Talk:Don LaFontaine/Archives/2012

First use of "in a world..."

Does anyone know what film (or films) started the whole "in a world..." business? I'm sure plenty of people looking up LaFontaine would want to know this; I sure don't know. Anybody know? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Priceyeah (talk • contribs)

That's a good question, I'd like to know that myself. The first time I became concsiously aware of it is when Janeane Garafalo pointed it out in the late 1990s or so, and all the parodies seemed to come after that. But I don't know where the convention itself first started. MrBook 18:23, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

According to AP's article "'That Announcer Guy' Finally Gets Due", his first trailer was (drumroll.........) "Gunfighters of Casa Grande" around 1963 I believe. And thus started thousands of "world" trailers! God Bless LaFontaine.Nikter 07:45, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia entry on trailer man Hal Douglas says Douglas is known in the film industry as the "In a world..." guy. (Douglas & LaFontaine are easily confused: I've just removed credit here for a parody appearance in The Holiday which is actually Hal Douglas.) Lyn50

Lyn, from what I understand reading a few interviews there was a disagreement between Hal Douglas and Don LaFontaine on exactly who used it first. Simon Bar Sinister (talk) 05:30, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Which trailers even say "In a world where" not counting comedies and parodies? I can't find any! --24.94.251.190 (talk) 01:17, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Why is there a picture of Don Messick?

Someone needs to change this picture.

Yeah that guy is just on google but hes nothing like the guy from the geico commercial (Googleyii 02:49, 27 August 2006 (UTC))

Hitch-Hiker's trailer

I think the 'cigarettes' portion of the Hitch-Hiker's trailer was done by a CBC Radio One announcer who is only known as 'The Voice'. He does the intro for the 9 AM weekday show called The Current.

[Update: The Hitch Hiker's trailer was not Don LaFontaine, but rather Ashton Smith (the same guy who narrates "Seconds From Disaster"] Someone needs to remove that statement.

It's still there. I'll remove it. Can I fit it under parodies, though? I'll try.--Viridis^{talk|contributions} 15:13, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

The trailer link (10) is broken. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.58.44.146 (talk) 10:50, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I am pretty sure the narrator is Stephen Fry and not Ashton Smith, but maybe this the movie differs in the U.S. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.73.134.163 (talk) 13:09, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

voice of god weapon

I got here trying to find details on the voice of god weapon. Mathiastck 23:34, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, you got to the wrong place. Try this Washington Post article or the XADS company site.--Dhartung | Talk 01:33, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

yiko, geico gecko.

Hopiakuta 16:19, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

He earns $1.8 billion a year??

"LaFontaine voices about sixty promo sessions a week; he demands $600,000 per 30 second promo" can anyone provide a source for this? There is no way this is true.

Yeah, that's ridiculous. I couldn't find anything asserting that he'd earned that much for any single job, let alone all of them. Numerous sources do confirm he's a multi-millionaire and earns "six figures" (some) "more than $1 million" (others). --Dhartung | Talk 11:28, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

According to workingworld.com:

"Don La Fontaine, acknowledged as the 'King of promos and trailers,' is reported to have earned $6,000,000 in 1998--for talking."

Unfortunately, the information is only available when you do a google search for "Don LaFontaine annual income workingworld.com", and the information is strangely unavailable even when you click on "cached". --JoshLMeyer 22:50, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, that's sort of a vague way to source such an extreme claim. I've added a cite to a major media outlet (E!online) for a "six figure salary" claim, which really should be sufficient -- I don't think we need to track his annual salary ups and downs.

P.S. you don't need to use HTML to format.--Dhartung | Talk 00:27, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Fix the first Current Work paragraph

This paragraph contains a trainwreck of a run-on sentence and after reading it 4 times, I still don't know what in the hell it is about. Could someone please fix this?--Senna27 22:59, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Is that him?

• Listerine Commercial

Is it LaFontaine who appears in a Listerine commercial "at a sink..."? G33K 18:29, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

No, that's not him. That actor is doing a very good parody of LaFontaine, though. The Listerine actor also appears as the boss in a series of recent Kellogg's Cinnamon Crunch commercials (you know, the one which has the young guy eating a bowl of cereal while the boss and his immediate underling talk). -- Jalabi99 11:54, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

For those interested: Interview with Don LaFontaine ~Kylu (u|t) 22:50, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

• Early Nickelodeon Program

Can anyone confirm or deny whether Don LaFontaine is the uncredited voice-over for the 1983 Nickelodeon series The Third Eye? - tuttlemsm http://www.retrojunk.com/details_tvshows/896-the-third-eye/

nickname list

Does the list of nicknames in the lead seem a little over indulgent to anyone. Seems like we're trying to include everything anyone has ever said about him in the form of nicknames. If we're gonna go that route we obviously need to add "the one guy with the voice", "that bald dude over there", "Holy crap he has a deep voice", and "Honestly, does nobody else record movie trailer voice-overs?". Those are some great nicknames right there, that's what those are. But seriously, surely it can be trimmed down to the smaller proportion of more notable monikers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.102.196.38 (talk) 08:54, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Possibly the busiest single actor in the history of SAG

According to All Access Media ( a trade pub for radio ), based on contracts signed... www.allaccess.com (you'll need to be a member and log in) Wamnet (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 17:37, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

Don LaFontaine Memorial

This site was added to the External Links. I thought that such "memorial" sites where not Wiki acceptable. Proxy User (talk) 18:08, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

"Are sometimes confused..." citation needed?

