voice coming up with more Otto.

You Otto be in pictures.

[laughs]

Yeah, that was a funny comedy joke.

- Beware! - Nerf!

- It's me, Yakko. - What is on your mind?

Hi, Rob Paulson here better known to you as Yakko Warner

from the Animaniacs, hello Vanity Fair.

Other characters from the Animaniacs include

Dr. Otto van Scratchandsniff, yeah that is me too,

Pinky, from Pinky and the Brain.

Nerf!

From Jimmy Neutron boy genius Carl Wheezer.

Are you gonna finish that croissant?

I was also the box ghost.

Beware!

A couple of Ninja Turtles,

Raphael from the original show and then Donatello

from a later iteration, 50% of the Ninja Turtles

in one old guy from Michigan and by the way,

thank you all you parents who bought

action figures because as a result of your largess,

my kids' teeth are straight today.

Today, I, that is Pinky, is going to review some impressions

of Rob Paulson's characters, let's see what happens.

Poit!

[bright animated music]

- They give me that saucy librarian look!

- Ooh, they give me that saucy librarian look!

You know uh, bookish,

then take them off and let your head down.

Oh oh, Las Vegas, uhm roller skates, crash,

hurt, hippies, park, oh, no no, help, firemans, carry,

drop, oops, pick up, lab, put them over there.

Let's dress them up, funny there was a face paint.

Narf!

Poit!

- Wow, that was quite excellent.

Although I didn't quite understand a lot of what you said.

Part of the trick is being able to speak in a way in which

conveys the character and the sensibilities of the character

but also you do have to be able to be relatively

understandable so even though Pinky can go

la la la la, fun fun, silly willy, nerf.

He still has to go say, I god brain, I think so,

but if they call them sad meals, no one would buy them.

Enunciate because we have to understand your stupidity.

Poit!

But that certainly wasn't for lack of energy.

You did a really great job and you said,

Narf and Poit quite well.

A really great job of moving around.

A lot of actors jesticulate a lot.

We jesticulate right in front of God and everybody,

so all of that stuff is great,

but you know what the bottom line is, man,

you were having a great time and that's what this is about.

Continue to embrace your silliness.

- I think so Brain,

but where are gonna find a duck and a hose at this hour?

- I think so Brain, but if they called them sad meals,

no one would buy them.

I think so Brain,

but it'd be Snow White and the Seventh Samurai.

I think so Brain, but Burleigh cheeps be so.

I think so, but where will we find an open tattoo

parlor at this time of night?

- Oh, really nice, excellent responses,

non sequiturs, those are called.

My friend, just raise your head,

you should be talking into the mic.

I understand that that's a technical thing

'cause you're reading from down here but easily fixed,

bring it up here.

We could hear more of your fabulous Pinkyness,

if you let us hear it,

but your tone and your temperament on the 'I think so Brain,

but if they called them sad meals no one would buy them'

was spot on, well done.

- Just act natural Pinky.

- Right Brain, La la la la la, Zort!

[laughs]

Narf! Poit!

- Ready to go, Brain?

Yes!

Okay, we're going to run the picture and you read the copy.

Animaniacs 406-859 take one.

- You did both characters.

I got no business doing that.

You're way better than I am at the Brain.

For our porpoises, our porpoises.

We're here to discuss your Pinkyness and it was quite good.

In fact, right at the beginning,

you got that sort of soft 'a',

because Pinky had this overbite in which he had trouble

producing the sound of 'a', 'really Brain',

'I god Brain' and you got that right away.

I think Pat Warburton said something very important

on an earlier version of this and he said, just like any

other acting choice, make your choices decisive and clear.

Even if it's wrong in the audition, it shows the producers

you're thinking, you're making clear, thoughtful choices,

you commit to that choice and that's what I did in Pinky.

Often, you can have a dialect,

either add or subtract one and it changes everything.

I can do a thing like this for me,

having a broken voice,

but then when I take the dialect off and I just talk

like this, I'm all of a sudden, a little different.

My voice is still cracking in the same way but if

I add a southern thing to it,

now all of a sudden I'm Pat Bertram.

I've gone from being this guy here,

to this guy and that's got three different

characters man and people think I'm a goddamn genius.

Well I ain't, I'm just not afraid to look like a idiot.

- I'll conjugate with you.

- Goodnight everybody!

- Hi, it's me Yakko!

Yeah, I was born in a water tower, but you know,

a lot of people are, I like to think that it's a good thing.

