Short Stuff: The Voice of God

**Josh** (0:04)
Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry sitting in for Dave. So this is Short Stuff. Hit it, Chuck.

**Chuck** (0:11)
In a world where two doofuses podcast. That's my imitation, everybody, of Don LaFontaine, and this is a bit of tribute to the man that was known as The Voice of God, Don LaFontaine, the movie trailer guy.

**Josh** (0:29)
That's right. That's exactly what a lot of people call him, the movie trailer guy, because he has to credit, Chuck, this eye-popping number. I'm going to take this one, okay?

**Chuck** (0:39)
Yeah, let's hear it.

**Josh** (0:41)
Over the course of his career, he recorded more than 5,000 film trailers.

**Chuck** (0:49)
Oh, man.

**Josh** (0:49)
Previews, 5,000 previews, 750,000 television spots, like commercials and promos and all that stuff.

**Chuck** (0:58)
I bet Don LaFontaine, when he passed away in 2008, I think, 2008 was a very, very rich man.

**Josh** (1:12)
I would think so.

**Chuck** (1:14)
And good for him.

**Josh** (1:15)
Sure. He did it with his own hard work. By the end of his life, he was working basically till the end. By the end of his life, he had built out a home office and was averaging seven voiceovers a day.
Which if you don't do voiceovers, you're probably like, that doesn't seem like that much. I'd knock that out in like 15 minutes. Yeah. No, you wouldn't. Because it's actually surprisingly difficult. And if you're actually working with the professional company, they will make you do that over and over and over again. And it's quite awful. I don't recommend it for anybody who doesn't love voiceover.

**Chuck** (1:52)
Yeah, we read our audio book and it was not fun. And this is two guys who talk for a living into a microphone. And it was pretty painstaking.

**Josh** (2:02)
Yeah. And the director was even great. Yeah.

**Chuck** (2:04)
No, everyone did a great job. Everyone was awesome. It had nothing to do with that. It was just very monotonous. It just wasn't for us, you know. We're very off the cuff, obviously, the way we do our show and did not transfer over to like exact readings of things.

**Josh** (2:20)
Yeah, for sure. Like exact. It has to be exact or you'll get yelled at.

**Chuck** (2:25)
All right. So Don LaFontaine was born in Duluth, Minnesota.
He served in the military and the, well, he's in the army because he was in the United States Army Band and chorus and worked as a recording engineer there. And once he got out, he continued engineering at the National Recording Studios in New York City. And in 1962, he got hooked up with a producer, a radio producer named Floyd Peterson. And Peterson just happened to be working with Stanley, the great Stanley Kubrick on Dr. Strangelove, was creating these kind of radio promos.

**Josh** (2:59)
Right.

**Chuck** (2:59)
And it was like really successful. So he and LaFontaine hooked up and said, all right, we should like be like legit partners from now on.

**Josh** (3:08)
Yeah, they did legitimize it. They formed Floyd L. Peterson, Inc. And I think this is the impression I have is that initially, Don LaFontaine just kept doing his engineering thing.

**Chuck** (3:21)
Yeah, yeah, I think so.

**Josh** (3:22)
It wasn't until 1965, a few years into their partnership, that I guess there was some scheduling mix up.
And a voiceover actor didn't show up on time or for their slot. So Don LaFontaine had to step in and record some radio spots for the Gunfighters of Casa Grande for MGM. And MGM said, Brother, we are just going to buy this whole thing outright. This proof of concept is done. You invented the plane with the seatback trays and everything right out of the gate.

**Chuck** (3:59)
Yeah, they're like, hey you, with the perfect voice, give this a shot.

**Josh** (4:02)
Exactly.

**Chuck** (4:03)
This was at a time when film production and promotion were all kind of done in house. Like you made the movie and then you didn't go to a different company to like cut the trailer or whatever. Like they did it all themselves. And they were like, hey, I think we can disrupt this tradition. And they, I don't know why that was funny.
Why was that funny?

**Josh** (4:26)
Disruptors, disruption. It's just such like a 2013 horrible Silicon Valley horror show.

**Chuck** (4:33)
Yeah, I wasn't thinking of it in the terms of disruptors, but they literally disrupted. But yeah, you're right.

**Josh** (4:39)
Yeah. But no, no, I mean, I wasn't laughing at you, Chuck.

**Chuck** (4:42)
No, no, I know. You're laughing at people that use the word disruptors with a straight face.