[SPEAKER_04]: What is up everybody?
[SPEAKER_04]: Welcome to comic book club on the Alex.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm Justin and we got a very special episode for you here with an amazing legend of the voice acting community TV legend Andy has a new book out called Voice of Versa finding my voices behind the mic that's coming on July 14th from Abrams press.
[SPEAKER_04]: It is fantastic highly recommended
[SPEAKER_04]: Ladies and gentlemen, the man, the myth, the legend.
[SPEAKER_04]: Billy West, Billy, welcome to the podcast.
[SPEAKER_04]: Hi, are you guys so good.
[SPEAKER_04]: Very excited to chat with you about this.
[SPEAKER_04]: For anybody, I assume people don't, but just for anybody who doesn't know you've done voices for decades at this point, ranging from Doug Funny and Doug, Rennan, Stippy to Fry at many other voices in future online.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I get you tagged me up, so I have to, I have to participate.
[SPEAKER_03]: Um, yeah, I worked for Nickelodeon in the early 90s, and I did a show called Doug, and um, he was a pamphletely shy 11 and a half year old, and dude, journal, um, today I blew up a courthouse.
[SPEAKER_02]: You see him in the court and who's the judge?
[SPEAKER_03]: Order the court!
[SPEAKER_03]: Order!
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, look who it is.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's you who's funny.
[SPEAKER_03]: And you're out gonna see you in here one day.
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, you're going to jail, funny.
[SPEAKER_03]: You're going for it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Five, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: No, a thousand years in jail, funny.
[SPEAKER_03]: You can even be someone who's this in jail, funny.
[SPEAKER_03]: What are you thinking of every night?
[SPEAKER_03]: And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just ruined everybody's childhood, and that time, and I did run in Stimpy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, run, we'll button you me.
[SPEAKER_02]: We'll shoot you full.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I can kill you.
[SPEAKER_02]: And after that, I did a bunch of commercials, and I did a bunch of cartoons along the way.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, various characters, incidentals, and you were talking about Futurama, which was my favorite thing I ever did.
[SPEAKER_02]: Grinch me at 3000, it still sucks.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, that's courage when you have a gun!
[SPEAKER_02]: What have awesome quotes for sideburns?
[SPEAKER_02]: Sideburn could eat?
[SPEAKER_02]: Why not sideburn?
[SPEAKER_02]: No, they don't love sideburn.
[SPEAKER_02]: They only care about the stupid fryer, that robot.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, everybody go take a nap and prove the quality of life around here once you win.
[SPEAKER_02]: So there That's just a few of them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's a thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't mean to pick you out there.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's really not what I was trying to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I need to be pimped out.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't be just all bad news with my book, you know?
[SPEAKER_02]: It has the happy ending, but it has a really rough start.
[SPEAKER_02]: And a lot of people will probably be surprised.
[SPEAKER_02]: Or a lot of people will go, he's talking about my friggin' childhood.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and that's really the point that I wanted to make is that I know there's lots of people that had it way worse and I did, and hopefully they'll sit there and go.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is what happened to me and this guy did something about it and he came out on the other end of the tunnel, you know, hopefully inspire.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I dedicated the book to like a abuse, you know, physically abused, sexually abused children.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, I read about stuff every single day and it breaks my heart and kills me.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm hoping I can inspire some people.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it is a super powerful breed and I'm glad you brought that up because that's definitely the place I want to just start, you know, I think you read the title voice of verse and you're like, oh, fine.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's going to do some fun stories about what it's going to be in the room.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like you said, do everybody how to be like me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_04]: But you really lay yourself out there in a very open and very honest way, particularly, throughout the book, but particularly in the first half of the book, like you're saying, talking about your child and talking about growing up.
[SPEAKER_04]: very rough start.
[SPEAKER_04]: Why, why that choice?
[SPEAKER_04]: Why now was it important to put that story out there?
[SPEAKER_04]: And maybe you've talked about it before, but in this book form.
[SPEAKER_02]: The reason, well, what started me, I never fancied myself as any kind of long form right or, I mean, I worked in radio in the 80s and I wrote short form, you know, comedy and also
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I started in radio and Boston in production.
