- I just like saying showbiz [beeping].
Oops, sorry, Carl's not suppose to say,
"Oh [beeping], I said [beeping]."
It's still making everybody laugh.
I love that.
Hi, my name is Rob Paulsen,
which probably means nothing to you.
Unless, of course, you like cartoons.
In which case, let's see, Yakko Warner.
Does that mean something to you?
Hello, nurse!
Or Pinky, from Pinky and the Brain.
That is me, too.
See, watch.
Narf!
And then I know a lot of you love Carl Weezer.
I don't care why, I just care that you do.
I'm not one, but two of the Ninja Turtles.
That's right, ladies and gentlemen,
50% of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
in one old guy from Detroit, Michigan.
Rafael on the original show
and in the 2012 version on Nickelodeon, Donatello.
So, cowabunga and turtle power.
You're probably asking yourself,
is that all you're going to do is ramble
and tell everybody how groovy you are?
No, that is not.
What we're gonna do here today
is I'm going to improvise some character voices
for cartoons I've never seen before.
Let's see what happens.
Oh, my goodness.
Well, I'm seeing what looks to be a very distinguished
elderly gentleman.
When I say elderly, that is understanding
that I am now elderly.
However, this older fellow,
one would think would might speak thusly.
I don't know why, he just looks quite distinguished.
Were it myself, I would say he looks extinguished.
Not too far from the truth.
But then we could go against type.
Wouldn't it be interesting if the gentleman opened his mouth
and all of a sudden started talking like this?
Hi, my name is Henry Wardsworth
and I know what you're thinking.
You're thinking, God, this suit fits me beautifully,
but it's a little incongruous when I talk.
Get over it.
What's going on there?
Don't let the door hit you where the good lord split you.
Bye!
Well, having already been Dr Scratch-and-Sniff,
which is that character who was the studio P psychiatrist
on the Animaniacs, a voice which I stole
from Peter Sellers, mainly because he's dead.
My favorite movie in the world is "Dr. Strangelove",
so I like that guy.
That's pretty typical, I think.
But he's also got that weird, crazy hair like Ed Wynn.
You know, the from Mary Poppins.
Let's go fly a kite.
So maybe we could put both voices,
that's kind of Dr Scratch-and-Sniff in the back
with the Ed Wynn, and maybe lose the dialect.
Hey, everybody!
Look, I'm drinking this.
It's going to make me so regular,
I'm gonna poop the rest of my life.
Oh, okay, great.
Well, the first thing I'm gonna say is
don't worry, he's just my dad.
You see what I did there?
You know what?
I gotta say, because he's a little ram here,
we are in LA so we have an LA ram here
and he's got sort of sleepy eyes.
So I would probably steal something
from a character I did a little bit earlier
on a show called Rick and Morty.
I played a little dog called Snowball who speaks like this.
And the first lines Snowball ever said were,
"Where are my testicles, Summer?"
Now, perhaps this goat could say the same thing.
If you're thinking for five seconds you're going to milk me,
let me show you what I can do with these horns.
I will beat you three ways, up, down, and continuously.
What if he was a teenager?
Okay.
Hey, my name is Goat.
Now, you're gonna think
that I'm describing what creature I am.
Oh, no, no.
Goat is an acronym for greatest of all time.
You know how I know?
Ask me, because I am, that's how I know.
I even got my own bell.
Deal with it.
Okay, I think, well,
he's already got lots of, what I'm seeing here is,
it looks like a science experiment doing karaoke.
I don't quite know what's going on here,
but he's got all this mess,
so let's bring in the mucous-y kind of stuff.
And I like the fact that he maybe does his speech
like Willougby used to,
so why don't we throw that in there, too?
Why not?
It could happen.
I mean, that's the beautiful thing about cartoons.
Who's going to argue with me?
Like a hype man?
Okay, maybe he can make it like,
Hey, if I'm lying, I'm dying.
My name is Gleep Glarp Glibble Globber
Glip Glop Glam and I'm here from Alpha Centauri
to tell you tonight it is great to be back
with Dancing With The Stars!
