The Curse of the Phantom Voice Actor
So, some ten months or so ago, work on The Curse of the Rhino King ground to a halt, much to my dismay and that of a certain number of my readers. I hadn’t wanted to get into the reasons behind it at the time, since there was a certain amount of dirty laundry there, and I had honestly hoped that I might simply resolve it in private before there should ever be a need to get into it publicly.
I still basically don’t want to get into it in any detail, but the long and the short of it is that the voice actor behind Reginald Kingsley Sr vanished on me. This was one of my best and closest friends of some ten years or so, and had up until that point seemed to have been a permanent and ongoing presence in my life, and so when he disappeared for three months and change, it really was a bizarre anomaly which I could not foresee becoming a persistent state. Unfortunately, though he reappeared, briefly, during the spring, with all appearances of regret and an eagerness to pick up our friendship where it had left off, it seems absence and flakiness has become the new normal for him; at present, I haven’t seen him in over two months, nor indeed has he returned any of my phone calls or answered any of his e-mails since he and a mutual friend of ours spent my birthday enjoyably hanging out on June 28th. It’s at the point now where I feel that I must regretfully accept that this is just where he is in his life now, and that continuing to pretend he’ll eventually return to being that steadfast and reliable buddy at any point in the near future is not a particularly reasonable expectation for me to hold on to, in light of the evidence of the past ten months.
It sucks, I continue to miss him, I bear him no ill will and I wish him all luck and happiness in whatever mysterious pursuits he is so engaged with in this enigmatic isolation, but it seems like it’s time for me to give up that fight.
The practical upshot of which, so far as you all are concerned, is that in order for me to resume work - which I have been impatiently waiting to do for some ten months - a replacement voice actor is required.
Those of you who had been following the story - and who even knows, ten months on, how many people who are now reading this thing are still around from back then? Some, certainly, but just as certainly not all - will recall Reginald Sr. as a crotchety, deranged, gleefully self-absorbed, abusive, histrionic hypocrite and hypochondriac with a penchant for delivering physical beatings upon people who are within reach of his cane and who doesn’t understand that pity isn’t the same thing as concern.
In short, virtually all of my favourite traits to write in a single character.
I would obviously prefer someone capable of pulling off a performance similar to that of the original, but strong characterization is always more important than mere imitation, and so while I present here a sample of some of the defining ramblings of the character for reference and inspiration, the question of whether or not you can sound precisely like him should be of lesser importance than whether or not you can give an entertaining performance in that same vein.
http://www.dave-littler.com/audio/curse/senior.mp3
There are a couple of other parts which need replacement. The voice actor behind Helmut Eisenbarth, Reginald’s fretful german bartender, has also vanished on me, though this is hardly out of character for the voice actor in question, who routinely vanishes for a year or more before resurfacing as though nothing at all has happened. In his case, I have nobody but myself to blame, and so I won’t belabour it. His part is a relatively small one, and he’s only appeared a few times, and so if I can find someone who can play the part, I may just replace the existing parts with the performace of the new fellow.
Finally, there’s a very small part in an upcoming chapter for an English woman of very low breeding, and if anyone can come up with a saucy, sort of cockney-ish voice for her, and the more over the top the better, then I would be well-pleased by it.
So, there’s that, fellows.
I still basically don’t want to get into it in any detail, but the long and the short of it is that the voice actor behind Reginald Kingsley Sr vanished on me. This was one of my best and closest friends of some ten years or so, and had up until that point seemed to have been a permanent and ongoing presence in my life, and so when he disappeared for three months and change, it really was a bizarre anomaly which I could not foresee becoming a persistent state. Unfortunately, though he reappeared, briefly, during the spring, with all appearances of regret and an eagerness to pick up our friendship where it had left off, it seems absence and flakiness has become the new normal for him; at present, I haven’t seen him in over two months, nor indeed has he returned any of my phone calls or answered any of his e-mails since he and a mutual friend of ours spent my birthday enjoyably hanging out on June 28th. It’s at the point now where I feel that I must regretfully accept that this is just where he is in his life now, and that continuing to pretend he’ll eventually return to being that steadfast and reliable buddy at any point in the near future is not a particularly reasonable expectation for me to hold on to, in light of the evidence of the past ten months.
It sucks, I continue to miss him, I bear him no ill will and I wish him all luck and happiness in whatever mysterious pursuits he is so engaged with in this enigmatic isolation, but it seems like it’s time for me to give up that fight.
The practical upshot of which, so far as you all are concerned, is that in order for me to resume work - which I have been impatiently waiting to do for some ten months - a replacement voice actor is required.
Those of you who had been following the story - and who even knows, ten months on, how many people who are now reading this thing are still around from back then? Some, certainly, but just as certainly not all - will recall Reginald Sr. as a crotchety, deranged, gleefully self-absorbed, abusive, histrionic hypocrite and hypochondriac with a penchant for delivering physical beatings upon people who are within reach of his cane and who doesn’t understand that pity isn’t the same thing as concern.
In short, virtually all of my favourite traits to write in a single character.
I would obviously prefer someone capable of pulling off a performance similar to that of the original, but strong characterization is always more important than mere imitation, and so while I present here a sample of some of the defining ramblings of the character for reference and inspiration, the question of whether or not you can sound precisely like him should be of lesser importance than whether or not you can give an entertaining performance in that same vein.
http://www.dave-littler.com/audio/curse/senior.mp3
There are a couple of other parts which need replacement. The voice actor behind Helmut Eisenbarth, Reginald’s fretful german bartender, has also vanished on me, though this is hardly out of character for the voice actor in question, who routinely vanishes for a year or more before resurfacing as though nothing at all has happened. In his case, I have nobody but myself to blame, and so I won’t belabour it. His part is a relatively small one, and he’s only appeared a few times, and so if I can find someone who can play the part, I may just replace the existing parts with the performace of the new fellow.
Finally, there’s a very small part in an upcoming chapter for an English woman of very low breeding, and if anyone can come up with a saucy, sort of cockney-ish voice for her, and the more over the top the better, then I would be well-pleased by it.
So, there’s that, fellows.