[SPEAKER_02]: I used to put together bits for the morning show and I used to voice them and that was my start.
[SPEAKER_02]: There were no voice people around and I wrote my own stuff and then I would record it and put it together.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was fun, you know, people enjoyed it and then I moved to New York and I started working with Howard Stern.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was really talking about Robin.
[SPEAKER_02]: You never know what I was talking about.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then as soon as I went through that gauntlet, I went off on my own and I had a pretty good career.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I can't complain.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel blessed.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm fortunate and grateful to everybody that had a hand in making the shows what they are
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, to this day, I mean, we're still doing it and I can't believe it.
[SPEAKER_02]: If somebody told me I'd be working at 74 years old, I would have said, you got rocked in your head, you know, you, you have no idea.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, um,
[SPEAKER_02]: And so the reason there was a pandemic, of course.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I said, you know, maybe I'll write memoirs and jot down stuff that happened in my life and the more I thought about it, the more I realized I had avoided half of my life.
[SPEAKER_02]: I avoided thinking about it for half my life.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, the first half, I mean, I just, I couldn't, you know, if I ever went down that road, you'd be come a victim, you're walking talking victim and you turn people off and you just, you just seem like a loser, you know, feeling sorry for yourself, which is something I never, ever did.
[SPEAKER_02]: I honestly can tell you that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, so I started writing in the more I wrote, the more that came flying out of me and, um, you know, I write the way I talk.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, that I don't know from syntax and this and that dangling participals and you know notifiers and I don't know shit about any of that stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just write the way I talk and then the publisher just said, oh man, it's all here.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, we have to do is just rearrange a paragraph or something.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was, I was thrilled.
[SPEAKER_02]: I felt really good about that because I just wanted to have
[SPEAKER_02]: my point of view and my voice on the printed page and they said yeah your your voice is here so that was important to me but I did it because you know I'm I'm 74 and um and I just thought I should write about all this life that I had you know people have no idea um
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, no one wants to read about how great your life is going and how well you're doing and, you know, oh boy, he must be living in a castle and Spain that guy with the residuals, but, no, I wanted to lay it out.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like people want to know where the hell do you come from?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, if I was watching somebody who fascinates me, like, you know fascinates me, there's a
[SPEAKER_02]: He, at that guy, is so amazing.
[SPEAKER_02]: And the first thing I thought of is, where the hell did he come from?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I'd love to know his story.
[SPEAKER_02]: He probably came from a perfectly happy house and everything.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just blew my own fairies out of the water.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I mean, I would want to know where how did that person become what they are?
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm very interested in that person and their talent.
[SPEAKER_02]: and there is or whatever we want to call it, but, you know, I, I just thought, you know, it was time to do it and I kept going and going and, you know, there was, there was things, there was always something to talk about.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had to not talk about lots of stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: What's it been like having people read this?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you're known as someone, primarily through your characters where you're disappearing into a role.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now you've opened up everything, probably a lot of people had no idea about this, whether they're close to you or not.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, how has it been feeling to have that response?
[SPEAKER_02]: It feels good because I can just say that I was being honest.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wanted to just tell it exactly the way it went and I felt like, gosh, the people that I know that I let read stuff, you know, like manuscript early manuscripts, they were like, I had no idea, you know, and that's people I'm close to.
[SPEAKER_02]: I, it, it just, it evoked a feeling.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's important to me, whether it's a cartoon or a commercial.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, if it doesn't evoke some kind of feeling in somebody, and it doesn't resonate, then it doesn't seem truthful.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't seem yet authentic or genuine, which is why when I read the book for audible and Kindle and all that stuff, people are going to go, he should have got Tom Kenny to read this book.
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, because I read it, my plane unvarnished vanilla voice.
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't want to do a persona, some funny baloney narrator.
[SPEAKER_02]: It just wouldn't ring true.
[SPEAKER_02]: It would be like, you know, I'll never forget the time it was New Year's Eve and, you know, I hate all this.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I can do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can do all those big dumb announcers.
