Doubling As 'Dubbers'

Regina Lemnitz

Doubling As 'Dubbers'
Brian Montopoli: Actors Find Extra Work As German Voices For Foreign Stars

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/28/world/main2050048.shtml

(CBS) Irina von Bentheim may have been a child movie star in Germany 35 years ago, but her face doesn't even appear in the role that has made her most famous. In 2001, von Bentheim was chosen to provide the voice for Sarah Jessica Parker in the German-language version of the television series "Sex and the City." The show was a hit here, and von Bentheim’s voice, dubbed over Parker’s, was soon echoing through living rooms in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Many German actors double as dubbers. Even if the money isn’t good — "It’s peanuts, what we get for dubbing work," von Bentheim complained — there can be ancillary benefits. Von Bentheim has turned the role into a second career. She recorded an audio book of Candice Bushnell’s columns, on which the show was based, and put together a tour during which she read the columns onstage, demonstrated the dubbing process, and invited people to try it themselves. She also began hosting a weekly radio show in which she gave advice on sex and relationships.

Manfred Lehmann, the German voice of Bruce Willis, is also heard in commercials for Praktiker, a chain of home improvement stores. “I think the producer at Praktiker knows people are hearing the voice of Bruce Willis when they hear me. It’s been very successful for them,” said Lehmann, who is regularly approached at bars and cafes and asked to spout catchphrases from the “Die Hard” films. While Lehmann looks a bit like Mr. Willis, more often than not the dubber and actor share little resemblance.

Regina Lemnitz, who provides the voice for Whoopi Goldberg, was standing in front of a cabaret in Munich when she called out to a friend. Suddenly, a woman in the crowd screamed: "Whoopi Goldberg is here!" "I guess she didn’t realize Whoopi speaks English — and is not a white woman," Lemnitz said. Stefan Fredrich, who provides the German voice of Jim Carrey, John Turturro and the computer-generated Jar Jar Binks of recent "Star Wars" installments, said there are benefits to a job in which everyone knows your voice but no one knows your face. "Nobody recognizes me on the street. I can be drunk and it’s not on the front page the next day," said Fredrich, who doesn’t actually drink.

Daniela Hoffmann has provided the voice of Julia Roberts ever since she dubbed Roberts' role in 1990’s "Pretty Woman." She also voices Calista Flockhart. "Julia Roberts is a little bit deeper, sexier," explained Hoffmann. "Calista Flockhart is a half-octave higher. It’s excited and all over the place." Hoffmann, a successful actress, said dubbing is actually the greater challenge. "When I’m acting, I can cry when I want to cry. I can act with my body," she explained. "I can do what I want – not what Julia Roberts wants."

Torsten Michaelis, who provides the German voices of Wesley Snipes, Martin Lawrence and Benicio del Toro, echoes that sentiment. "Acting is about finding your own rhythm; dubbing is about finding someone else's," he said. "But that can be the joy of it. I can play roles I couldn’t play in the real world because of my body. I’m a small guy. Characters like Snipes in '‘Demolition Man' – I could never do that in Germany."

When a film is dubbed into German, it goes through two translations. In the first, the intention is to keep the German text as close to the original as possible. In the second, however, some jokes and lines are altered, and sentences are rewritten to fit the mouth movements of the actors onscreen. "It’s the same as when you translate literature," said Klaus Bauschulte, production manager at dubbing studio Berliner Synchron. "Staying exactly true to the original is not always the highest aim." Indeed, sometimes staying true to the original can be a hindrance. "The Persuaders!," a short-lived ABC television series from the early 1970s starring Tony Curtis and Roger Moore, was a flop in its original version. When Rainer Brandt adapted it for Germany, he wrote new jokes and asides into the script, and it became a hit. Brandt, a former actor who once voiced Curtis, Elvis Presley and Marlon Brando, now runs his own company, where he oversees the adaptation into German of television shows like "Everybody Hates Chris." "When a company says they want something to be commercially successful, to make the people laugh, I give it woof,” said Brandt in a low, guttural voice, pushing his fist away from his body and down towards the ground. "I make them laugh like they would in a Bavarian beer garden." Brandt also adapted "Hogan’s Heroes," the late ‘60s CBS sitcom about Allied prisoners in a German POW camp. The show, in which dim-witted Germans bore the brunt of the jokes, had been unsurprisingly unpopular when first shown in Germany. But Brandt rewrote the dialogue to make the characters into even more ridiculous caricatures and it became a hit. Accents, however, remain a problem. How can a German actor convey Tony Soprano's New Jersey intonations? The few clumsy efforts by dubbing studios to pull such a thing off — to turn a character from the American South into, say, a Bavarian — have mostly left viewers confused. Instead, studios usually rely on language. To convey James Bond’s distinctive Englishness, for example, dubbers use old-fashioned German words and deliberate, upper-class speech.

Dubbing, rather than subtitles, has been dominant in Germany since the end of the Second World War, when German audiences gained access to foreign films that had been banned under the Third Reich. While they were hungry for fare like "Gone with the Wind," moviegoers found subtitles distracting and avoided films that were not dubbed. Today, it is rare to come across any foreign entertainment on German television or in theaters— from the lowliest infomercial to the loftiest blockbuster — that isn't dubbed. But many in the industry feel they get little respect for what they do. "There is no question about the quality of the artists, about how well you do it," said Brandt. "It’s only a question of price. Low, low, low. Keep it cheap." Lehmann, one of the best-respected dubbers in the industry, said he is typically paid roughly 2,000 Euros to dub a Bruce Willis film — less than he makes for a Praktiker commercial. He was on location in Thailand for an acting role when the time came to dub "Die Hard: With a Vengeance." Instead of adjusting the dubbing schedule to accommodate Lehmann, the studio simply used someone else. "They did not find ways of making it work for that film," said Patricia Fitzgerald of Agentur Drews, who represents Lehmann. "And they could have made it work." It is not uncommon for studios to use different dubbers for the same foreign actor, for reasons ranging from cost to availability to the preferences of a studio.

Efforts have been made to raise the industry’s profile. There is an awards ceremony each year similar to the Oscars in which prizes are given to the best dubbers in a variety of categories, but it hasn't meant greater recognition from Hollywood. "Sometimes, it’s very depressing,” said Dirk Hartung, who lives with Hoffmann and writes German scripts for "CSI: Miami" and "Numbers." He points out that the couple almost never gets invited to the premieres of the movies that Ms. Hoffmann dubs. "You just have to think, you are not the German voice of Julia Roberts," said Hartung. "Julia Roberts is your American body."

By Brian Montopoli
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