"It's a tough gig doing voiceovers. You do it wrong and you can destroy an otherwise good project, do it right and people will hardly notice you're there.
Pretty thankless role to play for the most part, like a job as a fluffer on some 3rd rate porn set in the Valley or being English.
Of course, I've tried my hand at narration for my good friend Stacy Peralta on his epic skater documentary Dogtown & Z Boys. That was a clusterfuck of truly biblical proportions. Let me break it down, Steve Hawking-style.
Now for my main man Stacy, this was a true labour of love, a heartfelt rumination on his youth and the emergence of a new kind of physical poetry on the mean streets of 1970s Venice Beach. For the rest of us living in the real world, it was just a bunch of hep-c riddled latchkey brats zipping round on skateboards and acting like shitheads.
Alva was no help here either, these two middle aged has-beens egging each other on like Leopold and Loeb, so convinced they were of their cultural importance and overall badassery.
When Peralta insisted I refer to him as 'the Proust of the half pipe', I knew I was gonna have to drop some serious truth bombs like Brando in Apocalypse Now. Oh the horror, the horror.
I took Stacy to one side and told him that it wasn't my job as the voiceover guy to try and add gravitas to his project, I was just there to call it like I see it. Once the narrator starts pushing some trumped up agenda, your film goes down the toilet quicker than a 12-week Denise Richards scrape job.
Tony Alva started playing the big man of course, dude must have had an acid flashback and thought he was 19 again and started peacocking.
I slapped that fuckin' goose down quicktime and let him know what the fuck was what. I've done time in county jail, and I wasn't gonna be sidelined by some white man in his forties rocking dreads in this day and age... for fuck's sake he looked like Rob Zombie beaten down with the AIDS bat.
Needless to say, Peralta got his act together and we cleaned up at Sundance that year. Like Shakespeare once wrote, 'an empty vessel makes the loudest noise'. Have a think on that one, and I'll catch you on the flipside."
Pretty thankless role to play for the most part, like a job as a fluffer on some 3rd rate porn set in the Valley or being English.
Of course, I've tried my hand at narration for my good friend Stacy Peralta on his epic skater documentary Dogtown & Z Boys. That was a clusterfuck of truly biblical proportions. Let me break it down, Steve Hawking-style.
Now for my main man Stacy, this was a true labour of love, a heartfelt rumination on his youth and the emergence of a new kind of physical poetry on the mean streets of 1970s Venice Beach. For the rest of us living in the real world, it was just a bunch of hep-c riddled latchkey brats zipping round on skateboards and acting like shitheads.
Alva was no help here either, these two middle aged has-beens egging each other on like Leopold and Loeb, so convinced they were of their cultural importance and overall badassery.
When Peralta insisted I refer to him as 'the Proust of the half pipe', I knew I was gonna have to drop some serious truth bombs like Brando in Apocalypse Now. Oh the horror, the horror.
I took Stacy to one side and told him that it wasn't my job as the voiceover guy to try and add gravitas to his project, I was just there to call it like I see it. Once the narrator starts pushing some trumped up agenda, your film goes down the toilet quicker than a 12-week Denise Richards scrape job.
Tony Alva started playing the big man of course, dude must have had an acid flashback and thought he was 19 again and started peacocking.
I slapped that fuckin' goose down quicktime and let him know what the fuck was what. I've done time in county jail, and I wasn't gonna be sidelined by some white man in his forties rocking dreads in this day and age... for fuck's sake he looked like Rob Zombie beaten down with the AIDS bat.
Needless to say, Peralta got his act together and we cleaned up at Sundance that year. Like Shakespeare once wrote, 'an empty vessel makes the loudest noise'. Have a think on that one, and I'll catch you on the flipside."
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