02 September 2008

Ancien Regime RIP

So, here's the thing: I've had a hate-hate affair with this guy -- not him personally, rather his voice. He is the guy who has voiced something like 8 billion movie previews and not a small amount of radio and television spots over something like the last 150 years.

I have hated his voice since I first noticed that every damned American movie preview sounded the same. I mean, the plots are already the same and star the same four actors, made by the same two studios and directed by the same three people. The movies are virtual clones of themselves, but do they have to SOUND exactly alike too?

Of course, they do. Mainstream American cinema is all about remaking the same movie over and over, so why should they sound different?

Well, this guy just died. I don't want you to think I have been doing a little happy dance since I heard about his death because that would be just mean. It's sad when anyone dies, generally. I told my spouse, Matt, that I wanted to write a blog entry about this, but did not want to seem ghoulish that someone has died and that cinemas will (eventually) stop sounding exactly alike (this guy probably recorded a couple thousand move trailers that will play out over the next decade or so, but someday they will run out) and that maybe, one day, it will be safe to step back into a cinema again.

Maybe this will be the beginning of the end of American films all being alike, maybe people will want to do something DIFFERENT and not succumb to the easy money of making sequel after sequel, remake after remake, and every film based on some television show from the 1960s.

Okay, maybe I'm drunk with delirium but it COULD happen.

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