Duncing With the
Stars
Having been
employed in the entertainment industry since Netflix personally drove the
actors to your house to perform your order, I have become friends with a small
cadre of practicing thespians.
Additionally, having spent a regrettable amount of time wallowing in the
fetid, festering spiritual cesspool that is children’s animation, I am
acquainted with a number of talented individuals who make their living giving
voice to artistic renderings of cute furry animals and intense do-gooders
wearing capes. For nigh on a decade now,
these flexibly-larynxed entertainers have lamented their industry’s perplexing
penchant for hiring celebrities. In
effect, they’re employing people with memorable faces to do voice work. Why, that’s brilliant! Talk about thinking outside the box. Why pay dedicated professionals, who’ve spent
a lifetime perfecting their craft, to weave their paralinguistic magic when you
can pressgang some sitcom-star-of-the-week or pre-arrest cinematic idol to do
it? That’s like hiring the handsomest
waiter at a restaurant to cook all the food.
“Garcon! This Liberty Duck Breast avec Confit tastes
like shit!”
“Oui monsieur, but
it is made by our most popular
waiter. Everyone just loves him. Would you like our waitress with the big tits
to mix you up a Pisco Sour?”
To see if the
cavils of the cartoon community had any credence – I checked out an animated
movie at random. I selected “Frozen” –
for no other reason than I Googled “3D animated movie” at its name came up. So, why don’t we check out the cast of this
high profile cartooned “gem” and scan their mile long voxographies.
Idina Menzel – Voice
credits – 1 – Frozen
Kirsten Bell –
Voice Credits 2 – Frozen and guest spot on The Cleveland Show
Jonathan Groff –
Voice Credits 1 – Frozen
Josh Gad – Frozen
and two or three other credits. (One other movie)
Santino Fontana –
Voice credits -1 Frozen
Alan Tudyk – Voice
credits - Frozen and one or two other parts.
Hmmm. To think these frigid freshman beat out every
available voice actor in North America and beyond on shear talent would be a
feat akin to Rob Ford showing up sober to Toronto’s
Festival of Beer.
But, perhaps this
is just an anomaly. A kooky quirk. A misleading defect in the time/space
continuum. Let’s look at the cast of Monsters University and see what it has to offer
in the way of insight.
Billy Crystal,
John Goodman, Steve Buschemi, Helen Mirren, Joel Murray, Dave Foley and Alfred
Molina.
Now, do you
suppose these fine actors were hired because they brought a depth and reality
to their computer generated characters, never even dreamed of by the creator,
or because they are Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Steve Buschemi, Helen Mirren,
Joel Murray, David Foley and Alfred Molina?
It’s enough to
make Mel Blanc burst out of his grave, throw up and then die again – because
let’s face it, Mel didn’t look that good, even when he was alive.
And for what? The audience they’re aiming these 3D buckets
of pabulum at wouldn’t know Steve Buschemi if he blew their head off during a
contraband whisky dispute. Now, Mr.
Buschemi is a fine, fine actor (a personal fave) but is he better at voicing
cartoon characters than Danny Mann, Maurice LaMarshe or Jan Rabson? No, he is not. Is Julia Roberts a better voice actress that June
Foray, Nancy Cartwright or Candy Milo? Let
me put it another way…Ringo Starr is an excellent, excellent Beatle, but if you
need a really good drummer, for Christsakes hire Bill Bruford!
Alas, this
celebrity psychosis among the entertainment executive elites is not just
limited to brightly-colored, ridiculously round-eyed, steaming piles of cute.
An example:
When I toiled
under the acrid scowling eyes that ruled Warner Brothers Television back in the
day, my partner and I sold quite a few pilots.
Once a pilot is sold, you have to do two things. 1: Remove any imagination, originality and
humor from the script. 2: Cast it.
The casting
process is long and heartbreaking. You
see literally dozens and dozens of actors (many of them deserving of the part and
even more whom I’ve admired for years).
After we’ve auditioned our brains out, we take our 3 or 4 top choices to
the studio brass for their invaluable input.
The casting
director prepares 4 pages of names for our confab with the big wigs: Actors we have
auditioned and liked, actors who will only audition for the network, actors who
will meet but not audition at all and actors who are unavailable or not
interested. When you get in the room
with these mega-mogals, they invariably flip to the “Unavailable/Uninterested
page and start asking, “What about Leonardo DiCaprio? Will he come in for a read?”
“Why, yes he will,
Tony! Thank God we have your wisdom and
insight to lead us through these confusing times. Just because he’s unavailable and uninterested,
he’d love to drop whatever he’s doing for a lengthy chat with a balding,
ass-licking halfwit who wouldn’t be trusted to hand out free-steam-cleaning coupons
in the real world. Let me go get him on
the phone!”
