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When movies with dirty words are on cable, who does the dubbing?
By: Katie, Charlotte, North Carolina
A.B. Replies: Let's handle the juiciest detail first: Some actors' contracts require the thesps to do G-rated voice-overs for future TV consumption, but most do not. Most of the time, those family-friendly versions of movies are not voiced by the original screen stars, but rather, by soundalikes.
So, when you hear an expletive redubbed as "melon farmer" ("Flip you, melon farmer!") in the TV version of Pulp Fiction or Repo Man, that very likely is a professional mimicker of Samuel L. Jackson. And when Trinity mutters "shucks" on the TNT version of The Matrix in December, that probably wasn't Carrie-Ann Moss either. (By the way, "Jesus Christ" became "jeepers creepers!")
"Some actors insist on it being their own voice," a film distributor explains to this B!tch. "But most don't care. It's the same for foreign dubs. Some actors insist on doing their own--Jodie Foster is famous for that. She does her own French dubs."
Fancy. I'm almost impressed.
Sometimes, clever movie editors can use an actor's own dialogue to cover up filthy words in other parts of the film. Other editors turn to proven soundalikes. Still, others use voice-over people who sound almost nothing like the original actor, but because we're talking about isolated words, audiences usually don't notice. In any case, the movie actor usually isn't even told about it.
Bruce Willis simply turns on FX one day and sees himself spitting out "yippee-ki-yay, Mister Falcon" and boggles over how that got here.
"If they can pull from the existing dialogue and loop it over, sometimes they will, but that's time consuming, so it's only if you are talking A-list actors," my source explains. "All dubs are a little different, but there are a zillion agencies who have different people available for voice-over work. You get a guy to say 'flake you,' and if he even sounds a tiny bit like Vince Vaughn, nobody is going to notice."
Hey, I notice. Flake you, melon farmer!
Most often, this shadowy realm of the "flipping airhead" is dominated by faceless voice-over actors, a mysterious gnome-like race rarely seen outside of darkened studios. These velvet-throated leprechauns usually command about $700 for each one- to four-hour dubbing session, not counting the 10 percent that goes to their agents.
Some big stars have their own hard-working soundalikes, people who regularly do their G-rated dub work.
"I know Eddie Murphy and Robert De Niro have them," voice-over agent Wes Stevens tells this B!tch.
As do I. That voice you hear on my radio show is actually that of Jodie Foster.
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