The animated boom draws from all kinds of real life
By AARON BARNHART – The Kansas City Star Date: 09/20/99 22:15
LOS ANGELES — “Will somebody turn that freakin’ music off!”
Wally Langham is blowing out his voice again.
On this August night, the comedic actor is sitting in front of a microphone inside a roomy recording studio in Santa Monica, Calif. He’s belting out the lines of Andy French, a 25-year-old two-dimensional denizen of the colorfully painted urban zone known as “Mission Hill.”
The animated sitcom of the same name has its premiere at 8 tonight before moving to 7 p.m. Fridays Oct. 8. It’s the WB network’s first entry into the increasingly crowded realm of prime-time TV animation.
Also in the L.A. recording studio this night are Scott Menville, the voice of Andy’s kid brother Kevin, whom Andy is forced to take in when their parents move to Wyoming; Vicki Lewis, who voices one of their roommates, a flower child aptly named Posey; Brian Posehn, the voice of the other roommate, an extreme slacker named Jim; and Nick Jameson, who has six different speaking parts on the episode.
Sitting behind a table facing the actors is one half of the show’s creative team, Bill Oakley, and his wife, following along on their scripts.
Like many producers in animation, Oakley and his partner, Josh Weinstein, earned their stripes on “The Simpsons,” the long-running Fox series that
brought cartoons back to prime time 10 years ago. And, like most, they like to record scenes over and over, trying out a variety of voice inflections and then cherry-picking their favorites in the edit room.
This does not favor Langham, a regular on HBO’s “The Larry Sanders Show” and NBC’s “Veronica’s Closet,” who has never had formal voice training. Not only does Andy have the most lines, but he also has the most expectorations — lines like “Will somebody turn that freakin’ music off!”And since this is TV, taping sessions are marathon affairs. No wonder Langham is hoarse afterward.
Lewis, who was a regular on the sitcom “NewsRadio,” is having an easier time. With her background in stage and song, Lewis’ vocal cords have no trouble standing up to hours of voice work. (It also helps that Posey speaks in nothing but delicate tones.)
Langham and Lewis were both hired for “Mission Hill,” in part for their voices, but in part because viewers know who they are. Ten years ago, when Fox decided to take a chance and turn Matt Groening’s animated shorts for “The Tracey Ullman Show” into the Sunday-night series “The Simpsons,” the voices were performed by relative unknowns.
Most latter-day cartoons have a star or two on board, probably for the same reason that Sprint pays David Duchovny to read its commercials. Familiar is good.
And “Mission Hill” is going to need all the star power it can get. Animated sitcoms are one of the year’s hottest programming trends, but they are rapidly beginning to glut the airwaves. Fox already has five prime-time cartoons: Sunday-night shows “The Simpsons,” “Futurama,” and “King of the Hill”; Thursday-nighter “Family Guy”; and “The PJ’s,” which is returning at midseason. UPN has one, “Dilbert” (Tuesdays), based on the Scott Adams comic strip. NBC has two arriving at midseason, and the WB has one planned for January and another for next fall (see box).
“Mission Hill” will stand out, say its creators, because it’s the only cartoon that revolves specifically around the culture of teen-agers and young adults. The semi-neurotic Andy, for instance, will move from one low-paying service job to the next in his cartoon world, and an entire episode of “Mission Hill” will satirize MTV’s “The Real World.”
But will its intended audience of 20-something viewers even see the show when it moves to Fridays? And is it provocative enough to persuade them to stay home from dates and the movies to watch?
Obviously, behind animation’s innocent-looking tableau, there lurks a creative Trojan horse. Through it a comedy writer can sneak in lots of sexual innuendo, black humor and social satire that network censors wouldn’t hesitate to strike from a live-action sitcom.
“Mission Hill” does not go to the extremes of “Family Guy,” a cartoon that instantly enraged Jewish groups with its Nazi-themed parodies. That show also features a talking baby with an advanced Oedipal complex — he wants to kill bothhis parents.
“Family Guy” has done so well that Fox is moving it to Thursday nights, where it will oppose “Frasier” on NBC. (The network did the same thing nine years ago when it pitted “The Simpsons” against “The Cosby Show.”)
