The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 186: That Was Perfect Do It Again

Episode Date: February 9, 2021

Mike begins with chapter 8 of his bestselling book which contains quite possibly the greatest audition story ever told about one of the most ubiquitous names in television. This is followed by a personal recollection of Mike's thespian dad and concludes with a moderately inappropriate conversation between Mike and Chuck wherein they swap audition stories from the '90s.  It's totally rad!

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That was perfect. Do it again. Story of my life. The episode starts with Chapter 8 from my book, which tells the true story of what I think is the greatest audition ever. And it introduces a terrific character actor who also happened to be an actor of great character. We conclude with a moderately inappropriate conversation between myself and Chuck, where we recall a few of the many thousands of auditions we've endured over our 80 plus years of combined experience in this circus we call show business. If you are sensitive to things like

cultural appropriation, I can only apologize in advance and remind you that times were different not so long ago. We mean, no offense, we're only discussing the way things were for us as voiceover actors trying to scratch out a living back in the 90s. Also, a trigger warning for anyone offended by the notion of a gig economy. Friends, the gig economy is not the enemy that so many people have made it out to be, in my opinion, anyway. The business of freelancing, of eating, what you kill, that's the essence, not just of every successful actor I've ever met,

but every successful person. Once again, we began with a short story called Can You Be There by Nine? Followed by a personal recollection about my dad, another actor of great character, and then a wildly unscripted conversation with the producer of this podcast, Chuck Klaus Meyer. My old friend, and the only guy I know who's auditioned for more gigs than I have. It's episode 186. It's called That Was Perfect. Do it again.

And it all starts right now. Chapter 8. Can you be there by 9? Al sat on the back of a horse that wasn't his, drew a pistol that wasn't loaded, and shot an Apache who wasn't an Indian. The stuntman screamed and fell unconvincingly to the ground, and the director yelled, Cut! Back to one, everybody. Let's do it again. Al glanced nervously at his watch. 6.30 p.m. Not good. His audition was at 9 the next morning.

St. George, Utah was seven hours from L.A. by car. and Al didn't have a car. All right, everybody, here we go. Ready? And action. Once again, Indians whooped and charged. Townspeople screamed and scattered, and Al pulled the trigger,

shooting the same guy for the 10th time that day. But now, when the Apache, who wasn't an Indian, fell to the ground, the director called, Cut! That's a wrap, everyone. Check your call times for tomorrow. Al knew his call time already. 3 p.m. tight, but doable. He turned his horse away from the set of bullet for a bad man

and rode hard toward the nearest highway. It was rough terrain, but he could handle a horse. You probably knew that, if you'd seen him in Springfield Rifle with Gary Cooper, the Big Trees with Kirk Douglas, or the true story of Jesse James with Robert Wagner. For a big man, he rode well. Five miles later, as the sun was about to set, Al reached the highway. He dismounted, turned his horse back in the direction of the stables, and gave it a slap on the rump. One thing about horses, they always know where the stable is, especially around dinner time.

After that one left in a cloud of dust, Al knew that there was no turning back. He stuck his thumb out, and two hours later, an 18-wheeler, finally pulled over. Where are you headed, cowboy? Los Angeles. I can take you as far as Vegas. I'll take it, said Al. Al jumped into the cab.

The truck driver said he looked familiar. Al asked him if he liked the movies. Sure, said the driver. Who doesn't like the movies? Well, did you see Dive Bomber with Errol Flynn? I don't think so. I was in that one. Oh, yeah?

What else you've been in? Well, I was in a periscope, with James Garner. Didn't see it. Time out for rhythm with Rudy Valley? Nope. What about rogue cop with Rod Taylor? Sorry. To the shores of Tripoli with Harry Morgan? Negative. The sea chase with John Wayne. Uh-uh. The West Point story with James Cagney doesn't ring any bells. By the time they arrived in Vegas, it was firmly established that Al's driver was not up to speed with his passenger's resume. But Al didn't mind. With a wife at home and four kids to feed, Al didn't care about being recognized. He just wanted to work. That's why he was busting his butt for a chance

to audition for the role of Jonas Grumby, the final character to be cast on a new show for CBS. His agent said he looked like a Jonas Grumby, and Al couldn't disagree. The driver dropped him at McCarron Field, just in time to see the last flight to L.A. take off without him. Al slept in the terminal. The next morning, he boarded the first flight to Burbank, landing a half hour before his audition time, and grabbed a cab to the studio. Al smiled when the cabby picked up exactly where the truck driver had left off. You got one of those faces, said the cabby. Where have I seen you? I don't know, said Al. You like the movies? Sure, said the cabby.

Who doesn't like the movies? Ever see Monsieur Bocquer with Bob Hope? Don't think so, said to Gabby. I was in that one, said Al. Oh, yeah? What else you've been in? Al sighed. Hometown Story with Marilyn Monroe. Didn't see it.

How about battle him with Rock Hudson? Not yet. No time for love with Claudette Colbert and Fred McMurray. It's on my list. Young at Heart with Doris Day and Frank Sinatra. Uh-uh. Al arrived at the studio with two minutes to spare. He didn't look like a man who had ridden a horse, hitched a ride, and slept in an airport

just for a chance to audition for a role he probably wouldn't get. Nor did he look like a man who would be flying back to Utah in less than an hour to shoot some more Apaches who weren't really Indians in another movie that no one would ever remember. He looked like a Jonas Grumby, the smiling, bumbling, exasperated character he'd come to read for. Al glanced again at the lines, which he'd already memorized. He walked into the room. A skinny kid with a funny hat on was waiting in front of a camera. Al shook the kid's hand, and they chatted briefly about the scene. Then somebody said, action. That was that. Magic. No one would ever look at Al again

and wonder where they'd seen his face. Thanks to that audition and five decades of syndication, Al's face would be forever seared into America's retina. Jonas Grumby would accumulate more screen time than all the stars that Al had ever worked with combined. And so, when he died in 1990, Al's ashes were sprinkled over the Pacific Ocean, a fitting send-off for the man who became synonymous not with the cowboys he'd so often portrayed,

or the Indians he'd so often shot, but with Jonas Grumby, the sailor, whose name was changed after the show's pilot to the one you know today, the ubiquitous title by which he was called every day for the rest of his life. Such was the fateful trip of Alan Hale Jr., a great character actor who just happened to be an actor of great character. A man whose 12-hour odyssey from St. George, Utah to Los Angeles, California, earned him a three-hour tour to a deserted island that wasn't really deserted. An island where he was known as the skipper, even though the real boss was a skinny kid with a funny hat named Gillian. Alan Hale Jr. never won an Oscar or an Emmy Award. He was never even nominated. But if Hollywood was in the business of recognizing character, surely there'd be a trophy somewhere with his name on it,

maybe even a statue, because what Hale did back in 1964 was nothing short of heroic. Imagine you're a middle-aged character actor. You're not rich. You've got a wife and four kids, all of whom depend on you. In the middle of a paid gig in Utah, you sneak away on a horse that isn't yours and make your way to Los Angeles on the off chance that you'll land a role you know nothing about. Then you get back to Utah in time to do the job you've actually been hired to do. Alan Hale Jr. didn't give a damn about fame. He believed in something far more noble, something Hollywood has never recognized and probably never will. He believed that a promise made was a debt unpaid, specifically the promise he'd made to care and provide for his family.

