Okay, folks, the Segundo site has been tweaked a bit and I’ve caught up with all but one of the outstanding capsules. Still needs some work and I may add another column, but if you have any problems or specific requests, let me know and I’ll employ them in the next few days. Also, more podcasts are coming this week.
Category / Bat Segundo
Coming Soon to The Bat Segundo Show
You may know Peter Fernandez and Corinne Orr from their voiceover acting for Speed Racer. In addition to writing and directing the American scripts, Fernandez was the voice of Speed Racer and Racer X. Orr was the voice of Trixie and Spritle. But what you may not realize is that both of these actors began their careers just as old time radio was on the decline. (Indeed, Orr even appeared on an episode of CBS Radio Mystery Theater, Himan Brown’s effort in the 1970s to bring back old time radio.) Since one of my side projects has involved attempting to revive old time radio for the podcasting age, I am greatly interested in this generation of great voiceover actors. I’m also a fan of Speed Racer. Fernandez and Orr — both of whom are especially friendly people — kindly took some time out to talk with me while I was bumping around The New York Anime Festival. There were many topics discussed during our conversation. (After many curious years, I finally learned the story behind the third season Star Blazers casting switchover, which will be revealed once the podcast goes up.) But as it turned out, we got to the subject of old time radio pretty quickly.
Correspondent: Was there a stigma in terms of female actors doing boys at the time?
Orr: No. Everybody did it. (laughs) Not everybody, but it was common because we were coming out of the radio era.
Correspondent: Yeah.
Orr: And people had doubled and tripled in shows. So…
Fernandez: Well, on radio though — and I grew up partly doing the radio shows from the East Coast, which was where most of the dramatic shows came from. And they used real kids. There was one boy named Ronald Liss, who started doing radio when he was a year and a half. He could read.
Orr: Really?
Correspondent: Wow.
Fernandez: Yeah. Quite a bit. He went to the same school I did and they skipped him three grades.
Orr: I knew him. I loved him.
Correspondent: I’ve listened to a lot of old time radio and I actually have heard children. So that’s definitely true.
Fernandez: Yes.
Correspondent: Actually, this brings up a question I wanted to ask both of you, in terms of animation and anime reflecting this old time radio feel. Rather, there’s a whole generation that grew up who didn’t listen to old time radio. I only discovered it just by complete curiosity. And I’m wondering if you feel, both as actors, that there has been something lost in the last forty years.
Fernandez: I want to address that. My favorite medium of all time is radio, and it always will be. You’ve heard the cliche “theater of the mind.” And it’s absolutely true. Every listener had a different picture of what he was listening to in his head. And it was a marvelous medium. And great for actors. It was live!
Orr: We do a convention each year called Friends of Old Time Radio in New Jersey. And it’s glorious. They recreate all the old shows with some of the original actors who are still alive, and they use other people to do the shows. And it’s great fun! We do it each year. And I just won an award last year.
Correspondent: Oh! Congratulations.
Orr: Thank you.
Correspondent: Well, we’re talking about radio as “It was a fabulous medium.” Do you think there’s absolutely no hope — particularly in this podcasting era; I mean, here we are talking on a podcast — of old time radio returning?
Fernandez: I don’t think it can ever return. Because now it’s a commercial every three minutes on whatever you’re watching or listening to. Three or four minutes. However, I was thinking of maybe devising three minute segments of soap operas — you know, original ones. Not going back to the old ones. And having a little brief drama or comedy. Whatever. Lasting only for the three minutes. What stations would run it, I don’t know. Because you need X amount of stations to pay for it.
Correspondent: But what I’m suggesting is, is that here we have this podcasting medium in which this isn’t a factor. In which you can have a sponsor sponsor an entire podcast. So I’m wondering if there’s any hope of old time radio that’s lengthy thirty-minute drama.
Fernandez: I don’t think there’s an audience for it.
Correspondent: Really.
Fernandez: Yeah, if they want to spend a half hour, they want to see it on television or whatever.
Correspondent: Even if they’re walking in the streets with their iPods? Have you considered that? I mean, people do need to listen to something on the subway.
Fernandez: Well, “listen,” there’s the key. To listen. Is it enough to just listen? Do you want to listen to a book being read or — I don’t know. I just don’t think that people are used to it mentally now.
