Being a Brief Discussion with Jeff Thompson

By: Way Jeng
Date: Thursday, March 24, 2005

Interviewer: Way Jeng



If you're a fan of New York dubs, you've probably seen some of Jeff Thompson's work. He has worked on many shows, including Boogiepop Phantom, The Irresponsible Captain Tylor, and His and Her Circumstances. I had a chance to speak with Jeff Thompson at Ohayocon '05. I'm pleased to share that conversation today, and I'd like to thank him for appearing in this column to talk about anime and dubbing.



Way Jeng (WJ): So, what have you been up to lately?



Jeff Thompson (JT): What have I been up to lately?



WJ: Yeah.



JT: A lot of convention work. We bought a house, so I have an actual place of my own.



WJ: You have Terra.



JT: I actually have land, and it has a little creek on it.



WJ: A hundred years ago you could have voted.



JT: A hundred years ago I could have voted, and I can vote now. How exciting is that?



WJ: You didn't even need land. Great changes.



JT: Things like that. Lots of family stuff. Some good, some not so good. But that's how life is.



WJ: How is that working out for you?



JT: I'd like to get back in. I think it's time to get back in. I went through a rough point there. I was working on Kare Kano, and I lost my dad. That was pretty horrible. That was at the same point when Right Stuf and I went our separate ways, so it was a double whammy. Some good and some not so good. But I'm always looking at stuff. I'm always open for an offer or freelance work. As I said, I did a lot of work for this convention for this year. I did a lot last year. I did Otakon opening ceremonies two years ago. I directed that and produced a video for that. So I'm keeping busy. But I'd like to get back into dubbing.




WJ: You're so cool. What's your secret? Is there anything you can tell us?



JT: I don't believe I am. I'm too invisible to be cool. This is not entirely accidental. I am mostly an invisible person. I stand next to people, and they don't know who I am.



WJ: Do you prefer it that way?



JT: I do. I am, by nature, a fairly private person. I live in the middle of nowhere. I like it like that. I don't feel that I am [cool]. I could give you the cliché answer.



WJ: Okay, let's hear that.



JT: I treat everyone as you would wish to be treated.



WJ: Sure, sure.



JT: I think long-term in any relationship. Whether it's selling somebody a stereo or a marriage. I used to tell people this when I worked retail. This was many years ago. People used to say to me, "Wow, this is a really great place," or, "Wow, this is really great service," and I would tell them, "That's what it's all about, because I cannot make so much money on this one deal that I can afford to never see you again." So what I would like to do is fit you into the best product you need that will not cost you a billion dollars, and when the time comes for the next piece of technology, you will come to see me.



WJ: That's a great secret. If only more people would think that way.



JT: People think short term. It's the stock market economy. It's all about this quarter. In many ways, this is what I did at Right Stuf. I always bought products that maybe weren't the biggest blockbusters at the time, and in fact it never was because the budget wasn't there, but always to buy something which was a good, serviceable product. Maybe it was product that was a little bit older. Maybe it was a product that people had passed over and [they] didn't notice it. Boogiepop Phantom was a perfect example of that. Tylor, too. Perfect example. The show was a little older at the time. It was a great show, and I don't say that because I worked on it. It was just a great show.



WJ: Right Stuf has acquired some very good properties.



JT: A lot of that was because of me, to be very honest. When I came to Right Stuf International, it was a company that produced Astro Boy. It distributed Gigantor and it distributed 8th Man, and that was it. I remember the first year when it first grossed more than a million dollars. We were so excited. It was a million dollars! We couldn't believe it. When I came to Right Stuf there was Shawne Kleckner, who had it. He was in a partnership with another person who actually owned it. Now that's all Shawne. And it was me, and one woman who worked part time. The answering machine was in her house. She would come in [during] the afternoon, take the orders off the machine, enter them in, and send them out. Now Right Stuf... you've seen the catalog. I did the catalog. It's huge.



WJ: It seems like everything on the planet.



JT: It's frightening how big it's become.



WJ: Okay, I've got some controversial questions to start. They're about the Fourth Estate, about critics and reviewers.



JT: I have no problems discussing that.



WJ: My main question is, what do you as an industry member look for in a review?



JT: I can answer that very simply. Somebody who has actually watched the product with an open mind and is giving constructive feedback. That is what I love. I realize not every show is a great show. Obviously not. Sturgeon's Law applies to everything, be it a reviewer, be it a producer, or anime releasing company. Some of it is going to be garbage. I'd like to think we never released garbage at Right Stuf. Obviously some members of the press may disagree. The only thing that upsets me is when somebody says, "Blank is a piece of garbage." It's like when you're in grammar school and somebody says, "I don't like blank." You ask the obvious follow-up question, "Why don't you like blank?" and they say, "I don't know." Well how can I make a product that you will like when you've already pre-judged an entire class of products?