That's what makes him a hero to me, and that's why his journey reminds me of another voyage by another actor. A regular guy who taught social studies for 30 years, started a vocational training program at the junior high school where he worked. raised three boys on a single income and appeared in 50 productions of better-than-average community theater. The first time I saw my dad on stage was in 1975 when he played the lead in a production of Woody Allen's Don't Drink the Water. The character was Walter Hollander, a middle-aged American tourist trapped with his family at the U.S. Embassy in a fictitious country somewhere behind the iron curtain. I was transfixed. Who was this man inhabiting my father's skin?

Why was everyone laughing hysterically, not just at the things that he said, but at the way he said them? Where was the no-nonsense teacher who'd come home every night and loom over me as I did homework? The stern taskmaster, who woke me up every Saturday at 7 a.m. to split wood and mow the lawn and shovel the snow. Don't drink the water, split my father's personality in two. He was still, my dad, still a dedicated teacher and church deacon, still the reliable head of our household. But every six months or so, he became an entirely new person, someone with bulging eyes

and a funny accent. All that his wife and sons could do was watch the transformation, marvel, and take turns running lines with him. I recall a production of Agatha Christie's Towards Zero. Dad played a Scottish inspector called in to investigate a murder at a country estate. From the front row, I watched him confront the guilty party with damning evidence. The expression on his face was one I recognized immediately. It was an expression that accompanied countless other investigations all conducted in the house I had grown up in. And whose muddy boots left the dirt on the carpet? And who drank the last of the milk? And whose socks are these jammed into the sofa cushions? Such questions directed to my

brothers and me were always accompanied with a raised eyebrow and followed by some dramatic revelation. The muddy boot, empty milk carton, where wayward sock held high for all to see. Ah ha! As a sleuth, he was a natural. My father's innate desire to get to the bottom of things informed his understanding of history and his desire to teach it to eighth graders as much as it drew him to plays that posed the question, who done it?

Dial M for murder, witness for the prosecution, 12 angry men, a shot in the dark. The butler did it, death trap. Dad's done them all. His portrayal of Judge Danforth in the crucible comes back to me all the time. We burn a hot fire here. It melts down all concealment. Sitting in the front row at the Dundalk Community Theater, I was sure that his lines were directed at me,

and seeing that there was more to my father than I had imagined made me wonder if maybe there was more to me. Mom certainly seemed to think so. One day, Michael, you'll be the star of the show, just like your father. If watching my dad was a privilege, working directly with him was an honor, a role you might say I was born for. In the rainmaker, he played a sheriff who arrested me for trying to convince desperate farmers that I could make it rain during a drought. In inherit the wind, he played a judge again and threatened to send me to jail for contempt of court. That, too, was a very believable portrayal.

Seven years after Dad's debut and Don't Drink the Water, I appeared in a production of the same play. Not in the same role. I was still too young to play a middle-aged American tourist. I had auditioned for the part of Axel McGee, the hapless son of the U.S. ambassador who'd fallen in love with the beautiful daughter of Walter Hollander, the character my father had played.

The production was staged. at the cockpit in the court, one of the more respected venues on the Baltimore theater scene. I had butterflies on opening night. I remember the audience murmuring on the other side of the curtain as the lights dimmed. But what I remember most clearly is Dad, in the front row, laughing loudly in all the right spots, no doubt wondering, who is this young man inhabiting my son's skin and getting all of these laughs. Coincidentally, or maybe not, my dad was back at the cockpit in the court

while I was writing my story about Alan Hale Jr., auditioning for a role in another production of, you guessed it, don't drink the water. Now that he was in his mid-80s, he was too seasoned to play Walter Hollander. But, thanks to a passable Russian accent and his no-nonsense demeanor, he did get cast in the role of Crowjack, a KGB investigator determined to get to the bottom of things.

Watching from the front row, I thought about his many roles over the many years, all the rehearsing, all the time he spent memorizing lines. I thought about the hospital he volunteers at two days a week and the shut-ins who anticipate his cheerful delivery of Meals on Wheels every Monday. I thought about the former students. who stay in touch with him and the church that still relies upon him to collect and count the weekly offering. And I thought about the three boys he'd raised on a single income. After the show, he told me that things weren't as easy as they used to be. But as anyone who knows my dad understands,

easy was never the point. My guess is that Alan Hale Jr. understood that as well. Dumb. Well, are you sick of it yet? Are you sick of AI hogging up all the headlines and sucking up all the bandwidth? You find yourself wishing we lived in a simpler time? Do you miss a rotary phone? Well, get over it. The genie is out of the bottle.

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And while you're there, pick up their free business guy, demystifying AI. It's filled with super useful information. And again, it's free at NetSuite. dot com slash mike that's net sweet dot com okay we are rolling i mean you really are like the producer's producer the way you pull all that together uh opening up my calculator when i'm trying to open up a and hitting the record button oh yeah all of it coming together i got this down man all right enough Chapter 8 is one of my favorites. Modesty aside in my book because my dad is the star of the show

and Alan Hale Jr. and Gilligan's Island and all that stuff. You know, I mean, it's just so familiar to me and so weirdly relevant when I listen back to it. As I just did, I assume you did as well. Yes. Your thoughts and hold nothing back. Well, it's one of my favorites too because it's a story. of perseverance. It's a story of he's a guy who knows he's working. He's working on a major

motion picture on location and he's still because he's a job or because he knows this job will end. He is thinking about the next gig, so much so that he takes this extraordinary action and just the idea of seeing big old Alan Hale on a horse. You know, know, headed towards the highway where he then hitchhikes to the airport, et cetera. It's, it's just, it's ridiculous. And I don't even know how he got back. Well, the thing, you know, I would, when I read the, the telling of that story, and I don't remember where I first read it, but I was immediately reminded on a much smaller level, of course, of how many auditions that you had done, that I had done, that all our friends have done over the years, the lengths to which

you go in order to get, you know, to some godforsaken little studio on the other side of town during rush hour in Los Angeles back in the days where there was nothing but a Thomas guide. Oh. Right. So annoying. And no cell phones, right? So if you run into traffic, the huge dilemma back then was, okay, do I pull over,

I know I'm going to be late, do I pull over and call ahead to let them know I'm going to be late, making myself even later. Or do I just press on? It's like catching a falling knife. Did you have an ashtray full of quarters? Oh, yeah. Me too. At an ashtray full of quarters in order to pull over to make the inevitable,

I'm lost call or I'm running late call or to call the agent and apologize as well. And that damn Thomas guide, if you don't know what a Thomas guide is, folks, imagine a small phone book, you know, in a large metropolitan area with all of the entirety of Los Angeles County inside, page by page. So it's a grid, right? So page 14 might actually be attached to page 109. Right? And if you're trying to track your product,

it was a very effective but clunky way to get from here to there. The way I remember it is it was like a giant map that if you laid it out as it should be, in its entirety would be the size of a small bedroom. Okay, but you're only allowed to look at maybe eight and a half by 10 inches of it at a time. If that. I thought of it like postage stamps. Yes, right.

