Roddy McDowell’s 1974 appearance on the Carol Burnett Show was something a little different. How often do you see a big TV star singing a love duet with an ape?
Burnett introduced McDowell as, “one of Hollywood’s most familiar faces,” then feigned shock when the actor came onstage in a tuxedo, but in full Planet of the Apes facial make-up. McDowell starred in four of the Planet of the Apes films and in the TV series.
For the next few minutes they engaged in some tomfoolery—McDowell says he’s been working on his tan in Palm Springs and when asked which of his movies has had the most profound effect on him he sidesteps the obvious and recites a soliloquy from Cleopatra—before launching into a spirited version of the Jerome Kern love ballad They Didn’t Believe Me. By the end of the tune the audience roars as Burnett warbles, “When I told them how wonderful you are, They didn’t believe me,” as she mimes picking a bug off his lapel.
Later she thanks Roddy for undergoing the three-and-a-half hours it took to put on the make-up for that bit of funny business.
It’s not likely you’ll see Andy Serkis, star of the latest slice of simian cinema, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, partaking in the same kind of promotional monkey business.
Times have changed since McDowell had to endure untold hours in the make-up chair, then smoke using an extra long cigarette holder so as not to light his faux fur on fire. “It’s about a foot long and makes me look like the weirdest monkey you ever did see,” McDowell told Newsday.
These days Serkis, who is best known for his motion capture performance of Gollum in the Lord of the Rings films, performs on a soundstage in front of multiple cameras that film his performance from every angle. He wears a body suit dotted with spots that allow the computers to register even the slightest movement. Serkis calls this “a magic suit” that “allows you to play anything regardless of your size, your sex, your color, whatever you are.” Later, in post production the “digital make-up” adds in the costume and character details.
It saves hours in the make-up chair, but is no less a performance than McDowell’s more organic approach. “I’ve never drawn a distinction between live-action acting and performance-capture acting,” Serkis says. “It is purely a technology. It’s a bunch of cameras that can record the actor’s performance in a different way.”
Rock ’n’ roll and the movies have always had an uneasy relationship. For every film that hits all the right notes, like Quadrophenia or A Hard Day’s Night, there’s a host of tone-deaf films like Light of Day, featuring Michael J. Fox and Joan Jett as musical siblings, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, a glam-rock-and-disco re-imagining of the Beatles classic.
Rock ’n’ roll biographies are equally hit-and-miss. In The Buddy Holly Story, the toothy Gary Busey earned an Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of the rock legend, but Roger Ebert sneered that Dennis Quaid played Jerry Lee Lewis in Great Balls of Fire “as a grinning simpleton with a crazy streak.”
This weekend, Jersey Boys — directed by Clint Eastwood, and based on the Tony Award-winning musical — tells the story of ’60s hitmakers The Four Seasons. Songs like Big Girls Don’t Cry, Walk Like A Man and Can’t Take My Eyes Off You made them one of the biggest-selling rock acts of all time.
Lesser known than the Four Seasons but louder, faster and dirtier were The Runaways, the subject of a rambunctious 2010 movie. Set back when you could still drink a bottle of stolen booze in the shade of the Hollywood sign, The Runaways focuses on two glue-sniffing, tough girls named Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) and Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning) who formed the underage all-girl band. The music of The Runaways was described as the “sound of hormones raging,” and this film captures that.
I’m Not There is a hard movie to describe. It’s a metaphoric retelling of Bob Dylan’s life, but none of the characters in it are called Bob Dylan. Most of them don’t look like Dylan, and the one who most looks like Dylan is a woman. Unlike Walk the Line or Ray, which were both standard-issue Hollywood biopics, there is nothing linear here, but then there is nothing straightforward about the man, so there should be nothing straightforward about the movie.
Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll is the title of eccentric English singer Ian Dury’s biggest hit and the 2010 biopic about his eventful life. Starring Andy Serkis, the film is as high voltage as one of Dury’s legendary live performances.
Finally, the film Control details the short life of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis (Sam Riley). After seeing the film at Cannes, Curtis’s bass player Peter Hook said he knew the movie “would be very well received because, even though it’s two hours long, only two people went to the toilet the whole time. In fact, one of them was (Joy Division founding member) Bernard (Sumner). The other one was a 70-year-old woman.”
Would you spend money to see an animated movie starring Nicole Jaffe and Henry Corden? Probably not, because you’ve never heard of either of them.
Oh, but you’ve heard them.
Jaffe voiced Velma on Scooby Doo, while Corden vocalized for Fred Flintstone. Their voices are familiar, but not well-known enough for the producers of most of today’s big budget cartoons.
“If they were doing a half-hour Flintstone show today, they’d still go with me,” said Corden in 1999, “but for a motion picture, even an animated one, they’d go with a celebrity to play Fred, because they need to sell the picture.”
It boils down to bucks —George Clooney as the Fantastic Mr. Fox will put more bums in seats than Henry Corden. “I hate it but I understand it,” Corden said.
Luckily marquee actors like voice work— the hours are good and you don’t have to shave.
Marlon Brando was so taken with the easy money of voice acting he suggested doing the role of Superman’s Jor-El in voice-over, with his onscreen character portrayed as a glowing, levitating green bagel. That one didn’t pan out but he took further audio-only roles, including his final gig performing an old lady voice in the unreleased Big Bug Man.