WJ: So do you look for specifics and detail, or are general reasons enough?



JT: I believe in some ways Confucius is right. Everyone's a teacher. Everyone's opinion is, in some way, valid. People can say, "Well, I don't like this because it used the color blue." Okay, I suppose if I used the color blue in all of the packaging and somebody said, "You use blue too much," then maybe I should try red. There is an infinite number of colors in the spectrum, and there's an infinite number of opinions. All of them are valid.



WJ: Do you remember your first good review?



JT: I don't think I could quote it, but there were certainly many of them on Tylor. I've got a great deal of anecdotal positive "Oh wow, that's cool!" on Toward the Terra and Legend of the Forest. Legend of the Forest was the first one I felt was a real departure for Right Stuf because it was Astroboy and such up to that point, and then Toward the Terra, which was a bigheaded science fiction movie from 1980. I really liked it. I thought it was a good show, but it was hard science fiction. Hard science fiction, in this market, doesn't sell all that well. A perfect example of that is probably Crusher Joe. I don't know how well Crusher Joe sold, but it's bigheaded science fiction. It's a good show. In many cases the market says, "We want this instead of that." Terra sold well enough. It made money, and in this market anything that generates the profit is probably not so bad. Legend of the Forest was a bit different. It was a Tezuka product. I'm a big Tezuka fan, always have been. It's entirely wordless. There's no dialog in it at all. It's very lyrical, very early Disney. Very interesting, very unusual film. I thought, "This is a great movie." Some of the profits went back to Terra. I really wanted to include a packet of seeds with every copy of Legend of the Forest, in keeping with its theme. We couldn't, in the end, find a package of seeds that would be durable enough to be packed. But I thought that was a very interesting idea, and it also proved to me that the company I was working with was willing to try something that was a little bit different.



WJ: Do you remember your first bad review?



JT: Mostly they're "You suck"'s. Again, that too is valid. Somebody says, "You suck!" Well, why do I suck? "Well, you changed this name." It's possible that our translator got it wrong. Errors creep in anywhere, and sometimes they're very insidious. Most of the bad reviews I've gotten have been like that.



WJ: What do you do when you get a bad review? A constructive one.



JT: A constructive one? I look at the process and see if there's a way to improve it. See if there's a way to make it a more accessible product. Ultimately, that is the goal. Make the product that is accessible to as many people as possible and go from there. And for a bad review, yeah you look at the process. For a good review you say, "Wow, check this out! Hey, I wonder if people would mind if we put this on the website or included this in the promotional literature." We've certainly done that with Tylor, during the process of the dub. There were certainly positive quotes that were in the material. So change it wherever possible, and celebrate when it's good.



WJ: Kare Kano had a large female cast



JT: Yes, it did.



WJ: All things considered it didn't have that many male characters. Did that pose any casting challenges?



JT: The casting pool in the New York market has a lot of female actors and fewer male actors. It did not present a problem at all, mostly because I had worked on Tylor before, I had worked on Boogiepop Phantom before. There were a lot of female actors I had worked with, many of whom were off the scale good and you say, "Oh, yeah. That's them. No problem." Male characters are always the problem.



WJ: Really?



JT: There are many fewer male actors than female actors, at least that I have acquaintance with. That may be some skewed funhouse version of what the marketplace is, but I don't think so. I've talked to a lot of people, and they say the same thing.



WJ: Have you ever worked on a show that had a predominantly male cast?



JT: Tylor is more male than most. I'd say 60/40, maybe 70/30. It was not a problem, but I used a lot of actors I hadn't normally used and, in many cases, have not had an opportunity to use again. Which is kind of a shame. It does not create a special casting challenge, and that's another thing I did at Stuf. I did all of the casting, and I think that's probably where my strength is. People say, "Oh my god! I never would have thought of blank for that, but they were just fantastic."



WJ: Suppose that you start a new show. What's your first priority when you're producing and directing it? You decide this is the show, you acquired it, and have to start production.



JT: My personal first priority would be completely familiar with the show. That's the absolute most important thing. I want to be absolutely prepared for anything the show is going to throw at me. Look as deeply into it as I possibly can. People have said to me, "How do you know so much about Boogiepop Phantom?" Because I looked at it very closely.



WJ: Approximately how many times would you guess you watch a show you direct?



JT: I think I watched through Kare Kano five or six times before I even really got very far into it.



WJ: What do you mean by "very far?" The dubbing process?



