KP: How do you treat a newbie that comes into the room? Is it some kind of hierarchy where you’re at the cool table and they have to work their way in? What is the acceptance level?
LAMARCHE: For a new guy?Â
KP: Yeah.
LAMARCHE: Not a celebrity, just a new guy on the block?
KP: Yeah, when a new guy comes in.
LAMARCHE: Usually with a hearty congratulations, at least… I’m thinking particularly about Jeff Bennett. The first time I worked with him was on Bonkers, and it was like… I turned to my left and there was this new blond guy, sort of lanky blond guy, and I was like, “Oh, who’s this guy?” to myself. And myself answered, which worried me.Â
KP: Was he combative?
LAMARCHE: (laughing) I just went, “Oh, who’s this guy? I’ve never met him before.” And all of a sudden he did, like, three characters in the episode and they were all great characterizations, and I went, “This guy’s good! All right!” So my thing was to put out my hand and say, “Hey buddy, you’re great! Welcome! Welcome to the club. You’re gonna work again. This is amazing.” And sure enough, he can buy and sell me today.
KP: Is there a tiered sort of thing where they have to earn a level of respect, when you compare it to the celebrity that comes in for two or three episodes then disappears?
LAMARCHE: The work speaks for itself. There’s no test he has to pass, but when a guy’s as good as a guy like Jeff, you know there’s nothing to do but welcome him into the community and go “Hey, welcome to the bottled city of Kandor. Well, you’re another guy with the super powers. Nice to meet you.”
KP: So there is something of an initiation rite that one has to go through though to be seen as that by you all, isn’t there? Either a dedication or a talent level…
LAMARCHE: Yeah – being good. That’s the initiation. Being good. Because you don’t last long in our business unless you got the goods.Â
KP: How awkward is it in a room, sitting with someone who doesn’t have the goods?
LAMARCHE: It doesn’t happen very often. They rarely get past the casting process. The same seven casting directors have been doing animation in this town for as long as I’ve been doing it, and they know talent when they see it. Marsha Goodman as much as any other. I always single Marsha out because she not only is the one who gave me my break on Ghostbusters and Inspector Gadget, but I would have to say that I was sort of… there was a dinner for her a while back, and it was sort of tallied up, the number of people she gave the first shot to. It was a laundry list of a who’s who of voiceover. So she’s great. She has a wonderful eye for talent, especially new talent and giving them a chance. But I mean, Tara Strong, Billy West, Townsend Coleman. Myself. Let’s see, who else? I know there’s more people on that list, because we were marveling at it, but there’s just a handful of people. The only mistake she may have made is that when it came down to casting a character named Capeman for the second season of Inspector Gadget, it came down to Townsend Coleman and some kid from Toronto named Jim Carrey. And Townsend got the part. But you know what? He may have done a better job with the part. Who knows? And if Jim had fallen into the comfort zone of voiceovers, maybe he wouldn’t have worked so hard to break into movies. I don’t know. But Marsha always laughs about that one. But she took green, new talents, and she gave them their first shot.
KP: For someone who started out as an impressionist, there’s very few times that you’ve dipped into mimicry. And there’s only a couple times that you’ve done voices that originated with other actors, like Popeye.
LAMARCHE: Well, yeah, true enough. Well, I have a rule about that, though. I don’t step into the shoes of any actor who’s still alive and still wants the job.Â
KP: Something similar to the situation with Jim Cummings and Paul Winchell…
LAMARCHE: That’s a story for Jim, I guess.
KP: But that’s the sort of thing you’re talking about.