In March “Futurama,” from Simpson’s creator Matt Groening, transported us to the year 3000, where anybody opting out of everyday life could simply step into a portable suicide booth.
Compared with those shows and such animated cable hits as “South Park” and “Celebrity Deathmatch” — a grotesque MTV series in which Claymation replicas of TV and movie stars dismember each other — “Mission Hill” is relatively tame.
Still, its opening episode is likely to draw attention — both positive and negative — for including what is probably network TV’s first gay make-out scene. It involves two middle-aged men who live in the same building as the show’s lead characters and will be regular characters on the show. “Mission Hill” also has some borderline-offensive humor, mostly sexual.
“They definitely push the envelope, which as an actor makes it more fun, because we’re able to get away with some really raunchy stuff,” said Menville, the voice of Kevin, who has had speaking parts on Saturday-morning cartoons since he was 11.
They make voices
Back at the recording studio, Oakley’s current concern is getting the voice of the highway patrol radio announcer just right. It’s only one of 20 or so incidental parts that will be dropped into the episode, but if they’re done in just the right voice, each one will be a bankable laugh.
On “Mission Hill,” most of those voices are supplied by just two men, Tom Kenny and Nick Jameson. In the main credits they are listed as the voices of the older gay couple, Gus and Wally, but in reality more than half the characters in every show are theirs. (On “The Simpsons,” the two main voice multipliers, Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer, have become fan favorites.)
In one episode Jameson has 13 speaking parts, and on the mid-1990s cartoon “The Critic” he routinely furnished 20 to 30 voices per episode.
To understand how Jameson does it, think of a celebrity impersonator put through a karaoke machine. By taking a familiar voice and modifying its tone, pacing and regional accent, a professional voicer can create myriad variations.
For the part of Mr. French, Andy and Kevin’s dad in “Mission Hill,” Jameson said, “I did a sort of bad Jack Nicholson. Actually, what I did was I had a Nicholson and then I said: What if you took all the macho out of him? You’d get” — and out came the voice of Jack on Zoloft.
“I keep a list of influences,” said Jameson as he reached into his briefcase. He pulled out a “reference sheet,” a two-page single-spaced list of more than 200 names. Under “H” the names included Jimi Hendrix, Katharine Hepburn, William Hickey, Alfred Hitchcock, Dustin Hoffman, Sterling Holloway and Huckleberry Hound.
H also stands for “Hawaiian.” In a recent episode Jameson impersonated a Korean grocer, but when one of the producers said it sounded too much like a voice he’d heard on “King of the Hill,” Jameson improvised, flavoring the Korean accent with what he called “Hawaiian pidgin.” The resulting hybrid was not only distinctive but also politically correct: You couldn’t tell whatnationality it was.
Judging from its first episode, “Mission Hill” lives up to the pedigree of its talented producers (see review). But that may not be enough to make it a hit. Despite its stated objective of reaching the WB’s target viewer (median age: 26), “Mission Hill” probably will live or die based on how many teens watch.
Teens are the main audience for animation: “Family Guy” and “The Simpsons” were the No. 2- and No. 3-rated shows last season among viewers ages 12-17, with “Futurama” at No. 12 and “The PJs” No. 15.
To reach Aaron Barnhart, television writer for The Star, phone (816) 234-4790 or visit the TV Barn Web site at www.tvbarn.com
Tooning up for midseason
“Mission Hill” is the first of all the current prime-time animated shows to be launched in the fall TV season.
The reason is bottom-line. Networks prefer to debut cartoons in January because it makes good money sense. Animation takes months of lead time to produce, so if a new animated show airs at midseason and flops, the network is stuck with only 10 finished episodes, not 20. If the show’s a hit, the network has all summer to crank out new episodes for the next fall.
The WB plans another animated series at midseason, “Baby Blues,” based on the popular comic strip. NBC also will air two animated series at midseason: “God, the Devil and Bob,” with James Garner supplying the voice of God; and “Sammy,” a vehicle for “Just Shoot Me” star David Spade, based on his relationship with his father.
– Aaron Barnhart/The Star