March 1 - Kat Cressida

Image courtesy giantbomb.com

On this day, in 1968, Kathryn Cressida was born in Long Beach, California.

After spending her formative years at the University of California, Berkeley studying Shakespeare (a move she admits is unlikely to generate any income, in case anyone else is considering it), Kat graduated cum laude and moved to San Francisco to continue her education at the American Conservatory Theatre. Once she was released to the world in 1993, she began picking up bit parts in regional theater productions and on television.  Her biggest splash in those early years was a guest spot on Babylon 5, which resulted in a collector’s card of her character being produced (not quite an action figure, but she’ll take it). In 1997, Kat (or rather her voice) made her big screen debut in the Jewish refugee documentary The Long Way Home. Not only could she now say she’d been in something with Morgan Freeman, Home also opened her eyes to the possibilities of a voice acting career.

Image copyright Cartoon Network

Kat began residing in the land of voices full time in 2000 and she does it all. She’s one of the few women who narrate trailers (you might have heard her promoting Bad Moms or Magic Mike XXL). She’s starred in animated series like Dexter’s Laboratory (Dee Dee) and Archer (Uta). She’s done dozens of characters in dozens of video games like Everquest II, Skylanders and Quake 4. And she is one the top voice matchers in the industry. What does that mean? Just like big name actors have stunt doubles for dangerous scenes in movies, a lot of them have voice doubles, or matchers, who can dub lines for them during the editing process, like when they’re not available due to other projects (or when it might be cost prohibitive to bring in an expensive A-lister for just a couple of minutes work). And voice matchers become really important to studios if someone passes away before the picture is ready to be released. If a matcher is good at what they do, like Kat, the audience never has a clue that they’re not hearing the voice they think they are. Kat is a voice matcher for (pardon me while I drop names all over the floor here) Julia Roberts, Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman, Jodie Foster, Helena Bonham-Carter, Anne Hathaway, Kate Beckinsale, Scarlett Johansen and Penelope Cruz.

Image copyright Disney

Another way voice matchers get gigs is when a studio wants to make a new project using an existing character but doesn’t want to pay big bucks to make it happen. This happens a lot in the video game world and is one of the ways Kat became part of the Disney family: she is Joan Cusack’s match for Jessie in a whole bunch of the offshoots of the Toy Story films. For instance, it’s Kat’s voice you hear when you ride Toy Story Midway Mania or play Disney Infinity, not Joan’s. She’s also done various voices for Phineas and Ferb, was Mrs. Darling in the 2008 Tinkerbell movie, voices Elektra in the Marvel Heroes app and narrated parts of the Disney’s Storyteller series.

Image copyright Disney

Kat’s most constant contribution to Disneyana comes in the area of attractions. Not only is she Jessie for the Toy Story ride, she’s also redubbed stuff for Wendy in the Peter Pan ride, Alice in her ride at Disneyland and is the voice of Little Girl Lost in the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Her most enduring attraction role is fairly high profile, however. It’s not often classic rides get expanded casts, like when Jack Sparrow was added to Pirates of the Caribbean after the film series, but Kat holds the distinction of being the only addition to The Haunted Mansion. You see her as your doom buggy heads into the attic and you become aware of Constance Hatchaway (yes, that’s her name), the Black Widow Bride who’s looking for her next husband.

These days, you can regularly find Kat announcing events on ESPN (she was the first woman to cover the NFL Draft) and appearing on Pardon the Interruption. She is also one of the voices of Professional Bull Riding (again, the first woman) and can be heard everywhere from Radio Disney to promo spots on TNT. And now, every time you see Julia Roberts or Helena Bonham-Carter in something, you’re going to wonder if it’s really them or if it's Kat you’re hearing. You’re welcome.