JT: Oh, no. The scriptwriting process. You know, look at the Japanese and watch the show through. You get a pigeon noun-verb translation of the Japanese usually. Sometimes you get a very good one. With the packet you will get the master elements and you will get an English piece. And it'll be, "Okay, this is this, and this is this, and this is this. Oh, I see. This is this, and this is... That makes perfect sense to me." I want to get as familiar as I possibly can with the show so I don't get surprised, because you can wind up in a world of hurt by casting someone and then having a disconnect in there where the character changes radically and you realize suddenly you have the wrong casting choice. It's never happened to me, but it's the thing we all live in mortal fear of.



WJ: I'm sure it must be a big concern for those shows that go two or three hundred episodes.



JT: Your casting decisions... I can't even imagine. Kare Kano was twenty-six. There are moments in that where you wonder, because actors are busy people. They may go away for two or three months, and then you have this hole. Then it's even worse. Do you recast it? Do you replace them? Do you wait? Are your vendors going to understand that a supporting actor, a big supporting actor but a supporting actor nonetheless, is unavailable to you because they got sick? We've had some scares where one actor became very ill, very gravely ill as a matter of fact, during the production process.



WJ: What do you do?



JT: What do you do? It's a very frightening moment, and it's the thing that keeps you up at night. That and are people going to agree with the decision that I made? Here's an example. When I cast Kare Kano... because I produced it, I directed it, I cast it. I did a lot on that show, and one of the decisions was Maho. Now Maho was an actor who I'd worked with before. She's very good, very talented, very fast. [She has] a good instinctive grasp of the material and took direction very well. But the pitch on her voice is not where the Japanese one is. Not at all. Her voice is deeper than the crowd around her. But in the English version it's way different. Now, I did that entirely deliberately because I wanted all of the school friends' voices to be here, and then hers to be bang! Right in the middle so it hits you like a hammer. "Oh wow, she's different." It was my way of telegraphing the blow. It was an entirely deliberate decision to do that. Most of them are not that complicated. Here's another one: You never want to double-cast an actor because it's too obvious. However, in some cases you go, "Okay, on this hand I don't want to double-cast an actor. Do I cast Lisa Ortiz as the Hanner twins, who are relatively minor characters in Tylor, and Azalyn, who is a major character in Tylor?" Now, do I get someone who may not have that talent level that Lisa does, and Lisa is incredible.



WJ: She is.



JT: If you watch Boogiepop nine, she'll rip your heart out with a butter knife. It's one of the most amazing performances I've ever heard in my life. It's stunning. But it's the same kind of thing. Do I want Lisa in as Azalyn and the Hanner twins? So it's actually three roles. The twins are different, by the way. They are different. In the end I figured that the Hanner twins are minor enough characters, but they're my favorites. I have a beautiful cel on my wall of the Hanner twins. But are they important enough that I can risk this double-cast? I did, and Lisa's voice is very distinctive. You can't hide that one. You can't do it. Not in a million years. So again, it's the balance. Do I pick somebody else? And there were many people read for that. Many people read for that. Casting Tylor took a long time, frankly because of my own inexperience. I second-guessed myself too much.



WJ: When you cast a show, do you figure out the cast for the entire show, through its entire run?



JT: Ideally, yes. In Kare Kano it did not happen that way. There were two actors who came in on the second week. I think I wanted these people and I had them come in and read. One of whom was our Maho. I think I wanted this person because she was very good. I had worked with her before, and I said, "Yes. I think I want her." I did not interview far for that one, but I believe it was a scheduling issue that caused her to miss the first round.



WJ: What part of the dubbing process do you dread the most? Is it the casting, or is there anything worse?



JT: I enjoy the casting, to be very honest with you, because it's a happy time. You're exploring your pool of actors. It's very exciting. As a producer or director it's very exciting. I imagine as an actor it's hell because you walk in, you don't know what the director really wants, and what the director tells you may or may be helpful. Or may or may not be exactly what they want in the performance. Maybe you're familiar with the Japanese. Well that could be exactly what the crew wants, or it might be exactly opposite of what they want, and you have a very limited time. You may have a half an hour or an hour in the booth, and everything you do is going to be preserved in a digital form forever. It's got to be hell. I think the dread comes when you look at the character assignment sheet, and there's Female Student A, Female Student B, Female Student C, Female Student D, and E, F, G, H, and I, and you wonder, "Is A really G, just with their back turned?" Or you look at the list and say, "Oh boy, I have to find a lot of female actors who are not so obviously distinctive so I can maybe have them double up on a couple of these things." Jessica, in Kare Kano or Boogiepop, did several roles opposite each other. It's a scary time.



WJ: Are people going to know? Is it going to be apparent?



