Jim Meskimen

[00:00:00] A.E. Guy: Welcome to Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show with your hosts, Phil Proctor and Ted Bonnitt. Phil in Ted's guest is artist screen actor and master impressionist, Jim Meskimen. And now your sexy boomer hosts, Phil Proctor and Ted Bonnitt.

[00:00:22] Ted: Welcome to Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show. I’m Ted Bonnitt

[00:00:24] Rocky: and I'm Rocky Rococo, you stupid fool! Proctor’s locked into close it back there. He’ll never get out!

Phil: Rocky, get out of here!

Ted: Thanks for bringing him along. Yeah. Well, I am Phil Proctor. I'm terribly sorry about that. Especially to our guests over here. First of all, I want to introduce Christopher Walken.

Jim: Hello Phil. How are you?

Phil: I'm good. Thank you. And you're going to do a little dancing for us later.

Jim: Cutting the rug.

[00:00:57] Phil: That's great. And we're very happy to have Morgan Freeman.

Jim: Yeah. Hello. So it's always a pleasure.

Phil: Oh, well, you're going to tell us something about working with Clint Eastwood, I believe. Right.

[00:01:07] Jim: And you bet ya. I'm going to lay everything out. I can't wait to hear the whole enchilada.

[00:01:10] Phil: And now really a very special and surprise guest Robin Williams.

[00:01:16] Jim: Well, It’s always a big, big surprise when someone dead shows up.

[00:01:20] Phil: I wanted to ask you about that. Is there comedy in the afterlife?

[00:01:25] Jim: That's the only comedy you see everything for what it is, you know, it's all just this strange dichotomy of true and false. Right and wrong black and white. It's like, it's like the real estate and Tarzana.

[00:01:35] Phil: Does God have a sense of humor?

[00:01:36] Jim: He's a funny guy. He's a funny guy.

[00:01:40] Phil: And finally, , Colonel, oh, the Colonel

[00:01:42] Jim: I never thought you’d introduce me after all those other Hollywood types. Well, where it's more appropriate, I think, to introduce an entrepreneur.

[00:01:51] Phil: Absolutely.

[00:01:52] Ted: And thanks for bringing the chicken

[00:01:53] Jim: You betchya. I hope you enjoy it.

Phil: I understand you kicked the bucket

[00:01:58] Jim: many times, many times.

[00:02:00] Phil: And one of the wonderful things about having you here Colonel is that, , I've enjoyed your interviews with modern celebrites, , those there phone calls basically beyond the grave I imagined or beyond the gravy.

Jim: Beyond the gravy. Definitely. The biscuit.

[00:02:19] Phil: And you can see our special guest is Jim Meskimen, , take off your mask.

[00:02:32] Jim: It's me.

[00:02:33] Phil: Jim Meskimen the man of a thousand voices. A dear friend and a, , an amazing talent. And, , one of the things that's so much fun about knowing Jim is that you can see his characters and his genius on a very regular basis. He posts videos at …

[00:02:55] Jim: on YouTube, just on YouTube and Instagram. I'm on Instagram, I'm at Jimsessions and on YouTube, you just look up JIMPRESSIONS.

[00:03:05] Ted: Hundreds and hundreds of videos.

[00:03:07] Jim: I think it's thousands at this point, cause I do at least one video a day, which is my “celebrity fortune cookie.”

[00:03:13] My daughter helps me with this. We conceived that we needed to make regular know appearances on YouTube. And then perhaps then the algorithm would smile on us and we would, you know, just make more friends and, and have more. Success that way, it didn't really turn out to be true. It didn't seem to make any difference at all to the algorithm, which has probably kept in a very secret place top of a mountain somewhere.

[00:03:38] Phil: Or inside a mountain.

[00:03:38] Ted: I'm learning that if you put links to your website on. They're going to suppress you. They don't want people leaving YouTube.

There is a video we saw last night. It must've been tough when Robin Williams passed, to be able to cross that bridge. And you did it in this beautiful way. You wrote a poem.

[00:03:56] Jim: Yeah. Well, Robin passed away and that's like one of those days that you just don't forget where you were and who told you and all that kind of stuff. And it was just so counter-intuitive and unexpected and, , , fella told me over the phone. I'm like, why? I didn't know Robin, I met him a couple of times, but I didn't know him at all, but in a way I felt like I did, you know being, the Blue Genie character for Disney for quite a few years before he passed.

[00:04:31] And I always felt a connection to him because he had actually gotten to start on my mom's show, “Happy days.” I felt very close to him because he came to prominence when I was in high school and I saw it happen and I was like, oh my God. He had what I conceive to be as similar skillset, chops or interests, let's say, and obsessions with accents and voices and characters and quick changing and all that stuff.

