The Mouse is Wooing Miss Piggy

[radionate]

Originally posted by frogboy4
Oh, Nate - Brendan Frasier has been in so many beloved classics. I hope this doen'nt turn into another Space Jam, but who knows. The one thing that bugs me most (no pun intended) wth the WB characters these days is their voices. They really seem off to me. Does Noel Blanc still do them? I never found him to be that good of a mimic. I wnder if Sppedy will make an appearance.

Jamie, Jamie, Jamie,

Please tell me you are being just a little sarcastic. If not, may I remind you of Enceno Man!!! (however you spell it)(Me I spell it C-R-A-P)

I don't think Noel has done any of his father's characters for years. The main plan was that he would take over after his father's death (as Mel had been training him for years), but as far as I know, he hasn't really done anything. Does anyone know more about this. Its something that I haven't researched, and would like to know more about.

 

[frogboy4]

Yes, I am being completely sarcastic. I don't think he's done amany good films exept for Gods and Monssters and maybe School Ties.

 

[radionate]

Gods and Monsters was incredible. I also got a small kick out of George of the Jungle (but I admit it was bad)

 

[frogboy4]

I remember that a scene from that film tied up traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge for hours a few years ago.

 

[DrGoshposh]

I was curious about Noel Blanc not too long ago, so I did an internet search, and it just happened to be around the time that Noel got married (the ceremony was on the WB lot in front of a mural of the WB cartoon characters). The articles said that Noel's main profession is licensing his father's character voices. I guess the ownership of the voices was passed to him, and he now gets paid when WB wants to use the characters for something. I found the whole situation interesting.

When I looked further, I found that he occasionally did voices on Tiny Toons, and when he did, it was very rarely doing Mel's characters. It seems that WB doesn't use the same voice actor every time for the characters.

I agree with Jamie, the voices have been off lately. You'd think the studio could find people who could do better than some of the voice actors they use. But who knows.

Scott

 

[Phillip]

Scott,

I agree with you because animation is solely focused on the voice. That is what matters most unlike puppetry which is a totally different art form. A voice is just a small part of the total puppetry performance.

 

[ZootandDingo]

Originally posted by DrGoshposh
I was curious about Noel Blanc not too long ago, so I did an internet search, and it just happened to be around the time that Noel got married (the ceremony was on the WB lot in front of a mural of the WB cartoon characters). The articles said that Noel's main profession is licensing his father's character voices. I guess the ownership of the voices was passed to him, and he now gets paid when WB wants to use the characters for something. I found the whole situation interesting.

To just elaborate on what Scott said, what Noel owns are thousands of hours of recordings that his father made throughout the 1980's in his home studio. Warner Bros. retains all rights on the characters, including the voices, but the actual recordings are Noel's property.

Noel did try his hand at doing some of the voices shortly after Mel passed away, but his heart just wasn't in it. He thought there were plenty of other actors out there who could do them better, so he instead turned his energy to keeping his dad's legacy alive. Noel took all of the recordings that Mel made and created a unique computer studio. With it, he can create practically any possible phrase in any of Mel's voices. If you purchased a talking Looney Tunes product in the last four years and the voice sounds like Mel, odds are that Noel supplied the dialogue.

I got to hang out with Noel about a year and a half ago at a Warner Bros. gallery show that I worked on and helped promote. He's a pretty cool guy, and he seems to just really get into discussing his father's work.

Interesting enough, a journalist was covering the event for the newspaper, and she was asking Noel what he thought of sons picking up their fathers' characters, "like Jim Henson's son Brian doing Kermit the Frog now?" I had to politely tell her later that she didn't really do her research well.

I agree that Warner Bros. has been doing a, for lack of a better word, sloppy job on keeping the characters consistent in recent years. The problem was for many years the studio was looking for one person to do all of the voices, and we just know that will never happen again to the same effect.

I think perhaps the best ensemble Warner Bros. has used lately are the voice artists who worked on the short "Carrotblanca," but apparently they didn't seem to realize it themselves.

I like the way the Jim Henson Company handled Jim and Richard's characters, where instead of trying to force a new person onto them they let new performers come into it more naturally. I think that's why hearing something like Bill's Rowlf isn't as jarring as, say, if Dave was suddenly drafted into the part in 1991.

 

[frogboy4]

Biggest mistakes people make with the Muppets:
That Kermit is voiced by Jim's son [Brian]
That Disney owns them
That they are the same as the Sesame cast or Muppet Babies
That Piggy is voiced by a woman (many people still don't know)
That there hasn't been a Muppet show since the early eighties.

Just thought I'd list a few of the things that the laymen think that peeve me.

 

[BoyRaisin2]

Yeah, I must say when people think the main troupe are "Sesame Street" characters, it kind of annoys me, especially if it's an official news article.

And for the past ten years, it was easy to say Disney didn't own the Muppets, but try to explain that some company called EM.TV (not MTV) owns them. Then try to explain in a few months that some other company (likely Disney) will own Henson.

Good grief...

 

[radionate]

Noel Blanc Update

Hey Everyone,

Thanks for the update on Noel Blanc. I really figured that he just had no interest in voice work, was only letting his father train him to appease him, and had just gone off to do his own thing. The fact that he is keeping his father's memory and work alive is wonderful news. That made my day!