NOLA Film Scene with Tj & Plaideau
A podcast about acting, filmmaking, and the improv scene in New Orleans.
NOLA Film Scene with Tj & Plaideau
Paul Rugg: Voicing Iconic Characters
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From performing sketch comedy to nearly empty theaters to suddenly writing for Steven Spielberg, Paul Rugg's unexpected journey into animation reveals the magical creative energy behind Warner Brothers' most beloved 90s cartoons. Paul's journey from sketch comedy to Emmy Award winner, Paul's journey is nothing short of inspirational. He reminds us that the best creativity often happens when you throw away the rulebook and embrace your weird.
Follow us on IG @nolafilmscene, @kodaksbykojack, and @tjsebastianofficial. Check out our 48 Hour Film Project short film Waiting for Gateaux: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5pFvn4cd1U . & check out our website: nolafilmscene.com
Hi, my name is Paul Rugg and I'm a voice actor writer and I'm very happy to be. I think I'm happy to be on NOLA Film Scene, but you'll have to check back later. Maybe this was a mistake, I don't know. And I love New Orleans, Nolans, nolans. See, I can do that, bob, I'm a lady, okay. A lady, a lady with the thing With the mic and boo doing baby.
Speaker 3:Okay, sorry, welcome to NOLA Film Scene with TJ Plato. I'm TJ and, as always, I'm Plato. Paul, this is a thrill for me to have you on. I am a huge fan of Freakazoid. Good and happy 30th anniversary to you on that.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you, Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Yeah, it's been 30 years and we're all older, but the material lives on, so that's good.
Speaker 3:I think relax-a-vision as we get older is becoming more and more in tune with what we need. If we could just put it on real life, and I'll leave it at that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I won't sing a theme from a summer place because they would get mad, but if you all want to listen to on your own time and your own dime theme from a summer place, you'll understand Relaxavision very, very well, so we like to jump back and ask where people started.
Speaker 3:What got you into the biz?
Speaker 1:What inspired you. I joined an improv sketch comedy group called the Acme Comedy Players. It was me, adam Krola, john McCann, jim Wickline and a bunch of the people and we would do half improv, half sketch comedy and we'd do two shows on a Friday, two shows on a Saturday. It was a lot of fun and sometimes we were literally performing only for Adam Krola's grandparents. It would be like a 99-seat theater and in the back would be his very elderly grandparents and they'd be like I don't like this. And then eventually we started getting people to come in and and then eventually we started getting people to come in and it was a lot of fun. And then when they were developing Animaniacs, sherry Stoner, whose husband was our director at the Acme Comedy Players, she came and saw the show and said you know, we're developing this show. That's got really it's got a sketch vibe to it. And so she gave me a script and John McCann a script. It was the first time I'd ever written animation. Anyway, that's basically how I got started. I didn't get started to be a voice actor or necessarily write in animation, but the animation and sketch comedy just kind of were like this really nice fit. It was really like using all the things we'd learned at Acme and then just doing it for cartoons and it was fun and that's basically how I got my start.
Speaker 1:Working with Warner Brothers in the 90s was my first real job and I would say Warner's in the 90s was about as fun a job as you could have. It was Peter Hastings and Sherry Stoner and Deanna Oliver and John McCann and all these sketch people just going nuts in the hallways and we shared this building called the Imperial Bank Building in Sherman Oaks, california. We shared this building called the Imperial Bank Building in Sherman Oaks, california. We weren't on the Warner Brothers lot. I think it's because we were too dangerous. They just said there wasn't room.
Speaker 1:But anyway we would just, you know, we would just say, hey, you know, it would be funny if we did this and did this and did this. And then they'd say, here, here's a check for your thoughts, and we're like what? And that's basically Warner Brothers and the Nines, and then from there, freakazoid came. Yeah, it was fun.
Speaker 3:Both of those shows were from Steven Spielberg.
