Michael Winslow is turning Japanese.
“Domo arigato?” he squeaks in a bizarrely convincing female
voice. “Where is the bank?”
The self-described “voicestrumentalist,” stand-up comedian and
veteran of seven Police Academy movies is on the phone from his
Florida home. As will happen many times during our interview, he’s
abruptly lapsed into one of his favourite accents. During our
conversation, Winslow will alter his voice no less than 10 times,
replicating the sounds of a dog, Stripe the Gremlin (he voiced the
character in the 1984 film) a typewriter and a Boeing 747, among
others. Let no one say the man does not love his work.
“I’ve been doing this for 31 years,” he says. “It’s worked out for
me so far.”
Winslow’s penchant for noise-making began when he was a kid growing
up on an air force base in Washington. (His dad was a military pilot.)
Weaned on TV shows like Hee-Haw and Johnny Quest, Winslow
began inventing imaginary characters to amuse himself. His parents
started to get annoyed when he began imitating the roar of fighter jets
and other industrial noises on the military base surrounding their
home.
“I’d make the military sounds at three or four in the morning, when
you’re not supposed to hear those things,” Winslow says. “All these odd
sounds seemed to affect me in small ways. I also used to make the rats
talk to each other in science class. We loved doing that with adults
and teachers. Don’t you just hate when rats argue with you?”
After honing his voice on radio and in local nightclubs, Winslow
quit college, bought a car and drove to Venice Beach to pursue a career
in entertainment. After a successful appearance on The Gong
Show, he hit the streets with a portable sound system, a Radio
Shack microphone and an array of sounds at his disposal. At this point,
Winslow was what he calls “a mobile homeless,” living out of his car
and off the goodwill of the boardwalk set. It was here that he stumbled
into a career-making gig opening for Count Basie and his
Orchestra—one of the last before the famous bandleader died.
“I put my little sound system right on top of Count Basie’s piano,”
Winslow says. “And (Police Academy director) Hugh Wilson and
(producer) Paul Maslansky were huge jazz fanatics and came up to me
after the show. Count Basie went up and told them, ‘You take good care
of this young man.'”
Winslow replaced another actor to play the noise-making, beat-boxing
prankster Larvelle Jones, and Wilson re-wrote the script to fit his
talents. Seven films later, he’s the only remaining original cast
member.
“I stuck around,” he says. “I like that they’re human, very human
films. You might notice that no one ever gets killed in a Police
Academy movie. And it runs onTV all over the world. It doesn’t
require a particular language for people to understand it.”
The popularity of the first Police Academy film helped raise
Winslow’s profile where he really shines: stand-up. A YouTube search
brings up his famed Jimi Hendrix impression. In the clip, the
afro-sporting Winslow seamlessly switches between the guitarist’s
laconic drawl and the wails of his Stratocaster. It seems impossible
that all these sounds are coming from one man’s throat—-and not even
Winslow can explain the process.
“Someone once asked me if I ever tried to look at my throat with a
microphone,” he says. “I never got into the how or the why, though; I
just want to take care of it. I don’t want to see it.”
After years of the same impressions, sounds and appearances, Winslow
says he’s recognized the importance of “diversifying,” and while he
won’t give up stand-up, he has other projects in the works. In the late
’90s, he released an album called Noise-i-tivity, and a
follow-up album is in the works—intricate rap and pop songs
constructed entirely with his voice, referencing monsters and kung-fu.
And there’s a children’s series he’s releasing in the fall with the
help of Bill Cosby.
“I don’t care if I’m doing movies, TV, whatever,” he says. “My job
is to help people forget about the rent. My job is release. And that’s
why I make the sounds—because people like it.”
Michael Winslow at the Halifax Comedy Fest, Thursday,
April 23 at The Schooner Room, Casino Nova Scotia, 8pm, $29, ticketatlantic.ca. Gala Finale,
Saturday at the Rebecca Cohn, 6101 University, $39, dal.ca/artscentre.ca.
This article appears in Apr 23-29, 2009.