- Wow, that's pretty good because he did the whole helium

thing without any chemical inducement, that we know of.

He was actually improvising lines and you know what,

that's when you know you got something because I can talk

like Yakko Warner all damn day and I don't know

if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it certainly

makes for the authenticity of the character.

You got that and you've got already got the placement down,

sadly for you, I've already done it and I'm still doing it.

So now you take all that wonderful skill you have and create

your own characters, that's how it starts.

- What does this remind you of?

- Girls.

- What does this remind you of?

- Girls.

- Hello nurse!

Uh, uh, girls!

Girls?

Uh, girls!

[laughs]

- Girls!

- Hey you're the one showing me all the sexy pictures.

Good night, everybody.

- Good night, everybody.

Well done my young friend, you did a pretty good job.

He's got the tone of Yakko, so the past two victim,

I mean talented actors,

they've done a really good job at being able to squeeze

their voice and by the way,

when I auditioned for Yakko, that's exactly how I did it.

You see like he was a little bit nervous or self conscious,

which is utterly understandable, you know,

had trouble coming up with things to say,

but when you did, it was very good and also remember,

you're gonna have a script.

When you're in a circumstance like Animaniacs,

we already knew we're gonna have fantastic writers,

so it was up to me as an actor to raise my level and so I

would improvise and try something where,

when Yakko is coming up with an answer,

maybe he goes, I don't think so.

Well, that turned out to be a thing,

so now there are like 100 examples of Yakko going.

Just because it was something I threw in it wasn't genius.

It was inspired because I already knew

what we had was great.

My body of work is a great example of how other people

made me look and sound way better.

- We paint ceilings, ceilings and only ceilings.

We don't paint floors 'cause they're beneath us.

- Look at that handsome guy with pants.

- That's 29.95 right?

How do we do it?

No overhead!

In fact, when we get through,

you'll have nothing overhead and if you hire us,

you'll have nothing in your head.

We paint ceilings, ceilings and only ceilings.

We don't paint floors 'cause they're beneath us.

- Because they're beneath us.

In that case, I could understand you but you didn't give it

nearly the range, okay,

you got a such a places to go up and down,

so it was a little bit flat.

Often, you'll hear somebody that will say,

push it a little more.

It's sometimes easier to pull an actor back,

than to get him to push it more.

I know this now because I've not only done this a zillion

times but now I direct.

The latest incarnation of Ninja Turtles at Nickelodeon

is called Rise of the TMNT and I'm the Voice Director.

I often get people who are on camera actors,

who come in and do the show.

John Cena plays a bad guy and it's interesting to hear me

say to John, okay, John,

we hear that, but you push it a little bit more.

Occasionally John would think, wow, I really pushed it big,

but it's not even close to how big you could go.

You kind of said, we paint ceilings, ceilings and nothing

but ceilings, we don't paint floors

because they're beneath us.

If I were to say to you,

gimme a lot of, a few more ups and downs,

I would want you to say we paint ceilings,

ceilings, ceilings and nothing but ceilings.

We don't paint floors because they're beneath us.

Lots of room to play,

so swing for the fences.

- Let's see yours Yakko.

- It's a cartoon.

- There's nothing there, that's not a cartoon!

- I take umbarge to that.

Oh, sure, take the umbarge.

No, I mean, I take offense, and now you want our fence too?

- Oh, okay, you take umbrage.

You switched a couple of letters around you said umbarge.

Now there could be um barge, but that's something that

carries garbage down the East River, um barge.

If you don't understand a word, or if you mispronounce it,

make sure you get that right, especially in an audition.

We don't want to give producers a reason not to hire

you and that is not an aspersion on your intellect.

I mispronounce words all the time,

so don't be afraid to ask if you have a question, okay?

You did a pretty good job of going from

Otto von Scratchansniff to Yakko bum bum bum like that.

It was quite good, exactly.

I've done many scenes where Yakko interacts with

Doctor Scratchandsniff, just because it's fun.

I like to act opposite myself,

so Yakko what are you saying, hey, scratchy,

you ever seen a pair of pants as brown as mine?

I know Yakko I don't think I have but you are

the only one of the two of you who wears pants,

so that alone is something for which I'm quite grateful.

The great thing about this gig is that you can act with

yourself but you don't have to.

We can stop and rerecord,

you do Scratchandsniff from top to bottom and then Yakko

from top to bottom.

So he did a great job of bouncing off the characters,

but it's not necessary, technically.

It's an awful lot of fun to watch though.