Speaker 1:Yes, well, that was the other thing. So my wife and I literally had a dime. We didn't have anything. When you do like sketch comedy in California or in LA, you pay in order to rent the theater and stuff. So not only was I not making money, I was losing $75 a month, which sometimes was very hard to come by. And then the next day it's like would you like to write on the Steven Spielberg show? And I'm like, oh, let me think about it. Yes, as far as working with Steven, he was just fun. He was involved. You know, I think he was making Jurassic Park when we first started, and then Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan. But wherever he was, he would send us emails and notes like, hey, I really like that. I didn't like that or whatever, but he was great.
Speaker 2:We're going to pause here. This has never happened before.
Speaker 1:It's me, it's me, tj, it's me.
Speaker 2:We lost Brian. I think his Internet might have dropped out All right, brian, that was very rude, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3:One second. Let me check my connection in another way. Can we have one of those episodes TJ.
Speaker 2:Nah, we're good, I hear you, I see you, we're cooking with grease.
Speaker 3:All right, okay, were you able to finish your Steven Spielberg talk? Yeah, it was great. You missed it. It was wonderful.
Speaker 1:It's where we had lunch together and then he said you're my favorite writer ever. Yeah, no, stephen was great and he was really involved and he would give us ideas and it was a kind of a magical little time capsule. Warren Brothers had nothing but money, stephen had nothing but cachet and we were just like yeah, okay, sure, let's do this.
Speaker 3:So yeah, it was awesome, very cool. Who do you think would win in a fight, freakazoid or Mr Director?
Speaker 1:Boy. I think it would be a tie. You know, hi me, let me tell you something, you crazy kid Boy, I don't know, they're kind of the same character. I don't know why Jerry Lewis became a thing for me during Warners and I think it's because Tom Ruger, our executive producer, once showed this video of wiser.
Speaker 1:Older Mr Director, you know this guy here, the one who uses avuncular and lugubrious and words that he's not quite sure what they are, but they sound very instrumental in his edification of thought. And I would do that around, I would sort of do that around the hallway and be like let me tell you something, you something, you crazy kids. And tom goes, if you write a character with that, will you never do him again in the hallway. So we put him in, we did one with, uh, him going against yakawako dot or yakawako dot doing against him, called hello, nice warners, and it was jerry, young jerry like oh hi, nice lady with the thing. And then, mr director, jerry, and for some reason, when we were doing freakazoid since that Young Jerry like oh hi, nice lady with the thing. And then, mr Director, jerry.
Speaker 1:And for some reason, when we were doing Freakazoid since that first season the first few shows were such heavily improv, I just sort of started doing that guy. So Freakazoid is a little bit Mr Director and is a little bit Jerry, a tiny bit A little bit.
Speaker 3:You can definitely hear it in the Candlejack episode when you take the pause.
Speaker 1:Right, can we pause here? Yeah, and that was basic. I think that was the second thing we ever recorded. That was after Dance of Doom, and we got to that point where, you know it was all in the script. I wrote that script and it was like they were tied up. And then Tom Ruger said hey, why don't you go off here? And I go well, what do you mean? He goes, just do something weird. So I just started going. Let me just pause here and say what a crazy or whatever it is. I said we're going to have fun, fun, fun, fun. And I just kept talking and Tom Ruger kept going more, more, more.
Speaker 1:And that's kind of how Freakazoid was, especially those first few episodes. It was like whatever came into our head or the recording booth and I thought people were going to go. This is not a good thing. I didn't know. And then when the first footage started to come back from overseas, I looked at it and I was like convinced we were going to be brutally savaged, like no one is going to like this. And then Stephen saw it and he goes I think this is weird and we're like and that's good or bad. And he's like that's good and we're like, and that's good or bad, and he's like that's good and we're like, all right, then we're good. So yeah, but he really loved freakazoid. He would get involved. And when we won the emmy after we were canceled, by the way, we won the emmy and he came before he was going to go shoot saving private ryan, he came to pick up his emmys and we won that year for Animaniacs and Freakazoid and he came in and he goes and we're like hey, here are the Emmys.
