Oct 24, 2023
0:00:01 - Announcer
It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level.
These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being
utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business
like a boss, a V-O boss. Now let's welcome your host, Ann
Gangusa.
0:00:20 - Anne
Hey everyone, welcome to the V-O Boss podcast. I'm your host, Anne
Ganguzza and today I am super excited to be here with very special
guest actor, comedian, entrepreneur oh my God, the list goes on Tom
Sawyer. Tom ran the legendary San Francisco Comedy Club Cubs for
over 30 years booking legendary greats, and this list just goes on
and on, but I'll give you just a few of them Jerry Seinfeld, dana
Carvey, Bob Saget, Jim Carrey, Rita Rudner, Joe Rogan, Sarah
Silverman and the list just goes on. He stayed on as a booker until
2012 and then ultimately stepped away from the comedy business.
After that, he was encouraged to explore voice acting by famed
comedian and voice actor Carlos Ellsrocki, a good friend of his. He
signed on with JE Talent in San Francisco and Aperture Talent in LA
in 2017, and the rest, they say, is history.
But boy, we've got a lot of history I'd like to talk to you about, tom. Thank you so much for joining us and welcome. Thank you for having me. Oh, it's my pleasure. So, gosh, there's so many things I want to start with. I mean the first tell. You have such a large history of comedy, so, of course, I'm sure a very common question you get asked is were you a funny kid, or have you always loved comedy? What is it that drew you to comedy?
0:01:44 - Tom
Well, yeah, I was the kid in the back of the class making all the
other kids laugh, so that was where I started and I always did
impressions. So when I was a kid I was doing Don Adams from Get
Smart and Ed Sullivan and Richard Nixon and you know, it's probably
a little weird seeing an eight-year-old doing Richard Nixon but
that's what I was doing. When I was very young I realized I could
do voices and never stopped and that's what kind of led me to
voiceover when I got out of the comedy club business.
0:02:15 - Anne
But boy, there was a long history of being in the comedy business.
I label you as entrepreneur 20 times over because I think just
following that passion of yours and then ultimately opening up a
club that literally was just famed and just housing some of the
comedy greats. Tell me a little bit about that history. I mean,
that is just so, so fun and impressive.
0:02:36 - Tom
Yeah, actually, I went to San Francisco to become a stand-up comic
and there were all these clubs, the Punchline and the Holy City Zoo
and the other cafe. They were very packed all the time and getting
stage time there was next to impossible. Or you'd get on at one
o'clock in the morning in front of a very tired, very small, very
drunk audience. And then there was this little.
0:02:55 - Anne
Sometimes that helps, I'm not sure Mostly doesn't, oh
okay.
0:03:00 - Tom
But there was this little club in the Marina District in San
Francisco called Cobb's Pub and they were trying to do comedy there
and there was no audience, but there was stage time. You could get
on stage there. In fact, sometimes you couldn't get off stage
because there was no one there to take over, so you had to stretch,
stretch and that was terrifying sometimes. Especially if you're the
third or fourth comic going, hey, where are you from? And the
audience goes we all know where we're from, so stop
asking.
0:03:29 - Anne
That's so funny. I just wanted to say that a lot of my actor
friends I feel like being on that comedy stage is like a rite of
passage almost, and it's probably I would think one of the toughest
things to do is to stand on stage like that and try to make people
laugh. I mean, that's just to me it's comedy without a net. Yeah,
exactly.
0:03:48 - Tom
And the thing is it's like you're stuck there, literally. You have
an allotted time that you have to perform and they give you 10
minutes. You have to do 10 minutes, doesn't matter if it's horrible
right from the word jump, you're on stage for those 10 minutes.
That's the time you have to do and that's one of the things you
learn right away is like if you get on stage early.
you're not going to get back on stage. So you have to go through the rite of passage of bombing, and I've seen comics bomb from Paula Poundstone, kevin Meany, kevin Nealon, the list goes on and on. Every comic has bombed. But even later on you get in front of an audience that just doesn't dig you.
0:04:27 - Anne
And again, nowhere to go. You can't run off the stage.
0:04:31 - Tom
You're mean, I get that.
