Welcome to Random Roles, wherein we talk to actors about the characters that defined their careers. The catch: They don't know beforehand what roles we'll ask them to talk about.
The actor: Journeyman voiceover actor Billy West, who found fame as the voice of first one, then both main characters on The Ren & Stimpy Show. Since kicking off his career in radio as a producer and voiceover actor in the '80s, West's roles have been varied and iconic: He's had memorable turns in everything from The Howard Stern Show to M&M commercials and Space Jam, for which he helped revive Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. He also toiled as several characters on Matt Groening's animated show Futurama until it was prematurely canceled by Fox in 2003—though late 2007 saw the series' resurrection as a series of feature-length, direct-to-DVD movies, starting with Bender's Big Score. The second of four slated new Futurama films, the tentacle-heavy The Beast With A Billion Backs, is slated for release on June 24, and will air on Comedy Central later this year.
Doug (1991-1994)—Various characters
"Doug" by Billy West
Billy West: [Adopts Doug voice.] A painfully shy, 11-and-a-half-year-old. This is my dog, Porkchop. [Barks.] And, oh, let's see, Patti Mayonnaise, I've got a big crush on her. Oh, and here comes the big bully of the town. [Adopts Roger Klotz voice.] Hey loser, come here, Funnie! Come here loser, vote for this! [Cruel laugh.] [Doug voice.] I guess that's it. If it wasn't for me, Billy West would probably be driving an ice-cream truck, full-time!
The A.V. Club: So he's still 11?
BW: Oh yeah, you know what? Disney made him older [for Disney's Doug], but I had nothing to do with that.
AVC: They made him older and gave him a three-quarter-sleeve baseball T-shirt.
BW: And about as much hair as I have in real life.
AVC: When Doug went to Disney, you said that's as far as that role could take you, and you jumped ship. How do you know when you've reached that point with a role?
BW: When they won't pay you any more money for it.
AVC: Was it tough voicing Doug and Quailman?
BW: Quailman was basically the same thing, but I wore my underwear inside-out for Quailman.
The Ren & Stimpy Show (1991-1996)—Various characters
AVC: Your website has a warning that if people are just there to talk about Ren & Stimpy, they can "hit the bricks." Does it irritate you to even talk about the show?
BW: No, I had people that were coming on my own website and attacking me. You know, they were like Hillary Clinton supporters? It was very ugly. And I'm sorry, I hate to say it, but it was a forum that I paid for, and these people would come on, and they were too cheap to get their own fucking forum, so they used mine as their platform for their love of [Ren & Stimpy creator] John [Kricfalusi] and all this other crap.
[John K.] wanted me to quit the job when he got fired [in 1992]. But the problem there is that I wasn't his partner. I was a hired gun.
AVC: But you were largely responsible for the show getting picked up in the first place.
BW: Well yeah, and then these people badmouth me for 10 years, like a rock in my shoe in that camp. It's a very small but active group of posters, as I've come to find out. But the thing is that I finally got to the point where, "Okay, I get you, I get it you don't like that I did what I did." But the thing was, the whole story was cockeyed. They said I put everybody out of work. No, I didn't. Everybody was going to be out of work if I didn't continue the show.
[John K.] is very talented; he used to really piss me off. But I did good work, you know? The show without me was totally unsuccessful. So if there's anybody listening out there with any doubts about what I can do for a show: Try me. The thing is, I wasn't about to stop doing a job. And he called me up, screaming at me, saying they can do the show without him, but they'll never be able to do it without me. So in other words, he was saying, "If you quit the show, you have the clout to get me back on." And I said, "You're fartin' way higher than your ass on that one, because everybody is disposable." Everybody is! I don't have that much of an ego where it's like "How dare you, you can't do something without me." Although the show did fucking do a bellyflop in a sundress. [Laughs.] Because I didn't do it.
Futurama (1999-2003, 2007-)—Various characters
AVC: Haven't you said that you made Fry's voice on Futurama so similar to your own that they could never replace you?
BW: Well, that's an attempt. Somebody's real voice is probably the hardest one that somebody could attempt. The characters are all, believe it or not, rooted in a reality of some sort. I've met and talked to people, and they're also fusions of showbiz periphery. But the best thing was, if you did your own voice and you were the star of the show—if it came to blows and they had you on the ropes and you had to leave, then they could just get someone to sound exactly like you.
But my voice is so fucking… it's like in neutral, it's plain vanilla. And my speech is terribly flawed. And it was perfect for the role of [Fry voice.] Fry, because I have fricative problems.
AVC: In pretty much all the Futurama commentaries, you all talk about how hard it is to do Everyman voices, like Guard No. 2. Why are they so challenging? Because they're so disposable?
