Tony Anselmo aka Donald Duck

Earlier today I went to a public program at the Walt Disney Family Museum called “Designing a Voice with Tony Anselmo”. First of all, everything they do there is fantastic and they keep the prices low enough that an entire family can go and not break the bank. The ticket for the afternoon was $10 for members and $12 for non members and it was at least 2 hours of entertainment capped off with an autograph session. This is about the price of a movie and you get a chance to hear from an animator who also does the voice of Donald Duck.
Tony started out as a huge Disney fan. He wore his Mickey Mouse Club ears so much they were all dog eared and almost destroyed by the time he was 5. As a kid he would write to the studio and the animators and was corresponding with Frank and Ollie via letters when he gathered up his animation portfolio at the age of 16 and went to the studio to have it looked at. They loved it and wanted him to attend CalArts to start training. After only two years there he was selected to go to the Disney School within the studio. There he was paid to study as an animator. One day he innocently asked Clarence “Ducky” Nash how he did the voice. This was just as a curiosity and he would practice in the shower, car, whereever he got a moment simply because he wanted to figure it out. He never had any intention of ever being the voice. He noticed that Clarence would stop by his desk and ask him questions like “what do you think Donald would say in this situation?” They would work on the voice but Tony thought they were simply palling around. One day after Clarence went into the hospital, he called for Tony and that was when he discovered that Clarence wanted him to take over the voice. Tony was the only animator to actually animate a Donald as well as do his voice. He did this in “The Prince and the Pauper”. As an animator Tony animated scenes in The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, and Tarzan and he has been the voice of Donald since 1985.
The afternoon was full of Donald’s voice, great stories from his time as an animator and tales of someone who had a love for the early Disney stuff and still does. Tony is an avid collector of Disney memorabilia and his collection goes back to his childhood when he would write the studio to get movie posters as the movie was coming out. Of course he has one of the best collections of Donald Duck memorabilia but he really loves collecting anything from the days when Walt was running the show.
My favorite quote from the afternoon would be “The Jonas Bros and Hannah Montana are no Annette.” He really loves what the studio originally stood for and was not shy about his distaste for the Michael Isner days.

Chuck Tales: The Nuns Told Me You Were Dead!

When I was a freshman at the University of Kansas I was living in the dorms and about three months into the school year this guy slowly walked up to me. He was looking at me like I was a ghost and approaching very carefully. Then he looked me straight in the face and said “Chuck….. Chuck Wedge…… is that you?” Of course, I responded that I was… you know.. me. He then continued staring at me in disbelief and proceeded to tell that when I moved away in the middle of my fourth grade year the class had heard I had gotten really sick. This was true. Shortly after moving away I started showing the first symptoms of what would later be diagnosed as Crohn’s disease.  Towards the end of that fourth grade year the nuns, I had attended Catholic School until the middle of fourth grade, well the nuns they had to break the news to the class that their old friend, Chuck Wedge, had died. This guy standing in front of me in the dorm cafeteria went on to tell me that my “death” was the first death he had ever had to deal with and that it really affected him. It took him years to get over the fact that another fourth grader that he used to play with was dead. He went on and graduated from high school within the same Catholic school system and then he and a bunch of his friends all went off to college. Then he started to see me again. I was walking around campus and the weird thing was that I did not look like I had aged much. Well… when I got sick they put me on this drug and one of the side effects was that it… well it froze my development as long as I was on it.. yup.. it stopped puberty until I finally got off of it… right about the time I started college. The eight years I had not seen this guy and I was still 4 foot 9 and I still weighed 70 lbs. I grew to me current size all within my freshman year. Back to this guy, well he had been telling his friends that he had been seeing Chuck Wedge walking around campus. Well, his friends could not believe it, they told him “Get over it! Chuck Wedge is DEAD! The nuns told us that in 4th grade!” This guy handed me his phone number and an address and asked if I would stop by that Friday. He wanted to show them that I was alive and well and that he was not crazy or seeing a ghost. That Friday night I searched everywhere but I could not find the slip of paper with his name, address, or phone number. I have worried for years that I have further scarred this guy by not showing up but I still have no idea who he was.