Yeah. Anyway, boo-hoo, right? That's us in the 90s trying to get from Studio City to the North End of Burbank. Alan Hale Jr. St. George, Utah all the way to Burbank. I mean, it's just, it just speaks to so many things. The phrase I think I'm most proud of in that chapter is a character actor who turned out to be an actor of character. Yes, of great character.

Yeah, I think he's something like that. I was so proud of it, I can't even quote it properly. No, it was good. It's a good line. It's a good line. And he really was. And he, like your dad, was making a living. The difference is that your dad did it for fun.

He was actually doing it to put food on the table. Big difference, right. My dad taught public school. but it was transformative for him. My dad was very serious and still is, kind of an uptight guy who takes comfort from rigor and discipline. And community theater for him was just this excuse to become somebody else. I mean, why else do most actors act?

You know, Hale, though, he was a journeyman, for sure. He was putting food on the table and laboring in anonymity. Oh, and I want to ask you, too, because you've just made the same mistake that I apparently made, sort of. The correctors came out of the woodwork for this one. You referred to him as Alan Hale. And people came. Well, is it? Because he officially dropped the junior, I believe, before he got the role of the skipper.

Because his dad, of course, Alan Hale, or Alan Hale senior. Like, are you a senior before you have a junior? no i think i think it's the junior that makes you a senior you're just alan hale until you junior comes along and then you're obliged to put senior after your name well only if the junior becomes somewhat of note i think and if junior has a son he's then he's the third the third yeah anyway alan hale senior was a major star in silent films and so his boy junior lived in his shadow. Even though he was a well-respected,

accomplished actor, he lived in the shadow of his old man. And it wasn't until that extraordinary ride to Burbank that he became ubiquitous. And again, it doesn't happen over time. You look back and it seems like, oh, now you're anonymous, now you're famous. You know, it took a while.

They made some terrible deals on that show. You know, I mean, nobody made any money. but suddenly thanks to syndication, I mean, it's a hell of a thing to ultimately eclipse your father. I would imagine if you're Alan Hale Jr., both working in the same trade, right, in the same business.

I just can't imagine how that level of celebrity would truly transform your life. Yeah, I would imagine that it would. Although, I guess within the industry, Allen Hale Jr. must have been a pretty big deal around town. People must have known him. Around town. Yeah. But remember the bubble. Chuck, by the way, is down in L.A. right now. Yeah. I'm up here a little north of San Francisco. We're each in our bubbles. But the acting bubble is really, most people I don't think, understand at all what it means to be a working actor who spends 30, 40, 40, 50 years. mostly anonymous, right?

Most Americans don't think of what that's like. Yeah, I mean, that's what I did, you know. I mean, very few people know what. More people know me now because of what I do with you than ever knew me before. Although I do remember when I was on days of our lives, people would recognize me. I remember walking into the bank one time

and the teller looking up and gasping. and and and and I was like I it sort of shocked me and I said what's wrong and she goes you're you're on days of our lives I go well yes yes ma'am I am she goes I hate you because I played a very bad guy well I've said it before to you and it and the others the the luckiest thing for me and there have been a lot of fortunate things but but to be associated not with a character but with me yourself And a version of me that I don't have to, for better or worse, pretend. You know. But I think the interesting thing about you and every other character actor I know is that a glance at your resume would suggest a life of unbridled success.

And people, I mean, I say this with respect, right? People don't understand. You've been in soap operas. You've produced movies. You've written movies. You've starred in movies. You've been on sitcoms. You've done more voiceovers, really, than anyone I know.

You've, I mean, it is page after page after page. And there's so many others right now who are, you know, living and working exactly as you do. And they're not back on their heels. They're not coasting, you know, every month. You get up. You make the donuts. Little Rocks out of big rocks. You know, I mean, not to suggest for a moment you're engaged in some level of drudgery,

but it is workman-like. I mean, it's true freelancing. Our industry still is one of the freelancing's under assault, as you know. But in our industry, it's still a thing. Yeah, well, you know freelancings like. You did it for years and years and years. You hung your hat on it. It was a great pride.

for you to, you know, to start every month with 30 empty squares, you know, and, and slowly fill them up. It's, it's, I know, you know, there are a lot of people who can't handle that lifestyle. My sister, I don't know how many times my sister would say to me, I don't know how you do it. Well, one square at a time. Yeah. But look, I mean, I don't know if we want to go here necessarily. I mean, hell, we can go anywhere we want. Freelancing is worth talking.

about. It's a big part of our foundation that we run, you know, jobbers, like the idea of being a jobber. You used that expression earlier. Alan Hale Jr. was a jobber. Today, he'd be called a gigger, right? He's in the gig economy. Well, the gig economy is under assault. Jobbers are now more to be pitied than admired because they're seen as people who who don't have any security, right? It's completely upside down. Like the way I thought of myself when I was a jobber was independent and self-sufficient and you eat what you kill and you get out there and, you know, all of that stuff was very satisfying to me.

And now, here in California anyway, I mean, that whole way of working is under a full-scale assault. And I don't think anything good can come of it. Well, you bring up an interesting point with the foundation, because this is something else that occurred to me when I listened to this episode again. And that is that Alan Hale Jr. embraced the sweat pledge, which you wrote, which all of the recipients or applicants, I should say, have to sign in order to get a work ethic scholarship from your foundation, the MicroWorks Foundation. You can see it at microworks.org. smooth. Thank you. But he really, I mean, just delayed gratification, you know, work ethic. You can't deny the work ethic, a positive attitude, you know, and what's the fourth pillar? Personal responsibility.

Personal responsibility. By the way, none of which you're allowed to say anymore today without getting, you know. Scorn. Yeah. How did that, how did phrases like delayed gratification, work ethic, personal responsibility, positive attitude, turn it into some dog whistle, some coded speech for something unpleasant. Because nowadays, instant gratification just takes too damn long. And if somebody's telling you to work a little bit harder, that actually is code for, oh, lazy, you lazy son of the gun, you know, it's not meant to be any of that, of course. I am struck by Hale's work ethic, and I'm struck by that journey that pops up a lot in the book from relative anonymity to fame. And I obviously was reminded a lot of my dad.

And dude, don't drink the water. Yes. I mean, let's talk about the play that neither of us had ever heard of that suddenly is like running through this whole weird quilt like a giant thread. Yeah, it starts with your dad. It was his first community theater production. Is that correct? 1975. He was cast, the social studies teacher was cast as the lead in a play by Woody Allen, a play that I think to this day, no one's ever heard of. You know, I mean, of all the things Woody Allen has done, you know, nobody ever sits down and says, okay, Woody, let's talk about don't drink the water.

I don't even know if they made a movie of it. Did they make a movie of it? They did, and it starred Jackie Gleason. Oh, that's great. And he was terrific. Watch don't drink the water. I mean, it's camp. There's a bit of farce in it.

You know, it takes place behind the iron curtain. I didn't know any of this, of course. I was 13, and suddenly there I sat in a giant auditorium watching my dad get all the laughs in a play I'd never heard of. And I just, I'd never seen a play before. I didn't even really understand what they were or why people would do such a weird thing to memorize somebody else's lines and get on a stage.