0:04:38 - Anne
And it's funny because I literally I just went to a comedy club a
couple of weeks ago and I was thinking about that, like what do you
do? I mean, they are there until the next comedian is called on
stage. And it feels interesting as being a part of the audience,
because a lot of times I think, as the audience, you are part of
maybe not part of the act, but it's very interactive, it's very
back and forth and engaging because, of course, you're trying to
make us laugh.
0:05:02 - Tom
Yeah, you have to communicate to the audience without really
engaging the audience, because you're the boss on stage, you're
kind of like the crowd master and you're crowd control and
entertainment at the same time. And because comedy, some people
feel like, oh, I'm going to be as funny as the comic.
0:05:22 - Anne
And that's when things get really sideways.
0:05:24 - Tom
You're there to be entertained. Sit back, relax and leave the
talking or the driving to the person with the microphone.
So you got some stage time on Cobbs and and then I realized that I just kept seeing these shows that weren't very good. The guy who was booking the club at the time wasn't doing a great job, and I was a big fan of stand up as well. So I started thinking about what I would do instead, and then I started telling the owner at the time first owner of Cobbs. I was telling him you know, here's what I would do differently, and then I could tell him at the beginning of the show how the show was going to fail. And then he was started realizing that everything I was saying was happening and he went what do I get to lose? We're doing horrible business. And so he gave me the job of booking and from there I started getting the people I really, really like to perform and it started going great and we went from being like about 20% capacity to 90% capacity in about a year.
0:06:23 - Anne
So let me ask you a question that, to me, is very interesting how
do you get, at the time, the talents that you booked? I mean, they
were big names. Were they big names then? And how did you get them
to book? I mean, that's a skill, right? It's something that we do
in our businesses every day, right? We've got to try to get clients
to like us and to work with us. So how did you do that? Did you
have a secret?
0:06:42 - Tom
Yeah, my secret was I paid really well.
0:06:45 - Anne
Okay, okay, that's a good piece.
0:06:48 - Tom
My biggest competition, which was twice the size of our club. We
were out paying that Because we decided that the most important
thing was getting butts in the chairs and the only way to do that
was having acts that actually brought an audience. So the only way
to do that was to offer these guys more of an opportunity to make
more money. So we would give them a percentage of the door and say,
hey, the more people come to see you, the more you're gonna make.
And because of that we had people that would call up and go, hey,
I'm gonna be on the Tonight Show in six weeks with Johnny Carson,
do you have anything open? And I would move stuff around and get
them in there and then I would get a Tonight Show plug or a
Letterman plug or Arsenio Hall. At the time and that was kind of my
thing was I'm gonna pay everybody. Really well, so everybody could.
Percentage of the door.
In the early days before all the big agencies came in, sure, and remember this was at a time where there were just like a couple agencies doing personal appearances for comedians. Comedians were pretty much on their own. They were doing their business themselves. So if I wanted Bob Sagan, I'd call Bob Sagan, so I get his number from another comic and everybody was kind of looking for each other and I would bring one comic in. They'd go, hey, you should book these guys. And I go, okay, great, and call them up. And they'd go, right, when can you give them me a date? And I'd give them a date. Plus, we flew people up and we put them up in the hotels. So we didn't personally make a ton of money. That wasn't my thing. My thing was having the best shows I could possibly have and making a name right.
And making a name for the club?
0:08:24 - Anne
Absolutely, and that's interesting because, again, I like to talk
about the entrepreneurial business side of what we do as creatives
and freelancers, and there's a lot of thinking outside the box and
also recognizing the value of the talent, that if you wanna put out
great work, then you wanna hire a talent that's amazing and great
and pay them fairly and absolutely. And so talk to me a little bit
about the networking aspect. I mean, the cash is a good draw, but
you also had to communicate effectively, I would say, to really
book these talent.
0:08:58 - Tom
Well, the thing that separated me from everybody else, besides
being generous with the money that was brought in, was that I knew
what they were going through, no matter what it was going on on
stage. If they were dealing with a heckler, I'd gone through that
as a comedian. If they were bombing, I knew that pain, so I could
empathize with them, I could be their counselor, I could give them
advice. I looked at it like I wasn't really a good comedian, and
mainly that was because I wasn't true to who I am personally. So my
mantra after that was be yourself.
0:09:32 - Anne
I love that.
