44 M PS E . O R G
those gremlin voices, and Richard
Anderson did the hard effects. And,
yeah … that signature laugh that
Mark Dodson did, is like, just … that
says Gremlins to me! Whenever I
hear that high cackle!
MM: That was pulled from his
audition tape. He sent me, cold, an
audition tape. His big credit having
been the voice of Salacious Crumb
in Return of the Jedi. And he had that
iconic mischievous sound. He had
that voice in spades. There was just
one little beat in his audition tape
where, the minute I heard it I thought,
"THAT'S our character right there!"
SL: I remember the great "gremlin
crowd walla" you compiled leads
off with that classic gremlin cackle!
You know, I've sort of made it a rule
for myself, because I remember
the days of the old cigar-chomping
"Liquid lunch" sound editors of the
'60s who would just cut the first
effect on the roll without listening
to the whole take—I always listen
to the entire effect before I cut. But
with THAT one, you HAVE to start
right at the head, because it opens
with that great cackle!
MM: That movie
terrified me. I mean creatively. It was
not just having to bring voices to the
Mogwai and Gizmo and gremlins—
but the sheer number of them, like
in the bar scene, and some of the
attack scenes—it was just a never-
ending process of discovery and
invention.
SL: They all had specific
characters!
MM: Many thanks to Howie Mandel,
Frank Welker, Mark Dodson, and
a host of others. Fred Newman,
Bob Bergen, Michael Winslow…
They helped us bring a variety of
character to all of them. Oh, and
Kirk Thatcher!
SL: I've heard of him.
MM: I was designing the gremlin
voices as Joe was still shooting. Very
rare in Hollywood. Or anywhere,
really. "POST sound." It's called
"post" for a reason. You finish the
shoot and the edit, and THEN
sound is applied. But Joe (Dante,
the director) saw the value of
PRE-design, so much so that as I
developed sounds, he would invite
Chris Wallas and the puppeteers
to my studio, and I would play my
sounds for them. And that would
inspire them, and in some regards,
affect their puppeteering. Joe
was just a brilliantly progressive
filmmaker that way.
SL: Ben Burtt did something
similar on Return of the Jedi. When
he was working on the Ewok vocals,
he brought a TCD5 (cassette
recorder) to play the sounds he
was making to the performers.
MM: I didn't know that! I had gotten
lucky and had recorded these crazy
pit bulls—remember in the library—
we had this thing called the "vibra-
growl!"
Recording penguins for Mr.
Popper's Penguins
(2011).
Photo by Ben Cheah
