I just read about your article "Spots Before My Eyes" on Animated News. As soon as I saw it was about a 101 Dalmatians song, I immediately remembered a song from the LP I had as a kid. Since I lived in The Netherlands, of course it was in Dutch, but the end is like: "…en honderd en een van die hongerige mondjes en honderd en een van die kwispelende kontjes, dat zijn dalmatiner hondjes!" (…and one hundred and one of those hungry little mouths and one hundred and one of those wagging little dog ends, those are Dalmatian doggies)
I was curious what you had to write about it and was surprised to learn this song is not in the movie. I can’t remember seeing the movie, but I just adored my record, especially this song. It is so catchy I too can remember it after so many years. Although you wrote your record dates from 1960, and the song wasn’t in the movie itself, my record is from the early eighties, me being born in 1977. I find it funny the song was used for a children’s record in The Netherlands, translated and stayed on the LP even twenty years after it was skipped from the original movie. Unfortunately, I don’t have the Dutch record here in Vienna, Austria...
Well, now you've done it. I'm going to be going around for weeks humming "…en honderd en een van die hongerige mondjes en honderd en een van die kwispelende kontjes, dat zijn dalmatiner hondjes!" to myself. Thanks a lot.
Now that I've learned how to embed audio links in this page, I'm going to share a few goodies, starting with the repost of something I put up here a long time ago, before most of you began visiting this blog. This is the demo tape of the late, great voiceover god, Paul Frees.
All voiceover actors have at least one demo and some have several — one for animation, one for narration, one for trailers, etc. Mr. Frees had a "one size fits all" demo. Actually, he had a couple different ones but they all had a wide variety of what he did, and of the three or four I have, this one's the best.
It's five minutes. Note to anyone who's considering a career in voiceover work: You would be a fool to make your demo five minutes. No one who can ever possibly give you work is going to listen to it and many of them will think less of you because you don't know that. You are not Paul Frees.
Actually, given his rep, his demo probably wasn't used primarily to get him work. It was probably more like a catalogue so that people who were already thinking of hiring him could get a fix on which Paul Frees voice they wanted. Even then, if Mr. Frees were around now and looking for work, this demo would be two minutes. The business has changed since his day and now agents and casting directors figure that if they don't hear something wonderful in about the first minute, there's no point in listening any longer. That's probably valid.
I once asked a top voice agent, "If this demo came to you from an unknown, how far into it would you get before you decided you wanted to take this person on as a client?" He said, "Halfway through the first voice on it." That's even discounting the most impressive thing about it, which is that about 80% of these are from real jobs Frees had, some of which were quite successful and loved. So was he, and I think you can hear why...
Fred Kaplan discusses what George W. Bush means by "victory in Iraq." The definition keeps changing but we don't seem to be getting any closer to any of them.
Now, that's service! Last night, I write a piece about how I wish The Night They Raided Minsky's would come out on DVD. I go to bed. I wake up this morning and there on Amazon, they're taking orders for The Night They Raided Minsky's, coming out on DVD on May 20! What clout we have here.
Amazing. True, there doesn't seem to be that commentary track I craved but that'll probably be done for a Deluxe Platinum Edition a few years down the line...about the time they're ready to try to get us to buy this DVD again. Guess you can't have everything. I'm just satisfied that my little item caused them to hurriedly schedule the release and design a DVD cover and get it all up on Amazon...and in under seven hours! (A few of the dozens who wrote me this morning to tell me about it are under the delusion that this was arranged some time ago and that I was simply unaware it had been announced. You folks don't understand the power of this weblog.)
If you'd like to pre-order, here's the link. I don't understand why the Amazon page says that the movie stars Harry Andrews and Jack Burns, when they actually have much smaller parts than Jason Robards, Norman Wisdom, Britt Ekland and Bert Lahr...but I guess whoever whipped up this listing was in such a hurry to surprise me with it that they got a little sloppy.
Here's three minutes from a movie that as I've mentioned here before, really oughta be out on DVD. It's The Night They Raided Minsky's and it starred Jason Robards, Norman Wisdom, Britt Ekland and, briefly, Bert Lahr. Mr. Lahr passed away during the filming and his role had to be truncated (or in a few scenes, played by a look-alike dubbed by a sound-alike). The film was made in 1968, produced by Norman Lear and directed by William Friedkin. Mr. Friedkin more or less disowned it and it was heavily recut in the editing room, making it into quite a different movie. The seams show but I still like what resulted.
The blonde gentleman you'll see in this scene is Dexter Maitland who at the time of his death a few years ago, was hailed as The Last Burlesque Straight Man. In the late eighties, I got to meet and chat with him in Vegas where he spent most of his last few decades (either there or in Reno) performing in revues that vaguely recreated the old days at Minsky's Burlesque where he had once worked. In Vegas, he sang a little but mostly played opposite The Last Burlesque Funnyman — the equally wonderful Irv Benson — in comedy routines that Henny Youngman would have dismissed as out-of-date. And maybe they were but I thought they were wonderful. (To read all about Mr. Benson, go here. Better still, go here.)
Like I said, the movie oughta be on DVD...and maybe it soon will be. The oft-announced stage musical version is apparently getting its act together to play Los Angeles early in '09 with an eye on later migrating to Broadway. Now renamed Minsky, it reportedly now bears very little resemblance to the movie on which it is ostensibly based. Still, it might provide a nice external impetus to get a DVD done...and I do hope they persuade Norman Lear to do a commentary track. For now, you'll have to settle for this clip...
March 26, 2008