It was all just, it was, it was bizarre on its face. But then to see my dad in the midst of it, I just, so many things clicked into, not quite clicked into place, but so many things suddenly seemed possible as I watched my dad, a man who had never, it had never indicated any interest at all in acting suddenly had the lead in a show and getting all those laughs. It was incredible. Well, let me ask you, was that the first time that you'd been to live theater as a kid? Yep. Yep. That was the first time. The very first time, and you're seeing your dad. Yep. There were no expectations. There were no rules. And it was almost impossible to square it after the event. wasn't quite sure what I had just witnessed. All I knew was that my dad the next day was back to

normal, being a hard ass, making us get the chores done and just, you know, my dad, you know my dad. He was not from that school of, oh, I'll be your friend, son. My dad was, he was not our friend. He loved us and we loved him, you know. He loved my mom, first and foremost, and he raised his kids as best he could. You know, it's not that it was unpleasant. I mean, he was always there for a laugh, but the laugh didn't come first. All of a sudden, he becomes this character. It was a lot for my brothers and I to get our heads around, believe me, a lot.

I got to tell you, one of the things I remember about, you know, when we were in high school, I guess, and I think that's a, this is about the time that this happened, was the family portrait that you guys took where I don't know you must have you must have won it from sears is it nearby because that thing is yeah let me see it's phenomenal oh yeah here is I got it over here right so so before I show this to you here's what happened I we we got a we got a phone call from Sears saying hey come on down and get your get your picture taken you know it was it was Olin Mills, I think they were called, right? And it was this outfit that went all around the country back in the, in the 80s and 90s,

and they would go to malls and they would take these family portraits. It was a real moneymaker, you know, and they came to the Golden Ring Mall where there was a Sears. And I said to my family, look, let's just all go get a picture taken, all right? I mean, it might be fun, but let's do it like this. Let's just all, don't dress for the picture. just come meet me at the Sears doing whatever it was you were doing. And so this is this is basically what happened.

Yeah, so obviously you were, so let me just describe the picture for our listeners. There's a John Rowe is wearing just a white t-shirt and suspenders holding a pipe and a cap. His mom is wearing an apron and stirring a bowl with a wooden spoon. are just looking as goofy as ever. And Mike looks like he just came from either a production of, oh, God, I can't think of the name. Chippendales. Chippendales.

There you go. Magic Mike is what I was trying to think of, but that didn't come until years later. Yeah, you looked like a stripper. I had just come from a wedding. So I had a tuxedo on, and I took off my shirt and I had a trench coat and I kept the bow tie on. I don't know why I did that.

But I- disturbing, honestly. But the first time I saw it, honestly, I just was like, wow, they really have a great sense of humor. My dad was up in the wood pile, cutting wood. My mom was making something, pancakes, I think. Phil had just come from a luau. And Scott had been digging a ditch with my grandfather out back.

Thus the bandana on his head, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, we all just showed up, got the picture taken, and then just sort of forgot about it until they sent the proofs a week later. and so I'm looking at the proofs and I think this is interesting everybody else just thought it was just kind of a waste of time, whatever, it's a goof

but I went to Sears to pick them up and there was a line of people waiting to get their pictures taken and they were all dressed in goofy outfits. They had taken this photo and blown it up and had put it out front like the next day. And so now families all over Baltimore are showing up, you know, in silly outfits.

I want my goofy picture, Han. I won't get a picture myself with my mom and dad. My family's just as goofy as that Mike Roe family. Yeah, man, I'd forgotten all about it. It's funny you mention that, but that absolutely did sort of capture the smoldering thespian potentiality that lurked. just beneath the surface of all the rows. My guest today, Tom Albanyce, is an American giant,

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that you can be proud to support. use code Mike, get 20% off your order at American-giant.com slash Mike. American Giant, American Made. American Giant, American Made. All right, so before we get too far afield here, I want to swing this back to the classic audition story. We talked about this before. I know you've got a million different audition stories.

gig stories that are just like so weird. Give me yours. If you had one that sums it all up for you, what was it? I guess the one that it was the audition that I didn't realize was an audition. And this was probably in the late 80s, early 90s, I guess, when I still had a hosting agent. and Nickelodeon was doing some new kids show and my agent called me and said well they had put me on tape here in L.A.,

but the production was in New York, the producers were in New York, and they were like, we want to have Chuck fly out and, you know, it's between him and another guy, right? Yeah. And so I was like, well, this is, you know,

this was a new territory for me. I'd never been flown anywhere to screen test or audition, you know, particularly because I, live in Los Angeles. You would think I was already there, right? So, but no, they flew me to New York, put me up in, you know, the park. Uh, what was that, what's that? What's that? Or quiet. Is it, no, it's a, it's terrible. I can't remember. It's one you see in a lot of movies, but anyway, so I'm having dinner with everybody and, you know, that night and then the next morning,

they're going to put me on tape and run through this game show with, with actual kids, you know, me and this other guy. We were going to tag team it, and then they were going to decide. So that night, we go out to dinner and I don't want to say the guy's name, but the producer of the thing is, there's like eight people around this large table. And he says, do you like to drink? And I said, well, sure, I suppose so. He's like, great. Let's get some champagne. And what sort of cocktail do you want? And I'm like, well, if we're having champagne, I don't know that I really want a No, no, get a cocktail as well. Come on. You know, so I get a cocktail that we're drinking.

And then we're looking over the menu and I say to the woman next to me, one of the associate producers, I say, so what's good? What are you going to get? And before she can answer, the producer jumps in and says, no, no, no, no, wait. What he orders will tell us a lot about him. And it was just weird. And he, he threw, throughout the night, he would barrage me with just questions. Like, he would interrupt.

me constantly. And then he would say things like, what's the square root of 49? Seven. Well, yes. But anyway, he was, I found him really, really annoying. And I think my annoyance came through. And I went the next day and I did the thing and I was great with the kids. And I remember years later talking to Mark Summers who got the gig.

No, no, he didn't get the gig. He was a big deal with the network at the time. But he told me, he goes, yeah, he goes, they didn't. hire you because of the way you acted the night before. And I said, the guy was acting like a total child. He goes, yeah, that was the whole point. It was, it was, it was to see how you would react. I'm like, but I was reacting to an adult. Yeah. You know. Yeah. So you blew an audition that you didn't know you were having. I didn't know was an audition. Yeah. That's a good one. But look, that's also life. Everybody is auditioning all the time constantly for everyone, everything.

everything is an audition. Everybody today is being weighed and measured like never before. Yeah, and it's not only for, you're not judged just on what you've done today. You're just judged on what you've done your entire life, everything that you've written. Anything you said that's recorded, it's a pretty amazing time. You know, it's funny you mentioned drinking. I was at a dinner one night. I got hired to host an infomercial by the Tourism Bureau of Atlanta and not Atlanta of St. Petersburg, Tampa and Clearwater.

Right. And, you know, it's just me walking on a beach, making the case for this particular part of the country. And there was a woman that was sort of a co-host and we were shooting this thing. And it was all very terrible. but they hired Robin Leach to sort of do the voiceover for this, but also have a little presentational thing, you know, at the top of the video. And there was an issue over his fee. And is Robin Leach still alive?

