Orson Welles and his voice over fortune (with peas)

[Concerned But Powerless]

Orson Welles did many adverts to finance his projects because Hollywood hated his guts and wouldn't give him a penny.

This is a recording of Orson Welles doing a voice-over to advertise peas:
http://www.demolicious.org/downloads/music/shite/peas.ogg

You'd expect somebody to just turn up and do the voice over, what I love about this is how Orson imposes his own high standards on the poor bastard having to produce this terrible advertisment.

I've never seen any of his other adverts, but going off this it sounds like he didn't just read any old shit off a cue-card.

Here's the transcript:

From "Orson Welles: Actor, Auteur, Copywriter?" a transcript of a recording session/or a television commercial voice-over, in the Winter 1992 issue of DIS: Southeastern Culture Quarterly, published in Tallahassee, Florida. Welles died in 1985.

ORSON WELLES [Reading copy]: "We know a remote farm in Lincolnshire where Mrs. Buckley lives. Every July, peas grow there." Do you really mean that?

COMMERCIAL PRODUCER: Uh, yeah.

WELLES: Don't you think you really want to say "July" over the pictures of snow? Isn't that the fun of it?

PRODUCER: Try "in July."

WELLES: I don't understand you.

PRODUCER: And can you emphasize a bit the "in"--in July?

WELLES: Why? That doesn't make any sense. Sorry. There's no known way of saying an English sentence in which you begin a sentence with "in" and emphasize it. Get me a jury and show me how you can say "in July" and I'll go down on you. That's just idiotic, if you'll forgive me for saying so. It's just stupid. "In July"! Impossible. Meaningless.

WELLES [Reading copy]: "We know a certain fjord in Norway near where the cod gather in great shoals. There, Yonster, Stenglin ..." Shit.

PRODUCER: A fraction more on that shoals thing, 'cause you rolled it around very nicely.

WELLES: Yeah, roll it around. And I have no more time. You don't know what I'm up against. This is a very wearying one; it's unpleasant to read. Unrewarding. "Because Finders freeze the cod at sea and then add a crumb-crisp co-- crumb-crisp coating." Ah. That's tough. "Crumb-crisp coating"-- No. You need to break it up. It's not written conversationally.

PRODUCER: Take "crumb" out.

WELLES: What?

PRODUCER: Take "crumb" out.

WELLES: Take "crumb" out. Good ...

WELLES: Here, under protest, is "beef burgers." "We know a little place in the American Far West where Charlie Briggs chops up the finest prairie-fed beef and tastes ..." This is a lot of shit, you know that? You want one more? More beef?

PRODUCER: You missed the first "beef," actually.

WELLES: What do you mean, missed it?

PRODUCER: You were emphasizing "prairie-fed."

WELLES: But you can't emphasize "beef." That's like you wanting me to emphasize "in" before "July." Come on, fellas, you're losing your heads. I wouldn't direct any living actor like this in Shakespeare, the way you do this. It's impossible.

PRODUCER: Orson, you did six of these last year, and they were far and away the best, and I know the reason.

WELLES: The right reading for this is the one I'm giving it. I've spent twenty times longer reading for you people than for any other commercial I've ever made. You are such pests. What is it you want? In the depths of your ignorance, what is it you want?

PRODUCER: That was absolutely fine. It really was.

WELLES: You know, you're, you-- No amount of money is worth this. [Welles leaves.]
COPYRIGHT 2000 Harper's Magazine Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group

Does anyone else have any gems like this one?

[Rats]

Hehe, I've heard that before somewhere, what was it on? Was it on one of the breezeblocks? I don't know who to feel most sorry for, it's a sad situation for anyone to be in, advertising fucking peas. He's probably sitting there feeling as if he's whoring out his kids arses to paedophiles. It's not nice that he's taking it out on the fuckwits, but, god, it must be an awfull soulless buisness.

[Concerned But Powerless]

I was reading a thing on that SOTCAA site about Derek and Clive.  It was saying how this recording was on a Derek and Clive bootleg so I searched for it on Google.

http://corpses.comedynetuk.com/editnews/derek.html

[Bilko]

John Peel played that on his radio one show 6 years ago, thats where I first heard it.  John said that the tape came with a cigar.

[mwude]

It's on the second breezeblock (Brett Easton-Ellis interview one), although not in its entirety.  That transcript has missed bits out as well, one of my favourite bits too -

producer 2 - "Orson can we just do one last take, it was my fault, I said 'in july', if you can leave 'every july'..."

welles - "You didn't say it.  He said it.  Your friend."