[SPEAKER_01]: I always do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: For fans of you, to hear your voice tell your story, that's got to be the most gratifying, like you're saying, the most authentic truthful.
[SPEAKER_02]: course that I hope so I hope so because I I wanted to be you know I wanted to be relatable and I thought well the way I actually talk which I spent half my life not to sound like right must be disarming
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, to get back to the writing for a second in terms of your voice, I think like when I was reading it, that comes through and this is certainly how I deal with things I have to be out of stealth with the level of hardship that you have through the book, but we deal with things through humor and you can see that coming throughout there where,
[SPEAKER_04]: you relate something that is very frankly harrowing to read as a reader and then you put a little joke in there or you diffuse the tension a little bit so yes I guess I'm curious from the writing perspective obviously you're telling your own story through your own voice but how do you modulate that because you are talking about these serious subjects you don't want to diminish them in any way so how do you make sure to kind of space out the jokes so to say I can't not thinking of them as jokes um I don't
[SPEAKER_02]: I was the same person I was when I was eight years old.
[SPEAKER_02]: The only way I could deal with things that made me feel stupid or things that frightened me or things that threatened me was personifying it in some way that I could just make fun of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I keep trying to remind people like, that's how I dealt with things I could not get my mind around.
[SPEAKER_02]: I do it to this very day, everything I wake up in the morning and I'm like, you know, why are conservatives so angry?
[SPEAKER_02]: They have everything they want, everything is going their way, but they're still so angry at you.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I realize that they don't know how to be funny because that's the way they would deal with their guilt and shame.
[SPEAKER_02]: So how they deal with their guilt and shame is the smirk and laugh at you and write little icons.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I win, you lose.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's how they deal with their paranoia and their fear and their guilt and their shame particularly is they just laugh it off because
[SPEAKER_02]: feeling to them to know they were wrong and are wrong and they're duplicitous, you know, and I'm speaking to the choir really, I mean, you know, you can't convince the people I'm talking about.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it would be like trying to explain a desert to a polar bear, you know, forget it.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're not going to get through.
[SPEAKER_04]: One of the things that I was really struck by, particularly in the first half, is and obviously true of anybody young, but there's so many different directions you could have gone in.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not like beginning the book, it was like, I was the voices guy from a very young age, and then I did voices later on.
[SPEAKER_04]: There are a bunch of different directions you can go in,
[SPEAKER_04]: Eros Smith is your girlfriend.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I knew them, which is wild, but you know, our podcast is comic book club, and of course I hooked into the amount of the comic books and superheroes inspired you, so do you think there's a world where a different path you would have gotten into comic books, potentially instead of voice acting?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I could absolutely see that because I couldn't read regular books.
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, there was no word for autism spectrum in the 1950s.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the only thing I could relate to was comic books because those made sense to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: I could see the pictures I could see the and the writing and the pictures
[SPEAKER_02]: just blended as one thing to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had trouble conceptualizing the printed page.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was slightly dyslexic.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, again, I couldn't get my mind around so many things.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, I mean, it was not even cool with comic books, you know, a lot of kids weren't into them.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I had like one and a half friends and I heard there was this guy across town that had comic books and I sought him out.
[SPEAKER_02]: I walked for like a mile and a half founded somehow and we traded comic books and I had the original secret origins comic books.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, the stuff that would
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, make collectors just sit up and park like Lassie if they saw it, you know, and leave it and put it in the Plexiglass display case at Comic Con to make everybody nutty because it's not for sale, you know.
[SPEAKER_04]: Was there a character in particular or a story that you were drawn to like were you a superman guy a spider bad guy where where was your head at?
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, I get the biggest thrill out of well Halloween was a big deal to me, um, because I, you know, I was, um,
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I go to Comic-Cons and I see thousands of people and I feel at home because I'm one of them, you know, I mean, I really was.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wasn't like a hard guy and a sharp guy or a cool guy.
[SPEAKER_02]: I, I, I, I had been.