Speaker 1:He goes. Which one is the Freakazoid? We go, it's this one, he goes that's the one I want, nice. I have that on film, so I'm not lying. He actually liked Freakazoid. So, that's good we believe a memo.
Speaker 3:You got the memo. We did just get a cease and desist from Steven, but we'll talk about that later.
Speaker 2:So you were improv in the beginning days there.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Were y'all in individual booths when you were recording, or were you in an open booth where you could see each other and play off of each other?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, yeah, so back then Andrea Romano, who was our director, who did Batman, the Animated Series Animanax.
Speaker 1:SpongeBob, she is amazing. She would throw us all in one room and we would have those little sound absorber dividers that would come up to maybe shoulder length or a little higher, but we would all sit there and we were always in the room together and we did. One thing they don't do today at all is we would rehearse at once. We would all sit there. Andrea would sort of sit at the center and we were all sort of a curve around her and she'd go okay, you know, fade in angle on, and she would read the script. Everyone would do it and what that did was like Ed Asner or Ricardo Montalban, it would be oh, I see how you're going to do that, okay, and then that would inform how he's going to do it.
Speaker 1:Not done that way today. No, no, no. It's like everyone either Zoom or individual sessions with you and the director, and which I just despise with all of my soul. Because, number one, it's horrifying. It's very judgmental. You know everyone's very nice, but it's you alone and the director is saying, okay, great, could we try that again? You know you're like, oh, what am I doing wrong? But when it's everybody and you sort of understand, it's just fresh and punchy and stuff and I know it's more expensive to do it, bringing a group in, but I am a firm believer in just get everybody in, that you can and record your doggone cartoon. But yeah, that was a very long-winded answer to your question.
Speaker 2:Yeah, not at all.
Speaker 3:We like long-winded answers. All right, good, good, excellent. People are tired of hearing from me, but I always have to talk, not that I hate that. What you're describing is like live theater. It's a totally different energy.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah.
Speaker 3:And I was thinking about it, because I don't have much theater experience. I do have a good amount of improv and even today, leading up to this, I got butterflies. Because I'm talking to you, I don't want to blow smoke up, but I love your work. I'll leave it at that, thank you, thank you, thank you. So it's a little bit, and then you kind of kick over.
Speaker 1:You're like I got actors and I can't remember his name might have been Frank Sinatra, might have been Mel Brooks.
Speaker 3:102 degree fever he's struggling he gets to the stage, bam perfect, walks off the stage. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's true, there's a life to live.
Speaker 1:Performance yeah, I mean, and there is something about also playing with your friends. You know the way I do it. I'm trying to get a rise out of them which will ruin the take, but so be it. I think you're exactly right, brian. It's a live performance. And the other thing about having rehearsed everybody is that we would do maybe two pages, just run it two pages, two pages, two pages, stop. And if there were any dramatic like, well, clearly there was a problem there, but otherwise we'd be like, well, all right, moving on. So the recording sessions were incredibly fast. I remember we had the studio from two, two to six, and I don't remember us ever on a single episode going past 4 30. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1:it was like we had some really complex sometimes in the booth or in the room. You know there was tim curry, david warner, jonathan harris, ed. As you know, there was Tim Curry, david Warner, jonathan Harris, ed Asner. You know, sometimes Marisa LaMarche would come in and Tress McNeil she was cover queen and it was a party. I mean, everyone was there to do their job, but it was also. It was. It's fun. There's no way I can put it except for me, because as one of the writers I used to love to be sitting like Andres sits there in the front and then you know the producers and writers sit on the level above and you know they write down things like that and sometimes give notes. But as Freakazoid I couldn't run back in and go oh, by the way, I didn't like the ricardo did that and then run back. So normally we would record me after everybody else.
Speaker 1:I would be there for the rehearsal and do it, and then we would just get me all alone which again talking about being all alone, it's like, but it was the best way for me to be a part of the decision making about the show uh, that makes sense, kind of like an adr track yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah so did it change to the remote, the Zoom that you were referring to earlier?