[Bilko]

Christ, that file is a .ogg extension, why can't everything be in mp3.  Still it opened in sound forge so I can save it as a MP3 now.

[Concerned But Powerless]

Christ, that file is a .ogg extension, why can't everything be in mp3.  Still it opened in sound forge so I can save it as a MP3 now.

Yeah I hate them as well but they play fine in the Winamp.  

I've just listened to the Breezeblock thing, it's good.  It really works well as a Blue Jam kind of  thing because it's so absurd.

[alan strang]

I was reading a thing on that SOTCAA site about Derek and Clive.  It was saying how this recording was on a Derek and Clive bootleg

The bootleg turned out to be 'Stickball And Other Childrens' Favourites' but Orson's peas doesn't actually feature, despite general apocrypha over the years.

Victor Lewis-Smith's 'Ads Infinitum' featured clips from the tape in its second series.

"A genius, but a lying bastard"

[peet]

Here's a bit more Orsonia: Usage of the word fuck
Fuck knows what the fat fuck was fucking thinking. You fucks.

[Concerned But Powerless]

Here's a bit more Orsonia: Usage of the word fuck
Fuck knows what the fat fuck was fucking thinking. You fucks.

Why has that been attributed to him?  It's clearly not Welles doing it.  I thought it was going to be some impressionist or something.

[Spaced Cadet]

He was also Unicron in Transformers the movie, one of his finer moments.

[Rev]

George Carlin, innit.  Innit?

[peet]

Damn file re-taggers! *shakes fist*
Actually having a snoop i've seen it credited to Carlin, Welles, Dennis Leary, even Bill Hicks in various places... hmm

[Darrell]

The most common artist I've seen it attributed to is Monty Python.

[Johnny Yesno]

I knew I'd seen something about this tape before. Negativland used it in one of their tracks. Here's some waffle on it.

[Squidy]

That's a very abridged transcript up there. There was a much better and more complete one printed in the March 2004 issue of Total Film (page 60, if you've got one handy). The track itself is available on the first Celebrities At Their Worst compilation (I once uploaded a copy of the track  to The Cabal), and is followed by a shorter and less well-known Welles recording session extract from another commercial:

"'Nothing is more important than the simple act of people getting together'"
"Good. Could I have one more go, Orson, please? Sorry."
"...What?"
"Could I have just one more take of that...?"
"Why? I just did it right."
"[realises he's said the wrong thing]Yeah..."
"Now, look, I-I'm not used to having more than one person in there. One more word out of you and you go. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir."
"I take directions from one person... under protest! But from two I don't sit still. [suddenly furious] Who the hell are you anyway?!"
"I'm the engineer."
"Well, why the hell are you asking me for another one?"
"[ponders on what would be the best answer] ...Well, I thought there was a slight 'bonk' and I would just like to be safe"
"Jesus. [shuffles papers] What is a 'gonk'? Do you mind telling me what that is...?"
"No, no, a 'bang', from outside."
"'A bang from outside'. [pours himself some water as he thinks of what to do; long pause] Can I see Mrs Rogers for a minute, please?"
"Yes, certainly..."

Here's an unpublished extract I wrote about audio out-takes as part of a much longer history of out-takes in general, now with added hyperlinks:

Audio out-takes have been doing the rounds for as long as Gag Reels, and emerged from the same source – behind-the-scenes engineers who thought the clips were funny. Audio out-takes started off, as with visual out-takes, as slips of the tongue made live on radio (blooper historian Kermit Schafer, who has compiled a great many albums of such gaffes, offers that the first incident of this type occurred when announcer Harry Von Zell introduced the current U.S. President as "Hoobert Heever"), but soon became more common as being abandoned takes bootlegged from various recording sessions. These generally split into two categories: commercials (such as Jack Palance blowing his top at his director: "You can't keep telling me what you think is thebetterthing-thebetterthing-thebetterthing, because I don't even know who the hell you are!"), and music. Music is the most fun, varying as it does between Elvis Presley having a giggling fit mid-verse, Bing Crosby forgetting his lines (always good fun as he often ad-libs through the backing track regardless: "Castles may tumble, that's fate after all/Life's really funny that way/ Sang the wrong melody, we'll play it back/See what it sounds like, hey hey!/They cut out eight bars, the dirty bastard/And I didn't know which eight bars he was gonna cut/Why don't somebody tell me these things around here?/Holy Christ, I'm going off my nut!"), or even the isolation of Linda McCartney's microphone as she performs the backing howls of Hey Jude at a Wings live gig. Gag takes occurred too: forties bands such as The Clovers, The Crystals and Sons Of The Pioneers all recorded unbroadcastable joke versions of their popular songs with all the lyrics changed to be sexually explicit; LaVerne Wilson and Jackie Wilson laughed their way through "Think Twice 'Version X'" with specially-adapted lyrics such as "You better think twice/And keep your funky lice"; and The Rolling Stones once produced a bizarre track (with Gene Pitney and Phil Spector!) about what Andrew Oldham did on a hill with Jack and Jill: ""Ohhh, suck it, Andrew!". Van Morrison once spent a session singing derogatory songs about the company to which he was under contract at the time, recording enough to fill an album (which it later did – on bootleg, of course).

