Blogs of the Round Table: I Love All These Voices in My Head

I'd hate to fall into a predictable pattern, but I'll end up writing mostly about the stuff that I love, as I did in my round table entry for the Music round table, but voice acting is another topic that I have taken weird notice of that so many other people let fall into the background.

It's pretty obvious that my childhood was full of some great cartoons. In particular I have the "Spielberg cartoon renaissance" to thank for instilling in me what I believe shall be a life-long love of animation. But even beyond that, the afternoon dynasty of Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, and Pinky and the Brain are perhaps more valuable for instilling in me an awareness and a love for great voice actors.

Because of his years as The Brain I think Maurice LaMarche is one of the easiest voice talents for me to pick out, and he appears in a huge range of work. He does the best Orson Welles impression and there are very few works that involve Orson Welles that don't use Maurice LaMarche. Even Ed Wood's seminal Welles appearance: body by Vincent D'Onofrio, voiced by LaMarche, albeit uncredited. There is a special feature on Harvey Birdman Season 3 of Maurice cracking up Gary Cole with his Welles impression between takes. (I love animation commentaries with voice over artists... Futurama has some great commentary.[1])

It's interesting how much some people know about the actors in the stuff they watch and yet ignore the voice actors.

When I go into The Dark Knight I'm not going to be comparing Heath Ledger's performance to Jack Nicholson's, I'm going to be comparing Heath Ledger's performance to Mark Hamill's amazing Joker from the animated series ...