This is Chris Staviski again with Mr. Brian Corder from Toxic Shock TV and today were down here in Van Nuys, were at the first annual sci-fi global convention and we ran into the man of not a million voices, not two million voices, but the man of a billion voices Mr. Billy West. I'm going to let him tell you what shows he's been on and maybe he might grace us all with a couple of his voices.

Well I decided to run for office for many reasons, I saw that there were a lot of wrongs to be righted, I saw that there were a lot of suffering to be unsuffered. I stand for the people; I'd be a fool to stand in front of them and Vote NO on Proposition 74, Thank you... Now kiss my ass! hahaha. That’s my acceptance speech. I'd be a great politician.

That’s pretty much what they all are, that’s the whole mentality.

Schwarzenegger ya know. [in Arnold's voice] I need more power, I need the people to give me more power so I can fuck things up more.

You asshole. He's a phony, a republican menace to society. I'll kick his ass, I'll go right up to Sacramento, kick in the door. [crash] come here! come here, come here...

[in Arnold's voice] what are you doing? why are you so strong?!

He didn't have to do steroids to get that strong either, that’s pretty good!

I have no use for that guy he's a phony. He's going down the drain, he's another tentacle of the white house, is all he is. You know, they got their marching orders, and they want to do everything they can do redistrict California so it will be put in sole Republican's control and it will give him more power to do certain things, like cut salaries of fire fighters and teachers and nurses. Its like, what planet are you from. I'm beginning to believe his movies.

[in Arnold's voice] Total Recall... Get your ass back to Mars.

That’s what I'd love to tell him.

Politically I believe that they just need to wipe out all politicians right now and bring in people like us who just want to party, have a good time and make some kick ass movies. Some of the voices you have done is for the great show Futurama, which I miss. Can you give our audience an example of the voices you did on Futurama?

[in fry's voice] Ya, I did the voice of Fry. A twenty five year old pizza delivery boy, and in the year 3000 I'm still a twenty five year old pizza delivery boy. Man, all of this prolonged exposure to radiation is making me thirsty.

He's a voice that I came up with because I didn't want anybody to replace me. I figured that if there is a voice you cannot replace it would be your own voice, when I was twenty-five. I'm fifty-four now and I'm doing the voice of a twenty five year old me and so, ya know, that’s where that came from. People ya know, the other characters, Zoidberg and Zapp Brannigan, the professor are cartoonie enough that there will be some nut come along and can imitate him perfectly, do them, and you can lose your gig on those. But not the one with your own voice, its very tough to imitate someone’s real speaking voice.

Classic.

BILLYWEST.COM

Mr. West, you have also done some more characters on the great Ren and Stimpy. Which characters did you do on that?

I did Stimpson J. Cat, who was just a big dumb retarded cat and he sounded like Larry Fine from The Three Stooges, is where the impetus came from. Larry was the Stooge that nobody gave a damn about, and I thought that he was the greatest, because the little that he said would be so peripheral and so funny to me. "Hey Mo, you put too much stincel on the tree". it was like "Hey Mo, you took my money didn't cha?". "Its Shemp, he's come back to haunt us." I just loved that, so you know, you couldn't have Stimpy sound like a depressed old Jewish guy, so you had to adhere to the comic, cartoon parameters of that universe and so, it Stimpy was like Larry Fine crossed with a seven year old. "I picked em myself".

Here is one of our all-time favorite questions and one that all of our fans at Toxic Shock TV like to hear. Who do you think is the biggest prick that is out there right now?

Aside from John Chris Fellucy? Geeze I don't know, prick in what realm? There is a Zillion realms.

Just in general because we could all name pricks. Brian over there from Toxic Shock TV would probably say that I'm the biggest prick around.

But your a pretend prick, you can get on the microphone and say "Guess what, you suck". And then you'll go by and help an old lady across the street. I'm like that too, I'm not this tough guy. I'm hardly formidable, but I have reached an age. I started complaining about celebrities doing cartoon voices and I was raging about it because it was this phony, phony based on nothing premise of thinking that a cartoon was going to be better if you had celebrities doing the voices. It negated what I had built my whole career and life on. Suddenly I was worthless, I couldn't get a job in an animated feature, ya know, if I blew everybody. But they had to have Antonio Banderas. These people do their own voices, which bring nothing to the table except ego, and they pay them 20 million dollars to do a picture. Cameron Diaz, you know. That’s insane, I can't get my mind around it. So, I said lots of stuff in interviews, Penthouse Magazine anywhere I could. Somebody said, aren't you afraid? Aren't you afraid that you will get like blacklisted? I said "guess what, you know what? I'm fifty four years old and that’s the beauty of being an adult". You don't have to explain shit to anybody; you can say anything you want. Cause your not scared anymore. Your not scared of any boogieman that is going to come out from the showbiz pool and smash you and go back in again. You know, if anything I got more work for doing that. Because the people that were reading it, you know, they are going "Hey I know that guy, why are we not we using him?" So I got a lot of work basing off about the state of the art.

Awesome man. One other question, I know that Hollywood is in a major dump right now; they are seeing some of the lowest numbers that it has in quite some time. What do you think is the biggest problem in Hollywood?

