Rand Unwrapped (6 page)

In 1984, I had been teaching at University of Southern California s School of Theatre already for eight years. I was also teaching acting and some other theatre courses at Pierce College and the Theatre Academy at City College. My classes were a combination of Beginning and Advanced Acting, Improvisation and Theatre History. I hated teaching Theatre History. Not because I didn't like the subject. It just reminded me too much of having to sit through classes like that in graduate school. But the acting classes were fun and I got to teach a wide variety of students at all levels. During this period, I also auditioned and got a part in a new Broadway bound musical called
Those Ringlings.
It was a biographical musical extravaganza about the famous Ringling Brothers Circus. I played a sort of pocket picking slime ball grafter and had to sing some of the worst songs in the show. It premiered at a small theatre for backers (which I don't remember the name) in Hollywood, which is now a car dealership. The producer promised us that the show's backers were planning to send the production to New York. But, the two leads in the show constantly sang out of tune and after a run of several weeks, the show thankfully closed. I was also taking acting classes with Milton Katselas first at the Zephyr Theatre on Melrose and later at the Beverly Hills Playhouse.

Milton's scene study class was a non-nonsense dedicated group made up of mostly of working actors, well known celebrities, writers and directors. The only way you could get into this group was through recommendation. I was directing a trio of Pirandello one acts at the Front Row Theatre. Leo Rossi, who played the lead in one of the plays
Che Che,
was student of Milton Katselas. Leo was a wonderful actor who would have the audience in the palm of his hand whenever he was on the stage. His performance as Che Che in the play was a showstopper and we became friends. He suggested that he would recommend me for Milton's class. I accepted his offer to help me and joined the class. It was a great experience to work with such of varied group of talented actors, writer's and directors. I with several of my classmates from Milton's Katselas's group became part of an ensemble production of Lyle Kessler's play
Orphans.
This production, a workshop only, with a cast of three (Dennis Holahan, Jerry Rand and myself) directed by Joseph Mascolo
of
Jaws 2 (1978)
and
Days of our Life
was never presented to a civilian audience. Only industry insiders, friends, fellow classmates and family saw this workshop production of Orphans. It was a great opportunity for me to work with top-notch people and work on a play from the ground level. A subsequent production of the play went on a year later directed by Gary Sinise and opened at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre before starting its successful Broadway run with Albert Finney. I never made it to the Broadway production but was grateful for the opportunity to be in this production. It was during this period of my life that I submitted my picture and resume to Harmony Gold and their production of the new animated series
Robotech
.

I don't remember actually what was said to me when I got the call for the
Robotech
audition, but the next thing I knew (well several days later) I was tooling down Sunset Boulevard looking for this odd named place called Intersound. Intersound was located in that wonderfully amorphous part of the Sunset strip between the “snazzy” Sunset Plaza clothing shops and cafes and the more artistic section where you could find a more creative clientele at Tower Records, the Old World Restaurant and Spagos. All of these places including Intersound are now gone. At that time, of my audition, finding a parking space in that part of town was often harder to do than the audition itself. But that day, I drove around several times and was able to snag a coveted space to park my car without having to walk several miles.

Intersound, seemed an unlikely place to discover the likes of the
Zentradi, Robotech Masters
or the
Invid.
If you didn't know exactly where you were going while walking down Sunset you could easily pass it. It was an unassuming small stucco building that looked as though it were dropped there by Dorothy Gale and a twister. It might have been a house in its past and looked quite uncomfortable surrounded on each side by larger buildings. When you stood directly in front of it, there was a downward sloping driveway on the left that took you to a very small parking lot in the rear. The front door as I remember was made of a dark brown heavy wood and had an almost medieval feel to it. On that audition day I slowly opened it to reveal inside a large group of actors filling every inch of the space. This wasn't as they say in the business a
cattle call
but it
was
crowded and filled with anticipation. There wasn't a lot of room for sitting, so after you signed in, you sort of crashed wherever you could find a place to land. There was a wooden front desk with lots of scattered papers and message pads that looked like more like a debris field than a place where someone sat. On that day, I don't remember anyone sitting at that desk. The walls were wood paneled with the same material that the door was made of and beyond the front desk there was a studio door on the right and a hallway, which lead to additional studios. But that day, my focus was on the first door on the right, that's where all the actors were going in and then, of course coming out.

Now I want to stop for a moment and just fill in a bit. Most auditions, I've attended, for animated projects usually have a some sort of story board or illustrations of characters to be voiced, short descriptions of each character and of course sides containing the lines to be spoken during the audition. The term “sides” refers to several pages or dialogue selections from the full script. Each character had individual line selections or pages from the script that are used in the audition. By reading the actual lines of a character the producer or director can have a clear cut idea of how that character will actually sound in the full production. Now that day, at the
Robotech
audition, I don't remember seeing any
storyboards or pictures of any kind. There may have been all of these materials available, but I just don't remember ever seeing them. They might have been part of what was scattered all over the wooden desk or on a wall in the lobby area. But, I don't remember ever seeing or using them. However, it doesn't mean that they weren't there. I want to make this distinction because I want you to know that I had no idea of what kind of project
Robotech
was and what kinds of characters were part of it. As I sat there that day, wondering about the audition, I thought to myself, “I haven't done animation or lip sync this for a long while and a really haven't a clue of what's going on.” But then I thought, “what the hell, voice over is just like riding a bike. Once you do it, it stays with you for life. So, I should be fine.”