I don't know if he's still alive or not. I'm speaking like Robin Leach, and I don't know why. Well, if he is, my apologies, whatever. It's a harmless story, I think. But he shows up to dinner. And I'm there with the producer and his wife and my co-host and a couple other people. And we're just sitting down and talk about the project. And Robin Leach orders a $20,000 bottle of wine.

And I didn't, you know, at that point, I didn't know there was such a thing. You know, you and I used to drink, you know, Taylor champagne, you know, for like, $9 when we couldn't. No, no, no. It was much less than that. Was it? 1980. Yeah. Anyway, until you see an actor order a $20,000 bottle of champagne that a producer really can't afford to pay for, but open it anyway and start passing it around. It's so craven. It's so awful. And it's so great.

And it's so funny. It was good wine. Leach died in 2018, by the way. All right, good. So we won't be hearing from his attorneys. Yeah, no, we will not. So give me another audition story. Something that was something strange that happened or out of the...

Well, I mean, look, for me, it's always the near miss. there have been so many. I came really close to hosting the reboot of Hollywood Squares. I came really close to hosting, I think like everything Tom Bergeron ever hosted, I wound up getting called back for. I came close a lot of times. But one, there were two, actually.

Do you remember e-television, entertainment television? Yeah, uh-huh. when that channel started, it was called Movie Time. And movie time back in the early 90s was a big deal. It was one of the early cable stations and it was catching on. And a guy named Dan Gibson invited me to audition for a new show on movie time that really didn't have much to do with movies. It was going to be a talk show or something.

really a roundup of all talk shows. And it was called Talk Soup. Right. And Talk Soup didn't know what it was, but I did a really good audition. And they called me back, and I, modesty aside, kind of knocked it out of the park.

And Dan Gibson called me after that and said, look, we like you. We like you a lot. And we like another guy a lot. And the guy we like a lot that isn't you, lives about five minutes from the studio here in L.A. I was living at the time back in Baltimore, or maybe it was New York, but I was back east. And they said, look, this could really go either way. And I said, well, I'm on the edge of my seat. Let me know what you decide. And Dan Gibson

told me he literally flipped a coin. He literally flipped a coin. And Greg Kinnear wound up hosting Talk Soup. And of course, he changed the format for a lot of hosts. He was so irreverent and subversive and funny and likable and all the things I aspired to be. And I don't remember exactly when, but you know how Way leads on the way in this goofy business. And the next thing you know, Greg Kinnear is winning an Oscar for as good as it gets, starring alongside Jack Nicholson. Crazy. That story reminds me of a story where I actually won the coin toss, and that was for a now defunct home improvement store that competed with Lowe's and Home Depot. Home Base. Yeah. I remember.

West of the Mississippi, right? So it was for the voice of, and they had three rounds of auditions. This is back in the day where you put the auditions on a CD and FedExed it out. the vast people did. Anyway, so after three rounds of auditions, I get the job. And it's the job that we all aspire to where you, you know, you show up every two weeks and read a stack of copy and then just sit by the mailbox and, you know, take a wheelbarrow with all the checks. Right. And so about a month into this, I'm at the shoot.

And there were long days, you know, we'd break for lunch and everything. So I'm breaking lunch with the client. and one of the producers says, hey, did I ever tell you how you got this job? Which, by the way, is a question you do not want to know the answer to. No, you don't. You really don't. But I was young and dumb.

I mean, I think, I'm like 25 at this point or something. I'm like, no, yeah, what is it? Actually, I was a little older, maybe 29. I said, well, no, how did I get the job? Because I just assumed I was the best guy for it. He goes, oh, you know, we played the final callback CD for the clients. And he was like, yeah, they're all pretty good. Just go with the first guy.

And I happen to be the first guy on the on the CD. And that as when I when I would tell this story, when I, when I taught VO, I would always say that job built the pool and all of the landscaping around the house that my ex-wife and her husband enjoy to this day. People should know. You have been teaching voiceover for how many years now? Over 20. I don't know. Since the early 90s, I think. Amazing.

Well, did I ever tell you about the Domino's campaign? I had. Yes, but please share it again. Well, I mean, I was living in New York at the time and impersonating a consultant and in business with William Shatner of all people. And we were working on this completely unrelated

project. But it was headquartered in a jingle house called Paradise. Paradise Music. And I was there late one day and I was walking out and the guy who ran the joint guy named John Leffler said, hey, Mike, you want to earn 200 bucks real quick?

Which, you know, in those days in New York is something, you have to be very careful before you say yes. Yes, right. But I said, yeah, yeah, what do I have to do? And he said, I got the client over here, the ad execs from Gray advertising were in charge of the Domino's business back then. And they had just introduced Domino's deep dish pizza. And, you know, there are a bunch of guys in there. The jingle was done and

everybody's happy with that. And it just needed a quick thing at the end. And the line was, when it's got to be deep and it's got to be thick, it's got to be dominoes. And the executives wanted a low voice. So I said, sure. So I walked up to the mic and I said, when it's got to be deep and it's got to be thick, it's got to be dominoes. And they were like, hey, that's not bad. And they gave me $200. And I left. And a couple days later, spur of the moment, Scott Flansberg, who you know, the human calculator,

and I decided to take a trip to Australia. And I was gone for a month. And we had a great time down there, met some new friends and had a ball. And I came back and went to my apartment in New York. and there were about $26,000 in residual checks jammed in my mailbox. And that's when I realized, oh, voiceovers. That's interesting. Yes, it is.

I had no idea, Chuck. I had absolutely no idea you could make money doing that kind of thing. But they took that sample for $200 and they dropped it in the actual commercial. And they played it. You got upgraded, my friend. I got upgraded. Didn't know what that meant either. But Domino's were like, yeah, he sounds right.

And so for the better part of a year, when it's got to be deep and it's got to be thick. Yep. It's got to be Domino's. Yeah. And you never know. So you did a scratch track that turned into a gig. You know who is famous, who is the, I think the most famous person who turned doing scratch tracks into a career was Don La Fontaine. Oh, geez.

Well, the man, the hero of all voices. Sova, right? He was a producer, I think, for Paramount at the time. I don't remember where it was, but I knew that I know that he used to do scratches. And then they were like, geez, why don't we, why do we need to change this? La Fontaine, for those of you who don't know, is the guy who introduced and perfected in a world. Yeah. One man, right? I mean, he took the movie trailer to a whole different level, almost to parody, unto itself. And he did it because the guy he hired to do it

didn't show up. So he was cutting trailers, I think for Paramount, and he went in the booth and did it. And the execs at Paramount heard it and said, yeah, get that guy again. And of course, Don didn't say anything, but he was that guy and he just kept doing it over and over again and again and made millions.

I got in his poker game. I was sort of an alternate for his regular poker game. So I played poker at his house a couple of times. Really. Yeah, yeah, that's the house that voiceover built. And it was a beautiful house. Well, it's weird, Chuck, that we're talking about voiceover. You know, because Alan Hale Jr. was a film star who became famous on TV.