Other star turns haven’t been so ignoble. Orson Welles thrilled a generation of tweens as the voice of planet-gobbler Unicron in Transformers: The Movie and Angela Lansbury was Mrs. Potts , the perkiest teapot ever in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.
In the old days, Disney frequently used celebrity voices to augment their cartoons — remember Bob Newhart in The Rescuers?—but the trend kicked into overdrive when Robin Williams’s hyperkinetic jabbering stole the show in Aladdin.
It was a tour de force performance and Williams’s star power helped push the box office past $200,000,000, an animated film first. Since then Disney has made a habit of regularly hiring well known actors to voice their characters—“They properly recognized that you couldn’t send an animated character out there to Entertainment Tonight to promote your movie,” said animation producer Fred Seibert–but sometimes big name talent can work against the part they’re playing. Can you hear James Earl Jones as Mufasa without thinking of Darth Vader? Me neither.
Perhaps that’s why the House of Mouse went a different way with The Princess and the Frog, premiering this month on The Movie Network. They kept things fresh by casting Keith David, Bruno Campos and Anika Noni Rose.
“I was so wanting to be a Disney voice my entire life,” says Rose, the voice of Disney’s first African-American princess in The Princess and the Frog, “and I would have been more than happy to play anything. Is there a blade of grass? Do you need it to whistle? Because I’ve got that.”
She’s a good actor, but hardly a household name and that lack of familiarity allowed her character to live and breathe and not simply be an extension of an already well-known celebrity persona.
In animation circles the debate rages on about the pros and cons of casting big name actors versus voice only performers, but there is one thing everyone agrees on. “It’s not just about the voice, it’s about the character under the role,” says voiceover actor M.J. Lallo.
“It’s not just standing in the studio doing funny voices, it’s acting,” adds casting director Michael Hack. “It’s more realistic CG animation and more realistic voices. You need to be trained and have instincts for real acting. If you don’t bring anything as an actor, the animation suffers.”
Voxography: Ten Great Voice Actors
1. The Man of a Thousand Voices Mel Blanc was best known as the voice behind Bugs Bunny, but he also vocalized for Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tweety & Sylvester and Yosemite Sam. He supplied so many voices in films that Jack Benny once joked, “There are only five real people in Hollywood. Everybody else is Mel Blanc.”
2. June Foray, best known for voicing Rocket “Rocky” J. Squirrel, was praised by animation kingpin Chuck Jones who said, “Mel Blanc is the male June Foray.”
3. Andy Serkis says he used the sound of his three cats clearing fur balls out of their throats to develop the inspired voices he produced for Gollum and Smeagol in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
4. Paul Lynde played off his irascible personality to play Templeton the Rat in Charlotte’s Web. Tony Randall was originally cast in the role, but when the director asked him to sound more “nasal” Randall suggested they get Paul Lynde instead.
5. Ben Burtt in WALL-E makes the list for creating the blips and beeps that make Pixar’s Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class, or WALL-E character, such a charmer.
6. Despite an acting career that spans almost 70 years Peter Sallis is best known as the Yorkshire accented voice of eccentric inventor Wallace in the Wallace & Gromit films.
7. Named a Disney Legend in 1991 Sterling Holloway voiced dozens of characters for the Mouse House including the endearingly raspy voiced Winnie the Pooh. Ironically the actor best known for his distinctive voice made his silver screen debut in silent movies.
8. As the know-it-all Judith in Where the Wild Things Are Catherine O’Hara left behind her mimicry skills—remember her turn as Katharine Hepburn on SCTV?—to deliver a pure and lovely unaffected performance in her own voice.
9. As the swashbuckling Puss in Boots in the Shrek series Antonio Banderas is a scene stealer. He’s flirty—“I don’t know you,” he says to one comely cat, “but I’d like to.”—and daring with a flair for the dramatic.
10. In addition to writing and directing The Incredibles Brad Bird also cast himself in one of the film’s most memorable roles, the superhero costume designer and Edith Head look-a-like Edna “E” Mode.
2005 will surely go down in history as the Year of the Remake. Theatres saw rehashed television shows like Bewitched and The Dukes of Hazzard hit the big screen, while old movies ideas like War of the Worlds and The House of Wax were reused, usually given a big budget do-over.
Unless you have been living on a remote island with only a giant ape and some restless cannibals for company you must have heard that Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson has taken on the biggest recycling project of the year—a remake of the classic 1933 film King Kong. In doing so Jackson has created an epic three-hour movie that adds to the legacy of the original without overshadowing it.
As you might expect the effects are amazing. A T-Rex chase scene is thrilling; Kong’s home base of Skull Island makes Jurassic Park look like Central Park and the Spider pit scene, cut from the 1933 original has been restored in all its gruesome glory but the most amazing thing here is how Jackson (and actor Andy Serkis) make us actually feel something for a 25 foot tall computer animated ape by combining 21st century technological wizardry with old-fashioned heart. Kong Redux behaves more like a real ape than the original, but the emotional core that made the 1933 version so great is still there. This Kong seems as genuine as any of the real-life actors he is working opposite.
With this version of King Kong Peter Jackson confirms his post LOTR reputation as a virtuoso of the epic film, infusing big-picture storytelling with a human touch.
Roddy McDowell’s 1974 appearance on the Carol Burnett Show was something a little different. How often do you see a big TV star singing a love duet with an ape?