[00:04:55] And I went, oh, okay, well, he beat me to that. And he, but he actually beat me to something that I couldn't even conceive. Exactly. You know, so I think that's all fair. If somebody goes ahead and does something beyond your imagination, then you're like, oh, well, I can certainly can't hold it against that's right.

[00:05:11] Phil: He was a complete trailblazer. I remember when Proctor and Bergman were touring, we were, when we played in Aspen or the ASSPAN as I like to call it. And he had just performed at the place we were performing at and he was the talk of the town and he could improvise anything! He was amazing and I'm very happy that I did get to meet him and hang out with him when he was doing “Mork and Mindy” He taped a show or rehearsal show or something, and then he'd go out and improvise with a group of Zannies in a, in a club at night, you know, indefatigable energy.

[00:05:50] Jim: Well as performers, I think we understand that cause people, people always come up after a play and go. Are you just exhausted? You know, they look at it as a kind of quantitative activity when creativity is not really that way. You're, the artist is often creating something out of nothing.

[00:06:08] They're creating energy out of nothing. They're creating, you know, aesthetics and so forth. Literally. And there's nothing there at all. And so it's not like they've, you've now tapped this and expended your entire reserve. And you're now this flow has begun and it’slike jazz musicians and all these people, they stay up all night, sometimes assisted by illegal chemicals.

[00:06:32] Phil: And also, I mean, it's very energizing to do what we do when you, when you perform, especially if you're supported by an audience that understands what you're doing is how is it kind of like the, the, the waves underneath your surf board? You know, when it's over.

[00:06:48] Jim: And it's always, always goes back to surfing with you, Phil.

[00:06:53] Phil: I have a surfeit of other metaphors. Let me just say something. Jim is a director, a writer, an artist, a voiceover artist, a graphic artist, a cartoonist, a musician?

[00:07:07] Jim: I sing, I play the ukulele a little bit.

Phil: What have I left off?

Jim: I'm also an unemployed actor, unemployed writer, unemployed artists, and

[00:07:15] Ted: And a fine artist was your first love.t

[00:07:17] Jim:Well, yes I did. I wanted to be a painter and an artist when I was a kid and I finally did get some fantastic painting instruction, which changed my life. And then, and then once you go down a path because you go, Hey, this path looks great. And then you think, oh, this will be it. And then you go down the path and you go, wow. Okay. I learned how to do that kind of lonely little lonely path. I'd rather be on the path where there's some other guys on that.

Phil: Tell me about the transition.

Jim: I was struggling with this problem in my, in my twenties. Oh, What path should I devote my entire attention to? You know, when you're young, you feel like everything's very desperate and you know, it's very clear.

[00:07:56] You have to go one way or another way. And I don't know, I felt that way. And indeed, you know, if you're going to be a painter, you're going to spend hours and hours in the studio. If you're going to be an actor, you're going to be spending hours and hours doing that. Reading plays, rehearsing, learn lines.

[00:08:09] And so I felt very frustrated because I loved both of them. And I thought, well, you know, something in me dies. Yeah, pick the right one. , I was very confused about it, frankly. And there, I had a moment of clarity when I was in Madrid, Spain. I had just come off of being just a painter and studying and being with friends in the countryside of Spain for quite awhile and getting into all kinds of personal problems and social problems and everything else that you do in your twenties.

[00:08:41] And, , and then I was walking down the street and I was looking at the. The posters that were up in Madrid at the time, this tells you when it was because there were a poster of the “King of Comedy” That was the Robert de Niro/Scorsese film that was just opening. “King of Comedy.”

[00:09:00] And I was looking at those posters and going, man, that's I want to see that movie. I look, I dig that those actors, I dig that, that kind of filmmaking, and I just seen mean streets at a revival house. And I'm like, yeah, I want to see that movie. And I walked down the street. I don't know, two minutes later, I ran into Harvey Keitel in Madrid. And I stopped him and talked to him a little bit. He was very nice. He's very convivial guy. I go, I'm sure it's shooting a movie. I’m staying here, you know, blah, blah, blah. And, and I, and I, you know, he maybe spent two minutes with me and we separated. And I noticed that my heart was just pounding out of my chest. The excitement of that chance meeting was, was just like, wow, devastating to me. And I had the presence of mind to go, huh? That's interesting. I'm really excited by that. I'm excited by this man and that his job and his art and, and, and I've been around a lot of really amazing painters and I've seen some amazing stuff, but I didn't have my heart bang out of my chest that way. You know, let's pay attention to that. And so I, at that moment I made the decision. I went on. Oh, I will, I will be an actor.

Phil: Wow.