JT: Exactly. Is it going to so obvious? Are people going to say, "Oh, it's Jessica talking to herself"? I fear things like that. You hope you camouflage it well enough. Remember, when you hear the final it's all mixed and the levels are all beautiful, and it's imaged beautifully. But when you hear it in the studio it's mono. It's completely dry, generally. Maybe there's some real-time effect there, but nothing more than a compressor, a limiter. That's it. You hear the same voice. It's a frightening moment when you do that, and you say, "Okay, who can I call in to do a half an hour of work?" For an actor, there's your transport time. You don't want to work for a half an hour. You want to come in for two or three hours. There are actors where there are minimums, and you say, "Okay, I will accept the minimum payment for this actor to read five lines." It's the tradeoff that you make. Fortunately, not many have that. But there are the more high-demand actors. They can go anywhere and do a voiceover session for television, or do real ADR work in a motion picture or television series, and get a lot of money. That's the frightening part. Or when you think you might have made a mistake somewhere. Usually it's after that person's recorded, like a couple of days later. You think...



WJ: Was that really the take?



JT: Yeah... "I... I don't know about that one. Maybe I should have them come back in, but geez..." Again, you're having that actor come in and read that part just for that one time, and that's awful inconvenient.



WJ: Did that ever happen to you after it was mixed, and you decided you just had to redo it?



JT: It has happened. I won't get into the specifics, but it has happened. In the studio it's an entirely different atmosphere. It's kind of like time doesn't exist anymore and sometimes the dialog doesn't exist, if you will, in a cohesive piece. Because you're recording one actor, so you're not seeing the big picture. Obviously Brian Wilson could do that. But you listen to it, and maybe you have a doubt about it. Anyway, this was the situation. I thought the performance was strong, and then I listened to the rough mix and I said, "Ooh... There's about fifteen here that I want to change. Well, that's enough to change." We called the actor back in, and they ended up changing more than the fifteen because they weren't happy with it, either. They essentially redid their performance in this one...



WJ: In that one scene?



JT: It was more than a scene.



WJ: Wow, that's surprising.



JT: It was substantial. I can't say it was a mistake because you listen to it, and again it has a life of its own. It's like... Have you ever heard a singer sing a song more than once? The first time you hear it, it might sound funny, but the second time it sounds fine even though they have changed? It's like hearing a song on the radio and maybe you go, "Gee, I don't think so..." and then the next time you hear it you say, "No, I see where they're going now," and maybe the next time you say, "Oh wow, that's really good." It's the same kind of thing. You get into a zone sometimes where you listen to something and on its own in a vacuum, which nothing ever is, but in a vacuum it's fine. Yet in the bed with everyone else, with all the other actors, it's suddenly uncomfortable. It's not right, and maybe it's something that you can tweak just one or two lines. Maybe it's something you have to go back for. It's only happened one time. Never again.



WJ: That's a fascinating story. You know, every now and then you hear about these things happening.



JT: I've heard about them for years, and it's the only time it occurred. But I tell you, all of us were in complete agreement and the final performance is amazing. You would never know. You would never see it in a million years, but you're like, "Oh, yeah. That was it."



WJ: I think that's interesting because fans don't see that.



JT: It's a process. You only see the end product. It's like working on a speech. How many tracks did you go through to get at that point? How many times did you rewrite the copy on the back of that box before it had the proper word count and the right pacing and it's exactly right? Because, as you probably know yourself, write something in four thousand words and it's pretty easy. Write something in fifty? Very difficult. Very difficult to do. If you care. If you don't care then, "There's this show about a guy..." How many revisions of the program book did I go through here? There was A-J, those were prototypes, then J1 and J2, then release candidate one and release candidate two, then a 100 and a 101 and a 102 and a 103. There're all these revisions that no one ever sees. "Well, that took you five minutes." Well... Maybe it did, but maybe it didn't.



WJ: Sometimes the work that looks like it was easy was the hardest.



JT: Very hard. I can give you an example of that in episode eight of Kare Kano. The second half of episode eight is really episode 0.5, and it's Arima talking about when he first met Yukino. It goes all the way through this thing, about ten minutes, and at the very end of it he snaps back into present tense and talks about what has happened since then. It's, "She's insane. She's whacked. She's a very disturbing person sometimes." But the trick is, at the very end of that he goes, "But I think I'm okay with that. Yeah." That "yeah" at the end was probably about thirty takes. It was over and over. "No, it's not quite... It's not quite... You're kind of discovering it, but you're also convincing yourself of it at the same time. But it's more internal than that. No, it needs to be a little more external than that. No, it's going in a different direction..." over and over. I know the actor was probably getting very, "You want to come in the booth and do it?"



WJ: Yeah.



