I Hear Voices

I love voices. To me, there's something really interesting about the sound of a person's voice, particularly when disembodied (over the radio, over the phone, recordings, etc.) When I was a kid in American Falls, I fell asleep every night to the sound of the radio that was perched on a shelf above my head. Usually it was just tuned to a top 40 station broadcast out of Pocatello but on Sunday nights there was some religious show that had a guy standing somewhere in public (a college campus?) and basically accosting strangers and asking them about their views on God and the Bible. I don't remember anything about the religious content of the show but I do remember the different qualities each person's voice had, how interesting and varied they were.


I always knew my local DJ's by name and knew their sound when they did uncredited commercials on air.

When we were kids, my older brother, Jason, and I would borrow the family tape recorder (black, oblong, the buttons labeled "record, play, rewind, fast forward, stop, pause)and make tapes of ourselves talking and, as soon as we recorded something funny, we'd immediately stop, rewind, and listen. There was something magical about our weird, tinny-sounding voices coming out of that black box.

I was never really aware of my fascination until I started working in radio after high school and I started thinking about how I sounded when I was broadcasting and how my coworkers sounded. When I did start thinking about it, I was struck by how some people's voices didn't always coincide with their physical appearance.

I was also working at JB's family restaurant at that time and I remember two other employees had wives who were constantly calling to talk to their husbands. Stefan, a huge, profane, sweaty cook, had a wife whose voice made her sound like a supermodel - soft, feminine, warm. She was married to Stefan who looked like Jabba the Hutt's uncool, glandular, older brother so it will come as no surprise to you that, when she came in to the restaurant, she did not look like a supermodel. She was very sweet and obviously a saint to be married to him but her voice was infinitely more attractive than she was.

At the same time, there was Lyle, the waiter. His wife was blonde and pretty with really striking brown eyes and a bright smile. Over the phone, however, she could have been a guy named Chuck who worked the night shift at the docks. She had a terrible-sounding voice and it mystified me how there could be such a disparity.

Anyway, it was around that time that my dad introduced me to Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion radio show and I really got into the way people spoke and the weight and texture each voice had. I especially enjoyed it when he would get people to speak who weren't "broadcasters" per se -- musicians or writers and people like that.



I started to get into NPR in general and really love the personality and tone that each reporter brought to a story, the unique quality interview subjects had. I fell deeply in love with the Fresh Air and the voice of Terry Gross. (I later saw what she looked like and was struck, dumbfounded really, again by the difference between the way a person can sound and their physical appearance.)



Anyway, I was thinking about this last night because I was watching a cartoon with a lot of celebrity voice work. (Suzanne was on a Girls Night Out with her friends. What do I do after my daughters are asleep? Watch a superhero cartoon, you bet.) Twin Peaks and Desperate Housewives alum Kyle Machlachlan voiced Superman, Lucy "Xena" Lawless was Wonder Woman, David Boreanaz of Buffy and Bones was Green Lantern,etc. A lot of celebrity voice work isn't terribly inspired. It sounds okay but it's nothing special and a lot of the time, you get the sense that the actor just needed a project that would enable him/her to get paid without doing wardrobe and makeup. (Shark Tale anyone?) Even more often, you see animated movies with big A-list names and it's clear their casting has more to do with name recognition than with being right for a particular role.

One choice that was made in this cartoon movie, Justice League: The New Frontier, was casting Jeremy Sisto as the voice of Batman. Sisto currently plays Detective Cyrus Lupo on Law and Order and was recently the abusive husband in the Keri Russell picture, Waitress. He has this really creepy voice that's both nasal and deep. Rather than an obvious, guts-of-granite type voice (like Kevin Conroy, the one who has done most of the Batman cartoons over the last fifteen years), Sisto's odd, unexpected voice makes Batman actually creepy and a little scary which is the whole point of his character. So I thought it was a brilliant choice and one of the more interesting aspects of the film.



Anyway, there are certain people whose voices I could listen to all day. They could read the phone book and I'd be on the edge of my seat. Garrison Keillor is one. Peri Gilpin is another. Terry Gross (even though I know now what she looks like), Jeffrey R. Holland, Allison (of 96.3 WDVD), Orson Welles, Holly Hunter, Sarah Vowell, Elizabeth Pena, and Patrick Warburton are others.

Oddly enough, when I came in this morning and checked my regular websites, there was a list on Entertainment Weekly's site about celebrity voice work in cartoons. I don't agree with everyone on their list but it's interesting to see. Check it out here.