LAMARCHE: Yes. Okay, here’s a quick story. I was at a writer’s conference and Harry Shearer was on the panel. And after the panel had cleared and everybody had sort of gone their ways, Harry spotted me in the audience. He actually stayed on the stage, and motioned me over, and said, “I want to thank you.” And I said, “What for?” Because Harry Shearer has never really spoken to me before. He’s sort of got his own group of people, very intellectual people that he talks to, and he said, “Our mutual agent told me what you did regarding The Simpsons, and how you turned down the opportunity to audition for all of my parts and all of Hank’s parts, and I want to thank you, because you started a trend that a lot of other actors followed and we were able to get the raises that we wanted.” And that’s exactly true. Bonnie Pietila came to me first after The Simpsons cast staged their power play for higher salaries. Bonnie, knowing my work from The Critic, basically offered me through my agent the chance to do any number of the characters, and I told my agent, “No. Those are their jobs, and they’re trying to better themselves right now. They’re trying to get paid what they’re worth. Maybe get paid what we’re all worth. And I’m not going to step on that by undercutting them. So no. Even though I could step into The Simpsons probably fairly easily, I’m not gonna do it.” And when several of my voiceover friends, top guys, called me up – guys we’ve mentioned in this conversation but whom I won’t mention in this part of the conversation – called me up to say, “Well, what are you doing about this? What are you doing?” I vociferously stated my case of, you know, “We don’t undercut each other. Those guys are still around to do the job and they just want to get paid what they’re worth, so don’t go in for it.” And so a bunch of really talented guys – I don’t know how much influence I had, but I know that a bunch of them stayed away from it and, as a result, they went, “Well, this cast is irreplaceable,” so they got the money they were looking for. When the red M&M thing came along… when it was originally Jon Lovitz and John Goodman, once again, that same agent called me up and said, “They want you for the M&M. Jon Lovitz is asking for too much money.” And I said, “I won’t do it.” Because they’d seen me imitate Jon on an Entertainment Tonight segment when we were both doing The Critic, and knew that I did a flawless Jon Lovitz…
KP: Not according to Jon…
LAMARCHE: (as Jon) Oh really? Well, well, well, I’ll have you know you’re talking to Jon Lovitz right now. I’ve just been imitating Maurice Lamarche. Ha ha!
KP: Okay, Mo, that was creepy.
LAMARCHE: Thank you. Listen, Lovitz actually tells directors that he doesn’t want to do his own looping, and to get me to do his looping. So at any rate, it did come my way, and I had the chance to literally walk into the red M&M. And again, I said, “You know what? I gotta check with Jon and see if he’s actually walking away from this part. That he doesn’t want it.” And I called Jon at home and told him what was going on and he said, “No, I’m in negotiations for it. Thanks for telling me, Maurice. I can’t tell you not to take it, but I appreciate you doing this.” So again, I turned down the chance to walk into the part. And it went the way it went. Jon still asked for too much money and they had a big round of casting for somebody to replace him but not doing him, and funnily enough, I didn’t get a chance to read. Isn’t that amazing?Â
KP: Yeah, funnily enough.
LAMARCHE: They didn’t say, “Well, let’s see what else you can do with it, Mo.” They went, “No, Mo didn’t play ball, so Mo doesn’t get a chance.” So I didn’t get the chance to read for the next round and it went to some guy… Billy something. I don’t know.
KP: Billy East, isn’t it?
LAMARCHE: Yeah, right. He’s named after a direction.
KP: I think he did one of those Groening shows.
LAMARCHE: Yes. Billy’s been a pal for years. Billy is not only an amazing talent, but he was a true friend. When I was going through my struggles with the drink, he was there for me.
KP: Well, he obviously went through his own struggles with the very same thing, and to a greater degree.
LAMARCHE: And in so doing, he lent his experience, strength, and hope to me and helped me get on the road.
KP: Is it important that someone in that kind of thing steps forward in a support role? Because I talked to Billy about his struggle, and he mentioned how important that was to him and how certain friends fell away by necessity because of having to go down that path.
LAMARCHE: Yeah, I think with real alcoholics, the only way we help ourselves is by helping others. And adopting a spiritual way of life. So, you know, for me it’s a big part of my life to try and help other people who have a drinking problem. Doesn’t come my way every day, but certainly I have a community of friends who’ve all been through the same thing, and we help each other and try to help out a new person who’s trying to stop them.