Unlike video out-takes, audio out-takes never became publicly popular as, obviously, they couldn't be broadcast as part of the television clip show format due to their total lack of visuals (one notable exception was in the (unbroadcast) gag reel for The Dukes Of Hazard, where the less successful takes of Waylon Jennings' narration were played over some of the sillier mute rushes from that series. Oh, and from the Star Trek reel: "Captain's log. Stardate, uhhh..."). Because of this ignoring by the mainstream media, filthy audio out-takes continued to be bootlegged throughout the eighties (such as Thundercats recording sessions: "I should have known the Terrortor didn't mean us any harm when the Sword Of Omens didn't obey me, and anyhow it was just plain stupid to assume it might be bad... [laughs] what the fuck am I talking about?!"), the nineties (Kurt Cobain's threatening answerphone messages to a journalist: "If anything comes out in that book which hurts my wife I'll fucking hurt you"), and right on through to the present day, with Britney Spears spitting blood at her backstage crew regarding the warm-up act: "This is retarded - they told me they were gonna do a vamp !". Like video out-takes before it, audio out-takes can often reveal more than you would expect, such as in that famous incident a few years back when at a press conference President George W. Bush, believing his microphone to be off, referred to a New York Times journalist in the audience as "a major league asshole".

Many audio out-takes are more infamous than similar video out-takes, due in part to the fact that they were easier to copy in pre-VCR days. Among the most well-known (accompanied by some examples to prove how much they've woven into the subconscious of modern culture) are: the Troggs tape, in which members of the band argue violently for ten whole minutes about how a drum beat should best be played ("Sprinkle some fairy dust on the bastard!") in a tape that proved most inspirational to the creators of This Is Spinal Tap (Oasis are so incredibly post-modern they seemed to recently rip off this tape with their own bootlegged studio rants: "The band is about fucking music, right, it's not about being thrown off fucking ferries!"); Casey Kasem's 'Doggy Death Dedication', where the DJ resents having to bring down the tone of his whole show by announcing the death of a "little dog named Snuckles" after coming out of an tastelessly up-tempo record (this is quoted more or less in full by Billy West on the DVD commentary for the Futurama episode "Jurassic Bark"); William Shatner out-takes where upon being told who to say he line he ripostes to the director "Please don't tell me how to do that – it sickens me". Later, when asked to say "Spock, sabotage the system", Shatner replies "I don't say 'sabo-tahge', you say 'sabo-tahge', I say 'sabo-tadge'" (so famous these lines have occurred in all manner of pop culture oddities, from Mystery Men to The Simpsons to The Angry Beavers); Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis' riotous recording session for a radio ad for their film The Caddy: "Come on and join the fun, see Paramount's The Caddy – it'll make ya shit!"; and Orson Welles attempting to record a Bird's-Eye peas commercial, which has since entered into out-take legend due to the outlandish rants of the angry auteur: "I've spent twenty times more for you people than any other commercial I've ever made. You are such pests! Now what is it you want? In the depths of your ignorance, what is it you want?". This clip turns up quite often on various compilations and has done the impossible in uniting Chris Morris and Victor Lewis-Smith: Morris utilised it into his second mix tape for Radio 1's The Breezeblock whereas Lewis-Smith played it during an episode of his BBC2 series Ads Infinitum.

Ironically, despite video-/DVD-copying systems becoming commonplace audio out-takes are still more popular because, with the birth of MP3-swapping programmes all over the internet, these clips have become even easier to copy and distribute, proving them still more well-known and widespread than their visual counterpart. Fans of such material could do well in seeking out the set of excellently-compiled CDs, Celebrities At Their Worst.

[Kingboy_D]

He was also Unicron in Transformers the movie, one of his finer moments.

And his final role!