Tribute: Voice Actress June Foray

Posted on July 29, 2017 at 12:19 am

We mourn the passing of June Foray, just shy of her 100th birthday. You might not have heard of her, but I am certain you heard her voice, or, I should say, her voices. She was one of the most versatile actresses in Hollywood history. She provided the voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Natasha the spy, and Dudley Do-right’s Nell Fenwick. She played Tweetie Bird’s owner, Granny and Cindy Lou Who. She appeared in “Mulan,” “The Flintstones,” “Scooby-Doo,” “Rugrats,” and “The Twilight Zone” (playing a creepy talking doll). She was also Chatty Cathy, a somewhat less creepy talking doll. She was Jokey Smurf. Animation expert Mark Evanier wrote:

Most of all, she was June Foray, a talented workaholic who for decades, drove into Hollywood every weekday early in the morning and went from recording session to recording session until well after dark. Everyone hired her because she was always on time, always professional and what she did was always good. It was her good friend, director Chuck Jones who said, “June Foray is not the female Mel Blanc. Mel Blanc is the male June Foray.”

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Actors Tribute

Brian Selznick on “Wonderstruck”

Posted on July 28, 2017 at 6:58 pm

For Rogerebert.com, I spoke to author/illustrator Brian Selznick, who has written the screenplay for the film adaptation of his book, Wonderstruck. I was fascinated by his description of casting deaf actors as hearing characters in the silent portion of the movie.

I realized that with a silent section in our movie it gave us the opportunity to hire deaf actors to play hearing characters. Deaf actors were hired all the time in the silent movie era because they were so expressive. They knew how to tell a story without spoken language. And so we used six deaf actors as hearing people. We had these amazing days on the set with hearing actors, deaf actors, sign language interpreters. The rest of the cast, the crew and everybody worked together.

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Based on a book Interview Writers

Prop Store: Auctioning Props and Costumes from “Robocop,” “Batman,” “Back to the Future,” Pulp Fiction,” and “Star Wars”

Posted on July 26, 2017 at 5:52 pm

I had a blast at Comic-Con talking to Stephen Lane about The Prop Store‘s upcoming auction of movie props and costumes.  SDCC attendees loved seeing some of the items coming up for auction, including Samuel L. Jackson’s wallet from “Pulp Fiction” and Matt Damon’s spacesuit from “The Martian.”

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