KP: It’s interesting when you talk about your early years, growing up and such, and sort of living within your own world, and it almost seems like either through the standup comedy arena or when you moved to voice acting, there seems to be this need to establish a bottled city of Kandor around yourself of people you can trust and who understand you, and vice-versa. Do you think that’s the case?
LAMARCHE: Yeah. Yeah, in terms of our voiceover community, absolutely. We’re very… we’re somewhat insular, and we support each other. Sometimes we even socialize, but within the community of what we do, you know, we’re very protective over each other and realize what we do is special. So yes.
KP: If you look at what happened with the Simpsons situation, not very many other divisions within the acting profession would have circled the wagons like that.
LAMARCHE: No. No, no doubt. No doubt. Although there are wonderful stories. There’s a very famous story about My Fair Lady where they were gonna make the movie from the Broadway play, and of course Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews had done the play, and they’d already taken it away from Julie Andrews and given it to Audrey Hepburn, with somebody doubling her singing voice, and they wanted Cary Grant. And they went to Cary Grant and said, “We want you to play the character,” and he said, “Not only won’t I play Henry Higgins for you, but if you don’t get Rex Harrison I won’t go see it.”Â
KP: And obviously Jack Warner backed down.
LAMARCHE: Absolutely. And you know the great story of Leslie Howard refusing to make The Petrified Forest without Bogart as Duke Mantee. Howard was the huge film star, and it was his on a silver platter, but he refused to make the picture unless they also got Bogart, who was nobody but had done it on Broadway and was brilliant in it.
KP: But generally the people that need to be stuck up for are not of a high enough level, or don’t have the supporters of a high enough level to back them up, within the acting profession. Look at a show like Everybody Loves Raymond a few years back, when Brad Garrett was making a play to at least be treated equally, and how close he came to being axed from the cast. But it’s almost like this very odd “exception that proves the rule” bubble in the voice acting community.
LAMARCHE: Yeah. Well, as I said, I think the less ego that is involved, the better. The more altruistic one can act. Because your face is not on the line and your ego isn’t on the line, there’s nothing to get too worked up about. You’re able to be a human.Â
KP: Within the community, do you recall the time when you felt you had become one of the go-to guys?
LAMARCHE: No. I still don’t see myself that way. When you say go-to guys, I definitely think of Cummings, I definitely think of Billy. You know, Rob Paulsen. But I still see myself as number 11 on a list of 10.
KP: If only you could master doing John Wayne, you could break the top 10.
LAMARCHE: I’ve never been able to do that voice well enough to perform it for anybody. I can do a bass-ackwards John Wayne that’s about as good as your John Wayne, but I can’t get it any better than that. It’s so weird. It’s a tough voice to do.
KP: Who needs John Wayne when you can do Jon Lovitz?
LAMARCHE: (as Jon) “Circle the wagons, pilgrim! But I don’t. I don’t care. I’m rich.”
KP: Jon Lovitz in True Grit.
LAMARCHE: (laughing)
KP: Your first star role really was The Brain, right?
LAMARCHE: Yes!
KP: And obviously that was based around a necessity to get you to stop doing your Orson Welles before recording began, right?
LAMARCHE: I think that was an added benefit. They didn’t think of Welles or a Welles voice for the character. It was based on a guy named Tom Minton, a writer who’s still writing for Warner Brothers animation.
KP: And Eddie Fitzgerald was the basis for Pinky, right?
LAMARCHE: For Pinky. Neither of them talked like the characters. I’ve met them both. I actually became rather friendly with Minton. I’ve only met Eddie once. Eddie’s just very high energy and very positive. I think he only says “POINT!”. I think that’s the only thing he actually really uses. Peppers his conversation with. But it makes sense the way Eddie does it because he’s, you know, he’ll go, “Well, there you go, and then ‘POINT!’ nothing’s there. It makes sense. He’s just using cartoon sound effects. Whereas Pinky, it’s almost like he has a sort of cartoony Tourette’s Syndrome.  But as to the Welles thing – they didn’t create the character thinking, “Ah, here’s an Orson Welles sounding character that’ll get Mo to stop doing the Orson Welles.” But they did think it might be an added side benefit. “Well, at least you won’t have to do that friggin’ Orson Welles thing in between takes now.” Wrong!