January 6 - Disney-MGM Studios

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On this day, in 2008, the third Walt Disney World theme park, the Disney-MGM Studios, ceased to exist. Which sounds more dramatic than it really is. The theme park didn’t actually go anywhere, of course, it just suffered a name change to Disney's Hollywood Studios. But that is enough of an excuse to talk about a place that has become near and dear to my heart. The park opened on May 1, 1989 as a theme park, yes, but with a fully operational production studio layered on top. The concept for the park had actually started on a much smaller scale. In the mid-Eighties, Legendary Imagineer Marty Sklar had teamed up with Randy Bright with the task of creating two new pavilions for Future World in Epcot. The two lead a team that came up with plans for a health based pavilion called Wonders of Life and an entertainment pavilion known as the Great Movie Ride. When Michael Eisner became the head of the company, he looked at the Great Movie Ride and thought it might be better to make it the anchor for a third theme park. To that end, Disney signed a licensing agreement with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and the Disney-MGM Studios was born, at least on paper.

Image copyright Disney

As plans for the new park grew, it was decided that included would be television and film production facilities, a functional backlot area and an auxiliary animation department to the California studio. The animation studio was the first thing to open and it promptly caused problems. MGM filed a lawsuit claiming they only agreed to a theme park and didn’t know anything about new film productions at the site. The fact that MGM wanted to open (and eventually did open) their own theme park at their hotel in Las Vegas, may have had something to do with it. Disney would file a countersuit over that theme park. In 1992 a federal judge decided that there was enough money to go around that both parks could exist. Only one still operates today, however, making the whole thing an overly expensive, not to mention pointless, spat.

Image copyright Disney

Plans for the new park were further complicated when Universal Studios announced that they were going to build a theme park in Orlando that would be similar to the one that already existed in Southern California. Construction had begun on Disney-MGM in 1987 but was accelerated in order to beat Universal’s opening by as much as possible (Universal’s actual opening was so plagued by problems it might not have mattered, but that’s a discussion for another time).

When Disney’s version of studio opened in 1989, it only had two attractions to offer guests. One was the Great Movie Ride (from the original Epcot brainstorms) and the other was the Studio Backlot Tour, which was part tram ride (through Catastrophe Canyon) and part walking tour. The Little Theme Park That Could proved to be popular, though, and it began to change in subtle ways almost immediately. Part of the backlot, New York Street, was taken off the tram tour and opened to relieve pedestrian traffic as the Streets of America. Bit by bit, pieces of the backlot tour were made into their own attractions, mainly to help with traffic control, including the theater in the Animation Courtyard area that made me love the Studios (more about that in my next post).

Image copyright Disney

The park also began expanding almost from the beginning. Star Tours debuted before the end of that first year. In 1991, the Grand Avenue area opened featuring one of my favorite attractions, Muppet*Vision 3D. The next big expansion opened in 1994 when Sunset Boulevard appeared on the map and dead ended at the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Since then all sorts of changes have happened. Actual productions stopped happening (too late to matter to MGM). The animation studio packed its bags and moved to California. The backlot tour systematically phased itself out until it was closed and the entire area was demolished to make way for an expanded Star Wars area. A Pixar street was added with the ever popular Toy Story Midway Mania ride and then even more Pixar was added as Toy Story got it's own land. And then, seventeen months ago, the Great Movie Ride itself closed its doors to make way for a new Mickey Mouse based experience.

Image copyright Disney

When the Great Movie Ride closed, the argument could be made that the Disney-MGM Studios actually did cease to exist at that point, not with the name change nine years earlier. The park has changed and evolved so much since opening day that hardly any of the original park is left. It is poised to change even more later this year with the opening of Star Wars Land (yes, I'm aware it's called Galaxy's Edge, not Star Wars Land, I'm marginal on that name) but that's okay. Change is something Walt expected his theme parks to do and I think Disney's Hollywood Studios has done the best job of embracing that change of any of them. It's gone from being a place where movies are made to being the place that brings movies to life. Will it get another name change as it moves into the future? Bob Iger once hinted as such, some really terrible names were focus grouped and then denials were made about Bob's hint, so I honestly don't know (although I'm still pulling for The Pixstar Ranch). What I do know is that the Disney-MGM Studios... I mean Disney's Hollywood Studios (some habits really do die hard) becomes more relevant and more exciting with every change.