[SPEAKER_02]: hide all my interests like an appendix car, you know, for fear of retribution, they'd circle the wagons, you know, they see a wounded animal and they're like, ah, you know, we're going to have a picnic with this guy.
[SPEAKER_02]: And unfortunately, that's the way things are and still are probably worse now.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I see them and I and I know everybody is like kind of on the spectrum to degrees and
[SPEAKER_02]: And I would, you know, I would be in that world.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel totally at home in that world.
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't matter who has what peripheral interest.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't mean to say peripheral is in and put down, you know, like, who cares about that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because millions of people do.
[SPEAKER_02]: Gosh, Halloween was a big deal to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I dressed up as the flash.
[SPEAKER_02]: I tried to replicate what I saw in the comic books with everything I could get my hands on.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, where there was a red hood that had eyes, you know, like a wool pull over to protect you from winter and I'd cut out the mouth and I used to plastic sunday cups.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, they were yellow and and I found him, I got him in an ice cream store.
[SPEAKER_02]: I had to go in by an ice cream and I go, I'm keeping this and I washed them and you know, stuck them on and put, you know, cut out little wings like he's like he wears those little, you know, feet foot, I'm really fast wings and, um,
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was thrilling to me and one time I took a bunch of bed sheets much to my mother's dismay and ripped them up and made myself into the mummy and I would start unraveling after about three blocks of begging on Halloween.
[SPEAKER_02]: But that, you know, I am totally at home with comic book
[SPEAKER_02]: But I love the world for all different reasons and some of them are at these Comic-Con's.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's an analysis within 50 miles.
[SPEAKER_02]: Ha ha.
[SPEAKER_02]: Everybody's an empath.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no misogyny.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no toxic masculinity.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, what a fucking beautiful world this would be.
[SPEAKER_02]: If that's the way it was, honest to God.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then it's dawned on me.
[SPEAKER_02]: They can't explain the explosion.
[SPEAKER_02]: of autistic births and neurodivergent children.
[SPEAKER_02]: They can't explain it.
[SPEAKER_02]: They've tried, they try to say it's aspirin.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, they try to say mothers took Tylenol.
[SPEAKER_02]: They was still fucking Tylenol when I was born.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, my mother didn't take Tylenol.
[SPEAKER_02]: They had probably St. Joseph's aspirin for children or some shit like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: But so, and I said, I can explain the explosion.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know exactly what it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we're gonna cancel each other out because there are people that like the syndrome, you're so stupid, you don't know your stupid.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's not like an insult.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a trueism, it's a fact, you know, it's a syndrome.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I see all these people that have the qualities that make us human beings at these shows, compassion, empathy, tolerance, acceptance.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I mean, I began to think when I saw two guys fighting on one of my flights, had to be in their 30s, slugging it out at 32,000 feet.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I got back and I went, where are these fucking freaks coming from?
[SPEAKER_02]: Where?
[SPEAKER_02]: Where did they come from?
[SPEAKER_02]: They don't care about their own life or the lives of 200 odd
[SPEAKER_02]: making an intervention a correction.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nature doesn't look the other way at this shit like we do.
[SPEAKER_02]: We find a way to normalize and excuse Bizarro events and go test things.
[SPEAKER_02]: We find a way to rationalize it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But nature doesn't look the other way, so I think it's making an intervention in the human condition.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what I think autism is.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what I think, I think it's the next level in human evolution.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, and I'm not the first one to think of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not a genius.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, there's other people that have thought about that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I came to find out that people were, a few people were mentioning stuff to that effect.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, but it just seemed to make sense to me, you know, it's like, how can people survive if they're that stupid and violent and prone to, um,
[SPEAKER_02]: tantrums and childish behavior I mean you can't it won't stand a society will never stand and you know the leaders we elect manifest where we are you know they they're indicative of where we're at on the meter so so I feel like I said I feel total get home at those shows
[SPEAKER_02]: They're not the kind of people that would go to Yellowstone Park and try to do selfies with a napping buffalo and then kick it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know, did you check out the napping buffalo activation of last year's Comic Con?