Someone's marked the statement "Similar voice actors Ashton Smith, Hal Douglas, and Peter Cullen have all been categorized as being a close copy to the style of LaFontaine, and are sometimes confused with LaFontaine." as "citation needed".

Why? It doesn't seem contentious or likely to be challenged. I'm happy to provide a citation nonetheless, but I don't know enough about Wikipedia's sourcing rules to do so properly. The obvious sources for this would be things like "the very history of this article" (which had several trailers misattributed to LaFontaine), or "a Google search for 'seinfeld comedian trailer don-lafontaine' compared to 'seinfeld comedian trailer hal-douglas'. Or an article about "that movie trailer guy" that erroneously attributes a trailer to LaFontaine.

All of that, in turn, would seem to be Original Research. It seems unlikely that anyone has written an *article* discussing the confusion. Yet it clearly exists. So.. uh.. what's an encyclopedia to do? JayLevitt (talk) 19:58, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

List of trailers

Does anybody know where I can get a complete list of all the movie trailers he worked on? Specifically, I'm just to find out which Star Trek movie trailers he worked on (if any). I'm pretty sure at least two of them has his voice; at least three others could be him. Any help would be appreciated. --From Andoria with Love (talk) 00:13, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Which ones do you think he did? Can you post links to YouTube? I can offer my opinion if they're him or not. Evan1975 (talk) 02:33, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

The ones I think may be him are The Voyage Home (sounds a bit different, but may be because he's younger), The Undiscovered Country, Generations (voice doesn't sound quite right), First Contact, and Insurrection. --From Andoria with Love (talk) 23:21, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm no expert, but since Evan hasn't been back: I don't think that any of those are Don. They sound a lot like George DelHoyo to me, but compare for yourself; you can hear a number of "trailer voices" at Prime Time Voices. "Insurrection" might be Nick Tate; there's a bit of an accent (or maybe just a head cold). JayLevitt (talk) 18:28, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Illness

The media keeps making references to a prolonged illness he had. The description of his lung clots/collapse don't seem to be consistent with this. Is there something else that needs to be added? Could the "prolonged" language be a reference to cancer or AIDS? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.32.122.60 (talk) 17:12, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

According to media reports, the prolonged illness from which Don LaFontaine was suffering was emphysema, with which the lung clots are entirely consistent. Max Density (talk) 21:13, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

This is a blog entry of Don's from December 2007 that goes into a lot of detail about his health problem. Evan1975 (talk) 22:33, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

imdb.com - Don LaFontaine (II)

This is the same Don LaFontaine as this one, isn't it? Should we have a link to both? Evan1975 (talk) 02:31, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't believe so. Clearly, the folks at IMDb consider them to be two different people, or they would've included those credits under Don LaFontaine (I). Any inclusion of Don LaFontaine (II) would be considered original research. Max Density (talk) 21:05, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

It's probably the same guy, Don LaFontaine started as a sound editor. imdb, like wiki, is user-created and often inaccurate. However, I will do as you say and not add it here. Evan1975 (talk) 22:30, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

It is the same guy. Why shouldn't it be added? Proxy User (talk) 23:58, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

autio non-free media?

For a biography on an individual known for his voice, I should think a short audio clip would be appropriate. If libre, that would be most excellent, but I think it would meet the non-free content criteria to use a non-free sample. — pd_THOR ^{| =/\=} | 01:26, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

350,000 Commercials?

His obit in the New York Times says he did about 350,000 commercials; this entry says "hundreds of thousands". This statistic makes no sense. According to this entry he worked for 46 years. If he was an immediate success and worked 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year, if my math is correct, that's an average of 158 commercials a day. A 30 second commercial takes a lot more than 30 seconds to record, even if each took an average 10 minutes, then he would have had to work 26 hours of each of those days making commercials. I think not. Am I missing something? MatthewBrooklyn (talk) 21:41, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

I think your math is incorrect. 5 days × 48 weeks × 46 years = 11,040 days. That number divided into 350,000 is about 32, not 158. That's one commercial every 15 minutes over an 8-hour work day -- still a lot, but not impossible, especially if some recordings were used in multiple commercials. Richard K. Carson (talk) 01:09, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks I thought I might have done something wrong there, but the point remains, because no one is an overnight success and I don't think it's possible that anyone can tape 32 commercials a day 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year, every year for nearly 5 decades, even if he was. This number of days also assumes no vacation time, as 48 weeks a year takes into account 10 holidays a year when ads are not likely to be taped. In addition, he did a lot of voiceover work other than commercials. This statistic does not seem like it can be accurate. MatthewBrooklyn (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 02:57, 12 September 2008 (UTC).

Question

I haven't listened to Rick Dees lately, but I would presume he is mister Mr.Voice but I don't see any mention of his work at Rick Dees. --JForget 01:12, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

How many?!?!

While I do not dispute that he is extremely prolific, the opening paragraph's claim of "hundreds of thousands" of commercials seems rather excessive...is there a source for this claim? -70.251.65.215 (talk) 16:03, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Star Trek: The Next Generation

Wasn't Don the voice overs of Seasons 4-7 of Star Trek: The Next Generation? I think I heard his voice if the preview of the Season 1 episode "The Arsenal of Freedom"--BigMac1212 (talk) 02:42, 11 May 2009 (UTC)