Loud Lake Bluff native lands voice-over role in 'Open Season'

"Something bad has happened! Something really, really bad!"

It's the opening line of the new animated direct-to-DVD movie "Open Season: Scared Silly," spoken by Mr. Weenie, a German-accented cartoon dog played by voice-over actor and Lake Bluff native Will Townsend.

The story of how Townsend got the job is actually really, really good.

The 26-year-old Lake Forest High School alumnus was working in the IT and marketing departments at Sony Pictures Animation in Los Angeles. One day, movie director Dave Feiss was talking to someone in a nearby cubicle and heard Townsend yell to someone down the hall.

He came around the corner and found Townsend, and he asked him to repeat what he was saying. Feiss thought he sounded just like the movie's deer character, Elliot.

That got Townsend an invitation to do "scratch voices" for the movie's early planning stages. Basically, that involves recording voices to accompany the black-and-white story boards.

"I think they asked me because I was loud and I loved talking to people," Townsend said. "I just kind of fell backward into it."

Townsend tapped into an accent he used to do as a camp counselor in South Carolina, entertaining 7-year-olds by playing the game "Hansel Says" instead of "Simon Says." It impressed Feiss so much that Townsend was cast for two roles - as Mr. Weenie and also as the loud, enthusiastic Elliot. In the original 2006 "Open Season," Elliot was voiced by actor Ashton Kutcher.

Townsend said Elliot's voice is essentially his normal voice after a cup of coffee.

"I love entertaining kids, so hopefully the movie does the same thing," he said. "I once talked in a Russian accent (to the campers) for two weeks straight because I thought it was hilarious. Being over-the-top and animated is who I am. My friends tell me to shut up, but I do it anyway."

Townsend learned he'd landed the lead roles while leaving work one night to catch a flight home to Chicago. It began with a long, drawn-out lecture about how thankful everyone was for his help with the scratch voices.

"I was, like, 'Right. I've got a plane to catch.' But then they said, 'We want to cast you.' I jumped out of my chair, and jumped around for a while, and was high-fiving everyone," Townsend said. "(That night) I celebrated at Silo Pizza (in Lake Bluff) with my dad. It was one of the most exciting days in my life."

Feiss described it as "our own little 'A Star is Born' story."

Doing voice-over for an animated movie wasn't what Townsend expected, though. He imagined he'd be in a room with all of the actors, reading the script. Instead, it was just him alone in a room with a big microphone.

"Everyone else was behind a glass wall," he said. "You do the lines 10, 20 times to get them right sometimes. Just being by yourself and acting was hard."

The movie's about Elliot and his friends (including Mr. Weenie) helping Boog, a domesticated 900-pound grizzly bear, overcome his fears of being in the wild.

To warm up before each day of work, Townsend would get into character by reciting the "Something bad has happened!" opening line with a German accent.

"I must have said that line thousands of times," he said. "It was the only way I could get into the Mr. Weenie mode of being a crazy German dog."

Townsend had so much fun making the movie that he's eager to do more voice-over work. In the meantime, he said he's keeping his day job as an associate production manager.

"Maybe it's something I can do on the side," he said. "Hopefully, this is just the start of a career doing it. I'm excited about what it could become."

- Jamie Sotonoff

• Dann Gire and Jamie Sotonoff are always looking for people from the suburbs who are working in showbiz. If you know of someone who would make an interesting feature, email them at dgire@dailyherald.com and jsotonoff@dailyherald.com.

‘Open Season: Scared Silly’

“Open Season: Scared Silly” will be released on DVD Tuesday, March 8. It’s the fourth installment of the “Open Season” animated movie series. The original, released in 2006, starred Martin Lawrence (as Boog) and Ashton Kutcher (as Elliot).