KP: Where did that originate from?
LAMARCHE: An actual tape of Welles…
KP: I know the tape quite well, but where did your fascination originate from?
LAMARCHE: Oh, from one of the nightmare sessions of my life, actually. Phil Proctor and I and BJ Ward were on this session from hell, dubbing a French live action puppet show called Bots, where the actors got in these robot costumes and had these adventures. And we had to dub the damn thing one line at a time. I came to the session dressed up for New Year’s Eve. The session was on New Year’s Eve day. I was promised I’d be out of there by noon, and I had a 1:00 flight to New York, which was gonna get me there by 10 PM and I was gonna get right off the plane and go to the MTV party, because my pal Howie Mandell was hosting the MTV party that year so I had entré. And I thought, “This will be cool, I’m gonna be partying with Sting New Year’s Eve, it’s gonna be great”… You know? And wouldn’t you know, the session lasted until 9:00 at night. The folks that were running the session said, “What are you complaining about? You’re getting overtime.” And all I could think about was, you know, my New Year’s Eve is completely dashed to ruins. But as a consolation prize, because Phil and I, Phil Proctor from Firesign Theater and I, it’s the first time we ever met, and as a way of commiserating, he gave me this tape of all these wonderful outtakes and he said, “Here. When you go home tonight, listen to this. This’ll make you laugh.” And the first cut on the tape is the famed frozen peas session, and I couldn’t believe it. It was just… I was stunned with his absolute honesty and his brilliant wit in taking down these two poseurs and…
KP: When you take somebody down through the use of proper grammar…
LAMARCHE: It was brilliant. It was absolutely brilliant. And I couldn’t stop listening to it, and I put it in my tape player in my car and literally listened to the thing. I had auto-reverse, so I just never took it out. Whenever I started my car, no matter where it was, I listened, and of course learned to ape it perfectly. And from there, there was one time – the first time that I was in a session that was going too long, and I just went… jokingly, I went, “What is it you want? In your depths of your ignorance, what is it you want?” And they looked at me for a second. The director looked at me for a second. The engineer stared. And all of a sudden they burst out laughing and went, “Oh, you’re doing that tape! Oh, it’s great!” And really, I was like just expressing myself, wishing I was Welles, wishing I had the facility to… this guy’s not gonna let me in. I’m driving while we’re having our interview because I’m going to an audition. No, he didn’t let me in. I have to go one exit past my exit and double back. Thank you.
KP: Well that pretty much sums up living in LA, doesn’t it?
LAMARCHE: Yes it does. Where are you calling from, by the way?
KP: I’m in North Carolina.
LAMARCHE: Ah! Nobody ever cuts anybody off on the freeway in North Carolina.
KP: What freeway?
LAMARCHE: Exactly. So hence, that’s the evolution of my love for that character.
KP: Was that the first time that you had even attempted doing the voice?
LAMARCHE: Out loud? No, I would do it in my car all the time.
KP: No, but prior to the tape, had you thought of Welles as someone to mimic?
LAMARCHE: Yes, and yet only, you know, only one line. My friend Steve Schuster in Toronto, from my Toronto Comedy Club days… a great club called Yuk Yuks – where Howie got his start, where Jim Carrey got his start… Steve had a great line in his act. Steve Schuster, son of Frank Schuster of the famous Wayne and Schuster comedy team of Canada. Also brother of Rosie Schuster, head writer of Saturday Night Live and ex-wife of Lorne Michaels. He had a great line in his act, but he couldn’t do impressions. He would… in fact, (laughing) that was part of what made the act so funny, is that he had absolutely no facility for doing impressions, but he would still do the characters, and not change his voice one iota. So he’d go, “Good evening, my name is Orson Welles and I’ll narrate anything.” And I just thought that was a great line, so I began to study his voice, but I never really locked into it the way I did once I got the outtake tape. And I kept offering Steve, you know, as much money as I could afford for that line, and he said, “No, I really don’t want to sell it. I like that line.” I said, “Yeah, but if you gave it to a guy who could do impressions, it’d be…” “Nah, I like the line. Not for sale.” “Okay.”