It was like this
for every role – no matter how small.
The more unattainable an actor was, the more their saliva glands bubbled-over
with desire. If we’d have had a fifth
page with dead actors on it, they would have been begging us to bring in
Lillian Gish to read for the grandma.
Andrew and I were
once dragooned into saving a sitcom starring Faye Dunaway – an actress of
magnificent ability but a human being who took the phrase “totally fucked up”
to a level inconceivable to mere morals.
We valiantly turned down their generous offer three times but were
pushed and pushed and pushed until we eventually acquiesced. Faye could hardly remember her own name,
never mind half an hour of dialogue to be regurgitated in front of a live
audience. Movie productions can last
forever. They’re the natural breeding
ground of prima donnas. Television is a
meat grinder. You cram shit in one end;
crank it day and night until even shittier shit comes out the other end. And then, after an incredibly short weekend
of wishing you were never born, you start the whole shit-cramming process
again. After working with David
Steinberg and a dialogue coach for three whole days during a long weekend, she
walked on stage, during the pilot, and got her very first line wrong.
After several
weeks of unimaginable suffering on the part of those around her and ratings dropping
like a herd of buffalo of a cliff; someone asked the obvious question. “Why would anyone put this crazy woman in a
sitcom?”
The answer was
very revealing. “Because Mr. X (a CBS
exec I actually liked) wants to be sitting in his office and hear, ‘Faye
Dunaway, on line two.’”
They pumped
millions into “It Had to Be You” and it lasted 4 episodes. Ms. Dunaway’s TVQ (a rating of likeability)
dropped from 55 in the pilot to minus 17.
Until Faye, I didn’t even know the number went below zero.
The pilot in
question was actually shot the year before (and tested quite well) with Twiggy
but not picked up because CBS didn’t think Twiggy was a big enough name. It isn’t about who was right for the part or
even what the public wants – it’s about “star fucking”. About flipping to that back page of the
casting list and imagining getting invited over for weekend barbeques with Kate
Blanchett and Michael Caine, taking their kids for play-dates over at the Brad
Pitt compound or just rappin’ to Jennifer Lawrence about “stuff” while she
shaves her legs in the shower.
The cult of
celebrity has corrupted the entire system.
Every actor with the slightest clout now has a production company. Tom Cruise, Sandra Bullock, Drew Barrymore,
Demi Moore, Penny Marshall, Bette Midler, Wesley Snipes, Jodie Foster, Billy
Crystal, Michael Douglas etc, etc, etc.
These “companies” are selling shows all over town. Now, these people don’t write the shows they
sell. They won’t direct them. And they certainly won’t lower themselves to be
in these shows. So, what possible contribution
could a “Star” make to a production that a run-of-the-mill writer or regular
producer couldn’t?
The Answer:
Those writers and
producers can’t get some soulless jack-off executive to scream into his Android,
“Guess what honey! I have Tom Fucking
Cruise in my outer office!”
So now, instead of
having to convince a lowly studio executive to convince a higher studio
executive to buy a project to take it to the network to get it on the air, you
have to go to a celebrity’s development executive who takes it to the celebrity
who takes it to the lowly studio executive who convinces a higher studio exec
to sell it to the network to get it on the air (and guess whose money the Celebs
slice of the pie comes out of).
In Conclusion:
These Gods and
Goddesses of the silver screen who shit pure gold and piss the healing
celestial light of heaven have it pretty darn good already. They’re paid millions of dollars to half remember
words somebody else wrote for them. They
get to sleep with whomever they want.
The snort the finest of drugs.
They
get their ever-so-glamorous dicks sucked (figuratively and literally) by
everyone they deign to meet. They never
have to wait for a table at a restaurant or line-up at a club. They live in fabulous mansions and party on
yachts and overdose in the very finest of hotels. Large brutish men in their employ roughly remove
the unsightly from their gaze. They have
minions pre-light their cigarettes and pre-chew their gum. I mean, isn’t that enough?
Do they really
need to take jobs off hard working voice actors, who are so lowly, they have to
cook their own food at
restaurants? Isn’t the writer’s
demeaning lot in life demeaning and lotty enough without having to drag their
soon-to-be butchered masterpieces before yet another layer of smug, disinterested
cunts?
Call me a
cock-eyed optimist, but I dream of a world where pilots fly, doctors heal and
policeman taser people ahead of them in line at donut shops. But alas, I fear it’s in only a matter of time
before we hear someone screaming into his Android at a Starbucks, “Unbelievable
news!…They got Lady Gaga to do my brain operation!”
And just
because…here are two attractive women in bikinis kissing an eggplant.
If you like the
writing, then check out my serial novel at the link below.
There is a new
chapter every Monday.
Chapter 12 is now
available.