0:09:33 - Tom
Yeah, that's who I wasn't. I was trying to fit in and have
everybody like me and that really affected the quality of my stand
up because I wasn't being true to me. So that was my mantra to
everybody be yourself. Because nobody can take that away from
you.
0:09:49 - Anne
That's so interesting because I never ventured into comedy myself.
However, I find that people find me the most funny when I am being
my dorky self and I'm making mistakes and I'm just being oops,
sorry, and I think in voiceover as well. I wanna talk more about
that. I think it's all about being authentic and being yourself and
that's really, I think, what connects you to people and engages you
to people and endears you to people.
0:10:14 - Tom
Yeah, I think it's really important when you get a job, and
especially if it's somebody you want to get more bookings from play
around, have fun. I mean, I booked a video game and the first thing
we did we went through several of the lines I had to do and then we
went through all those and I just did just the lines, basically no
acting or anything like that and they went. Yep, that's about it. I
went great, thank you.
0:10:33 - Anne
Love it, love it, bye, bye.
0:10:35 - Tom
So everybody started laughing. It loosens everybody up and that's
really it's just. Don't be a pain on the ass. Realize that you're
always learning. They're always learning. Everybody's a
professional too, and so be courteous and nice and smart and be
entertaining. You are the talent, so show some talent as a
professional as well.
0:10:53 - Anne
Show some talent. I love that. So talk about in the transition
while booking talent. So you did that for a very long time, I mean
30 years, and so, wow, I mean, was there a point? I mean, were you
just so busy for 30 years Did you think about voiceover? Was that a
thought in your head or something that you would do, or you just
were completely. You loved running the club and booking
talent.
0:11:18 - Tom
Prior to moving to San Francisco, I lived in Florida, lived in
Sarasota, Florida, and I did a lot of theater there.
That's why, I fell in love with theater and acting. You know, I always thought like, oh, stand up might be a good gateway to getting into acting, but then I got into the business end of it. So I didn't really think about it until I got out and I didn't know what I was gonna do. And I was talking to Carlos and he said dude, you do so many voices and stuff. You'd be great at voice acting.
Cause I've always done impressions, never stopped doing impressions. In fact I would teach other people like Kevin Pollack or something, if they had an oppression and they couldn't figure it quite out. They were doing it but they weren't quite right. We'd kind of jam and help them get there, or they would help me get there and we'd all do our really weird outside the box impersonations. You'd have to spend five minutes explaining who that guy is Right right right.
0:12:07 - Anne
So you can't do that one.
0:12:09 - Tom
But for comics, we love doing those, especially impersonators,
impressionists, we love doing those for other impersonators. It was
kind of like our jazz moment, you know, where you get to jam behind
the scenes with another musician.
0:12:20 - Anne
Absolutely.
0:12:21 - Tom
So Frank Calliendo, I had the club, and Dana Carvey, of course, was
the master of the not perfect impression, but getting the perfect
funny it didn't matter, that's what his genius is. Bye, you know,
is finding the perfect funny to any voice. And then Tom Kenny
played. The club started at Cobbs as well Again, the guy who did so
many crazy voices. It was another inspiration for me to move there,
and every once in a while I talked to him, cause I'll get a
audition for something that I know is directing or in, so I go
heads up and he's going dude.
I have nothing to do with casting, you know sometimes they cast people and I'm scratching my head. So yeah, but I'll put in a good word for you.
0:12:58 - Anne
So Well, hey again, networking totally helps. Now comedy skill. I
think comedy is a skill and art form. What are your thoughts on
that?
0:13:07 - Tom
I mean cause, oh, absolutely.
0:13:08 - Anne
Yeah, it's not something that I can go on a stage and
execute.
0:13:11 - Tom
Yeah, it's like anything else I personally believe.
my philosophy is we all have a gift somewhere along the line. We might not be in a position ever to know what that gift is, but we all have a gift and sometimes there are people out there have more than a couple fair, but there's also people who just don't ever find theirs. And I think that the idea is you know to try to discover who you are and your strengths, weaknesses. Stay away from those weaknesses and hurdle towards your strengths, you know, and don't get locked up into one thing to always be on the road to discovery.
