In 'A World,' All Voice-Overs Are Not Created Equal
Don LaFontaine had a voice anyone would recognize. As a voice-over artist, he recorded thousands of movie trailers and TV commercials, and became famous for his delivery of the phrase "In a world," which kicked off countless trailers. He died in 2008, but the new comedy In a World – written and directed by actress Lake Bell, tells the story of voice-over artists competing to become the next LaFontaine.
Bell co-stars opposite Fred Melamed, who doesn't just play a voice-over artist — he is one, with any number of ads, trailers, and TV-network commercials. He's an actor, too, perhaps best known for his performance as Sy Ableman in the Coen Brothers movie A Serious Man.
Bell, for her part, starred with Meryl Streep in It's Complicated, and co-stars on the Adult Swim comedy series Children's Hospital. At this year's Sundance film festival, she won the Waldo Salt screenwriting award for In a World, which casts her as a veteran voice coach who wants to break into the male-dominated world of voiceovers. One of the men she's competing with is her father, played by Melamed, who's already near the top of the field.
Bell and Melamed joined Fresh Air's Terry Gross to talk about the attractions of voice-over work, researching an accent and the perils of "sexy-baby vocal virus."