Jim: Cause I've been struggling with that question for so long. And I was like, it was like the tipping point, I guess you might say. And then I immediately made plans to move to New York city and start my acting career.

[00:10:26] Ted: When was impressionism of interest to, when were you impressed by impressionism?

Jim: Well, you know, as a kid, I used to watch TV and I felt myself, like, I felt so lucky if by chance I happened to turn the TV on and Rich Little was on. He's like the Elvis of impressionists and, at the time I just enjoyed the hell out of it and I thought, Ooh, you know, but I never thought, wow, you know, that could be me… I could put on a tuxedo and be on a date with celebrities. And I never had that dream. I never had that thought. It was just a thing to play with. I never had that ambition. And indeed, I kind of neglected it as a. , I don't know, a branding thing or a path well into my adulthood. And, but I always did it.

[00:11:12] And when it came up, I could provide it, but I didn't like go, Hey, I'm the impressionist until, you know, I was in my mid-twenties and then I would kind of let it go because I wanted to be an actor. That was my main thing. I didn't want to be the guy in a comedy club. I never played comedy clubs. I don't care for comedy clubs.

[00:11:28] I don't go to them. I just not crazy about them. You know, I respect it, but I don't, I don't go to it and I don't ingest it. So, later on, though, I started to realize after years and years and years, like, you know, these moments when I've had big successes and big peaks and big bunch of interests always were accompanied by doing impressions. And I went, ah, but it took me decades to go. Ah, so I've been quite thick headed about it, but then, you know, so at a certain point though, I went all right. You know what? It's a discipline point. Whether I care about it or not, whether it floats my boat, I must do impressions because this is what propels me.

[00:12:06] Phil: You nurtured, you didn't let go of it. Yeah. You didn't, you know, try to escape from it. Yeah. And then found the path.

[00:12:14] Jim: I found the path. And then I had all these crazy breakthroughs, like you, you were so kind, you came to that first impression show that I did in Hollywood, where my wife’s acting school used to be. And, , you know, I'd written this thing. It was really hard to put together. Of course, we can talk about this artistically when you're in the foreign land of this has never been done before, and it's a kind of a dream and it's only existing in your mind. You have the wonderful, of course we all know, but the wonderful feeling of creation and that's great, but you also have this, I noticed.This kind of low-level fear of like I'm all alone out. Absolutely. I know this might really suck and reveal me to be a fraud or weird fear to get any you're like, no, no, I'm just alone. Okay, fine. Let's do it. Let's have it be bad.

Ted: You can always paint.

Jim: Yeah! I think everybody came to opening night, but then I had like a couple other weeks. I'm like, I still need to get people here. And as you know, Phil, getting people to a live show in LA is, you know, very competitive. So I went, well, maybe I'll do a video of this Shakespeare thing that I've always done on stage where I take this speech from Richard the Third. And I do it in celebrity voices as they call it on it. You know, I'll put that. Try to promote the show. So I spent a couple of days doing the video because it was hard to do, not to perform the speech, but to remember the celebrities, because when I did it in my stage show live, I would have people call it out. I never had to remember anything except for what's, you know, what's the next line of the speech.

[00:13:46] So it took me a couple of days to actually write. And I think I had to put up cheat notes, like, okay, it's Morgan Freeman. Next Johnny Carson's coming up. Okay, good. And I finally did it. I put it up on. Okay, great. Then we went to see the Eddie Izzard show at the Hollywood Bowl. Oh my God. It was packed.

[00:14:03] They added a show and I looked around, I went, how many people at the Hollywood Bowl? And I looked it up 17,000 seats, about 17,000 people. And I went, you're a stand-up comedy for 17,000 people. That sounds pretty good. That sounds about right. And I just sort of, kind of went, oh, I could embrace that.

[00:14:25] You know, if I was doing my show, I'd like to do that. So I go home that night and my, my video, my little Shakespeare video has like 17,000 something views. Ah, wait a minute. And people came, it was full. I added shows and I began to be a YouTube person, you know, and that eventually went up to over a million views over a few years, but it made me realize, there it is again, if I do the impressions stuff happens.

[00:14:57] Ted: Is impressionism something that's just a gift or is it like ventriloquism where you have to really work at it?

[00:15:03] Jim: It's both. I think I, I mean, I, it's hard from the insight. I don't know how to analyze. What's a gift. What's me all I know. I am interested in it to the degree that I will listen in a particular kind of way.

[00:15:16] And I will noodle around with my voice the way a musician does. And so that I know the parameters of where I can go and, , what sort of sound I can create and, and what sort of sounds right. High end things that I can do. I'm very comfortable knowing. The limits of my voice. So, and then I'm just interested in people on characters.