Be careful how close you get.
Good night, everybody!
I mean, look at that hair!
This gentleman is here said, "Hello, my name is Kyle
and I'm a human chia pet.
Most people would love to have hair like mine.
It is mine.
It is authentic and if you dig very deeply,
you can find Jimmy Hoffa."
Maybe he also looks like he could be
a very sort of healthy fellow.
Maybe he's a fellow who works as a butcher
and he has a-- oh, can you hear all that?
That's my parole officer coming to get me.
You'll never take me alive, copper!
With this gentleman, because he's very handsome
and has that, looks to me,
like he could be a Scottish fellow,
so maybe he's going to teach you how to make haggis.
I'll slaughter the previous character.
No, no, no, two characters earlier.
The sheep.
We'll slaughter him, take his stomach,
grind up his intestines, and shove it in the stomach
and I will show you how to make haggis.
Looks like me before I had my teeth fixed.
Anybody with orange bangs is, from the get-go,
is gonna be an unhappy fellow.
So, maybe he should talk like this.
Hi, I've got two speeds in my voice, slow and quiet,
and there's no in-between.
So maybe his name is Theo.
Theo, have you fed the dog?
Shut up!
Theo, would you feed the dog?
No, I'm gonna eat the dog!
What are you looking at?
Yeah, my eyes are green and my teeth are green
and my gums are white and my bangs are orange!
Get used to it!
Would you put your tongue in my mouth?
Why not?
Well, maybe, you know, I'll have him do something like this.
He's kind of droopy, maybe droopy.
We'll throw a little bit of droopy in there, too,
only we'll make it like this.
Mom, I ate the dog again.
Is that gonna mess with my intestines?
Oh, yeah!
Oh, yeah, this is great.
A raccoon.
I think, because I'm a little raccoon,
I've got a beautiful tail and I'm a little bit sneaky.
I'm even putting my hands together
because, of course, we know that suggests sneaky.
So I'm gonna steal a little bit of a voice
from one of my favorite character actors from years ago.
A guy named Al Lewis who played Grandpa
on The Monsters, right?
Grandpa Monster and he would say, "Oh, yeah!
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, look at that!
I'm gonna eat coffee grounds and old chicken.
Now we're talking!
That's how I operate."
[sniffing]
Oh, oh, oh, this is excellent.
This is pork tartare, which essentially uncooked pork.
Perfect for me, not so good for you, so thank you.
We have a lobster who, probably,
because lobsters aren't red until they're boiled.
So this lobster has beaten the odds.
He just looks really happy!
He just looks, you know,
I'm just as serious as a pimple on prom night.
I don't know that anybody could be any happier than I am
because I was boiled alive, thank you very much,
and I'm still here to talk about it.
[laughter]
Don't got any closer, baby,
because I don't know what these things will do.
Whoa!
Well, you know, when you have a mustache like that,
it look very au francais, so maybe he is a lobster
from the north Atlantic off the cost of Nova Scotia.
So maybe he is a French or maybe a little higher up there.
Could be a French-Canadian lobster who beat death.
Why not?
Man, I got to tell you, I have not slept in so long.
There's so much bad dental work in this country.
I'm telling you, there's gonna be dearth of quarters
because, and by the way, parents, if your kid loses a tooth,
there's a cost of living index.
A quarter is not gonna work.
From now on, please drop your kid a five spot.
And, man, I'm getting old.
Fact is, you can't see it now, I'm so exhausted.
But I got a prostate like an Idaho potato.
I cannot do this much longer.
I got no retirement plan, so spiff your kids a five spot.
It'll pay me a little bit more
and oh, this is no way to make a living.
Oh, boy.
Okay, what' I'm looking at here
is on the front half on his head,
we have a critter that has really beautiful teeth.
Guy or girl, who knows?
Gorgeous blonde locks and one, two, three,
eight tentacles or so sticking out the back end.
And this is not that dissimilar to a character I used to do
on Fairly OddParents called Mark Chang
who is a surfer kind of octopus dude with a clear head
who lived in Yugopotamia.
