"Over the Hedge" Voices

In Theaters May 19

Animated films often trade on the celebrities lending voices to their characters. Dreamworks Pictures’ Over the Hedge features Bruce Willis, Garry Shandling, Wanda Sykes and many others. The technique of voice recording requires each actor to perform alone, so coming together for a cast interview was the first time the trio ever met. They couldn’t resist the opportunity to joke amongst themselves.

“You bet I would be in the middle,” Sykes began as she sat in between the men. “Gotta keep these two in line.”

After Willis commented that it was in fact their first meeting, Shandling said, “We never spent time together but do not misunderstand that the three of us have been in this room at the Regent before under circumstances that will remain private, right?”

In a rare moment of clarity with the actors, they revealed that each one had legitimate insecurities about their performances. “It was difficult for me because I was trying to find the voice for this character,” said Sykes. “It wasn’t Wanda Sykes. Usually I just show up. People hire me to come in and just be me and just deliver a joke. I’ve never had a character that actually had an arc so it was like ‘I might have to act.’ I’ve never done that before. I felt very vulnerable. It was very stressful.”

Regular action hero Willis even admitted he didn’t know what to do in front of the microphone. “It’s really hard,” he said. “It’s like standing there in your underwear. You’re just vulnerable. They take away all the tools. Normally you have the other actors in the room and there’s a give and take, especially in comedy. And then two years go by and they show you a rough cut of the film and it’s like someone has just done the most complicated Euclidian geometry problem and gone, ‘Here is the answer.’ And you know why? Because everybody’s laughing. At the end of the day, all this sh*t that we went through that was anxiety causing and vulnerability and lost in the woods and all that all goes away because you hear people laughing. That’s the answer to the puzzle they confronted us all with.”

Then it became evident that Wanda Sykes was waiting since the beginning of Willis’s speech to claim that she actually had to perform in her underwear. Shandling ran with that one. “You guys are lucky you got to wear underwear. I was standing there with nothing. I said, ‘Is this what everybody’s doing?’ They said ‘yeah’ and I said, ‘What is this flash camera for? Don’t sit there, help me. Why are you taking stills? Are we doing everything at once? Can’t I wear something?’ It’s what everybody’s doing except you had underwear on.”

Realizing the time to open up was over, Willis joined in the mockery. “There was only one time really. It was an experimental thing. I said ‘Can I wear the shell that Garry wears?’ They had this big human shell when we first started out. I think it didn’t work out for you to do the lines in your big turtle shell. I had it on one time and it was uncomfortable so I just did it in my underwear.”

Sykes took things to the next level. “They filmed me in bed,” she said. “I don’t understand that. I think they thought that that’s when I really stunk it up. I don’t know. It was weird. He had a whole different experience.”

“I saw some of that,” Willis added. “I actually got a DVD out of it. I don’t know if you guys got one.”

An indignant Shandling retorted, “I don’t know what this alone thing is. I was naked and there were about a hundred people there.”

With respectable actors playing talking animals, one would have to wonder how they imagined their characters. But one would also be sparking more hilarity. “I actually went out and lived with some woodland creatures for about three weeks,” Willis joked. “Didn’t get anything from them so that didn’t work, had to throw all that preparation away. I was bit by a possum. It, apparently, is called an opossum, did you know that? It’s not a possum and they actually do play possum if they are frightened. Did you ever hear that playing possum?”

Willis actually steered the conversation back to the anxiety of doing voice work and working alone. “Here is the problem. Without seeing an entire script which you normally get, without the opportunity to rehearse with the other actors… if I had an idea of what Wanda was going to do or what Garry was going to do… I was just guessing. All I saw was printed words on a board, that they had stapled the script onto a board. And maybe [director] Karey [Kirkpatrick] would read Wanda’s lines but he wouldn’t do it the way Wanda had done it. They wouldn’t even let me see or hear what the other actors had done. I don't know if they let you guys hear it but it was impossible. It was impossible and that’s crazy-making because those are your tools. Those are the things you rely on as an actor to try to create or at least feel comfortable that what you’re doing is on the right track.”

Since Willis was the one answering real questions, he started getting more attention. But it didn’t take Shandling long to call the attention back to himself. “Why is he so demanding of asking Bruce this question? It’s unbelievable. I’m happy to leave. I’m surprised you allowed me in the room. You had everything designed to hurt me. But that’s okay, that’ s why Bruce came in with me. He said, ‘I’ll cover you.’”

At that point, it was easier to just let the trio amuse themselves. Willis still took the lead. “I thought there should have been more exploded animals. Come on, that was a staple of cartoon characters. A ton of dynamite could blow and your jaw falls off or your leg falls off. There’s one explosion in this where the umbrella burns up and we plunge to earth.”

Shandling added, “When you list actors that you admire, now you would have to go back and add the Road Runner. Now you can see the difficulty of running into a wall that is painted like a cave and pick yourself up and say, ‘What are you telling me to do? I would be dead if I did that.’ Am I right?”

Over the Hedge opens May 19.