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Hangin’ Out withSponge Bob and Patrickby Lynn B.
These two friends are hilarious! They could have their own stand up comedy routine. Tom does a great imitation of President Bush for us; “We have a mandate”. Throughout the interview, both guys keep going into their character voices which cracks us up. Unlike for many animated movies, these voice actors often work together, side-by-side in the same booth recording their parts. Sponge Bob creator Stephen Hillenburg is in there with them, creating a really tight-knit family unit…and sometimes laughing and ruining the recording. So, picture yourself in that cozy pineapple under the sea…. AGW: Sponge Bob’s voice is really distinctive. Tom: It was just a matter of finding the voice that went with the drawing and his descriptive little bio that Steve [Hillenburg, the creator] had made prior to pitching the series. He always had me in mind sensibility-wise for Sponge Bob. We worked it out together several times before he even pitched the show to Nickelodeon and figured out where the voice placement was [slipping into Sponge Bob]. We just figured out how to twist it around a make a voice that was young, not really a child, not really a man either. Just sort of like an elf on helium [laughter]. Bill: This guy can do this voice high volume for four hours and still be funny. It’s a blend of remarkable comedic timing and this incredible sound he can make. It always leaves us in awe to be with Tom when he is working. If anyone tried this for five minutes, they would damage themselves. Tom: It’s a fun show. Everybody works so hard. People say ‘oh, you must be having so much fun’, which is true but when you go in there and see Rodger Bumpass who plays Squidward just screaming for a four hour session with the veins popping out on his head, it’s awesome. He did that for a whole session and they said that the recording didn’t come out. He had to come back and scream for four more hours. Bill has to do a lot of intense bellowing and Sponge Bob does a lot of James Brown-esque shrieking. It’s a weird specialized job, a whole different kind of acting. It’s a weird skill. I’m just glad we can make a living at it. AGW: Do you guys always work together? Bill: Gratefully, yes. That’s one of the pleasures of this job and has a lot to do with the success of it. We’re always in the booth together. It’s a cast performance. We get a performance experience when we’re working on an episode or a scene from the movie and that’s such a difference. Tom: Everyone’s there and it’s fun. It’s a fun, retro job. It’s as close as I’ll get to being an old time radio actor. AGW: It is unusual for animated films to let the cast record in the same room together. Tom: I think that’s easier logistically for them. You can bring each person in and cut it together later. Also, if you are dealing with celebrities, you only get Mr. Big Star for thirty minutes then Mr. Big Star is leaving. They almost have to do it like that. This is more time consuming. It’s slower, the records take quite a bit longer and Steve is in the room with us the whole time and is a very busy fellow. Bill: Steve isn’t the man behind the glass. He’s actually got a little table in the booth with us and he sits there and doodles and he has cans [earphones] on and a little microphone too and often he’ll pitch in with the group recordings but he likes to be present with us. Tom: I’ve done a lot of animation and he’s the only person who sits on the same side of the glass [booth] as the actors instead of on the other side of the window. He’s in there with you. He’ll occasionally ruin tapes by laughing. We’ll go ‘Steve you can’t laugh. We’ve been doing this for five years, come on’. AGW: In the world of Sponge Bob, does he have a family; a mom and dad? Tom: His parents have been in a couple of episodes as needed but more as plot points than characters. I think Steve likes keeping him sort of mysterious. He’s just this weird guy who lives in a pineapple and loves life. AGW: Would Sponge Bob be surprised at his own success? Tom: He doesn’t know he’s on a show. That’s an interesting conceit of the show that Steve has been hardcore about maintaining. Sponge Bob doesn’t exist in our world. He doesn’t directly pitch products. There is a Sponge Bob prize in a Burger King kids’ meal but the commercial never involves Sponge Bob going [in Sponge Bob’s voice] ‘Hey come down to Burger King and get my kids’ meal’. Steve feels that we’re observing this alien planet almost. Sponge Bob and his friends don’t have our TV shows or know our celebrities or know our music. They don’t know what Target is. We are observers of this world. It’s not like ‘The Simpsons” where you have celebrities playing themselves. Bill: [looking blank like Patrick] I’ve observed my kitchen sponge for hours and nothing has ever happened. AGW: Oookay. Was it hard to do an entire film where the characters go a lot of places they don’t usually go? Bill: It’s a wonderful progression to break out of the eleven minute segments and do this epic, this road adventure movie. Having the characters secure within the writers and performers. Tom: Scenes were longer, recordings were longer. Instead of recording an eleven minute episode in a four hour session, we would do one scene for a four hour session and then come back a few days later and do that scene again. In TV animation you do it three or four times and you’re done. We can’t go back. We’re movin’ on. It was nice to have that luxury to do it and massage the rhythms a little bit. You’re usually going home and saying ‘argh, why didn’t I do that a different way? It’s gonna be on TV forever’. It’s maddening. On this movie we got to do it again. AGW: Did you fellows sing the song in the movie and do you usually do that? Bill: There have been a few songs. Tom: Yeah and boy this is a good time for me to plug the two songs I wrote for the soundtrack album. There is a song for Patrick called ‘Under My Rock’ which is a tour of his rock, kind of a ‘60’s garage band, like a ‘Wild Thing’ kind of a song. And then there’s a song called “Best Day Ever” that Sponge Bob sings over the closing credits of the movie and a bonus track called “Employee of the Month”. AGW: Do you get to deviate from the script at all when recording? Bill: It’s pretty closely crafted before we enter the room but Steve likes to hear how we would do something and sometimes he’ll change his mind. ‘That wasn’t what I was thinking of but I like that’. Tom: It runs the gamut. it’s right brain, left brain. Sometimes it’s Math and sometimes it’s Jazz. You never know. We see our jobs as being to put this vision from Steve’s brain out on screen as close as we can to how he sees it. AGW: You are shooting a new TV season. Hasn’t Steve moved on? Tom: He’s involved in all things Sponge Bob but he’s less hands on than he was during the first five seasons. But he still approves every story. Bill: We’ve done four half hours and after the new year we’ll be starting sixteen more half hours. AGW: How frustrating is it to be the voices of these ultra-popular characters and people don’t know who you are when they see you? Tom: It’s the antithesis of frustrating. It’s a perk as far as I’m concerned. To me it’s the best of both worlds. You get to be on a popular TV show and play a fun character but this character doesn’t have your face, which would be creepy to me anyway. I feel sorry for Mr. Spock. It’s a drag. Bill: You pair that with getting to perform wonderful material completely free of cosmetic hysteria. That’s a beautiful thing. AGW: And you probably don’t have to worry about getting older like everybody else does in Hollywood. Tom: When I first started doing this, one of the things I noticed was there were older people recording in the booth. I mean over 25. It was like wow. Being good at your job matters more in this little corner of show business than looks or heat or whatever. Being good is how you get to be part of the A-team of voice over guys. As long as you got good you would play a lot. AGW: Did you meet any of the big star voice-over actors for the film like Alec Baldwin or Scarlett Johanssen? Tom: Yeah, they did all their scenes with us. Alec Baldwin was on the phone doing it in real time with us. He was in New York. Scarlett was there with us.
Pictures courtesy and copyright Paramount Pictures, 2004 |
 
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In
Santa Monica recently, we got to sit down with a yellow kitchen sponge
and a big pink starfish! Not really but the next best thing; the voices
of Sponge Bob Squarepants and his pal Patrick, Tom Kenny and Bill Fagerbakke.
You can tell which character the guys voice the minute the actors walk
into the room. Tom (Sponge Bob) is thinner, by his own admission, more
nerdy and he wears glasses. Bill is a big guy with a lower voice (Patrick).