0:13:42 - Anne
I guess I want to ask you first of all about once you got into
voice acting and then was it like you were always wanting to book a
certain genre because you've had lots of characters inside of you
that wanted to come out? Or did you find any of the genres outside
of character Interesting, because I'm a believer that you're a
character in just about everything you do, even if you're doing
e-learning.
0:14:05 - Tom
Yeah, I always try to find a person, even when it's just one of
those hey, you're a dad, or hey, you're a regular guy. Or I just
had an audition yesterday where you're just a regular father, you
know it's regular. But the line said something else, you know. So I
gave one as what they were saying and then one. That's what I felt
the lines were doing. It was a subtle difference, but it was a
difference that maybe whoever put this together wants to see. If
somebody figured it out, or they didn't know that's where they were
going and they don't know. Sometimes they don't even know until
they hear it.
So give them what you think they want, and then give them what they say they want.
0:14:39 - Anne
So interesting. I guess I would talk to you then about writing
right, especially now that you've transitioned in voice acting and
you're given a script right, or you're given an audition and
finding the humor. Sometimes there's subtleties in that humor,
sometimes it's obvious. Are there telltale signs to look out for?
And then, once you do see it, is there a specific way that you feel
it should be performed? Should it be performed in the obvious way?
Or maybe, if you wanna capture the ear of the casting director, you
do something different?
0:15:08 - Tom
Well, I think you know what you do with a couple takes is you do
the one that's on the page and then you do the one that where you
think they go or where you can go with it to show what you can
bring to the party. I always like to find the humor in something,
especially if it says it's humorous, you know, and then play around
with it and add a little bit, do a little improv with it, find a
little spontaneity into there, or sometimes I'll even rewrite a
line, cause I think it's kind of like flat, so I'll make it a
little funnier. A punchier.
0:15:36 - Anne
Okay, now that gives me a segue into a question In terms of with
the script, in terms of improv right For an audition, are you
improving in the audition and or improving the line, and at what
point do you feel that people may go too far if you're completely
rewriting, or do you think that's offensive maybe?
0:15:54 - Tom
I think you have to be pretty subtle in rewriting. I think you do
run the risk of people going why do I bother sending you a script?
Cause you're adding all this stuff to it. So you pick and choose
your moments. You know I've done that before, I've added jokes. But
I'll listen to it again and go okay, that's a little too much.
Plus, I want to have them. I don't want the person thinking after
the third one, is he gonna go back to the script or what you know.
So I wanna pick and choose my moments and make sure that I think of
the funniest, the ones that have the most oomph. You want them to
land, and so era on the side of too few than too many.
0:16:33 - Anne
Let's talk about character development for you, especially because
you're an impressionist. So how can you take, let's say, and you
don't necessarily wanna have a character that's just after a
particular person, but you wanna develop it into your own
character. Is there a formula or a process for that, in terms of
developing new characters?
0:16:51 - Tom
Well, I have a book of all the impersonations I do, well, a book
with the impersonations I do. And then I have like one that's like
the ones I do pretty right on, and the ones I do that are just kind
of soft. I don't really have it down, but that's great because it's
a character.
0:17:07 - Anne
Do you have a number for that? Somebody wants to have how many
characters in their arsenal, how many to build off of.
0:17:13 - Tom
Every day that I can figure out how to do a different celebrity or
something like that. I write it down in the book Cause it comes to
you sometimes. I mean, when I figured out how to do Robin Williams,
it just was an accident. It's one of those things where you find a
word and all of a sudden. Then you find a place in your throat and
you're doing it and you can't stop.
0:17:32 - Anne
It's crazy so it just never stops. I love it, I love it.
0:17:37 - Tom
So one day I did Robin for Robin and that didn't go so well,
apparently I didn't know he doesn't like his voice, apparently
being impersonated. You didn't like that. No, it's really a very
awkward Cause. I thought it'd be a lot of fun.
0:17:50 - Anne
Yeah, and that's interesting because I'm curious about that. You
know, celebrities like their voices impersonated, or now we've got
a whole another, a whole another digital thing to be thinking
about, when voices might be impersonated or turned into right With
synthetic voices. But that might be another podcast.
0:18:10 - Tom
That's a little scary.
0:18:11 - Anne
That's a scary one, absolutely.