So that's kind of like,
this is like a fireball with tentacles.
I don't even know where he's headed,
but he's headed there in a hurry, man,
because his hair almost looks like he's on fire.
Or, as they say, en fuego.
Okay, so this character does not speak English,
so what this character has to do
is make you understand what you are from talking from.
So even the character will say to you on the street,
"Excuse from me.
Can you point me from the to Chinese theater?"
That's what they tell me from saying to Hollywood peoples.
This looks like it could be,
I'm looking at a giant ball of hair
with two eyes that go this way
and it looks a lot like one of the Muppets, Gonzo.
[yells] Right?
Well, why don't we do him like this?
Why don't we say, "Hey, man.
What's that you eating?
If you're gonna eat that, give the rest to me
because if it ain't nailed down,
I'm gonna eat that bad boy.
But the cool thing is that when I'm quiet,
when I'm being sweet with my lady,
I talk like this.
Yeah, come on, baby.
You know what I like.
I like it when you do that.
Now, I ain't gonna tell you what that is
because it's probably a felony.
There's a fine line between funny and felony
and I ain't gonna cross it."
Actually, you know, I did a character
that is not too dissimilar.
I did a character in a bunch of movies
called, "The Land Before Time"
and I played a little dinosaur named Spike.
His dialogue consisted of the following:
[moans]
It's all I ever said.
Hey, Spike, here's a tree star!
[moans]
Are you happy? [moans]
Are you sad? [moans]
And then I get a check.
So this guy's probably the same way.
[grunts]
Oh, Harry.
Got to call him Harry.
[grunts]
Hey, Harry, how you doing? [grunts]
You want to eat the Brontosaurus burger?
[grunts]
Have you seen Spike? [grunts]
Spike still alive?
No, that was the Cretaceous Period.
Well, having played a couple of mice,
you might know me as Pinky.
And I also played a character called Jacques.
Cinderelly, Cinderelly.
That was me.
So, this guy is a very, he's a very fast rat.
Yeah, why not?
Why don't we get a guy like this?
He sort of sounds like Bruno Kirby.
Hey, I'm taking my cheese.
You wanna get this cheese?
I don't think so, junior.
I'm gonna grab my cheese and run until I can't run anymore.
Try and stop me.
Bye-bye!
Uh-uh!
Boom, I'm out.
Let's make him like this.
Let's make him like my own voice
because every now and then, I get a job like that.
Raphael sounds a lot like me.
Hey, Shredder!
You ten-faced geek!
Get back here and taste cold turtle steel!
And don't touch my cheese!
I think the best advice I can give prospective voice actors
is that it's small v, large a.
The actors who do this are wonderful, consummate actors.
My process in terms of creating characters
is no different than it was when I create a character,
try to flesh out a character, give it a personality,
a soul, when I was doing theater.
Also, because I'm not limited by my visage,
I swing for the fences.
My job is to give the producers an embarrassment of riches
so that they have trouble deciding
on which take to choose, if they're all good,
and being fearless, as Billy West says.
You don't have to worry about what you look like,
so if somebody says this is a talking sponge
or a talking turtle with ninja skills,
who knows what that sounds like?
Improv is huge.
Being able to think on your feet, doing a lot of improv.
Often, what'll happen is I might be in a session
with all these other world class actors,
somebody coming up with an idea
on the other side of the glass.
One of the writers, producers.
Rob, we've got two lines for this character.
You got anything?
And I'll look or I or Tara Strong
or Tress MacNeille or Mauriece LaMarche
will take a look at the character
and say, "Yeah, I've got something."
Off you go.
And that's why improv is huge because it helps
you think on your feet, so do improv.
You won't regret it.
And I have to tell you that at the ripe old age of 63,
the same Jones that inspired me to do this gig
when I was a kid is no different.
It just makes my soul happy.
I'm Rob Paulsen and that was my take on improvising
a few characters I've never seen before.
And look, if I can do it, you can, too.
Just do it.