[SPEAKER_04]: Really good.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was pretty cool.
[SPEAKER_02]: No.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd get it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd make a joke.
[SPEAKER_02]: One hundred percent.
[SPEAKER_02]: No.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know what?
[SPEAKER_02]: You're sharp.
[SPEAKER_02]: I usually expect somebody to go.
[SPEAKER_02]: Uh-huh.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, no you guys are good.
[SPEAKER_01]: You guys are good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's grew up out reading comics, but in all of the years and in different projects, he worked on their hasn't been a ton of superhero voices that you've done.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is there a superhero voice that you've wanted to do or thought of or anything like that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, I think the closest to that.
[SPEAKER_02]: would be Matt Grinning's marvelous invention of Zapp Rannigan, he's making fun of heroics and it's making fun of the superhero attitude and the countenance, it's poking fun at it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know how much fun I would have playing a straight on superhero, because I tend to not take things seriously and really.
[SPEAKER_02]: I kind of like, um, I don't know, I'd like to voice super girl.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nice.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I mean, this is the super girl that I wanna see.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh wow, you have that handy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow, it's awesome.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love you.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is pretty interesting.
[SPEAKER_04]: So the action comics reproduction, I think, probably.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, look at the guys.
[SPEAKER_02]: Look at the guys are like, aha, we tricked her into revealing her secret identity.
[SPEAKER_02]: They went through all this trouble to find out who she really is.
[SPEAKER_02]: Boy, they aim high as far as villains go.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, oh, we found out who she is.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, that's the super girl that I wanted to see.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Super girl, super girl.
[SPEAKER_02]: Your two shit face to fly home, so sleep it off.
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's kind of what they did in the movie a little bit.
[SPEAKER_02]: Comics were different back then.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they were really different.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I like that one is one of my favorite covers of all time.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I believe it's a real one.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think that they just mocked that up.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't think it's a, uh, the, just to get back to Comic Con's, I wanted to ask you about one thing in particular, and I have a feeling your answer is going to be, I feel good about this, but most of your life is spent in a sound recording booth recording at home.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's very individual sometimes.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm sure you get to work with other people probably.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's spotty here and there.
[SPEAKER_04]: I saw you guys do a future on the panel of Comic Con many years ago live.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: everybody just seemed to be, I think you read part of the script if I recall, but it was definitely read in episode.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, everybody was just having the absolute best time.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it seemed from the audience.
[SPEAKER_04]: What is that experience like for you when you get to go from the booth to suddenly performing those scripts in front of a live audience?
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm glad you saw that, because that's exactly the way it goes in the studio.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we do way more riffing than we did on stage.
[SPEAKER_02]: We were sticking to business on stage, you know, because that's when I fuck up.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's when I start mispronouncing words or read a begin to read in a different character's voice than the one that's supposed to be there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, during the recording sessions.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, these are these are my dearest friends in the world.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've known each other since 1999 and yeah, and and I and throw the death and I'm filled with gratitude for all the people that that love the show and keep bringing it back really.
[SPEAKER_02]: But that's we have so much fun recording.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, if you listen to the
[SPEAKER_02]: of the old DVDs, that's close to what goes on in a recording session, the disruptions.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm totally distracted from what's really going on, you know, complaining about the chair or the air conditioner, you know, I'm supposed to be talking about, oh yeah, I remember that day.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it was a great day.
[SPEAKER_02]: We did that episode and it's like, who the hell wants to hear that, you know?
[SPEAKER_04]: uh... based on reading the book and hearing you talking right now it seems like the thing that you really love doing almost more than anything else is future ramma but is there is there maybe a number to something from your very long career that you look at is like oh that that was great that is something that you look back on fondly no matter what um... let's see um... it was underrated
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, this show that ran for four years on the WB was called hysteria, and I was in, I was in a company of voiceovers and a company for a director and director Romano, a company for, um,
[SPEAKER_02]: a mentor and a producer, you know, Tom Ruger, um, we had so much fun, but I look at these episodes now because I didn't really see them when they played at the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wasn't home watching the WB, you know, I was out, uh, working always constantly for the past 45 years.