But it's the anonymity of voiceover that I think is the most interesting thing. I mean, most Americans couldn't list the 10 most successful. voiceover artists of all time. All they could list are the 10 celebrities they've heard who do voiceover. But, you know, there is an industry that is rooted in anonymity and for a time generated a lot of money for a relatively small number of people who no one's ever heard of, who made a fortune just going into the booth and doing exactly what we're talking about. Long before she was Peggy Roe, my mom was Peggy Noble, daughter of Carl and Thelma Noble. It was her father, Carl, who inspired me to pitch a show called Dirty Jobs to the Discovery Channel

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Soon may the noble men come to bring a bottle for everyone. One day when the waitin is done, we'll take a drink and go. Can you think of a most embarrassing audition? Did you ever just absolutely muck it up or something happened that? Sure, sure. But, you know, not as many as you would think because I figured out early on that the reverse commute was the thing to do in an audition. You know, like they give you the sides, which is just a fancy word for some scripts, and they give you some very specific direction. And so your assumption is that you should follow those directions.

because your further assumption is because the people who are telling you what they want actually know what they want. But of course, they don't know what they want. And so if you ever get to the point in your career where you get to be on the other side of the camera and sit through an audition process, what you see is a terrible sameness of people desperately trying to follow direction. And what you wind up rewarding so many times in the end is the person who comes in the person who comes in and ignores you and goes another way, right? You wouldn't give that person a ton of credit right out of the gate because you first have to see dozens of people trying to please you. And then when the guy comes in, or the woman, who just suddenly doesn't seem to care and does it

the way they think, that that's the thing that becomes refreshing and interesting. you know so I only embarrassed myself I think in the early days trying really really hard to follow direction and stopping myself if I didn't think it was going well or if I got a line wrong saying no no no let let me try it again and and and trying so hard to please these mouth breathing sycophants that I only debased myself in the process I've been there so many times so many many times. We all have. Yeah. It's, I don't even want to, you know what, sorry, we, we, we, we, we, uh, I want to circle back to don't drink the water because you didn't mention that, uh, that we did that. Well, I mentioned it in the story, but I didn't realize how, you know, to see my dad,

do a thing I'd never seen him do before in a, in a, in a play. And then for me to get cast, not in the same role, but in the same play, years later, was interesting. The fact that you happened to be in that production, too, is beyond interesting. And then years after that, my brother did the same play at his school. So, you know, I don't know if that matters or how interesting people might find that, but to have a play come out of nowhere and touch multiple people in your family, as well as your best friend. You know, our friend Ricky directed that thing.

Yep. Back at Essex. Strange, right? How just some words on a piece of paper turn into this thing that winds up connecting friends and family. You never know. Yeah, you never know. You played who, you were Crowjack or no. No, I was the priest, Father Drobney.

Father Drobney. Yeah. Right. Is this interesting to people, you think? I have no idea. I have no idea. But isn't that, I mean, look, that's really the point of that chapter. I didn't mean it right now.

But that is the question that torments people like us. And I bet a lot of other people too and in any other industry. Is this interesting? Is anybody buying this? Do people like this? I mean, Alan Hale Jr., right, he goes to Helen back to audition for a role he's probably not going to get. And he had to be asking himself along the way. Am I doing it right?

Do they like me? Is it interesting? Or maybe he was just at that point in his career where his job was just to throw mud against the wall and see what stuck. I mean, that was dirty jobs for me. at that point, I wasn't even trying anymore. I was just throwing mud. People love that. People respond to that.

I can think of one audition that I walked into where I thought, there's no way I'm getting this. I look like I'm 14. I'm supposed to be a doctor. This is never going to work out. I went in and I just threw it away. And they called me and they booked me. And it turned out to be a scene I got to do with. John Voight.

Right? Chernobyl, the final warning. Yeah. You know, and but here's the thing for me. And I know that you figured this out early, but I don't think I've, I've figured this out. I just can't execute it. Is that I can't stop caring about stuff. And you really do.

You have to, you have to not care. You have to go, I don't, I don't give a fly and F whether or not I get this job or not. and that's the kind of thing that is so attractive to people. People, people smell that, they see it. People can also likewise smell desperation. And I've been on the other side of the camera where, you know, sitting next to you in some cases where we see people where we're looking at people

who come in and you can smell the desperation. And that was, and I recognize, oh my gosh, that was me many, many times. Oh, man. My hope for everybody in our own Godforsaken,

an industry is that they can sit on the other side of the camera at some point just to see that, you know. And it's my same hope for anybody who has ever interviewed for a job. I hope that one day you can interview people, dozens of them, you know, because it's just so poignant and it's just so enormous, you know, to see person after person after person. And if you think about the difficulty they went through to get there on that day. You know, probably not Alan Hale Jr. difficulty. But if you just think of the adversity

that people have to overcome just to get there, just to show up, just to wait to be weighed and measured. And 99% of the time found lacking. I mean, that's life. The greatest bit of wisdom that was given to me,

me around auditioning was from a casting director who said, listen, I really want you to be good. I'm on your side. Right. If you come in and blow me away, that makes my job so much easier. You know, if you just come in and just do you, be you, be the best you that you can be, you know. Yeah. And because I think the thing for me was I would, I would, as we learned from friends, King, you want to think about what you're doing and not how you're doing. And I was way often,

too often, thinking about how I was doing. And more importantly, like with jobs like I went to network for full house, for the, for the TV show full house a million years ago. Right. And all I could think about with that was how it was going to change my life to be on a sitcom. So I didn't even have the job yet. And I was already thinking about my life and how different it was going to be. and then was this good or was this bad? And, you know, I wasn't focused on what I was doing. I was thinking how I was doing and what could come of it. I was up for the role in full house.

What happened? I didn't get it. So many stories, man. You know, after the talk soup thing, I thought that would never happen again. I didn't think it was that possible that I could ever get so close to something that blew up so big. But let me tell you something, ma'am. There is no moratorium on how many near misses you can have.

I got hired, as you know, but I got hired to host the Daily Show. And they went on, this was back in the late 90s, a colossal talent search. They went all over the country. And it came down to two people, me and a guy named Craig Kilbourne. And it was going to be me because Craig Kilbourne was tied up at ESPN and his bosses weren't

going to let him out of the contract. So I got the call on a Friday from a woman named Madeline Smithburg. I hope she's listening. And she said, Mike, you did it. We loved you. Three auditions, by the way. Right. She said you crushed it each time.

Everybody here is a fan. you're going to start on Monday, but why don't you come in on Friday just to meet the writers and hang out and say hello? And I said, great. And I came in and Madeline was in a room by yourself, looking very sad. There were no writers.

Sorry, it wasn't Friday. It was Monday. I went in on the Monday because over the weekend, over the weekend, I think Doug Herzog let Craig Kilbourne out of his contract. So I missed the Daily Show. They offered me a correspondent role, but I was bitter and angry and like correspondent. I'm going to do a correspondent role because Dick Clark, who you'll meet later in the book,

offered me the role of a host on an actual game show in L.A. That's what got me out to L.A. again. But then, Chuck, as you'll recall, a year later, Craig Kilbourne quit the Daily Show to host, I think it was CBS late night. And they came back. Madeline Smithburg. I swear this is true. She came back and she said,

Mike, I feel terrible about that last go-around, you know, but obviously Craig is going on to greener pastures and we'd love to have you back. Love to have you host the show. I said, sure. She said,

the only way this isn't going to work out, full disclosure is, her words, if this tight-ass network comes up with a big pile of money for a Norm McDonald or a Dennis Miller, or a John Stewart, but that'll never happen. Famous last words.