Segundo Cleanup
Apologies to all for the unfinished capsules for the last seven shows and the delay in getting these most recent shows up. It’s been extremely busy around here. I should have the capsule situation rectified in a few days. In the meantime, four new shows are available. Beyond the two part interview with Tom McCarthy, which touches upon a remarkable range of topics, you won’t want to miss Show #157 if you’re interested in the future of independent publishing. Multiple streaming and downloading options are, as always, available at the main site. Thanks for your patience.
BSS #157: Roy Kesey & Dan Wickett
Condition of Mr. Segundo: Wondering if Roy Kesey is a “real” Roy.
Author: Roy Kesey and Dan Wickett
Subjects Discussed: Writing stories in Beijing, exotic stories, conversational vs. descriptive stories, Carlo Ginzburg, working from pre-existing conversations, text that kick-starts a character’s voice, personal experience and intuitive narrative choices, the relationship between art forms and words, Jack Kerouac’s scroll, the worst case scenario of the artist’s lifestyle, baroque vs. conversational stories, finding the heart vs. putting together the puzzle pieces, imbuing a baroque character with a human sense, the advantages and disadvantages in “working on only one element at a time,” the difficulties of cooking a seven-course meal, the relationship between problem-solving and being a narrative ventriloquist, limits to the level of invention, Elmore Leonard, Donald Barthelme, cathartic responses to unpleasant airport experiences, dashes in dialogue, on being seduced by Dan Wickett, and starting up a new publishing company.
EXCERPT FROM SHOW:
Kesey: I like playing with diction levels. I like the way that people talk. I like the way they hide things from themselves sometimes when they talk. And all of my stories start with voice. I get a piece of voicing and I try to figure out who it is who would talk like that, and then get them in trouble and try to get them out. And so it all starts with talking. And that doesn’t mean that they’re all going to end up as conversation. But the “Cheese” story was from — the book that the epigraph comes from, a book called The Cheese and the Worms by Carlo Ginzburg, which is a fantastic history book about a 16th century miller in the Fruili, in Italy, who had some pretty strange beliefs and who was pretty outspoken about them and got in some trouble and ended up being burned at the stake. And Ginzburg went into the — he was maybe the first person to go into the archives of the Vatican and get into the history of the Roman inquisition, but looking specifically for places where the inquisitors and the the people that they’re asking questions of are kind of talking past each other. Because these are people — he’s kind of the father of microhistory — and he’s interested in these people that only exist in terms of history now, because they had some kind of problem with an authority figure. Otherwise, they would have totally disappeared from history.
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BSS #156: Andrea Barrett
Condition of Mr. Segundo: Praising the smell of authors.
Author: Andrea Barrett
Subjects Discussed: The similarities between pre-World War I and contemporary environments, stumbling upon 1916, sanatoriums, The Magic Mountain, ethnic backgrounds, dwelling upon immigrants and working class backgrounds, blowhard intellectuals, cure cottages, the American Protective League, writing in first person plural, working from two green volumes of chemistry, amateurs in science, X-rays and radiation, the dark underbelly of science, research and ensuring verisimilitude, period clothing, symbols of an ethereal environment, unintentional imagery, stylizing a love quartet, characters who maintain a love of science, character names, Eudora Welty, on being a chaotic writer, the 1916 silent film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, on being labeled a “historical fiction” writer, writing in the past vs. writing in the present, inventing details vs. being inspired by real-life details, the importance of architecture, entertainment vs. atmospheric narrative emphasis, movie rights and film adaptation, how Barrett’s names turn into characters, and the access to inner lives within novels.
EXCERPT FROM SHOW:
Barrett: That time — just the time of the First World War, before the war — was really the last time as a culture when we could imagine science as wholly benign, as something that was only going to help people, as something that was only full of intellectual excitement. It is the First World War, really, that gives us the dark underbelly of science. It’s when X-rays are discovered and then they’re found to be damaging. It’s when the chemical and dye industry is bringing all these wonderful things to light and at the same time they’re making poison gas. It’s when cars are invented and then they turn into tanks. It’s when airplanes are invented and they drop bombs. Everything gets turned so quickly in the First World War into darkness.
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