KP: Honor among thieves.
LAMARCHE: Yeah, I mean, I won’t take a line that doesn’t belong to me. Some guys out and out steal. Then there are the guys who stuff a $20 in your pocket or a $50 in your pocket and just take the line and consider you paid. I can’t do that. I gotta look at myself in the mirror.
KP: Do you think that that was one of the positives of being a mimic, was that there’s very little they can steal from you without the facility to do that?
LAMARCHE: Yeah, I’m probably one of the only people Robin Williams never stole from. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I’ve never heard any of my lines in his act.Â
KP: When you look at the success of something like The Brain, is it surprising to you that the character took off like it did? And how much of it, in your head, is based in Orson Welles’ voice?
LAMARCHE: Unless Welles were actually playing the part, there’s not much more Welles-ness I could bring to it apart from imitating his voice. There’s a lot of Maurice LaMarche in that part.
KP: It reminds me of what Daws Butler would do with the Hanna-Barbera cartoons. That it wasn’t an impression as much as a distillation of the actor applied to a cartoon character.
LAMARCHE: Yeah. I would say we distilled Welles’ voice, and like I say, that little dash of Vincent Price for some color and highs and lows. We distilled Welles’ voice, but Phil did it through me, the distillery, and my own frustrations of not being able to take over the world of standup comedy. Remember those ambitions we talked about before, of coming to this town and getting my own sitcom and then going onto movie stardom, and, you know, stuff that happens to just about every friend I have but not me?
KP: There’s no bitterness in what you just said.
LAMARCHE: None whatsoever. But it served me well in terms of Brain, you know, because he had gigantic ambitions. And there was no way he was ever going to achieve them, but I was able to channel that part of me that wants to take over the world, and at the end of the episode, that dusting himself off and saying, “Back to the lab to prepare for tomorrow night.” That part that was heading back to the lab to prepare for tomorrow night is the part of me that heads back to Toronto to prepare for the next time I come down to the States and try and take over the world of standup.
KP: Is there a part of you that wishes you were Pinky?
LAMARCHE: No part of me wishes I was Pinky. Not even my pinky.
KP: There’s a sense of enjoying the moment in Pinky. Are you able to enjoy the moment?
LAMARCHE: I’m better at it than I used to be. It used to be, for me, all about the great someday and getting there, wherever there is. And I’ve trained myself to get more into the moment and just appreciate the hot second I’m in right now. No, right now… No, right now. No – this one. No… this one. So yes, in that way, being more Pinky-like… but if it’s at the sacrifice of IQ points, no. And the joke of it is that Rob Paulsen’s actually an extremely bright man. He’s probably brighter than I am. Certainly quicker. But I think you have to have that many smarts to play somebody that dumb and to hit all the right beats.
KP: You need to do a two-man show. Take it out on the road.
LAMARCHE: I’ve actually proposed that. We did a staged reading of a Pinky & The Brain script at the Comic-Con. We forgot how funny this thing was because we never read it on its feet in front of a live audience of 200 people. We couldn’t get through it because the audience was laughing to hard. We had to adjust our timing. So I’ve actually though it’d be a fun thing to do to just take a Pinky & The Brain script and go on the road with it. Do a Q&A, then read one like it’s a radio show and do a little Power Point presentation.
KP: Well, you guys would certainly be a hit on the college circuit with that.
LAMARCHE: That would be fun.