BW: It's very hard to take a character out of nothing, and put a hook on it, especially because it's only sonic. It's a sonic world, and everyone's attention is focused on that sound and that little cartoon image. You can change it. Tom [Kenny] is a master of changing it a pubic hair this way or that way, and sounding like a totally different character.
AVC: Is that the most under-sung quality of a voice actor?
"Everyman" by Billy West
BW: Yeah, it is, because you have to go and think about what the Everyman is. Like, in a black-and-white world, back in the '50s, you were either like [Loud, gruff, voice.] Charlie, the garbage man, or you were [High, nasal voice.] a guy in an office, worrying about where his coffee is. [Panicky voice.] Uh, did you get that report I sent you?
You know. Those were voices from another era. All actors used to sound different. Robert Mitchum sounded different from John Wayne, and John Wayne sounded different from Clark Gable. They were like men's voices, but they weren't Everyman, it was them. So you're trying to work around it, and it always comes out like somebody from the '40s. Tom and I just have that love for that period anyway, when things were, "Oh, shucks. Oh shucky darn!" But the Everyman of today? There could be a guy on a garbage truck that has a PhD!
AVC: What about the 30th-century Everyman?
WB: The everyman of the 30th century? I figure if I was in the 30th century, I would be just like this. Just the way I sound.
AVC: Why wouldn't it be any different?
WB: Well he's the only one from an earlier era. But the thing is, it is tough, the original question that you had. It's very tough to be Astronaut No. 3 and, "Oh, I gotta play a peanut." And they don't want cartoony, and they underline "Not!"
AVC: What's the worst note you've gotten to improve a voice like that?
BW: "Can you be funnier?" or "You've got three seconds: Make us cry."
AVC: Who's a better voice actor: Al Gore or Stephen Hawking?
"Robot Voice" by Billy West
BW: [Laughs.] Well, I happen to have a love of vocal reproduction devices. But my love of it is from the '50s, the '50s idea of what the future was going to be like. It was like when you went up to a computer and the computer turns on you—or the machine turns on you, and was like [Robot voice.] "I hate you. I will kill you." And so Stephen Hawking is like [Robot voice.] "I have to take a dump in zero gravity." You know, up in the spaceship? [Robot voice.] "Get the Depends." [Laughs.]
When I was a little kid, I saw a guy with one of those cancer clarinets, and I flipped out. I totally flipped out. I said to my mom, "Mom, what is that thing?" And she happened to know, too, which was the oddest thing. She said, "That's a Bell Telephone artificial larynx, for men that had their voice boxes removed because of cancer." I was like, "Wow." And I couldn't wait to get one. I didn't get one 'til I was all grown up and everything. I went to a pawnshop and I saw one, and I went in and just bought it. And I guess it worked, but it didn't work when I tried to do anything with it, because you have to have no voice box for it work. It was nothing; it was like buzzing. [Makes a rasberryish, monotone buzzing.] So I had to learn how to [make the robotic voice] without one of those things. There's different ways to explain it, I guess.
"Robot Voice II" by Billy West
It's like when you do a sound of a ray gun, and you make your mouth go [blows a monotone raspberry]. Like that, like a bee or something? [Buzzes like a bee.] And you add a tone to it, which you can do at the very same time because the original sound is coming right from your mouth and not from your throat. It's not using your vocal cords. So if you add a voice to it while you're doing that buzz, you can control the pitch of your buzz to match the pitch of what you're saying. And it sounds like an octave. Let's see… wait a minute. [Robot voice.] "I hate being a robot." [Lower robot voice.] "I love to be a robot." [Robot voice.] "No, you don't." [Lower robot voice.] "Yes, I do." [Higher robot voice.] "Shut up, both of you." I love that monotone, creepy sound, I just do. I don't like that computers can talk perfectly normal.
Yeah, [Stephen's] a better voice actor. But I love Al Gore, man! When I met him, I said, "Man, you got gypped, Al." The guy who had to swallow it, go back to the Senate, and hear people arguing about how his election was stolen, [and] was like, "You're out of order." The last eight years were like, "What the hell? We lost our constitutional rights? What, you're being wiretapped?" And John McCain is like [John McCain voice.] "Don't call me Bush, or I'll have you wiretapped." I heard some story that [McCain] shit in someone's bathtub.
AVC: Well, that's gotta be true, right?
"John McCain" by Billy West
BW: [John McCain voice.] "No, of course that's not true. That's where I draw the line. I took a dump in a dead Cong's mouth once and wiped my ass with his clothes, but a tub? No, forget it."
AVC: A lot of your impromptu voices involve people taking dumps.
BW: Yes, because I think that's the funniest thing somebody could say. Yeah, I'm puerile, you know? I'm not like a high intellectual. That's the thing. I talk about Stephen Hawking trying to do that in zero gravity. I don't think that would go very well. I could only imagine, them standing by, floating around with the rolls of Bounty. You know, [Robot voice.] "The quicker picker-upper."
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