James Earl Jones

have to be able to make those leaps and bounds in order to convince the audience that this character At the very least, the person that's trying to portray the character is still aiming for the highest standard goal that Mel set for us.

You know, Richard, I buy into that because when I was in Raleigh, North Carolina, I worked with a guy who had a James Earl Jones voice.

But it wasn't James Earl Jones because he couldn't act.

James Earl Jones took that voice and made something of it.

Well, that's it.

You know, when you listen to Eric Bauza and the work that he did, it is something that pays homage to what came before him.

It's probably just going to be the screen.

Like, you know, you got the animated image of Darth Vader, the voice of James Earl Jones.

It's probably going to be like a Zoom conversation.

You know, like

think about it.

Because I'm like, they've done that before where they actually had comedians with their recognizable voices do it.

But for you to use an A.I. James Earl Jones, and don't get me wrong, I applauded it for, like, games or movies because then it gives his family, his estate, some type of revenue from his voice.

But when you're going to do it on Monday Night Football, this is just the wrong place for it.

Most famous person I met? Fuck, not very famous.

My dad met James Earl Jones.

I don't know if that counts.

James Earl Jones is walking this way in the neighborhood, and my dad is walking the opposite direction, and my dad's like, what's it called? I like your

work.

He said, heroes get remembered, but legends never

die.

James Earl Jones looks up and says, thank you.

We actually interviewed you in Sydney, 2017, just quickly.

And you said, you looked at my, you said I had a deep voice like James Earl Jones, and you said my arms looked like they'd been dipped in a bucket of hair.

They were so hairy.

You've met, now I'm holding my arms towards the camera.

So the film that we are talking about today is The Great White Hope from 1970, which was adapted from a film, from a play, I should say, from just three years previously, 1967, written by Howard Sackler, who also did the screenplay for the movie.

It was directed by Martin Ritt and starred in the lead roles, James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander, who'd played those roles, who'd taken those roles from stage onto screen and won or received, I should say, Best Actor and Actress Academy Award nominations for those performances.

This came out in October 1970.

And essentially, the film is a kind of version of the true story of the boxer Jack Johnson, the first black ever heavyweight champion of the world and his wife, Etta Durea.

They just changed the name and everything's the same as his life except for his name.

which is not correct, but it's what I thought.

I think that the performance particularly of Jane Alexander and James Earl Jones are great.

I might want to say at the outset that for me, the film's biggest fault is its lack of boxing scenes in the movie.

So the reason I

say it's less than you'd think is because everybody likes to think of the folks with distinct voices like James Earl Jones and Morgan Freeman or people with big range like Mark Hamill and so on.

But the most common voice you'll book is your own.

What do you mean by that? So, like, I'm not doing a whole lot with my voice here.

I mean, it's

not just having James Earl Jones over there, right? It's all, it's also, but I'm serious.

There's like, like you want someone who's passionate and you, you want to hear that.

And it's, everyone has different personalities and you never know what's going to grade on certain people.

Yeah.

I just remember a lot about flies and James Earl Jones being extra strange and those little electrodes put on her head.

Yeah, Ennio Morricone, Night of the Electric Insects.

That was one of my favorite cuts on the soundtrack.