How I spent last week: Why, voice-directing Squishees, of course! This is a soon-to-be-released animated feature concocted and produced by my pal Don Oriolo, who otherwise manages the career of Felix the Cat. You all know Felix the Cat? The wonderful, wonderful cat? Well, whenever he gets in a fix, he reaches into his bag of tricks. Don has a pretty potent bag o' tricks himself, one of which is this new film which will be out I-dunno-when-or-where but the animation has been completed and this week, we had to dub in the voice track. Yes, this is the reverse of how the process is usually done.
Squishees is the story of a little girl, her scientist father and a very nasty lady. That's the nasty lady at right in the red dress. The scientist's experiment opens a portal into another world where the people are multi-colored and tend to squish a lot and when one of them tumbles into this existence, the nasty lady decides to make a new toy out of him. The result is a cute, fast-paced tale that I think younger kids will enjoy. You can read more about it — and about Don's current Felix projects — at his website, www.felixthecat.com.
We had a terrific cast which included Mark Hamill, Laura Summer, Ruth Buzzi, Gregg Berger, Neil Ross, Anna Garduno and the always-incredible Frank Welker. I've worked with Frank now since…well, since he appeared in the on-camera cast of a Bobby Vinton Special I wrote in 1978. He still manages to dazzle me with his ability to instantly come through with the sound of anyone or anything. On one show, we asked him to make the sound of angry oatmeal cooking…and he did. I'm serious. If I played you the tape and asked you to identify it, you'd say, "Gee, I know this sounds crazy but that sounds like angry oatmeal cooking!"
You hear Frank incessantly in movies and TV shows, animated and otherwise, and often don't know you're not hearing the person whose mouth is flapping. Same with the other folks in our cast. You can hear on-line demos of Gregg Berger's and Neil Ross's extensive voice work at their websites, www.greggberger.com and www.neilrossvo.com.
What a joy to work with all these folks…and to spend time with the absolutely-delightful and very funny Ms. Ruth Buzzi, who voiced our villainess. When I was a wee lad, taking the bus out to work for Disney in Burbank, I'd sometimes hike over to NBC, just a few blocks away, and bluff my way in to watch tapings of Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. The show was done in Studio 3 (wherein Leno now lurks) and only for the first few did they have a formal studio audience. That was because they taped all day, several days a week, and you couldn't keep a live audience properly ensconced for any meaningful length of time. So they let folks — mostly those there for the otherwise-disappointing NBC Studio Tour — wander in and fill the bleachers.
I remember thinking that some members of the troupe were very funny on-stage but not off, while others were funny off-stage but not on. A few managed to do both…and then there was Dan Rowan, who had a pretty good career without ever managing to be either. Ruth Buzzi, on the other hand, was funny when the cameras were on. Ruth Buzzi was funny when they were off. She was funny going to get a bagel from the craft services table. She was funny sitting on the sidelines in grotesque make-ups, waiting patiently for hours for them to get to her sketches, which was how I most often saw her. Cameo guest stars were being hustled in and smooth-talked by the producer, George Schlatter, into saying lines they feared might be injurious to their careers.
No matter how long, Ruth sat there, being patient, waiting for her moment in front of the camera which was invariably accompanied by the announcement that they were running late and she'd have to try and get it on the first take. She usually did. And if they allowed her a second take, she was even funnier.
Watching those old shows, I'm amazed how well they hold up. More that a decade back, someone tried syndicating Laugh-In reruns that were chopped in half. They attracted few viewers; not even myself, and I really loved that show when it first appeared. I dunno if it was because they'd been slashed to 30 minutes or if it was just the wrong moment in history to see those shows again but they didn't work then and they do now. One can also see — and this is true of the Saturday Night Live reruns — why certain cast members kept working and others did not. This is not true of everyone but it's certainly true of some.
Ruth has worked pretty steadily since those days. To a young generation, she's not "Ruth Buzzi of Laugh-In" but "Ruth Buzzi of Sesame Street." Or maybe the lady on that soap opera — I forget which one. They hire her because they've learned what I just learned. She's a wonderful person, relentlessly dedicated to her craft and fun to be around. And boy, is she funny.