[00:15:40] I'm interested in viewpoints. I'm interested in Patrick Stewart's attitude. It's nice to become him for a second to, to, to experience that. And, and so whether that's talent or just I'm interested. You know, Michael Jordan goes out as a kid, into his backyard and shoots hoops for four or five hours a day.Yeah. I mean, he's interested. Was he born with something? Probably. Yeah, but it's not, I, it's not all biology I practice makes perfect.

[00:16:11] Ted: It sounds like it's. As much of a listening exercise as it is a projection.

[00:16:15] Jim: Yeah. Listening and like, well, these days, like, you know, like Phil, I get auditions all the time sent to me by my agents. And I get a lot of voice matching stuff sent to me, you know, I'll get an email and says, can you do this actor? I've never heard of this actor who is, and you hear a little snippet of something that they have to replace from a movie. , like, , recently I did Roy Scheider's voice for his last film that was never finished.

[00:16:35] And I was like, excited about that because for me, it's a game it's like, yeah, ‘cause it's my hole in one, if I can do a recording and someone says that sounds like Roy Scheider, I don't know. I, I feel like I score and sometimes it, it, it bites me in the ass because you know, you go, oh, I wonder if I could do this for you.Yes, I can do it. Oh, this is a crappy job. Yeah, these are people I don't want to work for, which happens sometimes. But the game of it, you know, the games.

[00:17:04] Phil: Now, I'm going to ask you a question about this. I speak a lot of languages, you know, and, and I do a lot of dialects and that's because I feel, I always felt like I had a little tape recorder in my head.

[00:17:17] You do. Right. And there's that?

[00:17:21] Jim: Not if you had a similar kind of feeling and you know, you hear something like, well, if you can't play back, if you can't recall things. Then you can't really do this job. You can't really, I mean, any artist has to recall things, even if they're like, you know, David Hockney, he has to kind of go, “you know, Yorkshire where I grew up It's like, there's these trees and this road, and I'll take it back to the studio and noodle around with it. A light was kind of lavender.” You know, he's got to be able to have a mental picture and a library of, of great things that he's created.

[00:17:51] Phil: You have created a character who is a teacher, critic, historian, right? Oh, he's in a story.

[00:17:59] Jim: Right. And I can't fully do his voice without the fake teeth. Oh. Then I'm doing my best to do groomed.

[00:18:09] ` And he's at what? A not loud mouth, mouth

[00:18:13] Jim: Oxmouth in England.

[00:18:16] Phil: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely charming. And in, in your show again, you asked for. , suggestions from the audience as to what it is that he's looking at.

[00:18:26] Jim: I discovered, , you know, people say, Hey, will you come and entertain at this thing? And you're like, yeah, whatever the hell am I going to do? And I thought of this, I had this professor Nester Jackdaws who's based on an actual professor I had in college named Jasper rose, who was just fantastic.

[00:18:40] And my character has turned into a very weird version of him. Funny caricature. Yeah. Yeah. Completely, completely. Chap, but, um, , I had this idea of like, well, if I get an audience, the audience gives me the suggestion of a title of a painting or a work of art. And then I just sort of projected in the air and describe it so that they eventually see.

[00:19:02] And I tried it out. It's pretty magical. Loved it. And, and, and then I still neglected it and then I did it again and people loved it and I went okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I did it enough times to go, all right. You idiot people really like this, so maybe you should do something more with it.[00:19:17]

Ted: A lot of it is characterization as well as just spot on mimicry.

[00:19:21] Jim: I guess. Yeah. I mean, the way I approach it as the Ross mark one, and I've talked about this a lot, is that, you know, Tries to be that character. So that means, yeah. Anything that you observe or can receive from that person, physicality, if I've only heard the voice of the guy and I've never seen him. Then I only get that, but if I have like, I'm going to like Jack Nicholson, I've watched Jack Nicholson since I was a teenager. I know what he's doing with his wrists and his ankles.\

00:19:55] Ted: Robert DeNiro, I mean

[00:19:55] Jim: narrow as well. Same thing. I mean, long time, long time watching him and how he snapped. Very impressive.

[00:20:05] Ted: In general, how does, how you feel about somebody or like affect your impersonation?

Jim: It does, you know, and I tend to just do guys that I really respect and love.

The affinity is very high and where the affinity is high. You understand more about the person and can communicate like them, right. That's just, that's just the way things work. The people you hate, you don't really understand them. They don't understand you, that you can't communicate with them. And then, you know, unless that changes, unless that that formula changes and you can get more communication and more understanding the affinity is just going to hang by the, in the basement like that you don't want to embody them any more than you want to hang out with, you know, like it's interesting.