Speaker 2:individual calls as a result of COVID, or is that just because of cost saving?
Speaker 1:I think COVID certainly made it a standard. I think it was being done. You know it's like, yeah, we'll get it via Zoom and stuff and with SourceConnect. Yeah, I mean, we'll just sort of do it. But I think COVID sort of put the nail in the coffin of live big, large shoots. Also, it's much more easy to say okay, you'll be in from 1 to 1.30. You've got two lines, so that's going to be a problem, and then from 2 to 4, we'll get Bonnie and she can come in.
Speaker 1:To get everybody scheduled to sort of happen in these days is harder. But having said that, back in when we recorded these in the mid-90s I remember David Warner was filming Titanic because he was the villain in Titanic. In Long Beach there was a dunk take or one of the sequences they were shooting required water to the Russian and all that stuff. But David Warner made sure that he had written into his contract that he could go and do his freakazoid because he liked to do his freakazoid. So I can only imagine you know him with James Cameron and then being I have to, I have to go to Studio City. So he wanted to go. But everybody showed up Ricardo Montalban, ed Asner, tim Curry, jonathan Harris God bless him. They all showed up and they would have pizza with us from one to two and then be like, all right, let's do this thing. You know, come on, I got to go.
Speaker 3:And David Warner was the lobe, yes, a fantastic villain who is basically all brain TJ.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and he was.
Speaker 3:They got Ricardo Montalban to say no, you are the weenie.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, ricardoardo. So again it was like andre romano would go off and say I think I can get you ricardo montalban, and we're like, why would he do our stupid little show? And she goes, probably are you paying? And we're like, well, I guess I mean, so then he'll come do it. This is what working actors do. You pay them a fee and then they come and do your stupid show. So so he would come.
Speaker 1:And it's funny, you know you always oh, he won't get. This Frigazoid is so weird he won't really understand what we're going for. And he would come in, he'd have the script. He goes I see I will be doing some Khan parody, wrath of Khan. All right, yes, my friend, and he knew what he was doing. Same Harris, dr Smith from Lost in Space. He got it. Oh, I see you want me to do Dr Smith? All right, yeah, but David Warner, he was in the Omen. He was the villain in Titanic. He was the villain in Time Bandit. He was Rajagul in Batman, the animated series. He is profound in his speaking manner, but he would come in and knock it out of the park doing the stupidest stuff for us, because I don't think he had been asked to do comedy. It turns out he was a really funny guy.
Speaker 2:The different voices, funny voices and accents, and was that something that you were good at before you started doing improv and sketch comedy? Or is that something that came out of improv and sketch comedy?
Speaker 1:I think I was always mimicking back then late 60s, early 70s. When I was a young kid they would play the Jerry Lewis movie on Saturdays. You know, whatever the errand boy or whatever, I would mimic that. And then you know, mimic teachers get into trouble, always got into trouble for doing teachers.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I think that's something that was always in me, but I never. You know, before I worked at Warner Brothers, voiceover was like number one. I didn't really ever think that's that something that people do. It wasn't really there for me as a oh, that's a job you could get. And, to be honest with you, every voiceover I've mostly done, I've never gotten from an audition. It's just been.
Speaker 1:You know, my friend Doug Langdale, who did Puss in Boots, saying I wrote this really weird character for you. Or you know, when he was doing Dave the Barbarian, I wrote a weird character for you Because my voiceover ability is so specific in weird stuff. But if you want the British guy, you're going to hire Maurice Lamarche or Fred Tattashore. So it's like I'm such a small part of that that when you hire Rob Paulson, you get a hundred people. When you hire Maurice, you got a hundred people. So I found that I had to carve out my own little weird niche, because otherwise, you know well, brian, you guys know when you get an audition, it's like he's from Belgium and then you do your French accent and then you just imagine Fred Tatteshore doing it and you're like you know what am I doing? You just got to find your niche and stuff.