Chuck Tales: The First Time I Was Hit By A Car!

My friends have been on me to get some of the stories a tell written down so here it goes. My first one!
So far in my life I have been hit by 5 cars, on five separate occasions. All of this happened within a two year period. When I say that I was wreckless during my first few years of college, I am not talking about experimentation. I did none of that. I am referring to the fact that I was actually not very careful when it came to watching where I was going.
The first time I was hit, I was crossing the street on campus. The car was coming upon a stop sign and I assumed it would slow down and stop, you know, since there was a stop sign. I started crossing and yet it actually did not stop at the stop sign. I rolled up on the hood, then across it to the other side. I landed on my feet and just kept walking. I was pretty embarrassed that I was hit, since this was the first time that had happened. I continued walking with my headphones on. I was a little sore, but it was mostly my pride that was hurt. All of a sudden I felt someone tap me on the shoulder. I turned around and pulled my headphones off my ears and said,
“yeah, what’s up?”
The woman looked at me so weird and said, “I… just hit you with my car.”
My response was to brush her off and try to play it cool. “Yeah, I guess you did.”
“So, are you alright?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
I then turned around, put my headphones on and started to walk away. I did not want to be rude, but I was so embarrassed that I just wanted to get out of there. As time has gone on I realize that this was not something to be embarrassed about. At the time, I had even bigger things that would embarrass even the most jaded person but I did not want to come across as a wimp.

Modern Flashback: 1980′s

Recently, I have seen a series of announcements about “new” shows that will be hitting the air in the next few seasons and I have noticed a trend. Everything that is 1980′s is new again. I am not sure if this is caused by the success of Transformers, the fact that the Gen Xers who are in power now are suffering from nostalgia, or a general hesitation to take risk on something new. To those making the decisions, the shows from their childhood were great and a huge success, the characters are already set, you add in a few twists and maybe a new character or two and “bamm!” instant hit.

To me there seems to be several glaring flaws. Every generation is different, what worked for my generation may not work for this one. The environment is extremely different and the underlying themes that drove the 1980′s, which bore out these shows, are not around. Take the recent announcement at E3 and in Variety that Namco is shopping around a new Pac-Man show, this seems like a silly move to me because Pac-Man was a 1980′s phenomenon. The show only existed because it was a wildly popular game at a time when home video game systems were brand new and only a few were in existence. The kids who it would be targeted to would probably only have a vague knowledge that Pac-Man was once a game. They might have seen it in an old arcade or pizza joint. Maybe they played it once or twice, but they do not have the investment in the character that the kids who played the game everyday after school, all weekend, bought Pac-Man cereal, and generally suffered from Pac-Man fever.

Another issue would be that at a certain age, what was once cool to your parents is not exactly cool to you. This turns around but a show like Thundercats straddles that age range when kids are trying to establish their own identity and if this was something that dad loved or dad watches with you, it may not be the defining show for you.

A third issue is that these “reinventions” rarely seem to work at all. In the effort to take old characters and modernize them a lot of the magic seems to disappear. Look at shows like Looney Tunes Unleashed or movies like Speed Racer, Astro Boy, a live action Underdog, G.I. Joe (my biggest heart-break), and the Chipmunks movie. All of these took what was once fun and presented it to the next generation as garbage full of “inside jokes” for the parents and unnecessary celebrity appearances (why have celebrity voices for the Chippettes? Their voices are sped up and totally unrecognizable.)

Then there is the writing, the original shows were clever and featured some of the best talent in the business, both voice actors and some really amazing writers. Look at a much older show and then the movie remake. The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle was a very clever and funny show featuring some of the best writers and an amazing cast. It was fantastic that they brought back the legendary June Foray to do the voice of Rocky, but the live action cast did not live up to the voices and the writing lost the magic of the original.

I worry about a very poor showing from the Smurfs movie. The casting feels like it is for a much larger joke. Katy Perry as Smurfette but I hear from a reliable source in the business that was only because Lady Gaga turned it down, others are Jeff Foxworthy, Paul Reubens, Wolfgang Puck, and Tim Gunn. They moved the Smurfs to New York and thus hi jinx shall ensue.