And, and sometimes well, there's certain impressions just to do certain voices that we don't do any. There's Bill Cosby hat we just don't touch. We don't, you know, it has a whole nother meaning. Now I know isn't it. Even Kevin Spacey and other guys that we've just kind of, you know, what, maybe we don't do that impression anymore because it means something else.

[00:21:12]And, , and it has a lot to do with how audiences feel about them too. You know, like, , I have a friend, , John D. Dominica whose name I always say wrong. And he is a specialist in Trump and has toured the country as Trump and was touring the country as Trump, prior to 2016. And, you know, he just has been riding this way.

[00:21:32] , of, of going around and doing it for pro Trump groups and anti-Trump groups. I mean, he, yeah, his act apparently is, is adjustable to, , you know, the extremes. , so, but that's an example of someone riding the wave, the waves. Right. That is interesting.

[00:21:49] Phil: And you're very aware of that. Obviously, what's your audiences like?

[00:21:54] Jim: I mean, I, I don't feel like I've got a huge audience really, that, that is hanging on my every word. When people comment on my YouTube videos, I eventually get back to them because it's just, we've, I've developed all kinds of little friendships with people that. Actually one of the ways that people have friendships these days online friendships is absolutely a big deal.

[00:22:17] And these are people that consume my content every day. They watch my fortune cookie videos. They comment on it, they, they engage and I'm like, oh great. I'm happy to talk to you. You know, one day maybe we'll meet. I actually started doing, um, Kind of zoom Hangouts with my YouTube, oh, fans, that's six or seven people show up at 12 people show up, but we see each other.

[00:22:38] We can talk and interact and hopefully it's exciting for them. And I like it cause I, I do better with lots of. , interaction. I loved living in New York city because it was so different from LA and in New York city. As you know, at any given time, you can walk down the street and you're gonna have 10 conversations and have 10 different points of view and see, and see different characters moving around.

[00:23:03] You know, it's the richness of life to me is their viewpoint. And your interaction with them. It's just so excited. They're not in cars.

[00:23:11] Ted: New York city is a pedestrian city. It's a pre-combustion engine city.

Jim: That's true.

Ted: And it goes as fast as you want it to go. If you're running here doing that, grabbing a slice of pizza, doing this means everybody's accelerated. So the in passing conversations are. But they're true rich.

Jim: You mean the ones you over here, or you even engage.

Ted: Both.

Jim: I love the ones you over here, you catch a snippet of it. And then it fell off the side of my head. I mean, that's all you get. My favorite New York

[00:23:42] Phil: story was, , I was going to have breakfast at a Greek restaurant on Eighth Avenue and walking along and some pedestrian goes in front of a car and the car screeches to his stop. And he's the guy leans out, says, fuck you! And the guy who's almost hit says, fuck you! And two people walking across the street was completely detached from this. Go, “fuck you! Fuck you.” And then everybody laughed. The epitome of living that close to people all the time know. You are an actor. What kind of roles have you been doing?

[00:24:16] Jim: Some of the cool ones. Yeah. I just got off of two big projects and nobody's told me not to talk about So good. I worked with Sean Penn and Julia Roberts on a show that's going to come out next year, called guests. And it's a series, a series about Watergate. here. She plays Martha Mitchell. And he plays John Mitchell under a lot of prosthetic makeup. Oh. To the degree that when I met Sean, and he came up to me and said, “Hey, I'm Sean.” I went, “you are?”

[00:24:49] Ted: What a Washington power couple they were.

[00:24:53] Jim: Well, it's very interesting. I'm going to go out on a limb here a little bit and you guys are so sharp and intelligent. I've been very pleased to work on a very few interesting dramas that are based on historical events. I did Apollo 13 and that was fascinating. And then you research it, right? And you find out all kinds of stuff about the space program. Then earlier than that, I did Inherit the Wind. Now Inherit the Wind is a popular play that everybody loves and has great dramatic moments. And it's based on true events. Well, when I was on Inherit the Wind, I made the mistake of researching the true event and I found that, you know, Inherit the Iind is a really great. It really has very little to do with what actually happened in this ghost trial and what it all means, and the whole message of it. Yeah. Scopes monkey trial. But I continued to research anyway. And in this one, the Watergate thing, I'm like Watergate. Yeah. You know, I was a kid when Watergate was happening.

You were a college student, right? Or just out of college. So I, for me, it was, I remember all these names. And I remember the faces because Mad Magazine always was lampooning these guys, and they had such amazing faces. Nixon there's, nobody has ever looked like Nixon, maybe Joe Walsh and John Mitchell and Hubert Humphrey, all these strange characters that we, that we had shoved in our face.

[00:26:11] And I was trying to draw them all the time because Mad Magazine was drawing them. Mort Drucker was drawing them. So I was aware of Watergate. You know what, I'm 62 years old now. I don't really remember what Watergate really was.