[SPEAKER_02]: I worked, you know, without a break.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, um,
[SPEAKER_02]: I watched an episode called the Thomas Jefferson Show, and of course, hysteria was history lessons made entertaining with cartoons and gags, but it got the point across of how history allegedly went, and there were musical numbers, and just incredible, and I looked at it and I said,
[SPEAKER_02]: I did the Thomas Jefferson as Jack Benny, because it was almost like the old Jack Benny show, you know, old Rod Chester, where's my white jacket?
[SPEAKER_03]: Where are we at?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I don't know if you've ever seen that stuff but it's got plenty and so dry, you know, it's not, and surreal.
[SPEAKER_02]: So they did, they did that kind of stuff on history.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was really proud of those episodes.
[SPEAKER_02]: called Puccini.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I had a lot of fun doing that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I look at the episodes and I go, they were so well done.
[SPEAKER_02]: Really well done.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I put my heart and soul into it with the voices.
[SPEAKER_02]: everything I would normally do.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I mean, there's stuff that I, you know, if you gave me like an hour or two, I could dial up stuff that I'm extremely proud of.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just that there's such an abundance of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't remember.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I look at your IMDB.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is voluminous, you can say it's yeah, you know, it's so funny though there's there's people that are professionally unimpressed.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, so when you tell them, you know, take a look at my IMD and there's like so what else you're doing?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, um, did you keep scrolling?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I just got elected president.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I became the Paul by went over to Rome and they just, they saw their work way clear to making me pulp.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, what else is going on?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, like you're talking about with comics, you're a visual, you're into the visuals of comics, but you work in such an audio medium predominantly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is there a character you've done where the, that is your favorite visually leaving the voice aside that you're like, yes, that's the one I, I love to see from a design perspective.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, well, well, I think that's what I'm talking about, I think that's what I'm talking about.
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess, I guess, because I have a personal stake in it, met devised a running gag for Future Rama, which was the head museum, which meant we could revisit people from hundreds of thousands of years earlier, you know, in the head museum, because they kept them alive.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was a plot device that, you know, lend itself to many, many gags.
[SPEAKER_02]: And one of them was that,
[SPEAKER_02]: Richard Nixon's head, they save that and that's not enough to still be alive in the year 3000 in some way or other.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, he wants to be president of Earth and it sounds really familiar when you think about it and so we all tried to
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, Matt said, David Cohen actually said, you know, anybody want to try Nixon and I said, God, you know, I remember every impressionist back in the 60s, you know, doing Nixon and, you know, and like a perfect sound to like, was never funny to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like these great, great impressionists, it's like, I just never found it really funny.
[SPEAKER_02]: I thought it was impressive.
[SPEAKER_02]: but you need something to go against the grain in such a weird or comical way that makes people go, oh, I know who's doing that version of next.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: How you got a reality, so it has a little juice to it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But what I did came out of real life, one day the writers came,
[SPEAKER_02]: do that that our room thing I said you don't like it and they go no we love it we just don't know why you do it so I told them that when I was
[SPEAKER_02]: About nine years old or so, me and my mother watched the presidential debate on television.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was the first televised presidential debate between Nixon and Kennedy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Kennedy looked like a game show host, you know, that gleam in his eye and he was so focused and boy did they work on that and they also did everything they could to make Nixon look shitty.
[SPEAKER_02]: They told the camera, Kennedy's people told the camera people do extreme close-ups on Nixon.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's very important that people take him seriously.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you could see him sweating and his hair was matted and he's all nervous and his five o'clock shadow was coming in at 1 o'clock and then he was mumbling, you know, Kennedy was like, way have to face the future.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and he was
[SPEAKER_02]: Like an orator, and Nixon was just like, while I want to be president of the United States, but it was a war forever.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then he was like, you know, because, uh, because, and he's sweating and I said, mom, he looks like he's going to turn into a werewolf.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I, in my mind, I saw him as, I want to be president of the United States for one reason and one reason only.