0:18:13 - Tom
The thing about it is is like the flaws, like, let's say, go back
to Dana Carvey, cause again there aren't many that he does right
on, he'll leave me be the first to admit it. He's not like somebody
like Frank Caliendo, who's just like amazing. He's verbatim, you
can hear the voice. He's somebody who can do a sound alike. Dana
could never do a sound alike, but he gets people's caricature down.
That's the thing is it's like, and that's kind of what makes it
funny is the imperfections is going up, finding those
words.
I just, you know, I used to do Bruce Stern and a lot of people kind of forgot who he was, and then one day I just was doing it for somebody to just start laughing Cause they didn't even remember who that Bruce Stern was. But it's just his voice is funny, you know, cause he has a kind of voice like that and it's very inquisitive either. Everything goes up at the end Doesn't make a darn gosh darn bit of difference, and not sometimes he gets crazy. But and so you find those little imperfections actually make a character and make it really funny. That's what I like to do. You know, I did a animation pilot and it was like a hippie character and I was going through a bunch of voices with a writer cause they booked me and they didn't feel like they wanted to do something different with it. They said what can you do? And I was going through my book and I started doing Nick Nolte and they loved it and then you ended up going with that over what they originally had, with me doing it.
0:19:37 - Anne
So I love how you have a book with everything written down. Now, do
you also have audio files that go along with that, so that you can
help yourself get into words?
0:19:45 - Tom
Yeah, I have one where it's all my impressions, so that way I can
go back. And how do I do that? One Cause I don't practice them all
the time. Cause.
0:19:54 - Anne
I have life.
0:19:55 - Tom
So, and I don't want to be walking around talking to myself, of
course, of course. Man, it's got so many voices.
0:20:00 - Anne
So are you writing down then the name and then you write down the
qualities of the characteristics or how you get into it. Is it a
kick phrase? Maybe that gets you into the character.
0:20:10 - Tom
Well, there's certain words, for example, you know, I came up with
for Christopher Walk and I came up with the word pantaloon being
the perfect Christopher Walken word. I'm thinking cowbell but
that's yeah, cause. Well, that's, this is before cowbell yeah,
before cowbell.
0:20:26 - Anne
But pantaloon automatically gets me there. I love it. I love it
Cause I say it.
0:20:33 - Tom
I can't help but do more. Christopher Walken, who doesn't like a
nice pair of pantaloons?
0:20:43 - Anne
I love it. I love it.
0:20:44 - Tom
Cause you want your calves exposed. So yeah, and then with Kurt
Douglas, it was horse, oh Horse, okay, I'm going to read my horse.
If I say horse, I go into Kurt Douglas Well.
0:21:01 - Anne
I think there's something always so obviously so entertaining, but
something that just draws people to comedy. What are your thoughts
about this crazy, chaotic world that we live in today, and where
does comedy sit now, I mean, in terms of how important is
it?
0:21:17 - Tom
I think comedy is as important as it ever was. And it's in a weird
place right now, cause I think a lot of people are reacting to
people saying words and there's a lot of people getting offended
easily and comedy is not for those folks that have thin skin, both
sides of it.
I find it funny that I think a lot of comics right now have thin skin as far as getting some criticism back, cause it's also about growth. What was funny in 1970, if you listened to comedy in 1970 or the 80s, it's not as funny now. In some of it's just not funny at all. We grow, we expand, we move on, and to me, that's what's great about comedy is it's about adapting. You're always adapting. You're always growing, as you should be as a person. So to me, if you're moving the ball forward constantly in your life, you're gonna be a better person than you were 10 years ago. So why not take that to comedy? Absolutely, the things that were funny like 15, 20 years ago are real cringy right now, and it's not because they weren't funny back then. They were. It's the same reason I get upset with people who go back like 20 years and go. I can't believe you said that back then.
0:22:28 - Anne
Well, back then that wasn't offensive.
0:22:30 - Tom
Exactly, we didn't find that offensive back then. Now we've all
grown up and we've all moved on a bit and we understand that's not
the same. But don't punish me for something that was okay Back
then. Mark Twain, who wrote a famous book about a guy named Tom
Sawyer, had a lot of cringy stuff in his books. There's still
masterworks of literature, but those were the times. We have to
accept. That's where those books came and there were a reflection
of those times. Same way we would stand up. So to me it's just
about. Everybody just needs to grow up. Everybody needs to
understand where everybody was back then and where they are now and
be better for them.
