i was dissapointed with the program. azaria and shearer were funny, those guys actually have comedic talent. but castalenetta didn’t seem like homer at all when he did his little “safen it up” bit. you think a guy could find his character’s voice just a little after playing him for upwards of 10 years. i wish lipton would have asked him about the evolution of homer’s voice. he sounded so different in the first couple episodes of the series.
nancy cartwright seemed pretty annoying. she does most of the kid voices, it seems. i bet they all dislike her. really, the vibe i got from the program is that they all pretty much stay away from eachother as much as possible.
it’s strange that yeardley smith only does one voice. i wonder if her contract is equal to everyone elses? if so, shearer should be pissed.
i have even more respect for that guy after seeing the show. he was one of the few bright spots. his range is amazing. first of all, he has to carry on conversations with himself as burns and smithers. then he’ll do ranier wolfcastle or flanders on top of that. then there’s skinner and lovejoy… and that’s really only the tip of the iceberg. how you can get so many completely different voices out of one person is amazing to me.
azaria was fairly funny as well. i’m a bit baised since moe is probably my favorite character on the show. seems like hank does all the voices with accents. apu, bumble bee man, dr nick, cletus (another favorite). and i can;t forget dr frink… flavin…
and julie kavner just does the bouviers, which is basically one voice. and she sounds almost exactly like marge anyway, so it’s a little wierd that she would be uncomfortable “doing” the voice. i’m sure it’s annoying for all of them to do shows like this. if i ever saw azaria i’d definately yell “do moe szyzlak!” without even thinking. it’s got to be hard for the serious actors to be stuck in yellow cartoon bodies. well, except for cartwright, seems she relishes the role, since she wouldn’t shut up…
so yeah, the writers are the stars. like we didn’t already know that .
In fact, he probably had a good disguise. I haven’t seen this episode, but Castellaneta plays a man who works at a theme park wearing a Homer Simpson costume.
I saw Nancy Cartwright on a TV talk show (Conan, I think) and she said that she does Bart’s voice in public all the time. She talked about “doing Bart” over the PA on airplanes sometimes, and then proceeded to have Bart say a few words.
Nancy Cartwright is a scientologist. I was once told by my boss (a major Simpsons fan), that NC is given to talking at length about scientology when given an opportunity through a media interview. Maybe this contributes to the other cast members’ irritation with her.
I have a downloaded video of her giving a half-hour-long speech at a book signing. She did a whole lot of Bart. I was kind of disappointed that she mostly just repeated old Bart lines from the series rather than having using the voice to say something new, but it was still pretty cool to watch.
I got a really weird vibe whenever Yeardley Smith spoke. She looked unsure and it seemed like she was waiting for the rest of the cat’s approval with whatever she was saying. Kinda like when rats get shocked whenever they do something wrong.
Dan was a guest on a local radio station and explained this. He said (in more words) that he did one voice while on the Tracy Ullman show because they were just doing shorts at the time. But when it became it’s own show he changed the voice so that it was less straining for him to do, more comfortable if you will.
Re: Nancy Cartwright’s use of Bart’s voice outside of the show
I read her book last year, and as I recall it is indeed a contractual thing. It’s true that she does “do Bart” on all sorts of shows, but from my understanding she can only use things Bart would typically say–catchphrases and the like. The problems come in when people try to get her to do Bart to say other things. So “Aye Carumba” is ok, but “This is Bart Simpson telling you that Howard Stern will be right back with Lexi the stripper” is not. And that makes sense. I think its all about protecting the image.
I was a bit disappointed, too. I would’ve liked to learn more about the creative process behind the Simpsons and the origins of some of the characters (like how Azaria explained the origin of Moe).
Instead, the whole thing came off a little like a trained seal show. “Do him! Do her!” I also felt bad for Julie & Yeardley, because in such a situation, they’re going to be sitting around with little to contribute since their contribution, though essential, is not as multi-faceted. Given their dramatic backgrounds, this gig also seems to be something they wish was given a little more perspective in relations to their larger careers.
Odd. I read Nancy’s book, which was published in the year 2000, and she never mentions Scientology. If this is true, it must be a recent development.
The voice thing is due to the contracts the actors have. Remember, none of them owns the rights to the characters.
As an aside, in her list of thanking people, Nancy mentions an actor I use to date a long time ago. He has an unusual name, and the guy was appearing in local productions at the time.
Cartright’s membership of the Church of Scientology was mentioned in the infamous Time magazine article (well, infamous to the Scientologists) in the early 1990s.
I always found it surprising that the show did a very funny episode poking fun at Scientology and other pseudo-religions, because of Cartwright’s ties.