[SPEAKER_02]: Our room.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and so it's like there's a generation of people that think that's what he did or that's what he found it's like which is so beautiful And to this day, no, oh, and that bastard drafted me in 1970 Whoa, yeah, during Vietnam I get drafted into the army and They I was Rejected because they had the flatest feet anybody ever saw and I had high blood pressure hypertension
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, so I could, you know, go play in bands.
[SPEAKER_02]: I played music, you know, I would have gone to Vietnam and I would have never had a music career.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, not that I was on American or in patriotic, or I was going to run away to, you know, Pidalburg or someplace, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: to avoid the draft.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, but to this very day in the Nixon library and I continue with Luke plays all the Nixon stuff I did on future.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm, uh, I went.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I went.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, one of your other longest righted gigs is playing the
[SPEAKER_04]: He of course won an Oscar for whiplash.
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you ever think like what's my whiplash?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: I I mean Jake K probably has a better idea of it than I do About me and maybe there's something he thinks is fantastic or great But I can't imagine what that would be because he's
[SPEAKER_02]: he is just something else.
[SPEAKER_02]: I knew him 33 years ago and when he first was on television and a show called Oz, the worst guy in the prison and he was totally frightening and you know I mean like seemed like the real deal like he can't he's no actor.
[SPEAKER_02]: That guy's the real deal and I remember
[SPEAKER_02]: evil.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I said, I know him.
[SPEAKER_02]: They said, you do.
[SPEAKER_02]: I said, yeah, he's the yellow M&M.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, it's so like you said, you know, he wins an Oscar for the movie, whiplash.
[SPEAKER_02]: He, he, um,
[SPEAKER_02]: He just ripped it up in that movie and then two days later or so he was in doing M&M's commercials with me.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's a journeyman.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's somebody who's not above doing any kind of honest work.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that about the guy.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's seen the farmers and farmers.
[SPEAKER_02]: Farmers and insurance.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, the Notre Dame Cathedral Fire seen it covered it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Man, you're doing JK.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's that's your whiplash
[SPEAKER_04]: He is.
[SPEAKER_04]: I did it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Just to tie it back to the superhero thing, he has a pretty eye-cotic voice or a right down plague.
[SPEAKER_04]: Omni-man over unprime videos, invincible.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know if you checked it out at all, but would you be interested in doing a role opposite him on that show?
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_02]: Any excuse to be with him working?
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you kidding me?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I didn't know about that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this will kill you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to television.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a watch television since the 1980s.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Great idea, is that?
[SPEAKER_04]: Why?
[SPEAKER_04]: Given that you work so heavily at it, it is just like, ah, I do this with my day job.
[SPEAKER_04]: I want to just relax and do something else.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's part of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just got too much going on in my head all the time and it was mostly music.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was consumed with playing and practicing and every now and then I would get a chance to play out with other people like I did some gigs.
[SPEAKER_02]: With other voice people who happen to be musicians, like Jimmy Cummings is a tremendous drummer, you know, and Debbie Darryberry, Sanger,
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I think she plays guitar and Robby Paulson is a lead singer, you know, I mean, they had bands and everything all my my constituents.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, my my colleagues were all musically inclined and I think that's part of the voice thing Tom can he is a musician.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, but.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I would love to work with JK for any reason.
[SPEAKER_04]: All right, we'll start the Billy West for invisible campaign right here.
[SPEAKER_04]: We'll get it for sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is there is there some role that's in development, you think?
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_04]: They have multiple seasons.
[SPEAKER_04]: Go ahead.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's so many parts of the time.
[SPEAKER_04]: They tend to cast a lot of different voice actors on that show.
[SPEAKER_04]: Really?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I'll have to get back into it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll have to look at JK.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I'll follow him.
[SPEAKER_01]: He won't call call the invincible writers room as JK and demand that they hire Billy West.
[SPEAKER_02]: Listen, I know this dark.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, he wrote a piece of, you know, a piece of
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, God, what do they call it?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, when you do a blur about somebody who has a book and you, you know, and you blur, be okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's wrote a blur.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: He wrote a blur for my book.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was thrilled that he did that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was so honored and, you know, he, I don't know, that that's show.