0:23:06 - Anne
Yeah, yeah. Do you find that you miss owning a comedy club or
booking talent or having that in your life?
0:23:12 - Tom
I miss working with young comics. That's the thing I miss the most
and it was actually when I started. The last version of Cubs when
it exists now, because it's a 400-seat room has really amazing
acts, but they're much bigger acts and they generally bring their
own acts with them, and comedians who can bring their own acts
generally don't bring really really great acts because they don't
want to have to work as hard. I would make comics work hard because
I would have really good acts going on before them.
Sure, so they have to try to continually stand tall, so they had to keep their game. My thing was like Interesting strategy. I like that yeah yeah, absolutely Nobody could coast. And then later on it was comics they would bring in.
I didn't think they were as talented as some of the people I could book with these guys, and so I wasn't really working with the comics anymore as much as I used to, and so that's one of the things about smaller room is you can get to work with younger comics and you get to tell them the dos and the don'ts and hopefully guide them to a path where they can be their best selves on stage. Sure, that part I miss.
0:24:14 - Anne
And actually, speaking of that, what sort of advice would you give
to voice talent out there that want to continually up their game
and stay on top of the voiceover game, because, boy, it's
competitive out there, super competitive.
0:24:27 - Tom
It's crazy, it's crazy.
0:24:29 - Anne
Like just as I'm sure it was in comedy and being in the club. It's
such a mental game a lot of the times too.
0:24:34 - Tom
Yeah, the nice thing about voiceover having been a stage actor very
early in my life is you don't see the person who you're auditioning
for, so you don't see that look, as soon as you hit the stage, that
you've already lost your audition. You're not the person they're
looking for, and that's so disheartening sometimes so at least you
go into every audition with this could?
0:24:56 - Anne
be the one.
0:24:57 - Tom
And I love auditioning, so I love going into another character or
finding something I haven't found before, or even sometimes there's
a couple of characters I do that I think, oh man, this one is
definitely gonna find a home someplace. It's just a matter of
getting in front of the right casting person hearing it. So I'll
bring out those guys every now and then, when it's the right
opportunity for those characters, cause they're like they're my
buddies. I want them to succeed. Yeah, I think just have fun in the
booth is the main thing, and if you need to take a break, tell your
agent I need to take a break. I mean, I talked to other voice
actors and it gets a little depressing. Everybody came in this
business thinking that everybody always said I should be in voice
acting and everybody always said this is what I should be doing and
I did it and nothing's happening.
0:25:43 - Anne
Yeah, what's your advice for that? Because that becomes like a mind
game. It becomes like oh my God, I've done all this work, what else
can I do? I mean, what would you suggest in terms of getting work?
It seems like the question I get most often as a coach is like so
all right, I've got this great demo now and had this great
coaching, and so now, where's the work? How do I get the work? Or
how do I stand out?
0:26:04 - Tom
I think the thing about it is acting as a lottery. You're buying a
lottery ticket is what you're doing. I mean, carlos Alice Rocky was
a comic Lucky, had a job, state entertainment state creative, but
it was getting the Taco Bell, chihuahua and all those people you
auditioned from and he hit it, hit the lottery, you know so, and
from there he's done so many other things. But when I say who
Carlos Alice Rocky is, when I bring him up, I always go the Taco
Bell, chihuahua guy and they go oh, I love that. So it's the same
thing where you just go, my lottery ticket is gonna come and you're
gonna believe in yourself.
When you believe in your talent and talk to other people in the business too. Just do classes I think it's still a good idea to do, just as even a workout session. Plus, you get some inspiration from other people who have a different style, maybe that you see something in yourself or you bring out something in yourself you didn't know was there. So I would say, take a class every now and then network with other people who just to have support, just so, hey, I'm here for you when you're down on yourself, in the same way that if I need somebody to talk to and say, hey, I'm really kind of wondering what the hell I'm doing here.
And they can talk you down from being sad or lift your spirits up and let you know you're really a talented person. That's why you got into this whole thing in the first place.
0:27:16 - Anne
Yeah, I think that self-sabotage can happen to the best of us
even.