Phil: It’s just watergate over the bridge to you.

Jim: Exactly. So I began to do a little bit of research. They said, well, this movie Gaslight is based on a podcast. So I tried to find that podcast. I thought, well, I'll listen to that and get some information about, I was playing a Senator and I had some really, really nice scenes with Sean that you’ll see, I hope. And, I, I thought I found the right podcast, but I found a different podcast and this different podcast I have to just say is called, The Mysteries of Watergate.

[00:26:54] And it, it blew my mind, this one research. Now it's one of the worst produced podcasts I've ever heard in my life. It's as if the guy could say three words and had to cut and it's all cobbled together. There's all this noise and things like that.

[00:27:10] Phil: Like our show,

[00:27:10] Jim: but the information and it is absolutely mind boggling and it spins Watergate completely on its head. Not that Nixon was, oh, he turned out to be just an innocent victim. It's it's more complicated than that obviously, but the fact that, that the CIA were all over Watergate. Oh yeah. And the Washington post was basically trumpeting CIA information. Fascinating. But it made me think once again, here I am involved with this thing.

[00:27:40] I was so happy to be heard, but, and I'm like, I dunno, I dunno what this is about. This is about making a living and playing the scenes.

Phil: That's right.

Jim: You know, it's, it's not a, there's no virtue signaling. Oh, you'll have to immerse yourself in the moment.

Ted: Gaslit. When do you think that's going to be out?

Jim: I don't know next year sometime. I mean, it's vast and the way that they're shooting these limited series, now some of them, two of them that I've been involved in, , they have like eight episode arc. They're basically shooting them all at the same time. It's like a they're shooting eight hours. Yeah. And so I can't imagine how they put that all together.

[00:28:15] Ted: You've been in five, Ron Howard pictures.

[00:28:17] Jim: I have, I been in five Ron Howard films. Yeah. And I hopefully I'll be in a few more, , I don't know. I just saw Ron recently. Of course he and his brother have released a book, a memoir called the boys, which is fascinating and charming. Their parents were awesome.

[00:28:33] Rance and Jean Howard. I knew them both. , I worked with Rance on the Grinch. Actually, we would spend a lot of time together and Rance was, , he, , he grew up on a farm, so he was real salt of the earth. God, they were actors from Oklahoma. And they started a dynasty. You know, both their young kids were stars of hit TV shows in the sixties and they split up and one had to go to east coast. One had to stay on the west coast in Burbank to help with the kids.

And those are two examples. Like the only two examples that you can readily think of, of, of child actors, of that period, who did not flame out, who did not, you know, go down some weird, crazy dark path. And, and Ron Howard became, , you know, the head of a dynasty and is still unbelievably great director.

[00:29:23] Ted: So when you're on the set with him and you can't help yourself, but to do an impression,

[00:29:27] Jim: oh, I can help it. Very good control over that.

[00:29:30] Ted: The question is when you do their voices sometimes to their face, do they, do they hear you?

[00:29:35] Jim: They don't, because in the same way that when you hear your recorded voice, you go, there's a moment of foreignness.

[00:29:42] There's a moment of this dis-association with an impression is no matter how good they are, They're still leagues away from what the guy actually sounds like the best voices that I do. If you put them side by side with the original, there's a huge gulf. There, there always will be. But for entertainment purposes, you just need to really influence strongly that voice and that character, and then people like that's enjoyment. We're going to get out of it in more practical aspects, like in a movie where we're trying to replace somebody's voice and we do not want to break the illusion. Then we have to really hunker down and use every shift that we can to make it to match very, very well.

[00:30:22] But first of all, I don't do, impressions if I can possibly help it to the person themselves, because. it can't but come off as a bit of an evaluation to the person, you know, you're mocking me, even if my intention is great, there is a mockery quotient. I think that is kind of unavoidable. So I don't want to make a caricature it's a character.

[00:30:44] Yeah., I have a policy about that. I don't do it. I don't want to do it. I run. Celebrities every now and then, and I'm not going to go, Hey, you know, I do your voice and you sound like this. I don't do that.

But I did break it out once, out of just stupid enthusiasm. I went to a studio one time and I rounded the corner. And there's Sam Elliott. And I had just done a Sam Elliot kind of read for something like something that he should have done, probably you have a trailer or something anyway. And I was like, I was so excited and such a fan boy. And I went, oh, you know, I was just doing your voice, doing Sam Elliott, doing Sam and to Sam Elliott. And he was so charming and he just listened to, you know, and he went, “Well, you can really get down there.”

[00:31:32] Jim: And then at that moment, the penny dropped and I went, ‘you idiot, what are you doing?’ What? Shut up, leave the room.