Speaker 1:I guess, oh yeah, and mine was always weird.
Speaker 3:And you have to put all that aside during the audition.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, Because you get all that am I?
Speaker 3:nope, I'm just going to do my thing. I just had one recently and, without describing it, it was multiple characters and my beard was long and I needed to trim and I looked at the descriptions and one guy was kind of bolsterous. I was like and he's kind of unkempt and it was like oh the perfect, don't shave. Second one the character was way too young for me, like in his twenties, but they still wanted me to read. I was like fine, and I was smarmy and I was like, hey, baby, you know. Then I shaved and then it hey, how you doing? And then it got quiet and I pulled into myself and I was a shy guy. So, finding those moments and I didn't worry about who would get it later, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but when?
Speaker 3:you can focus in the moment. It's fantastic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:I don't think I've booked from it, but you can't let that discourage you no you really can't.
Speaker 1:I mean, trust me. I think auditioning for voiceover, especially, is back before COVID. If you were in an audition for on-camera or whatever. You go and there's feedback and there's someone looking at you, right or wrongly, going, tell you what, let's do that again or whatever, or hey, good job. And then you feel something. But to do voiceover alone in your room and record it and then send it off and not know that's a tough gig, that's tough, and so you kind of have to not care, otherwise you'll just wonder so just doing it for the sake of doing it is the reason to do it, I guess.
Speaker 3:You're going to have the emotional rollercoaster, any type of acting but you have to learn to let go and it's easy to say, yeah, terrible to do, yeah, it's true, right, right, yeah. Yeah, I did have a voiceover audition recently and then they wanted it on camera because the instructions. It was weird, not for, like, warner brothers or anything. I'm still in independence and you know actors access. So it popped up on there and because of the instructions, I thought it was on camera and I go to do it and I see that it's voiceover and I'm like why do they want my face? And I started getting a little nervous because of AI.
Speaker 1:Maybe they want to use my hand, you know.
Speaker 3:So I just sent the voiceover in. Maybe I was wrong due to that. Whatever, I didn't mind missing that, because I just had that feeling you got to trust your instinct. Might be the greatest guy in the world, maybe they're just starting out.
Speaker 1:Right, it was weird. Right, right, right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, we can use AI. We can fix this in movies. We can do all this stuff Like proclaiming they're going to use it. It's killing me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I bet yeah, yeah, yeah. I think AI is a particularly worrisome development in our lives, especially for creative people actors, voiceover people yeah, I'm not a fan.
Speaker 3:I'm not a fan. I hope that it could be used as a tool, but never in the creative process Because, like any computer is a differential engine. Right, it could be good for editing, it could be good for I don't know if it'd be good for the stock market to keep a track of it, but it's the people who use it, like the producers wanting to just knock out a movie without the actors and just steal their image.
Speaker 2:Right, I just don't know this is my take on AI. If you're using it as a tool for workflow, I think that that's one thing. I mean if you Google something that's using AI to search for that. But if it's AI that's going to recreate the personality, the image, the likeness, the voice of a working actor or in any industry, then that's where I think a line needs to be drawn. No, I agree, with rare exceptions, for example, when an actor dies in the middle of a shoot and they have to use a little bit of CGI AI to recreate them to finish the movie. You know I can forgive that. You know James Earl Jones.
Speaker 2:When he died he gave the rights for them to recreate his voice in future Star Wars things and I think for continuity purposes. That was very generous of him to do, but I think it needs to be very specific and very well defined before it can be used.
Speaker 3:Yeah, agreed, and actors compensate it or their families if they passed away you know Right.
Speaker 1:And then even the artwork too.
Speaker 3:Yes, you know Right. Like if I draw something and I can animate it passed away, you know, yes, right. And then even the artwork too.
Speaker 2:Yes, you know Right.