The biggest problem is that it is totally and entirely run by Harvard business grads. Lets face it; they didn't go to Harvard to be creative types. I don't know how film or anything gets made here, because on one side of the table we don't know what it feels like to NOT have an idea, the creative types. They don't know what it feels like to not have an idea. And on the other side of the table you have got all of these guys who don't know what it feels like to have an idea, so what they will do is they will hear you outside riffing on something and they will go in the meeting and say "I have an idea, why don't we get Billy to do..." You know, that’s not an idea, that’s a thought, and you know they actually make industry out of these silly notions and comedy suffers greatly because of it. I come from the old school, Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters, Jackie Gleason. These guys could make you cry, because they had the ability, they had so much emotional investment in them. Someone who could make you sad now has the power to ripple you with laughter and split you into pieces, because now it has dimensions there, there’s worth there. Everybody now, everybody who walks in the room has an over prepared one-liner. Little kid comes down stairs with sunglasses on and everybody’s cool. Its not comedy, it really isn't. People are wacky, and wacky was invented by people who aren't fucking funny and I resent that because it’s so insulting. I remember the old shows, they did more creative stuff in the first five years of television, than we actually bare witness to today as far as comedy goes. Guys who wrote TV shows back then came from literary backgrounds. They were book writers and scholars and people who studied their craft, writing drama or anything. Now, comedy is written by kids who grew up watching TV. That’s why the movies have the same theme, there’s always like two lug heads driving in a car trying to get away from something. They don't see the huge object that's looming in the highway, and finally they see it and they look at each other and they go "Oh Shiiit" and they go through broken glass. That’s an imbecile who watched too much Starsky and Hutch or something, you know what I mean? I see it all of the time in movies, its an edict, there’s a law in Hollywood that you have to have that.

Mr. Billy West, one thing about Toxic Shock TV is that we like to cater to independent filmmakers, the wannabees, all of us out there that one day dream of making our full features etc. Do you have any advice to actors, filmmakers etc.

Yeah, sell out. No... I don't like that tortured artist stuff. There’s a million geniuses’ and a lot of them are derelicts, you gotta at least have a business sense. That’s what I'm really saying, I'm not saying sell out, but you have got to respect the stuff you do and say "This could make somebody money." You know, that’s really how you will get it showcased. You have to co-exist in a world that actually turns your stomach and makes you sick, but that’s how you get your work showcased. Your never going to make a million dollars with the first thing you did, even if its a hit, your not going to make a million dollars. Its the second thing you do, when they are all throwing offers at you, is where you make your big money. I feel for people making film and I know that there is passion out there but its so its just, a lot of its really tough to find and see it, so I skour the Internet and I look for independent stuff. I can't go see a movie with a Hollywood ending and I can't. I just can't. I wasn’t to be taken somewhere for once and not know every bit formatics and what the set piece is in 30 seconds, you know what I mean. And the arc of the story is apparent before the second act. In movies, they spend the first hour setting up shit, that’s why I fall asleep and I wake up by the second act. Because they spend an hour explaining to cement heads what’s going on. That they are afraid that they are not going to get it, and the thing is that they are not cement heads, they are intelligent people, but they get treated like. Were going to do it real slow and deliberate, because you monkeys won't understand it and that’s the kind of contemptuous attitude that I see and its for anyone who comes in with a new idea. ooh! no no no no no. Number one, this has to be pre-sold, it has to have already been a cereal or a toy. They want to insure success. You can't, you can't take out an insurance policy that you will be successful. You know its like, Kevin Rooney. Great comedian once said, "Hollywood is a bunch of people rushing to the very spot where lightning just struck". You know what I mean; creative types get the fuzzy end of the lollypop.

You know... I have to say, that out of all of the interviews that we've done on Toxic Shock TV, this is one of the best. Its real... Its nice to have somebody who's not afraid to say, you know what... its bullshit. It is complete bullshit out there, but this is how I did it, and hopefully somebody out there can do it too!

Everything is bullshit, once you find out that there is no Santa Claus, it doesn't get any better after that. You find out that the president is a crook, and he comes from a long-standing crime family. A dynasty of criminals. The vice president is almost a sadist in his orders and mandates. There torturing prisoners, and they pretend that they aren't doing it. And I hate full-grown men who play pretend, especially when you elected them. It’s all bullshit. Politics, Filmmaking. You gotta watch out, cause if you don't be careful and you have too much success, you will become the guy you hated. And I want to spend my life, hoping to never become the guy I hated. The guy that I never wanted to be, you gotta avoid that and a lot of its... I got it going, I got the formula. ding ding ding, and it goes no where.

One thing I want to say to all of the fans of Toxic Shock TV, check out the website BillyWest.com. Go there, support him, he's real.

I'm really cranky today, that’s the problem. I'm not cranky on my interviews, sometimes I do happy, silly interviews, but sometimes you feel like being real and lose the whole. "Hi Everybody!". You know, we're not going to talk about this and we can't talk about that. I have passion for the industry I’m in and I am always willing to talk about it. Discuss it, and you know, I can be very silly and humorous. It’s not all...and this happened, and then this got fucked up arrhhh.

Thank you Mr. West, it was an honor. This is Chris Staviski and Brian Corder from Toxic Shock TV.

[kiss noise] As a final woid, goodbye!

Goodbye