Hi all! There's having another Anime con in Houston this weekend and, of course, the highlight was Peter Cullen - the original voice of Optimus Prime. I've never seen even a picture of him before so I shouldn't be surprised that he WASN'T a hulking 7' tall guy (he's more like 5' 8" or 9" if you didn't know either). He was still very interesting to listen to and very patient with the usual barrage of questions (What's you favorite role? Who was your favorite Transformer? Do you remember this episode where.......)
Peter was very humble and grateful that enough fans of the old TV series had made a racket and made the director and producers of the movie called him in to do a reading for the movie version of Optimus. He got allot of laughs talking about how he was supposed to do his first reading with some assistant of Michael Bay who was so bad that he just grabbed the script from her and read the parts for Optimus and Ironhide. After he was done with that one, Bay apparently had no clue what to think of him and kept asking if he really only did voice acting work. It turned out Bay had never met a strictly voice actor before and Peter had to go back and do two more readings with actors from the movie to prove he could actually interact with them. Only then did he get the part, even though Bay apparently never knew what to think of him. Peter said he had not seen the finished movie and had only been given the parts of the script that involved Optimus. He said that the characters were changed a bit for the movie, but he seemed comfortable with that they were essentially the same. (When someone asked the inevitable "Is it the same Optimus Prime?" he thought about it and said that the character was an "elastic band" and that he may have been stretched for the movie but it was still the same character) Oh yeah, he also apparently let slip that DreamWorks was planning on another 2 Transformers movies, if the first one didn't bomb. So now I'm even more curious to see how it actually is when it comes out. If it does do good, maybe all those jokes about a live action First Gundam movie(s) won't be near as funny as they used to be............ ****************************************** WA Bob Allen "I think I know, I don't think I know, I don't think I think I know, I don't think I think." - Ed (Cowboy Bebop)