JT: But it's very frustrating sometimes because you have it in your head, and it needs to be completely, totally, totally natural. I had a moment like this in Boogiepop Phantom. Mother's Day, which I think is number six. Very difficult performance. I still can't watch the episode. I can't. It's too difficult. Shizue is dead, and it's all in flashback. In death, Shizue and her mother come to grips with each other, so it's very difficult. Shizue's mother is a very talented actor. What she needs to do is break down. Shizue is much more difficult. We just did take after take, and Shizue herself is a very talented actor. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over again... And finally the director turned to me. I'm sitting behind him and he says to me, "Look, there's the mike. You tell them what you want. Just do it." And it was still another fifteen or twenty takes before we got it exactly, in my opinion, where I wanted it to be. Very difficult. But people look at it and say, "Oh, well that's easy." No. When it has to be completely natural? When you're talking about this and there's spaceships flying through the air, easy. When you are coming to grips with something, something in the past, something very painful for you, not easy at all. Especially because it's never just that. There's always something else in there, too.



WJ: Right, and everything's got to work.



JT: You're sitting there and you have an engineer who's at this large console, and you're trying to explain this incredibly subtle point, and the actors are getting frustrated, and maybe they're just not getting it. Time is money. Every hour you're in that studio, there's more money going away. Every minute. You're always acutely aware of this. Here's an example. Have you ever seen a show that you really loved, and you're looking for the purpose of the show, because all Japanese shows have one. There's always this one moment, it's usually not in a big episode, but there's this one little moment that has to be exactly right because the whole show hinges on it. I can give many examples of this, but obviously it would be inappropriate of me to do so. Those things, where you listen to it and you go, "Oh! They missed it. If only it was this." And maybe all directors do it. We look at other people's stuff and say, "What were you thinking?" Me, I'm more interested in seeing how they solve the problem than did they get this than did they get this or did they get that. It's like, "That was a good solution. That was a good one."



WJ: What's interesting is that a lot of the time my favorite moments in dubs are not big, dramatic...



JT: The big splashy ones.



WJ: It's not. On the animeondvd forums I'm famous because there's this one word, not even a line but just a word, in Haibane-Renmei. In episode three it's Carrie Savage, and she says, "Pancakes." That's the whole line, and it's my favorite word in all of anime dubs. People think I'm insane because it's not a whole line. It's just a word. It's not dramatic, it's not important.



JT: It's just perfect.



WJ: Yeah.



JT: There is a synchronicity. If the best actors and the most talented directors, of which I am not one, get into the zone, then it's right there. It's line after line after line after line... There were certainly moments like this in Kare Kano. There were many of them with Veronica Taylor where it was just cue, cue, cue, cue, cue, cue, cue, cue... Where the engineer is telling you, "Okay, we need to stop for a minute because we have to clean out some of the junk because there is so much in the session that we have to consolidate these regions because we're actually working faster than the machine can handle it." But she's a machine. Oh my goodness. She's incredible. I cast her as Yukino. I did it without really... Again, I had a lot of people read it. At the end of the day you listen to the sessions. "Okay, that's really good. That's really good. That's really good, I'll put a star next to that one. That's pretty good. No, that's not going to work. That might work for somebody else. That's pretty good, that's pretty good, that's pretty good... Oh my god, that's it. That's it right there." It happened to be her. Well, she was in Tylor, too. People tend to forget that.



WJ: I remember when Kare Kano was just coming out, and everybody found out it was Veronica Taylor, everyone said, "Wait a minute, from Pokemon?" And then everybody heard it. Of course she's not going to sound like Ash, but...



JT: She is an amazingly fast actor. Amazingly talented. She's on the short list. There are probably five female actors I can think of, and she's one of them that's amazing. She's amazing. Rachel Lillis is another one.



WJ: She's great.



JT: Rachel... every time Rachel opened up her mouth in Tylor it knocked me out. She was so good. And Lisa Ortiz is another one. Her Azalyn is incredible. It's just incredible. You go, "Oh, I totally believe this. I'm not even listen to the voice anymore. I'm just listening to what's going on." It's completely believable. I've side tracked you enough.



WJ: So, tell us one thing that most fans think they know about dubs, but they're actually wrong about.



JT: I think it would be that dub actors are tremendously well paid. They're not. The hourly fee can be a substantial amount of money, but it's not a way that you're ever going to make a billion dollars. You get this sum of money, and it's very, "You get that amount?" But then you have to think you're not working every day. You're working a couple hours a day, a couple days a week. You have to rest your voice. It is an instrument. It's part of your body. It needs time to recuperate just like you need time to sleep. That's certainly one of them. Another one is that companies don't care. I'm sure there are companies that don't. I've never seen one. Obviously some of them care more than others, but all of them do care. No one intentionally goes out there to make a piece of crap. Nobody's going to do that. No one.



WJ: I've always wanted to ask this question because it's so funny. Do you actually sit there in your office on an ivory throne and think to yourself...



JT: Well, mine is made of plexiglass.



WJ: Do you ever think to yourself, "You know... Bob... I've been reading his stuff on the forums. I'm just going to ruin his day. I've got it out for Bob and I'm going to ruin that show he loves"?