I was not allowed to watch a ton of TV as a kid but the shows I did watch were all the more precious. I will give all of these a chance but I am preparing myself to have my childhood memories ground up and spat out in my face by executives that suffer from a lack of imagination.

Movies With My Nephews: Prince of Persia

For the remainder of the summer we have 2 extra guests, my nephew and niece are visiting for the summer from Arizona. Nick – 13, Ashley – 10. Last week we all went to see the movie Prince of Persia. I was not sure what to expect, from all the previews I believed the actress Gemma Arterton would speak in that lifeless monotone she had in the trailers, which was not at all the case. I actually feel that she exceeded my expectations significantly. Afterwards I discovered that she was classically trained and that my expectations that she was a bad actress who just looked good were simply me being ignorant and jumping to conclusions. The action scenes were exciting and, for a PG-13 summer movie to take 4 teens/tweens/young adults to, this was a good choice. All the nephews and even the niece score it around a 4 on a scale of 5 and I am hovering around a 3.5 possibly a 4.

Probably my biggest complaint was that it felt like the movie must have spent a fortune on spray tanning English actors and actresses and the American Jake Gyllenhaal. What is it about foreign locations and everyone needing an English accent? Overall, I can overlook this because it suspended my disbelief in Persia not being English during the length of the movie and only bothered me afterwards.
Hank – 18 years old: (Score missing but he said he liked it)
Dylan – 14 years old: 4.0
Nick – 13 years old: 4.5
Ashley – 10 years old: 4.0
Chuck – age withheld: 3.5 but could be swayed to a 4.0.

Combined score 4.0

Movies With My Nephews: Shrek Forever After (The Final Chapter)

Every week, for many years, I have taken two of my nephews to a movie on Sunday. It is a tradition that I cherish. My nephews, Hank 18 and Dylan 14, choose the movie and we go from there. This week we decided to start adding reviews to the blog so here is the first review from me and my nephews.

This week we saw Shrek 4: Forever After. This final installment in the Shrek series was good but not great. Both Hank and Dylan stated that it was better than Shrek 2 and 3 but did not live up to the original. Of course, a movie featuring this much comedic talent had it’s funny parts, many of which you have seen in the previews. Craig Robinson added a funny new Ogre named Cookie that had some highlights but most of the comedy comes from the standard Shrek characters.

On a scale of 5. Hank gives it a 3.5, Dylan gives it a 3. I give it a 3.5

Overall: Combo 3 (Only whole numbers)

Freberg!!!

Chuck, Mark Evanier, Stan Freberg, Cia Court

Last Tuesday I had the pleasure of sitting in on a recording session with a handful of the best voiceover actors in the business.  The Garfield show is written and voice directed by Mark Evanier, a man known for writing in almost every field known to man, comics, television, and animation. This show features the voices of Frank Welker, Gregg Berger, and Wally Wingert as well as legendary guest voices such as June Foray. On the day my friend Cia and I were there though we were surprised with an appearance of Stan Freberg. That’s right! Stan Freberg, you know Pete Puma, Junyer Bear, the Beaver from Lady and the Tramp, the man who put funny into advertising, the man who did comedy records galore! I actually find this to be amazing since I have really started to discover all of his work since the time I saw him at ComicCon, then WonderCon, bought his book “It Only Hurts When I Laugh“, two of his comedy albums, and generally became obsessed.

I was not around for the first runs of most of Stan’s work but in discovering it now I find much of it to be timeless and still extremely hilarious. The Warner Bros. Cartoons he is in are some of the funniest to me and I discover new characters that he voiced all the time like Wile E. Coyote’s father (Cage E. Coyote), Sam the Orange cat in the Sylvester Cartoons, and the Three Little Bops.

During the session I learned alot simply by listening to his stories like the fact that he was the voice of Mickey Mouse on a Disney album – Mickey’s Birthday Party and that he was the one who came up with the name “the Grammys” for the music awards. This man will be at the upcoming ComicCon so if you are going to be there, take the opportunity to meet a real legend and at least shake his hand.

This man is one of the few remaining legends from the golden age of cartoons and animation