Speaker 3:Like, if I draw something and I can animate it with AI, that's one thing, but if I draw something and then I want to use, like Studio Ghibli, there's a filter out there. That's different. So, yeah, now that I brought us way down, how about we go from Earth to Ned? Yes, how about we go from Earth to Ned? Yes, that was an incredible show. I liked it. For those who don't know, it was on Disney Plus and you were a puppet, yep, and a fish out of water, but it was a talk show, yep, and it also had some other puppeteers and puppets and a thru-stream. And then Disney bailed on you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, disney bailed. I had done some work with Henson with the Jim Henson Company. I was one of the members of a show called Puppet Up where we would go around. We went to Scotland, we went to Australia and it was improv with puppets. So it's basically there's a camera and it's above and we had 80 puppets and there were like eight of us and it was an improv show. We'd get suggestions from the audience. We'd grab a puppet, we'd puppet up, put it up, put our puppets up into the camera, which is the Jim Henson style. You know it's the frame and you do that, and we'd just do an improv show. It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:And when they were developing Earth to Ned, brian called and he goes hey, I want you to audition for this. And he looks just like his dad. Brian Henson is just an amazing guy. And he says I want you to audition for this show and I was like okay, all right, great. So they were like okay, and the way Henson does it is which is fascinating. And as an actor, you know you probably appreciate that. But when you audition, like Drew Massey and all these other actor puppeteers are sitting there watching your audition, right, so it's a little unnerving, but there's also calm camaraderie and he's like hey, you know what you should do. And that was new to me and that's sort of the Henson philosophy we're all going to make this better. One person is going to get this role, but we all sort of participated in sort of pushing that person there.
Speaker 1:When Brian called me one day, you know, ok, that's it, you're going to be Ned, don't blow it. The very next day I got a call from his secretary saying you have to go to the creature shop and they had a sort of a working model of it and the way he did it was Jim Henson developed something called the Waldo, which is this glove that you put on and you're at a station and the glove has all kinds of points of access. So there's this, there's up and down, there's this, there's forward and backwards, and then within the glove are things for your fingers. So all those put together are going to change the shape of the mouth. And you know, like M's and P's, o, and I'm a stupid person and to get that and to sit there and I think for two months I literally was like A, b, c, d, e, f, d and looking at the mouth and stuff and they were building the head. They were divine. So they would give me different versions of the head.
Speaker 1:This puppet is a seven foot tall puppet. So I'm just the head, I'm not even the eyes. Alan Troutman, who was in Babe he did a lot of puppets in Babe. He was going to be the eyes and there was someone inside to sort of move from side to side. Then there was someone at the front doing the hands like this, and then there was another puppeteer doing the other set of hands and the first time we put it all together.
Speaker 1:It was like it was and I'm like this is we're dead. Oh, this is not going to work. No-transcript. Our little station, the puppets on stage with them, we're good. 50 feet away All we have is monitors. And Penn comes over and sort of looks and he's like you know what puppeteers are? Like a lower grade mime, and then he laughed and he sort of walked away and he goes I'm kidding, but the improv with them. And then we got good at it and it was just so much, so much fun. And then I guess what happened was we weren't Marvel, you know, we weren't Star Wars, we weren't Marvel. We were just another show to sort of fill a space so that they could do more Marvel stuff and get that stuff coming down the pipe. But they didn't really ever like the show. I don't think it did for them what they wanted. I really liked it. That's meaningless, but I really, really, really liked it.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't think it's meaningless at all, but I understand it grew a little bit, but then it didn't have time to grab its legs, to grow its legs, yeah. And I think the other problem was we'd shot from I think it was September to December of 2019. And then they were going to take about four months to edit it because it was a lot of pieces. And then COVID hit, and puppetry is a very proximity-based art form. We're all in each other's faces. I don't think at that time that they were going to even think about bringing the puppeteers back together.
Speaker 1:You know how would you do that? You're sometimes right in someone's armpit and I guess that scared them all. It didn't scare me. I was like, well, whatever, let's just do it. But I think that didn't help. But I think something happened to Disney, where they don't embrace the new anymore or they're not patient with the new. It has to be all right. People know what this is, let's do it. I think that that's kind of sad, but you know, it's understandable, it's a business decision. But what can you do?