0:27:20 - Tom
And then sometimes you'll hear it in the reads. I mean, again, I'll
go into a class and you can tell the person who's been beat down on
pretty bad by themselves, mostly Cause do you have an agent? Yeah,
do you have a demo? Yeah, well, you're doing all the right things
and I think it's good to have an agent or two that are giving you
good feedback or giving you feedback.
0:27:40 - Anne
I was with an agency that way too many people.
0:27:43 - Tom
The poop sticks agency you have 400 people that they represent and
you just go. That's too many. I don't feel special when you're just
going okay.
You got a demo, you're in. So I think, being with a smaller agency, that's a little more hands-on. Both my agents give me feedback every time, even if it's just a nice job. Yeah, and because of that I feel like I'm better for it, because I already know if I see a script, I know exactly what kind of read in the ballpark I need to be, so that's what I'm gonna get back. I'm at the point now where I really get back oh, you need to do this, this is too much, and something like that. So it's always I recognize what I'm working with right away. I do it, get it out, get the feedback, forget about it.
0:28:26 - Anne
That's what you gotta do. I think a lot of people really crave
feedback in this industry because we are just in our studios, kind
of just talking into our little four padded walls, and so a lot of
times it's hard when you don't get feedback and it's
interesting.
0:28:40 - Tom
Yeah, especially if you don't have a partner in a relationship, you
know where you can at least go hey, honey, what do you think of
this?
0:28:47 - Anne
Yeah, you can bounce it off.
0:28:48 - Tom
I don't bother my wife with everything, but every once in a while,
you know, I go. You know, what do you think of this? Or she'll hear
me and she'll go. I need to hear the whole thing. She'll hear me in
my booth screaming, you know. And then now she has to hear all the
stuff I did in that character.
0:29:04 - Anne
I love what you said about well, at least when you're in front of a
stage, I can, you can get that reaction from the audience. You know
that, if you've bombed or not already, and the fact that when
you're in your studio you actually use the fact that you're not in
front of an audience as a creative kind of positive outlook, that
you can be creative and not have to face that which is so
interesting from, let's say, somebody that doesn't necessarily or
hasn't started from being on stage. They might've worked a
corporate job and now all of a sudden they're getting into
character acting, and so they don't have that perspective. So I
really like that perspective of taking the challenge and I think
the creativity has to be in your brain, your imagination. You have
to imagine that character in that scene, which is so difficult for
some people. Do you have any tips on how to really create a scene
realistically while you're sitting here in your studio?
0:29:53 - Tom
Yeah, I think the most important thing, especially when you get
those video games where it's like one line, one line, one line, one
line, five, one lines and they're like hey, don't touch that rock
and you're going. How are these people going to book somebody based
on five lines that are no more than 10 words for the longest
one?
and you're going, how am I gonna stand out in front of anybody? So you gotta kind of create a scene around those and those. I generally will write a bigger scene for the line and then because I'll have the line in there and I'll make sure that it doesn't bleed into the other words that I'm saying, but that gives me a little bit more emotional pop for that line.
0:30:35 - Anne
Are you developing the characters that you're interacting with as
well?
0:30:38 - Tom
I know who I'm talking to. Yeah, so I might not have the character
fully developed, but I know who I'm talking to.
0:30:44 - Anne
Right, and what's happening in that scene? And what's happening,
yeah, and you actually write that down.
0:30:48 - Tom
I'll go on Word, I'll cut and paste the lines and then I'll put
words around the line and highlight the line that is actually in
it. So I have all the other words and a highlighted line to make
sure I hit that one. But I know what's going on and I try to create
more around it.
0:31:05 - Anne
So how long would you say do you spend, let's say, analyzing and
doing all that work? How long would you say you take for an
audition to kind of do that creating the scene and writing that
down before you go in and record?
0:31:17 - Tom
It depends on my schedule and what I have to do and also how much I
think something is really in my wheelhouse. I mean there's things
you get where it's like I knock it out in 10 minutes because I
really have a solid idea of what I'm gonna do with it and I go and
do it and I listen to. It sounds good. With characters, though,
with video games and animation, I really like to do as much as I
possibly can. I remember I did this video game audition where the
character was cockney. I called my dialect coach and we went
through the whole thing together.