[SPEAKER_02]: I got to watch it then because
[SPEAKER_04]: He's great on it, but you get back to you and to get back to your book and just start to wrap up here.
[SPEAKER_04]: Again, I'll just mention for everybody voices.
[SPEAKER_04]: Wait a minute.
[SPEAKER_02]: You have to go.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're that busy.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I'm not.
[SPEAKER_04]: You're busy.
[SPEAKER_04]: The book is fantastic.
[SPEAKER_04]: It is, again, coming out on July 14th from Abrams, so people could pick it up then.
[SPEAKER_04]: But are you celebrating in any way or are you doing a signing or are you going to like sneak into a bookstore and look at the show?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, first of all, I'm beyond thrilled and honored that you liked it.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you don't, you look like people that are discerning, like you don't, you know, very picky.
[SPEAKER_02]: Stinks of, you know, inauthenticity or whatever.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, bye.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's what I think so.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, I'm really glad to give you a big up on it.
[SPEAKER_04]: It is like we've been talking about really brutally honest in the first half, but funny at surprising moments, the stories are really fascinating.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think even in the second half, when your career starts to turn and take off, you don't forget about that first half.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not like,
[SPEAKER_04]: some bad things happen to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then they went away and down everything is great.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's really, really how like you were talking about at the beginning, how you build your life and made yourself yourself.
[SPEAKER_02]: And also about finding help for problems, mental problems.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like chronic.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was born with chronic low levels depression and I had no idea.
[SPEAKER_02]: I thought everybody felt the way I did.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just, you know, where you wanted to die in the morning when you went in the bathroom and when the shower and everything was fine until this black cloud crushes you to the floor.
[SPEAKER_02]: I used to think that's what, that was part of everyone's ritual in the morning and they just, you know, maybe I'm a pussy and I can't deal with it like they do.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you feel bad, you're like going something wrong with me, that I can't handle it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you make everything worse.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it took me many, many years to get treated for severe depression and all the junk that goes with at ADD, OCD.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, you know, but I feel like that level of honesty specifically for anyone out there dealing with the similar issues to that is the kind of thing that gives them that relief that you're saying like I thought everyone felt this way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, or the opposite, I feel alone in trapped in this.
[SPEAKER_01]: The fact that you, someone they admire went through that, I think.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, and having to go through all that stuff, that's you also mental.
[SPEAKER_02]: things through a filter of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So as you become an adult, you look back to go, you know, how on earth did I deal with that stuff?
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's always like in your mind, you know, keeps you from doing what you shouldn't do.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you shouldn't overreact to this or that.
[SPEAKER_02]: You shouldn't let people press your buttons and it's like normal healthy psychology But but having gone through you know broken glass It's um every day.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like I and grateful like I said, you know, I must sound like I'm repeating myself here fortunate
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Billy, thank you so much for your time.
[SPEAKER_04]: Congratulations on the book.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm really looking into everybody else reading it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And thank you for your amazing career that continues.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm looking forward to everything you do next.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't wait to talk to you guys again after we get rollin with this thing and when Petrama comes back in August Yeah, what do you have to the craziest thing is to hear Zoydberg come out of your mouth To watch you to say it and have it come out is insane to me Why not Zoydberg why not a silly voice Well big lobster a big hungry lobster with no money
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, they did.
[SPEAKER_02]: We did.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have to.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I had to do one last tip.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's OK.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have to say that that was the thing that struck me so hilariously funny about the character of Zoyberg, is that he's a doctor and he's poor.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: So good.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nothing says loser like David.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: Billy, thank you again.
[SPEAKER_04]: Thank you so much for your time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll let's just turn back to number one The reason they might get dead and I want to be The moment they're coming to see us And they're all ready to get this out of the city You can't stop but I can't stop but I can't stop
[SPEAKER_00]: They sit on crappy couches, and they let the sick on week And he's just a monkey, they're like fast, they're sure they're speaking So grab your ring, hammer, don't relate, or it goes down