Speaker 3:Right yeah, and the streamers are losing money. So I think there'll be an independent streamers and independent films will come and grow again like they did in the last century.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh yeah. I mean, look, everyone's like oh, woe is me, how can I get my product out there? What can I do? I was like dude. When I was a kid there were three networks, there were studios and there was no ability for anybody to do anything. And now they spend millions of dollars on a show or cat videos and most people are like I'll take the cat video, to be honest with you. So it's like yeah, it's streaming platforms, like you're. It's like all this stuff, it's the great equalizer. And it's not about money, it's not about this, it's about what's entertaining. So I say good.
Speaker 2:When you first got into doing voiceover work, did you go through any classes?
Speaker 1:Nope, you just Nope.
Speaker 2:Nope Trial by fire. Get in there and do it.
Speaker 1:No, I think my first one was I wrote an Animaniacs about Yakalaka Dot go against Einstein. And I remember Tom Ruger saying, do you want to be Einstein? And I was like, no, not particularly.
Speaker 2:That sounds really scary.
Speaker 1:He goes why don't you be Einstein? I was like, okay, so I showed up, I wrote it and it was Tress McNeil, jess Harnell, rob Paulson and me and I was like what?
Speaker 1:the heck am I doing here? This is ridiculous. But I, you know, I was doing the sort of right, you know the german accent and stuff. And they were like, yeah, this is fine, you know. But I was petrified. And then bring, jim cummings would come in, and then frank welker and that was like what the heck? I don't know what I'm doing.
Speaker 1:You know, and I didn't know, that you can't just follow someone's dialogue. With more dialogue, you got to leave that little beat so they can cut it together. And they had to stop and go. Paul, you have to wait, you can't just keep talking. And I was like, oh okay, that was my education Plus my job. As we were preparing to premiere. We would do ADR like Animaniacs especially. We would look at the bit when it came back, we would look at the short and go, man, that line could have been funnier, that line could have been funnier, that line could have been funnier. So my job was to plus the lines and then I would go and Andrea Romano would bring all the actors back in and we would sort of do it.
Speaker 1:I was at the studio all the time and just watching them work, especially watching Frank Walker, because Frank Walker, you know, obviously Scooby-Doo is like you know, but he's not only is a nice guy, but Frank would be so funny because he's such a pro and he's a pilot and he would have his copy stand there. You know, they'd all be sitting and he would have like pilot magazine and he would just be. You know, the whole thing's going on, everyone's doing their session and then when it came to Frank, you'd think he was reading his magazine and it'd be okay, frank and you, he'd go and he would just go back to reading about his airplanes. You know, these guys they're all just great and it's kind of awe-inspiring to watch them.
Speaker 1:But yeah yep, yep, yep, yep. So no, I had no training other than you better get in there and not die. So okay, I'll get in there and not die.
Speaker 3:It was the old school swimming lessons. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, yeah so.
Speaker 1:I've seen you. You're on the con circuit, you and Tom, I think, though I think I have, yeah, with Tom Ruger. I think we have one more con and then I'm kind of bowing out for a while to do other things. But yeah, that's been fun. Like everyone's so funny, they bring their kids and be like well, that's Frigazoid, and the kids would be like I have no clue what you're talking about. Dad, I don't, you know, he goes, come on, you know, and that's kind of fun to see parents now bringing their kids and the kids are like I've, you know, whatever dad, I go whatever floats your boat, Okay, but uh, this is weird. So, yeah, that's been fun.
Speaker 3:Kind of like my generation Son that's a Studebaker. Okay, I thought about saying Edsel and I realized that might've been an insult, so I stopped myself. Yeah, paul, it's been a lot of fun, but get out. All right fine, very cool. We hope to see you on the flip side. Okay, cool, I don't want to let you go.
Speaker 1:All right. Well then you have to come mow my lawn because it needs to be done. So there you go, okay, okay, bye, nice people, freak out.