[00:31:42] Phil: Our voices is going through our bones in our head. So we always hear ourselves differently.

[00:31:48] Jim: If you ask most people, if they like the sound of their voice, unless they're people like us in broadcasting and in entertainment, most people do not like. Like have antipathy towards their own voice.

[00:32:08] Ted: You also recently worked with Al Pachino.

[00:32:10] Jim: I did work with Al Al but he was working somewhere else. He was on the east coast. I was on the west coast. I worked on the show “Hunters” and it was a really great experience and I get to play, I can't say anything about it. Cause it's too much of a spoiler. I got to play a German judge.

[00:32:33] This was great because for me, you know, as, as you know, again, like a hole and one with an impression you'd like to be able to be convincing with an accent. And I feel very confident with the German because I've done actually many commercials and other things with this.

Ted: Is there a voice can't do?

Jim: Oh, many, most of them I can't do. I mean, you're talking about billions of people on this planet.

Phil: Jack Lemmon?

Jim: As a matter of fact, I can. The thing about Jack Lemmon is that he shifted gears all the time. I mean, he wouldn't be up like this and he'd come down and yeah,

[00:33:05] Phil: I got to replace his voice in Glen, Gary, Glen Ross. This is a funny thing, but you know, that's a very colored, the language is very color, fruit, savory language. And they had to by contract supply a version of it for airlines.

[00:33:21] Jim: So you did his airline.

[00:33:23] Phil: So, yeah, and the very clever way, the words that they would come up. To replace all the naughty words.

Jim: What were some of the words?

Phil: Oh my God. Well, frigging of course is always very big.

[00:33:34] Jim:What the, what the freak is that

[00:33:36] Phil: I actually wanted to save that I've lost the script because I was so impressed. And I told him that this would be a fascinating that you did it.

[00:33:45] Jim: My favorite one is “Cake sniffer”, which is great. Cause there's something nasty about a “Cake sniffer.” It's almost as nasty as the word it's replacing, but not quite. And the other one is monkey feather, and I've heard monkey feather used, , I think it was on the sanitized version of the movie “Traffic” and Don Cheadle called somebody a monkey feather.That's a great word.

[00:34:11] Ted: Have you ever, , counted up how many impression you do? .

[00:34:13] Jim: do well, I, I did kind of have to count them up cause I had them on a list and, and I, I, again though it ebbs and flows, you know, because I add new ones off, I take some away. So it it's in the seventies, I'd say in the seventies of ones that I can kind of bang, you know, just do, , others.

[00:34:30] I have to kind of warm up into a little bit or others. I'm like, I got to refresh my memory, but YouTube is such a great resource for that. You know, if I want to study somebody. Like last, last night. Okay. So last night I was watching Michael Keaton get interviewed and I realized, h, that's good. That's interesting. He's got an interesting voice. He's got an interesting sort of, um, delivery, you know? Yeah. Anyway, so I researched that way and you can kind of get a lot and you get a lot of. From YouTube. You can get a lot about that person, particularly if it's not them playing a character, but then being interviewed, I go to the interviews to see them. That’s the raw material.

[00:35:11] Phil: That's another thing. The thing that I admire about you, if you go to Jim's YouTube site, you talk about acting, you talk about the process that you're in, in your life.

[00:35:20] Jim: I've got a little series called actor tips because right now what I'm working on is I'm creating an online course about impressions and voicework. I was approached by a company that, that wanted me to do that. So I'm in a very, it's a very weird, sort of process to sort of say, what do I do that would help another person. We've shot it all. So that's good. And we did that during the pandemic and it's going to launch pretty soon.

[00:35:47] Phil: The things that you've you've done also is you kind of been on the cutting edge of technology in terms of expressing your talent of mimicry visual.

[00:35:57] Jim: Right. With the deep fake.

[00:35:58] Ted: Yeah. Yeah. That's weird. I saw that. That was really extraordinary.

[00:36:01] Jim: Yeah. It's still a, it's still new and interesting to people.Although that video is now, I don't know, three, four years old. Yeah. And the story of that was that I was approached by email, by a guy in Manchester, UK . His real name is Sam, but his handle is Shamrock. I don't know why I should ask him someday. And said, Hey, I'm looking for an impressionist to collaborate with, with this technology.

[00:36:28] And I was like, what? And he had sent me a little clip of one of my videos that he had done a treatment to a high, I forget what he did. If he turned me into Morgan Freeman or returned my face into somebody. And it was. I don't know, 10 seconds, but me and my family were just, we were just amazed. They are jaw-dropping.

[00:36:47] Ted: You’re in front of a neutral gray background. It looks very simple. And you start doing the, your impressions.

