Harry Chase is a Voice Over God
Harry Chase: I read the script.
Me: Well?!
Harry: I feel like you have my house bugged.
Hello Lonesome is in large part centered around a character who lives and works from his home studio as a successful voice over artist. I wrote the role as an amalgamation of all the VO guys I’ve worked with in my career as a producer of TV promos. I named him Bill Soap and always imagined him played by either William Shatner or Rip Torn. (Rip Shatner?) A gregarious bear of a man who loves to make waffles and isn’t afraid to record in his underwear who starts to feel terrible about being such a lousy father and, well, continues to behave very badly.
I’m a HUGE fan of Pixar’s The Incredibles and when it finally came time to cast the role of Bill Soap we offered the part to Craig T. Nelson. Craig responded wonderfully to script, I was overjoyed because he’s a fabulous talent and I used every opportunity I had to tell people he would be playing Bill.
At that point I was trying to drum up $3 million to produce the film based on the script and cast. Then one day after a particularly depressing meeting with potential financiers I realized that the silliest thing I could ever do would be to spend millions making this movie. It was a very personal passion project at it’s core and I needed to shoot it with a tiny crew and cast the greatest actors for each part regardless if they could sell tickets. I called my brilliant (and patient) casting director Brette Goldstein and told her we might have to re-cast the film and then I told her I had an idea that we might actually find a real giant of the VO world to play Bill and the magic trick would be getting a great on-camera performance but knowing we had real pipes in the voice over booth.
Brette made her calls and summoned magical forces to our aid and then sent me a list with links to all the VO guys that seemed like they could play Bill Soap. I listened to all of them, and without even looking at his picture, I knew Harry Chase was our Bill.
It’s time the world give Harry Chase some serious love. You have been hearing his voice every day and just didn’t know it. Harry told you to join the Navy way back when:
You also know him as “The Captain”:
He was the voice of CNN for most of my childhood:
Harry made you buy this laptop:
Harry also won a Golden Trailer Award as BEST VOICE OVER for this Jesse James Trailer.
That’s of course when Harry isn’t selling you a cheap lunch:
So we cast him as the voice of Abe Lincoln in this book trailer I directed:
Beside being a true genius in the voice over booth Harry Chase is different than Bill Soap in a few important ways. Harry is a tremendous father, husband, and one of the kindest men I know.
I clearly wrote this role for him without ever knowing it. The universe is funny that way.