Three days later and $4 million. They did a big old deal with John Stewart, and I missed it again. So, yeah, man, that's why Alan Hale Jr. resonates. Because you resonate, and my dad resonates. And so many other friends I know in this business who are still going about the business of pushing the rock up the hill.

many with good humor and they figured out a way to be okay, laboring in a relatively anonymous way in a field that is defined almost completely by celebrity. And I just find the inherent nobility and all of that. Interesting. Well, good. I think this is a good place to wrap this up since we've been yammering now for about 50 minutes. minutes. I just want to remind everybody that you've just listened to Chapter 8 of the way I heard it with Mike Rowe, which is the book that is based on this podcast. You can get it in its entirety wherever fine books are sold. You can also get the audio version if you want to hear it all together. But stay tuned. We're doing one chapter a week. Hey, the paperback is coming out. Do you know when? I don't. The publisher told me, but I don't.

I don't know. I mean, what's the advantage? Oh, are you kidding? It's cheaper. The paper, well, A, it's cheaper. And B, it's easier to read. It's easier to hold a paperback than it is a hardback book. A lot of people wait until the paperback comes out. I think your mom even mentioned this, that she prefers the paperback.

Remember she said, you told her that it was coming, that the paperback was coming out. And she said, oh, good. There's so much easier to read. I'll wait. Yeah, she's got the arthritis, you know. She can't hold on to those. hardbacks. And she still hasn't figured out how to listen to a book on tape yet. I'll work with her. Yeah. All right. You get on that. And I'll see you next week. Hey, do I ever tell you about the Mazda story?

Yes. Is it too late? Have we talked too much? I mean, I don't get. Listen, I don't know. Well, let me look. How long have we been talking? We've been talking for 52 minutes. Good God. All right. Well, look, this just occurred to me because in the world of VO and in the world on camera and in the world in general. This just speaks to the absolute futility that I think we were alluding to earlier. I'm back in New York. I don't remember what year it is,

but they call me in to audition for the voice of Mazda, and I get it. So they call me back to do the record. And I walk into the booth, and the engineer says, give me a quick level. And I look down at the copy, and it's one word.

Mazda. So I say, Mazda. Mazda. Mazda. He says, okay, great. And then the geniuses pop on, right? There's a guy in Tokyo, there's a guy in San Francisco, and there's a guy in New York. They're all patched in and they're all listening.

Chuck, I stood in that booth. They booked me for an hour to say one word, right? And I said that word every imaginable way you can think of for the next hour. and everybody on the line took a turn at directing me. Mazda. More authoritative. Mazda. Friendlier.

Mazda. And so forth and so on. There was a, the guy in Tokyo asked me if I was like, what's your body language when you're saying the word Mazda, he says? I said, what do you mean? I'm in a booth. I'm saying Mazda,

because I'd like to hear you say it as you step forward and gesture with one of your hands. like you're announcing this to a room full of people. So I start doing it like an asshole, right? I'm just standing there. I'll do whatever they tell me. I'm so desperate to please them. Then the guy in San Francisco says, listen, this is going to run in Japan as well.

So we would like you to say Mazda, in a, you know, they're different dialects. So like up in Hokkaido, they would say Matsuda. Matsuda, I say. Try it again. More authoritative. Matsuda. Now down in Tokyo, maybe on Hanshu, you know, it's going to be more like Mazda. Mazda. Mazdaa is how they say it. So I say Mazdaara, friendlier. Mazdaa. More authoritative, Mazda.

And then my favorite, they say, you know, we're not sure how this is going to play over there and elsewhere, but we'd really like to hear the English pronunciation with the Japanese accent. Oh, no. Oh, no. Like, what are you talking? about. And like, no, no, no, it's okay. But that's, that's kind of what we want to hear. So I'm, I'm alone in the booth, Chuck. And I'm looking at the engineer who's looking back at me. And we're all just saying, there's nothing to do, but quietly and silently commiserate me on one side of the glass, him on the other, as I lean forward into the mic and say, Mazda. Oh, geez. Mazda. And they're like, yeah, that's good. Think,

think Bruce Lee, right? Think, and I'm just, I'm literally standing there imitating a Japanese person who's trying to say the word Mazda as an American. And then we go the other way. And it just goes on and on and on and on. I say the word Mazda in some way, shape, or form. I say between five and six hundred times.

In the end, they chose the second. the second mic test that the engineer asked me to do when I said, Mazda, Mazda. Right. Mazda. They went with Mazda.

Yeah. And simplest. That was it. Yeah. That was it. I know that that's like an inappropriate story to tell today, but that was the way it was.

You know, asking a guy like me to say, Molda, Molda, Mada. Nobody would blink at that, you know, 20 years ago. You've been there. I, I, I, sadly, I have. Yeah. My, uh, my, my Mazda was, we need more egg. Look, I mean, I don't, I don't know how it happened, but, uh, but it was, it was written like that. And, um, and, and, you know, I read it and they booked me and I did it. It was for realtor.com or

something. I was like a, you know, an entrepreneur running his own restaurant, but apparently I was Asian. I also did. No, no, no, wait, wait, wait. Okay. I just want to hear it one more time. We need more egg. You can't do that. I can't do it again.

So, I mean, but look, please don't cancel us. But this is how the VO business worked. I mean, if you think cultural appropriation is a thing in general, fine. But in the world of voiceover, when you're invisible, how does anybody ever get caught. How does anybody ever know? But, you know, I mean, this was day in and day out for you. Yeah, I was, I did tap into the taste of tapatillo, which that's a terrible accent, but I booked it. And I, and I was the voice of South of the Border for a time as well. How'd that go? I don't remember, you know, come in for our great enchiladas, you know, just a slight little thing.

and, you know, I went to, I was with William Morris at the time, and the booth director was a guy named Marco Rea, who was a great guy, Latino, and I was embarrassed. I'm like, you know, Marco, I'm like, you know, forgive me for what I'm about to. He goes, that's okay, buddy, it's okay. All right, you know, and so then I just affect this little Spanish. I went all the way from like just a little tiny thing, all the way to Ricardo Mantobam, you know.

I like what they've done to my car. Oh, it's terrible. terrible. I mean, is it really terrible? And look, you're more into this world today than I am, but what's happening in voiceover? Like, would they ever ask you to do that again? Would they ever ask any? No, no, no, no, no. You would never, even if it's voiceover and you can't tell. Didn't you do? What was the video game you did where you were an Indian? Earth and beyond, I was Greyfeather. A wise sweet man.

That's not even an accent. No, I don't, look, you know, it was a long time ago. But, and I literally, when I walked into the session after they booked me, because I just, first of all, when they, when my agent called me to book me, I just laughed hysterically like you have got to be kidding me. And I literally walked into the job. And I shook the producer's hand. And the first thing I said was, I can't believe I'm the best you found.