It was like a class for me. I thought this was a good opportunity to have a little class on doing a cockney accent and I said can I book our session with you? And we just worked on the script I was auditioning for because I really I loved it and I really wanted to nail it and, regardless, I got a class out of it. So it did two things for me helped me learn, and I put that learning to immediate use.
0:32:11 - Anne
Absolutely absolutely.
0:32:13 - Tom
And again, that's a really good thing to do is have a network of
people, find a good dialect coach, find people that are teachers or
coaches that you can work with, that you can go to and use them
when you need, when you're stuck or when you just need something.
Had a Pixar audition that I did and the character was obviously
somebody from Eastern Europe and I had a friend who's from Ukraine
and we went through the script and she helped me with some of the
pronunciations and I didn't book it but I really felt confident
sending it in.
0:32:45 - Anne
I really felt like I nailed it Exactly. I love that because you've
gotten the worth out of it, whether you booked it or not. So that's
the other thing. So when you really are excited about something and
you do all that work and you feel like you nailed the audition, but
then you didn't book it, thoughts on how to stop that from getting
you all upset and, oh my God, that's it.
0:33:03 - Tom
Well, it's sort of like you still have to go. This is out of my
control. I have no idea what the other person at the other end is
going through what they've got in front of them. If they end up
going with somebody that they've already booked for something and
they can give them another character because union rules and it's
like you did a really good job, maybe even better than that person
but they're already booked and they don't have to pay another
person to do that voice. They can do up to three voices and not get
a penny more. So they go. Let's just give them that, so you don't
know all the little things that transpire for somebody to get that
part over you.
0:33:35 - Anne
Yeah, and I think it's important for people to understand that it
doesn't necessarily reflect on a poor performance or a poor
audition.
0:33:42 - Tom
No, my agent is a very funny woman and my auditions who I'm getting
in front of have escalated. I'm doing more Disney Pixar auditions
and stuff like that and she just goes. You're feeling
upwardly.
0:33:53 - Anne
There you go. I love that.
0:33:56 - Tom
Which I thought was hilarious, because we always think we're
failing. We're not. We're all doing the best we can and we're all
doing great auditions. But because I'm doing so well in my
auditions, other casting people are getting interested, so I am
getting in front of people that I didn't get in front of, like four
or five years ago.
0:34:12 - Anne
Awesome, that's awesome. So even if you don't book the job, you
could be making an impression on someone that can get you maybe the
next job or the job after that.
0:34:21 - Tom
That's the idea. They go well.
I really like that because you don't know, when I was booking COBS I would get DVDs and before that VHSs of comedians from around the country. We were very well known so I would get them from New York, boston, other parts of the country and they'd just pile up on my desk because it was excruciating for me at some times. So then at one point, when they were ready to fall over, I would just start watching them. In the beginning I would watch two or three minutes of somebody. Then it came down to just 30 seconds to a minute, because you know right away and that's how I'm sure it is for casting people.
0:34:56 - Anne
You know right away if there's talent or if they were gonna be
bookable absolutely or if they're right or wrong.
0:35:01 - Tom
You might like them and you might wanna listen to the whole thing
and you would go ah, they're just not quite right. I need a little
bit of a younger voice. This is obviously somebody who's an older
voice and I think it's really. I mean, I try to do what I can and
have as much fun as I can, because there's gonna be probably 10
years down the road where this voice isn't gonna sound the same and
I'll be doing grandpas and wizards.
0:35:22 - Anne
So yeah, our voices do change as they age. I have experienced that
myself. I certainly sound a whole lot different than I did 10 years
ago. Well, well, this has been an amazing discussion, Tom. I so
appreciate you taking the time and just dropping all these
wonderful tips and tricks and words of wisdom for the boss
listeners out there.
0:35:45 - Tom
Yeah, yeah, have fun kids. That's the message.
0:35:47 - Anne
There you go. I love that. So, bosses, I want you to take a moment
and imagine a world full of passionate and powered, diverse
individuals giving collectively and intentionally to create the
world that they wanna see. You can make a difference. Find out more
at 100voiceshoocareorg. And a big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl.
You, too, can network and connect with amazing people like Tom.
Find out more at IPDTLcom. You guys have an amazing week and we'll
see you next week. Bye.
0:36:18 - Outro
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Transcribed by https://podium.page