JT: I've never done that. Because again, it's Confucius. Everyone's a teacher. You can learn something from anyone. Maybe one person tells you it sucks, and tells you why it sucks in very small words so you understand properly. Maybe there's another fifty people who felt the same way and never told me about it.



WJ: All right, I'll just say this for everybody. You can all rest easy that at least Jeff Thompson is not trying to ruin your favorite shows!



JT: Because I like them, too! I am a fan!



WJ: People forget that. That the producers and directors like the shows they're working on.



JT: And if they don't, you find other producers and directors. You're supposed to like the show you working on.



WJ: I think there's a myth that some producers come in and say, "Okay, I just need to put in my eight hours, then I'm out of here."



JT: There probably are some. There probably are. I've never met one.



WJ: I find that [thought] weird.



JT: It doesn't stand up to logic, does it?



WJ: No, it doesn't.



JT: Here's the other side of that. The product has your name on it. Would you intentionally produce a bad product that has your name on it?



WJ: Presumably not. It's one of those reality checks.



JT: It doesn't make sense.



WJ: As a fan, if I read an interview with a director who said, "I didn't really care for this show. But they paid me a lot of money," I think unconsciously... Without even listening to it, and this is maybe unfair of me, I'd probably say it's probably not going to be that good. I wouldn't want to watch it anymore.



JT: Then in a hypothetical situation like that, I've never encountered that...



WJ: Right, in the magical land of make-believe.



JT: I guess you would count on your actors. What about the good people working on that show? The ADR writers. Did they do a good job? The director's job is much easier. The voice actors, who are very talented. Some of them are crazy talented. Can they pull it off? Sometimes they can. I will also tell you that in the studio where I worked, if the engineer didn't like a take the engineer was free to say, "Do you want to do that again?" If the voice actor said, "You know, I don't like that one. Can I do it again?" I'm going to listen to it again, and nine times out of ten I'm going to say absolutely. Do you think you can take this in a different direction? Is there somewhere else you wanted to take this? And they'd say, "Well, I was thinking about blank." Yeah, of course. That makes a lot more sense. Here's me being a dumbass. Let's go in and do it again. Do we have to change anything else that led up to that to make that fit? Yeah, that changes one other line, so we'll do the cue again. It's a non-destructive editing process. You can take those two cues and listen to them in the context of the other things.



WJ: So, do you go in with no ego at all?



JT: Well, obviously we all have an ego. Otherwise we'd be some quivery mass of gelatin. But the idea is to make it as easy as possible for everyone. Obviously there're some actors who question every line, and when this person opens up their mouth and says, "I want to do it again," maybe it's for reasons other than the integrity of the show. There are some actors, I can think of three or four of them actually, who will ask for a change but they will do it after the morning session. You're eating your lunch and they'll say, "Do you know that cue we did that was right after the scene with the carnival?" "Yeah." "Well, you know I've been thinking about that one and I don't really know." "Really? Well let's listen to it. Well I think it's pretty good." "Well, I think maybe if I did it like..." "Well, yeah. You're right." I tell you, especially on a long show, you reach a point where the actor understands the character intrinsically. They absolutely know how this character thinks, and in situations like that you let it happen. You give them the loosest possible rein and let them do it. Then the trick becomes when do you say, "Well, this is going different and maybe I do know more about this show than you do." I have very carefully dissected it, perhaps in excruciating detail. In situations like that you say, "No, I think this is going in a direction other than it needs to be." I would never say, "Do it this way." I would say, "I think it's going different. I have it in my head like this. Because of this, this, this, and this." And the actor will say, "Oh, you mean in the arc of the character this happens?" "Yes." I have gotten some negative feedback on Arima in Kare Kano. Because many people watched the first episode of the dub, always the worst. The first episode of anything is always the worst unless you do ten episodes and then go back. Because you have to start somewhere, and the actor and the director are finding the voice. And I don't mean the timbre and the pitch. I mean how that character lives, and it changes. But with Arima I made a very conscious decision. If you watch the show, he has a very definite arc he travels. He's very nervous early in the process, but he's masking it with a faux self-confidence. So if you listen to it, the pitch is very low early on. And then as he loosens up and relaxes, his pitch comes back up to where it would normally be, you would think. His style of voice, his meter, becomes more relaxed. It was an entirely conscious decision, although I have taken some heat for that decision. "Oh, well he sounds like he's a schoolboy with a ridiculously low voice." Again, that would be a situation where I said, "I understand what you're saying, but please watch more of it because this is a deliberate decision." Watch episode ten or eleven, and you'll say, "Oh, it's going somewhere." As I give you the benefit of the doubt, please give me the benefit of the doubt."



WJ: I think that's fair.