KP: When are you going to clear your schedule for that?
LAMARCHE: I don’t know. This is something that I need to run by Rob. You know actually what just popped into my mind, is this would be a great way to entertain the troops. Because a lot of those boys were little kids watching our show ten years ago.
KP: Does it shock you that that kind of generational thing has already happened?
LAMARCHE: Nah. Nah, I’m over that. It used to. The first time a twenty-something person came up to me and said, “I used to watch your show when I was a kid,” I went, “What do you mean? Aren’t we the same age?” I kinda looked at my drivers license, and went “No, dude, you’re getting older just like everybody else. And don’t worry – that young dude’ll be 45 someday, too. Of course, you’ll be 65 or dead!”
KP: Mel Blanc was attached to Bugs Bunny, or Daws was attached to Huckleberry Hound or Yogi Bear – and now you’ve got your own character that generations to come will attach to you. And honestly, you are attached to a character that’s lasted over the years that people do love.
LAMARCHE: And that still stuns me, because in my mind, much like Shatner would say about Star Trek, it’s just a job we do. It’s a TV show I acted on for three years. And it was over and then I went and did regional theater. I really understand what Shatner… the first time I read his autobiography – actually, I listened to it on tape because I just love his voice, so I’d listen to the book on tape. I was like, “What are you talking about? You were Captain Kirk. You were an icon.” And now I understand. I mean, yeah, we had fun doing that. I probably had more fun doing that show than just about any other show I’ve done. Actually, The Critic, Futurama and Pinky & The Brain are the top three shows in terms of the fun they were to do. They also ended up being the three best things I did. But I just looked at it as, “Okay, it’s this job we did,” and when I watch it on TV, I went, “Wow, this came out really well.” And then you sorta carry on and go, “Okay, what’s next in terms of putting some steak on the table?” But yeah, it always stuns me when anybody even knows what the show is. In my mind, we did it then. We haven’t done a new one in six years. And it’s over. But my son reminds me because he TIVOs Pinky & The Brain and wants me to sit down and watch it with him. And even though he knows that was Dad’s job, he refers to it in the present tense and he loves the character as though it’s its own thing, not Daddy doing a voice.Â
KP: And as you said, that’s the kind of thing you could take on the road with the USO and entertain troops with.
LAMARCHE: It’s an interesting thought. I wonder how you go about doing that. I literally just came up with that in this conversation.
KP: I’m sure you’d just see if Rob was up to it and contact the USO’s talent office.
LAMARCHE: It might be an interesting little presentation.
KP: I’m sure they’d get a big kick out of it.
LAMARCHE: Then, of course, there’s that self-deprecating part, that self-effacing part that says, “Oh, they just had Drew Carey down there, what do they want me for? Why do they want two cartoon hambones?”
KP: Yeah, but I think the key comes down to, sure Drew Carey’s funny, but that’s an adult connection, whereas you’re tapping into something much closer to their hearts because here’s a piece of their childhood.
LAMARCHE: Yeah, maybe so. You know what? Let me talk to Paulsen about this. We could make this happen. Because I’d love to be of service in some way.
Comments: 4 Comments
4 Responses to “Interview: Maurice LaMarche”Leave a Reply |
March 21st, 2008 at 2:48 pm
I don’t think Marice did that great of a Puzzle anyway. Dan H did a much better one in the first season.
January 4th, 2010 at 3:28 am
Thank you for entertaining me over 3 very late evenings (took me that long to enjoy this interview, once I found it was more than one web-page). Long-time fan of Maurice ever since that HBO Dangerfield Special he was on with Sam K and Jerry Seinfeld and Bob Nelson, et al. I can’t wait to see him on the Animaniacs Vol. 2 dvd. I really liked your persistent interviewing style – the way you continually riffed back on what he was saying, asking definitions, making jokes about the Superman references: love the site – keep it up!
September 4th, 2010 at 6:17 am
I very much enjoyed this
September 27th, 2018 at 8:56 am
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