settle down, dear," she says. "I've already opened them. They total just under two hundred dollars."

"Oh," I moan. "Radio."

4 P.M.: An audition for a new microwave food. Network TV. Big time. As I read, the writer asks me if I could "romance" the words she has written. I do, changing the timbre of my voice, making it sound a little warmer, a little friendlier, almost musical. These are the subtle shadings that can make or break a booking. She likes the changes I've made and asks me to read again. I do, this time even more sincere, romancing like mad. More members of the creative team come in to listen. When I see them, my heart picks up a few beats. Outstanding, I think. This one's in the bag!

Two days later, I learn that I didn't book the spot. Turns out it was because the creative director said she didn't know my work. Swell, I think, maybe I should have romanced her instead of the words. Now I'll have to see the thing when it rolls out on the networks.

That's the worst part of my job: You have to see the spots that you don't get. There's no way to avoid it, because if you work in commercials, you watch commercials. This can be disquieting, especially for friends who watch TV with you. They quickly notice how you get up to use the bathroom or dash to the kitchen only while the show is on. They see how attentively you sit through all the commercials, how you glare at anyone who actually enjoys a spot you're not in. Which is why, when I return home at 4:30 P.M., I find out from Laura that our friends Michael and Becky will not be coming over tonight as planned---unless I swear I will put on only PBS or HBO. No commercials. Laura thinks it's a reasonable request. "Fine," I say, "but I'm not paying for the pizza, then."

6:20 P.M.: I happen to be upstairs when one of my spots comes on the air. Laura yells, "You're on!" (She's assigned to watch the tube whenever I'm out of the room.) I come crashing down the stairs, trying to reach the screen before my work disappears. I just miss the last word. Laura tells me I would have liked it.

Yes, in this business, wives participate in the madness, sitting through hours of TV at a stretch, just to hear a glorious 30 seconds of your work. Even friends across the country are recruited to listen for you. You instruct them to write down the time they caught your spot and the channel on which it aired. You ask them for a full report the next time you speak with them. And when your agent tells you a spot has gone off the air, those same friends are called again, this time with stricter marching orders: "Now, if you see that spot, call me instantly. 'Cause if it's still running when they've told me it's not, that means someone ain't gettin' paid." Good friends are becoming increasingly hard to find.

8:45 P.M.: Michael and Becky have arrived and we settle in to watch a movie on ABC. (Through persistence, I've convinced them that it's a really good film. "Uh, James Bond, I think.") Just after it starts, I get up to order the pizza I'm buying. Suddenly, the phone rings.

I pick up the receiver and hear my grandmother yelling. She is ecstatic. "You're on!" she sings. "I think I see you! Look at that---you're on TV!"

Oh, dear God. ...

Guess Who's Talking

Moses pitching beer for Anheuser-Busch? Our steamiest siren romancing an Arrow shirt? You bet. Today, more and more stars such as Charlton Heston and Kathleen Turner are flocking to do commercial voice-overs---the work's easy and the pay's great. Meanwhile, advertisers continue to hire the celebs, banking on the notion that you'll recognize the voice, trust it and become an instant consumer. But is Madison Avenue getting its money's worth? How many of these famous voices actually ring a bell?

1. He was a Yuppie in Wall Street, a grunt in Platoon and went on to tout "a new day at Sears."

2. The Great Santini went A.W.O.L. a few years back to announce, "Packed with peanuts, Snickers really satisfies."

3. He once beamed down from Vulcan to address such earthly matters as "The Real Thing, Coke."

4. As Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee in All the President's Men, it's unlikely he would have run a headline shouting, "You're in Good Hands with Allstate." (Hint: He also announced for Xerox.)

5. He was once known as Our Man Flint. Then he became Our Man Acura, Our Man Century 21, Our Man Coke and Our Man U.P.S.

6. As Hot Lips in the movie M*A*S*H, she was short on rations. Now Revlon has her color, Woolite's in her machine, Hidden Valley Ranch serves her half the calories and Stouffer's got it all right.

7. Although this feisty actor played a feisty actor in The Goodbye Girl and a feisty actor in Moon over Parador, he mellowed as the voice of Hewlett-Packard.

8. The Jaws shark just missed getting a piece of him. That's probably why he got "a piece of the [Prudential] Rock."

9. Brando called him "an errand boy" in Apocalypse Now; Pepsi made him the voice of "a new generation."

10. As commander of the Enterprise, he was big on space travel, but in 1989, he slowed down to pitch the Transamerica Corporation.

11. He lived at 1313 Mockingbird Lane with his spooky wife, Lily---then he moved to Hyundai, Maytag, Colgate and, now, Hostess cupcakes.

12. Thirty-six years ago, he made Oscar-winning waves in Mister Roberts. These days, he is Mister Honda.

13. As TV's Lou Grant, he was practically an overnight success; now he's jawing about overnight deliveries for Federal Express.

14. He was once The Penguin on TV's Batman; then he squawked for United Airlines (for 11 years), Honda (ten years), Busch Gardens, Sargento cheese, Shady Brook Farms, the Florida Citrus Organization, the Donnelley Yellow Pages. ...

15. As Maxwell Smart's partner, Agent 99, she kept her missions quiet. Then she started yakking away for N'ice throat lozenges.

16. Her greetings in Fatal Attraction were ghastly. They became more cheerful for Hallmark cards.

17. Her sexy, husky voice seduced the likes of Bogey---then captured hearts at Welch's juices and Christian Dior mascara.

18. His gig for Campbell's Home Cookin' Soup undoubtedly made his a more Wonderful Life.

19. Back in 1971, he was plugged into The French Connection; now he's plugging G.T.E.

20. After playing Barney Miller, he got a call from U.S. Sprint---"the company with one hundred percent fiber-optic sound quality and lower rates than AT&T."

Answers

1. Charlie Sheen. 2. Robert Duvall.

3. Leonard Nimoy. 4. Jason Robards.

5. James Coburn. 6. Sally Kellerman.

7. Richard Dreyfuss. 8. Roy Scheider.

9. Martin Sheen. 10. William Shatner.

11. Fred Gwynne. 12. Jack Lemmon.

13. Ed Asner. 14. Burgess Meredith.

15. Barbara Feldon. 16. Glenn Close.

17. Lauren Bacall. 18. James Stewart.

19. Gene Hackman. 20. Hal Linden.