JT: It does annoy me sometimes when a show is very popular, but has what I would consider an okay dub and they think it's a great dub because they love the show. And maybe the show is not one that you love. Assemble Insert is a very lightweight show, but it's a lot of fun and I loved working on it. The dub, in many ways, is very funny. It's really good. But a lot of people said, "I don't like the drawing style, therefore the dub is bad."



WJ: It's very hard to separate for many people.



JT: Again, I have no problem with you saying you don't like it as long as there's a "because" after it. "I don't like it because the voice on this guy is wrong." Okay, that's valid. "I don't like it because I don't like it." It's a lot more difficult to take someone seriously when they say, "I don't like it because I don't like it," or something along those lines.



WJ: Okay, name something that fans think is very easy but is in fact very difficult.



JT: The focal point of the show. When you get the focal point. And it may not be obvious until you reach it, and sometimes it may not be obvious until you've passed it that this is it. Because that has to be perfect, and it may take you all day to get this.



WJ: That one word, that one sigh...



JT: That one phrase. It's this very tiny thing, and you're picking at it with tweezers. Here's an example. In Captain Tylor, Harumi screams to Tylor that she loves him. It's a great moment in the series. No one hears it, except Yuriko hears it. We as the audience we don't hear it. We hear her say, "And I have to tell you that..." and then the sound of the shuttle taking off drowns it all out. We recorded it time after time after time after time. Over and over and over again, and it never sounded right because the script said, "And I think that I..." and then there's nothing. We recorded it, and it sounded bad. Again, it wasn't a limitation of the actor. The actor's very good. Very talented. But it wasn't right. Finally, we came to a moment where I got the button. I leaned over the director, which is a no-no, and I said, "Look, you have to say it. Just scream it out like you imagine it is, but we're not going to hear it all. You just have to do it this way." And that was it. It sounds perfect, and it was exactly what I had in my head at that moment, and to me I think it stands on its own. It's absolutely right, but it's a moment you could easily miss where it's one little thing. Sounds easy. The worst are when you have these long pieces of dialog and you think, "Oh my god. How can an actor do it?" and the best actors... One take and it's done. There's others where you're just, "Oh, wow." Again, it's this sick dread that you're never going to get it right. Over and over... "It's got to be like this... Okay, it starts off like that, but it needs to end like the fourth one you did... It's more internal... I don't know how to explain it to you..." At which point the best actors will just say, "I'll just give you something else," and that will loosen up the brain glue and you'll say, "Okay, that's not right, either, but I see where the problem is now. It's here." Because you get very close to it sometimes, and again you're hearing it isolated. No one around them, or maybe someone around them if it's late in the process, and you go, "It's so close, but it's not quite..." or worse, "It's wrong and I can't tell you why."



WJ: Right.



JT: That's the worst, because English is an imperfect language. Experience obviously enters into it. Education obviously enters into it. And you go, "It's like... Like..." Casting, especially when you're not there for the casting, is like this, too. Because you give a casting director or the person running the session a very broad outline of what you're looking for. Here's an example. Casting Tylor, we were looking for a Yamamoto. Which was difficult because he has a lot of dialog. Probably a third of that show is Yamamoto in one way or another, and whenever you have one actor being a third of a show, like Kare Kano, the casting decisions... you sweat those. A lot of people read that. So how do you describe a character like Yamamoto to somebody running the session? Neil Nadelman did some of this, and he described the character of Yamamoto as like Frank Burns in M*A*S*H. Officious, just out of the academy, et cetera, et cetera. A little bravado. We got these sessions back that just... No, no, no, no. Eventually we found out that the director, the guy running the sessions, interpreted Frank Burns to be a whiny mealy-mouthed guy and not the bass-baritone, the bravado yet still inexperienced, young, just out of the academy. There was a disconnect there, and when we could communicate that, it was funny. J. David Brimmer, wow he's another one by the way. He has the most amazing pipes. You listen to that Tylor dub. He has the most amazing voice I've ever heard. Like James Earl Jones, he's down in the basement. Crispin Freeman is in the booth. Brimmer was in on a Tuesday. Crispin was in on a Monday. He started working on Tylor and he didn't finish. He came in the next week after we had laid down the Brimmer tracks. Crispin's sitting there with the headphones and he's listening to it and he says, "Who is that?" "It's J. David Brimmer. He's new." "Whoa! I thought I was a baritone." Anyway, so it's Neil and me. We're sitting in the studio with the director and said, "Okay, here's the character of Yamamoto. Here's the arc through which he travels. He starts here and he goes here. By this point the change becomes obvious, but it's not going to be a hard line. It'll be a more subtle line as we lead into that. Someplace around here you probably start the change, and when he gets here it'll be obvious. Then when he gets here he's in the final adult form." Brimmer's sitting there and he's listening to all this and he's like, "Okay, okay, okay." Finally, there's this moment. It's about twenty minutes into this. "Oh, he's a shave tail lieutenant! I know how to do this!" Yes, that's what he is. It's the eureka moment. There you go.