The wait to get into the audition room with the door on the right seemed to take forever. Some actors went in and then came right out and then there were others that seemed like they were in there for an hour. Finally, my name was called and I approached the door on the right that I think said simply
Studio A
. When I got inside the room was dark, (much darker than the room I was waiting in) with the exception of a small stand with a script on it and in front of it all a rather small television monitor. Behind me, was a glass wall that housed the engineer's booth. It was a friendly atmosphere and I put on the headphones and was told to check out and voice a character. It was not one of the major characters that we have all come to know. It might have been a pilot or someone like that saying something like, “Yes, sir!” I had to match the line on the page to the character's lip movements and what was physically happening on the screen. No problem. Right? Well, not so easy. The first thing you do at a voice over audition is slate your name. That means when you are cued to do so, you simply state your name into the microphone. After you do that, you are cued to begin. I was cued and then slated and then cued to begin. The images on the small television monitor moved by quickly and then I quickly looked down at the line on the script, as I had done thousands of times before, but just couldn't remember it as I looked up at the screen. I tried again and the results weren't much better. So much for riding a bike. I thought to myself, “When I did this in Hawaii, the screen was much larger. I wasn't used to such a small television monitor.” In the studio, there was silence and then in an instant it all started to come back to me. I did one last take and that one was a keeper with perfect sync. And that was it. Before I knew it, I was going out the Studio A door and another actor was coming in. It all happened so fast and I suddenly found myself walking out the front door and walking back to my car. When I made it back to my car and noticed that the meter had run out but I hadn't gotten a ticket. This is a small miracle in West Hollywood. I thought to myself, “No ticket! This is a miracle! This
Robotech
audition was a disaster but at least I didn't get a parking ticket. I'm really thankful for that.” It was late afternoon and as I drove home I turned off Sunset Boulevard on to Laurel Canyon toward Studio City, I started thinking about a whole lot of “woulda shoulda's couldas” that I might have done at the audition but now it was too late. I sucked and there was nothing at this point I could do about it.
Robotech
, whatever it was, was something I wouldn't be a part of.

Several days went by when I received a call from Intersound to show up for a session several days later. It wasn't one of those “congratulations! You got the part calls.” The person on the phone routinely asked if I was available to work at a certain day and time. Of course I said yes and that was it. It didn't feel like I was offered a job. It rather felt like I was being invited to a party. My
Robotech
adventure was about to begin.

In a traditional setting, when you are cast in a project you usually are cast to play one role or if the roles are small, you play several roles within a total production.
Robotech
was different in the sense that (especially for me in the beginning) I never had an idea of what I would be doing until I arrived at the studio. I usually was called for “bits and walla.” When I showed up and looked down at the script, I would find out right there on the spot. That was not the case, of course in the third season, when I knew I was playing Rand. But even within that framework, I never really had an understanding of where my character was going within the storyline and how that storyline would influence my characters relationship with everyone else. One thing I wish we did in those early days was as an ensemble meeting to get a sense of the
Robotech
series as a whole. There was only one person who knew that, Carl Macek.

Carl Macek, like Da Vinci or Michelangelo always had an extremely clear idea of the total canvass he was working on. The
Robotech
television series was assembled from three diverse sources including The
Super Dimension Fortress Macross
,
Super Dimenson Cavalry Southern Cross
and
Genesis Climber Mospeada
and only Carl Macek really had a concept of how it would all fit together. As an actor in the show, I never really had a sense of what that picture was. I wish that we could have all gotten together as a group and told the story so that we would all know what are part was in the whole piece. The very nature of the way animation is done, is compartmental. You have individual writers writing scripts and then actors coming in at various points separately to voice only the parts of the script that their character appears in. While it is nobody's fault, the problem with this process is you don't have a sense of the whole as would with a painting, a play or film. Each person, works on his or her own part of the mosaic and then it is put together. Let's not romanticize filmmaking. It too is a compartmentalized process. I can't tell you how many times actors will show up the first day of shooting to learn that they are filming the their character's death scene at the end of the film. It would be like shooting
Romeo and Juliet
beginning with the death scene on the first day of filming. But I guess I'm really thinking like a theatre person. In the theatre, usually at the first rehearsal, you would meet the entire cast and read the work in its totality aloud. At some point the director would discuss a point of view that they would take in the presentation of the production. If communicated effectively, everyone in the cast would at least have a general idea of the how the director chose to present the work, the storyline and how their character would fit within that structure. It would still leave room for creative interpretation but everyone (at least theoretically) would be going in the same direction. I would have loved a group
Robotech
meeting to meet and work with all of the actors at least once or twice so that I could get a feel for their character interpretations or even better to work on one episode at a time in an ensemble. Depending when I recorded, I rarely saw the other actors in the series unless they recorded either before or after me.

The truth was though, that the show as one conceptual idea was being created on the spot by all of us within the framework of Carl's imagination. Carl Macek was the glue that held us all together and could, at the drop of a hat, tell you in great detail all of the nuances of the story line and its characters. He was a great storyteller and had a keen sense of how it all should fit together.

At that point in the series, I didn't have one of the major roles in the show. During those early days, I did mostly what they called “bits and walla.” Bits are of course all the smaller character parts that serve the main story line. These parts included characters
such as pilots or civilians with names like “Dan,” “Bobby,” or “First Lieutenant.” The lines these bit part characters delivered served to further the plot by providing exposition or to be available to be blown to bits by the
Zentrade
or
Robotech Masters.
The group sessions were called
walla.