[00:36:52] Jim: Yeah, it's a poem I wrote called the pity, the poor impressionist. And my face morphes, when my nose widens or my eyes changed slightly and not.

[00:37:03] And then it starts to get really extreme and mustaches drop out of nowhere. And that skin color changes entirely. Starts to get more like, Hey, wait a minute. Well, that's a technique called deep fake, and it is, I don't understand it, but it has to do with the fact that we can, um, you know, with celebrities, we have so much data that is available, that they, the super computers can crunch all this information and take my face or another person's face and stick, you know, the parameters and the characteristics of that celebrities.

[00:37:33] Very seamlessly to yours.

[00:37:36] Ted: How would somebody find this video?

[00:37:37] Jim: Well, you go to YouTube and type in my name and the deep, fake. It's called “Pity, the poor impressionist”, but, , you'll find a lot of stuff. If you just go to my channel and look up the, the deep fakes that are there, I've done several with, with that, that fellow now, who became quite famous and now is working for ILM. So he got a good job for himself as a SFX guy.

Ted: That's Industrial Light asnd Magic.

Jim: I was lucky to get in on the kind of ground floor of that. I don't know how to do it myself, but I think it's in the, in the short amount of time that, I've been involved with it. It's already. Something that you can get in multiple apps on your phone to some degree.

Phil: You have an appointment.

Jim: I do this afternoon fitting a fitting. I have a fitting of some decor of things that I wear.

Phil: Yeah. Your own personal Prothetics

Jim: Yeah, exactly. You know, when I started losing my hair in my late thirties, I guess, I had an agent at the time. I didn't work with him for very long, but he took me aside and he said, you know, do you think you could get a kind of a fuller hair look?

[00:38:43] And I'm like, I don't always talk about it. You want me to grow my hair? No, no, no. Just a fuller. And he was talking about getting a hairpiece. Right. And I think he eventually actually used the word hairpiece at the time I went. What's the matter with you. I hear peace. Are you just trying to, what do you, who do you think I am like, it's an insult, you know, like you just, like, you think you should dress up like a clown half the time.

[00:39:08] So, because in my mind, a hairpiece was this kind of awful hairpiece that we see on, on, on people where it just screams hairpiece, you know, to pay. And so I didn't have the reality to pay or not to pay. Exactly. And then I worked on the Grinch and on the Grinch, they made me a little. , Hollywood hairpiece, ha a a net front, , lace front wig.

[00:39:33] That was so intoxicating. We realistic that I, I stared at myself in the, in the, my dressing room mirror for hours going. Wow. Look at that. Wow. Oh my God. 'cause I never knew. And like a lot of us don't know that many of the actors that we watch for years and years are wearing, you know, , you know, wow, got all these guys, you know, tremendous people and, but there is an art to it.

[00:39:59] And when it's done well, you don't notice that it's there because you just say what a wonderful, full haircut that actor has right now. So I started. Wearing a hairpiece for specific things. Now I don't wear it all the time. If I get an audition and it's an insurance salesman, a dentist, a, you know, a politician or something like that.

[00:40:17] And I go like, wow, I don't need a hairpiece for this. But when I do my impression show, I do like to have a little hair because I think it just changes the presentation. It makes for a more neutral kind of palette, if you will, for the presentation of a lot of different personnel.

[00:40:31] Ted: It's just like any other device you would use in a performance.

[00:40:34] Jim: A nice clean shirt. Or a good microphone. Yeah, sure. Excellent. Well, so I have to go to my, my hair fitting.

[00:40:45] Phil: This has been as fascinating as I thought it would be because I've known you for quite a while now and we love one another. Yes. And we have. In common, you know? And, , I'm, I'm, I hope that we've been able to share some of that with our listeners today. And I, I absolutely encourage you to go to YouTube and take a look. So thank you so much. And thank you for driving me here to

[00:41:13] Jim: My pleasure. My pleasure. It's a $34.98 if you round up.

[00:41:19] Phil: All right. Here, give me the thing.

[00:41:20] Jim: All right, here we go. Here we go. Well, thank you guys. It's really been fun.

[00:41:25] Phil: This is Ted…

Ted: And I’m Phil. Bye!

[00:41:30] A.E. Guy: You've been listening to Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show featuring Phil Proctor and Ted Bonnitt and their special guests. Jim Mescalin music by Eddie Baytos and the Nervis Brothers. To hear all the Sexy Boomer Shows, go to our website, sexyboomershow.com.

[00:41:47] Be sure to subscribe to the show for free and never miss an episode. I'm A. Earnest Guy. Stay tuned for the next episode of Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show produced by Radio Pictures.com. The makers of fine podcasts for seasoned hipsters, man.