WJ: Okay, everybody who comes onto my column has to answer one question pertaining, in some way, to academic philosophy.



JT: Oh, this should be good. Can I answer with bunnies?



WJ: If bunnies are part of your answer, then so be it. All right, please do your very best because this is one of my favorite questions.



JT: Ooh, you've built it up so far.



WJ: I know. Are there things that don't exist?



JT: Of course. Subatomic particles wink out of existence all the time.



WJ: Interesting answer. I've never heard that one before.



JT: Do protons exist? Well yes, well no. Do gluons and quarks exist? For billionths of a second, yes. But what happens to them in the meantime? Does a thought exist? Well, a thought exists in itself. Does it have mass? Does it have weight? Does it have volume? Is there a cell in your brain where that thought came from?



WJ: Ah, I'm having horrible neuroscience flashbacks.



JT: Neuroscience is something that I'm very interested in, and always have been. In a strictly layman's approach, of course, but it's always been something I've been very interested in.



WJ: You just gave me about a hundred flashbacks to grandmother cells.



JT: The grandmother cells! Exactly! You're working with contact cement one day and you forget what your grandmother if that cell is gone!



WJ: That one must have died! Oh no! There goes Grandma.



JT: No, it's so subtle, and then you get into the network. It's not in anything. And then you get into what has an effect on that. Is it the gravitational pull of the moon? What happens if a cosmic ray comes through and zaps that one neuron? You wonder.



WJ: Sometimes I wonder how anybody thought there could be a grandmother cell. You take a reality check and...



JT: It doesn't make sense, but people believe some pretty weird things sometimes.



WJ: I think people sometimes people come up with an explanation that's so simple, and if it was that simple...



JT: Oh, and science loves the simple explanation, doesn't it?



WJ: That would be neat.



JT: Wouldn't it be nice if...



WJ: If there were one cell for you, and one for Grandma, and one for each of these other people, and somehow they magically don't get lost.



JT: And wouldn't it be nice if there were a simple three-variable formula for the Grand Unified Theory? Wouldn't that be nice? Another E=Mc2. Just something like that.



WJ: Right, so you wouldn't have to take Psych 452.



JT: And without dealing with superstring theory. How many quarks are there now?



WJ: Yeah, now there are strings and branes... Eleven dimensions, they tell me.



JT: That's right. What is it... Oh, "If I knew there would be so many quarks I would have become a botanist." Or Heisenberg sought him out. "Visualize an electron!" and he said, "Don't."



WJ: All right, now we move on the Lighting Round.



JT: Oh, the Lightning Round.



WJ: Everybody needs a Lightning Round. I'm going to read you five questions, and all you have to do is come up with the best answer possible in the shortest time possible.



JT: Got it.



WJ: Grading will be by the world. Everyone who reads the interview.



JT: "You suck!" As long as there's a because!



WJ: Because you took five minutes!



JT: Oh, yeah. Five minutes. Yes. Unfortunately, I give long answers. As you may have noticed. You may have discerned this.



WJ: Now, the people at home will score you fifty percent on content and fifty percent on time, so even if you can't get one, as long as you do well in the other you're still respectable.



JT: All right.



WJ: If you want to strike an answer from the record, go ahead and say, "Strike that. This is my new answer." Tell me when you're ready and time will start as soon as I start reading a question.



JT: Let 'er rip.



WJ: Name a food you'd like to try, but you doubt you'll ever get a chance to eat.



JT: Artichoke.



WJ: What button on a DVD remote control best describes you?



JT: Pause.



WJ: Offer one piece of advice that nobody should ever take.



JT: Screw 'em all. The easy ones twice.



WJ: [Pause.]



JT: [Laughs] You weren't ready for that!



WJ: Suppose you could cast any President of the United States of America, living or dead, in any anime you worked on, in any role. Who would you want to cast, and what role would they play?



JT: Oh my god. [Pause] Bill Clinton as Tylor.



WJ: That's an interesting choice. Okay, name a hair color that doesn't work for anybody, including anime characters.



JT: Green. No, that's not true. That's not true. Hair color... I'd have to say blue. Something around two-sixty-six Pantone.



WJ: Your time is: 1:32.20.





Again, my thanks to Jeff Thompson for taking the time to sit down and talk about anime dubs.



Are you involved with English dubbed anime, and would you like to have a brief discussion about it? If you'd like to appear in this column for an interview, e-mail me at way.jeng@gmail.com



If you enjoy reading this column, you may also enjoy my book, Getting Things Just Right. ISBN 1-4116-0881-X.



Copyright 2005 Way Jeng