Hello, Messed. This is whack up from Animaniacs and you're watching K. C R A.
Just like we do in the Water tower A.
I began as a studio singer. Well, first I was a rock singer because they had
the right here for it. And then I became a studio singer. And I think the
reason that I worked as much as I did with that stuff is because I could
change my voice to sound like a lot of different people. So if they wanted to
have Michael Bolton sing about Folgers coffee, but they don't want to pay
Michael Bolton. They paid me a lot less to imitate him and singing about
Folgers coffee. And it worked out, you know. So I was doing all that stuff,
and when I would be on the mic singing commercials, I'd always just do voices
because I've always loved voices, have been fascinated with him, and a guy
that I did singing for us said, Hey, I'm doing the music for a ride at
Disney. You might have heard about this ride this year to called Splash
Mountain, and I said, Oh, cool. You mean my voice could be on a Disney ride
and he said, Yes, it could. So I went, I auditioned and I got like, 12 of the
voices of the 15 on Splash Mountain. It's almost all me on that right,
including We're rabbit singing Zippity Doo does eveybody, which is pretty cool
if you were the voice of Sonny Bono. A. I've been the voice of everybody and
because it's like stunt singing. You know, it's like that in the Disney
movie Pocahontas years ago. Mel Gibson. You know, I've stepped in to sing for
people tons and tons of times, and a lot of the time they don't even know
about it. And I meet them later and they go, I say I worked on a record.
They go, Yeah, I was thinking really good on that record. I'm like, Well, it
wasn't really a man. If it makes you happy with the Sunny Boto thing, I've
done a lot of those bio pics where they need singing, and with him, God bless
him in it and God bless his soul. But they actually that's the only job I
ever did when they said, Yeah, can you sing a little worse? Just singing a
little bit worse, man, because because he you know he was back in here. I got
you big. Everybody thinks it's Ringo and it's not Ringo. I'll tell you. The
way it came about is I read for wacko. I wanted to read for Wacker right away
because I read that his name was wacko. He weren't he wore no pants. And I
thought, Okay, I can relate to both of these things. So I wanted to read for
wacko, and I went in there and I just did some crazy cartoon voice. I don't
remember what it waas, but it was good enough. I guess that I got a call back
when I went in there. Andrea Romano, who is probably the most decorated
animation voice director of all time. She's got more enemies than the academy
as and she said, Hey, I know you do all these impressions because I do a lot of
voice matching for people and she said, Why don't we do so? Try with some
impressions and I said, Well, who do you want? And she said, How about Elvis
and that that would that would have been pretty good. I was going Hello
nurse. I mean, I got a potty emergency. That would have been kind of weird, you
know what I mean? So after I did that, when she said, What about the Beatles?
And I said, Well, which one? And she said, What do you mean, don't they all
sound pretty much the same? And I said, No, no, no. It's a common misconception
because, you know, first of all, you got John and John's voice to me was
always sharpening his nose and it sounded You could actually hear his
nose when he was talking. You know, then this Paul and Paul's voice is a
bit more like light on back in the throat on a bit more triple Hate should
be grateful that than this. George and George always sounded to me like he was
congested and getting over a cold, you know, on then Ringo was down there the
bottom. So you got all four of them. So she said, Well, why don't we try John?
So I'm doing John. Then they showed me a picture of wacko and an animation.
Pictures really fill in the blanks. Freeman, because as soon as I saw him
and I was doing it like, Well, I don't know, Dr Scratch and Sniff all. Do you
think we should do on? Then she showed me the picture and, oh, so he's a real
little guy. She said, Yeah, I said, Well, you can't have a man's voice. I
think we got to take his voice and give a little bit of helium and bring him up
here. And then it was John, let it on Helium. So we are saying is give wacko
a chance. You know that there aren't many cartoons and goodness knows, I've
been fortunate to work on a lot of them that skewers social issues, you know?
And think about it this way, man. If you make a list of the stuff that we
made fun of in the nineties and you compare it to a list of the stuff we
could potentially make fun of, now that one list is gonna eat the other one
like a Pacman who hasn't had a snack in years, you know what I mean? It's like
there's so much stuff going on, from social media to, you know, to YouTube
and the Kardashians and a certain little thing called politics and all
the other issues that we face as a culture, and it's kind of cool to be
able to laugh at them a little bit. You know what I mean? And and and and put a
little, you know, poke a needle in the balloon and watch it float around the
room. Is it deflates? It's like and that's that's where that's our mission
and we've chosen to accept it. I don't wanna be in something that people are
going to say. It's not as good, you know. I love the old one. I wish they
would have left it alone. So our first thing was, we found out that Steven Mr
Spielberg is very, very involved in every single episode. He sends more
notes back then, little tiny startup projects to the producers and God bless
them. They got to deal with all of he's involved in every script, every
recording, ever. He approves everything. He went to every single pitch
personally that they had When they were pitching this, he showed up and I don't
mean he just drove him and waited in the car. He went upstairs and he was
talking to these executives and, you know, Steven Spielberg walks in,
chances are you're probably gonna be greeted warmly. Then he put this team
together for us, which, although isn't the same incredible team we had on the
first. The thing we were a little nervous about that too got in Wellesley
Wild. A guy named Gave Soir and bro. They rose to the challenge. They wrote
amazing scripts and they have amazing songs. Remember how big the songs are
in Animaniacs? We have kept that tradition alive. We're doing Broadway
musicals were doing Animaniacs music. So we kept breathing collective sighs
of relief just going They got it right. We're gonna be just fine.
Okay? What we want you to dio is watching when your age and watch it
again in 18 and 28 38 have a different experience each time. And what's really
cool is on the old episodes. You know, it's a fine line, too, because, like,
we did an episode, Dave, all about the 2020 Olympics. Well, guess what? There
was no 2020 Olympics. So some of these things it's a fine line between being
topical and being so time specific that in five years people are going to go. I
don't have the slightest idea what they're talking about because I don't
remember that. So the things that we poked fun I have to be universal enough
and long lasting enough that we'll remember them. But, yeah, that's one of
my favorite things. Man is a lot of stuff that I do is very much directed
at Children, and it's beautiful. I've done other ones, like for Comedy
Central that were very much directed as adults, and that's great. This thing,
everybody will find something to laugh at. At least that's our hope, and we
hope we pulled it out. We've done a couple episodes, one is about gun
control, and another is about climate change. You know what you're thinking
to yourself? How are we gonna make a Children's cartoon topical and
educational and relevant and still entertaining toe little kids about
these topics? And then we get finished with the script and we go, They did it.
We couldn't have picked a better time to have this show come back in 2020 and
specifically November 2020 because, you know, it's been a brutal year for years
wrapping up, we're entering the holidays Let's have something fun to do
and share just for a few minutes because we know that we're not saving
the world. But we're going to try our damnedest to make the world smile at
least for a minute, you know?