You're looking for a Native American. He did not find that funny at all. Let's go with Klausmeier. Klausmeier sounds like he's got that real Apache thing going. Unbelievable. Many moons I have worked this voice over gig. No. I mean,

I was just doing like an impression of every bad Indian voice I'd ever heard. But that's the whole thing, man. I mean, that's the world we're in. Tell the story of, I mean, how many times in the last few years have you gone into the booth where it says in the style of micro? And how annoying must that be for you? Well, I mean, you know how many times because every time I send you the copy. I go, hey, look, somebody else wants you to do this.

And what do you always say? I always say send them to me. Let me do it. You always say, no, let me record it, and you put your name on it and send it. That's it. That's it, man. Oh, I got another one you'll love too, but I also, before I forget, oh, Gary Owens. Oh, right.

So I used to booth direct at the voicecaster, which is the biggest voice casting agency in the world. and um that uh you know and basically all these actors and when i first started in the late 80s like every face that you had ever seen on all of the sitcoms we grew up watching would come through those doors and sit down from you know um the the guy who played the manager on the partridge family to the to uh the guy who uh mr ed yeah the the the actor who you know who was the owner of Mr. Ed to Chuck, Chuck Mc, what is his name? Chuck McHale, Chuck Hale. Oh, geez, I can't. It's just so many of these faces that you would recognize from get smart and bewitched and all, they were, they were always in there. Anyway, so one day,

there was, they were looking for a Gary Owens type. Okay. But there are several things going on. They're like four booths there. So you have all these different jobs going on. So the casting- And Gary Owens, by the way, is Gary Owens was, did the laughing. You know, he was the announcer on laughing. Right. This is Gary Owens.

It was just a really, just a classic, great crisp voice. Anyway, so Lisa, Lisa Dyson was the casting director. And she's got a room full of these guys. And she says, she's talking. She's got her back to the door. And she's addressing them all and saying, what what we're looking for is that straight sort of classic announcer read? like Gary Owens.

And just as she said that, behind her, the door had opened and another actor stepped in. And this actor said, did somebody say Gary Owens? And it was Gary Owens. And she turned around and screamed. She literally went, oh, because he was not reading on the Gary Owens gig.

And this is the thing that people need to remember. Every day somebody asks me, how do I get in the voiceover business? How do I get in our business? Like, look, careful what you wish for it, because that is still to this day going on. That's how they'll direct. That's how they'll look for a type.

If Gary Owens isn't right for a Gary Owens part, you've got to ask yourself if you really want to get in this industry. Well, what's that old joke? You know, the five stages of an actor's life. It's like, who is Mike Roe? Let's see Mike Roe. Get me Mike Roe. Get me a micro type.

Who is Mike Roe? I think that's how it goes. Where am I right now? Oh, you're still in the, you're still in the get me micro. Oh, but actually, no, there's the, there's the,

the micro type. I mean, they're always, you know, particularly in voiceover. I mean, you really, you really, that is, that is, you just have that great narration voice, you know. Well,

I'll leave you with this because somebody just asked me about it on Facebook the other day, but, you remember American Chopper? Oh, yeah. So American Chopper came out right around the same time dirty jobs did and Deadliest Catch.

And it was produced by the same company who did dirty jobs, Pilgrim Filgrim films. And the guy who runs Pilgrim, Craig Peligian, sort of owed me a favor. I had hosted something called Worst Case Scenario a year or two earlier that really, really did live up to its name. God was going to be able to show those. this was another one that was on camera kind of crash and burn things

and you were wearing like a suit or something I was wearing like a Zanga suit and I had all this I mean I would hit my mark and I would say my line and I would talk like this and you know I was just I was still channeling

every other bad host I'd ever seen and anyway Craig and I had stayed in touch and he was ultimately the guy that I brought dirty jobs to to help me get it to the network but before that happened he he started

and throw me these little scraps, right? These little bones. He's like, I got this show American Chopper. And we had been talking about a show for motorcycle enthusiasts, right? The idea was the networks don't know what they want. Nobody really knows anything. So why don't you find a group of people who are already passionately interested in a subject and make a show just for them? And that's kind of how American Chopper evolved.

and Craig hired a guy named Hank Capshaw to direct. Hank's brilliant. Also did the pilots for dirty jobs. And I never met him, but they sent the studio some copy and they asked me if I would do the voice for American Chopper. And I said, sure. Why not? I went in the booth. It was just like with the Mazda thing.

It was just me and the engineer. I put on the headphones and I look at the copy. And the engineer needs a level, right? you always got to do a mic check. And I gave him one as a joke. I read the copy like every bad sort of FM DJ meets every car commercial you've ever heard, right? So it went like this, a father, a son, the drama, the deadline. There weren't sentences.

There were just these ideas. So it's part Don La Fontaine, part this, part that, but mostly just something for the engine. and I get done reading everything on the page and I hear this voice in the headphones saying hello Mike I'm like oh hey Hank he goes yeah Hank Capshaw I'm like hey it's nice to meet you Mike grow he said hey uh that was great and I laugh because obviously he's pulling my chain you know because that's that's not how a serious voiceover actor would bring copy like that to life he would bring more pathos more empathy more emotion you know more of a narrative ebb and flow blah blah blah, blah. I know all this, of course. And I say, okay, well, let me lay down a couple for you. And he says,

well, okay, but I really did like what you just did. And I laugh again because clearly this guy's hysterical. Right. And now I do it the way I want it. You know, I massage it. I caress it. I get it right. And Hank's cool. He's listening. Okay, great, great. I got a lot to work with here. I got to go. Hank Capshaw is very busy. Long story short, they take the joke. They take the mic test. again. And they drop it into the beginning of the first episode of American Chopper. I went on to narrate over 100 episodes of American Chopper. And Hank went on to hire me to be the voice of American Casino, American Hot Rod, Ghost Hunters, Ghost Hunters International. And the UFC. I was the voice of the entire UFC franchise for like 10 years. And every single time I went into the

booth jug, every single time. If it was a Hank project, you know, I'd look at the copy and say, okay. And Hank would go, you know what I want. Yeah, that's right. Previously on the ultimate fighter, the drama, the deadline. Now, on American casino. And of course, that just morphed into deadliest catch and so forth and so on. And so on. And so, I just Forrest Gumped my way into the voiceover business by two joky performances in order to facilitate a mic test that wound up being used. Dominoes, Mazda, and then ultimately American Chopper. So when people say, how do I get in the voiceover business?

I tell them, get famous. and then do what you're told. We'll see what you do, Chuck, first thing is get a hit show and star in it. And then it's pretty easy after that. Yeah, it's amazing what happens next. So the moral of the story, friends,

indeed there is one, is that nobody really knows what they want until they hear it in spite of what they tell you. Nobody really knows what they think or what they like until they're, They see it in spite of what they tell you. These lessons are true in life. They are true in acting.

They are true in voiceover. They are true between fathers and sons, directors, and actors, friends and lovers. That concludes the true message of chapter eight, where Chuck, I once again have attempted to land the plane. I feel like it was a three-pointer, Mike. Well done. Sadly, there's six wheels on planes. Are there? No, not really.

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