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(WCCO) A night at the movies wouldn't sound the same without those trademark voices.

The deep bass, the intense delivery -- fewer than a dozen regular voices narrate Hollywood's movie trailers and primetime network television.

Two of those voices belong to native Minnesotans.

Don LaFontaine was born in Duluth 66 years ago.

"I'm never out of work, I never don't work," said LaFontaine.

In the 1960s, LaFontaine helped invent the modern movie trailer. His first gig paid $82. He was in the marketing department of a major movie studio, when someone suggested putting together a 30 second movie ad to run on the radio.

"I guess we were part of the original five people in the movie advertising business at that time, it was absolutely a brand new industry," said LaFontaine.

The movie trailer hallmark is the often-imitated and never duplicated phrase -- "In a world."

"People always joke at parties, and go, 'in a world,' and everybody laughs, but those same people go to a theater and you hear it in the context of a trailer, and they never laugh," he said.

LaFontaine works in his home, in a basement studio his wife calls "The Hole." Promotion producers fax him scripts and a digital ISDN phone line hooks him up with the producer.

As a Duluth teen, LaFontaine remembers the moment he found his voice.

"My mother was washing dishes and I said, 'Mom, I'll help you with the dishes," he recounted, his voice going from soprano to bass mid-sentence. "And the damn thing would not go back, it wouldn't go back."

He remembers Duluth as a "great place to grow up."

"I remember the warmest day in January 1957 was like 60 degrees below zero. We used to go chase women in that weather, that was our play weather."

More than being "the" voice, LaFontaine's also been a mentor, helping another Minnesotan more than 10 years ago.

Ben Patrick Johnson was just 26-years-old.

"It's a long way from St. Paul," said Johnson, looking out at the Los Angeles skyline from the patio of his Hollywood Hills home.

Today, Johnson lives next to Paris Hilton and his career is as booming as his voice.

"My first paid gig: Cities 97, doing overnights. I was 16 and lied and said I was 18," remembered Johnson.

He went to the University of Minnesota for awhile, but started working full-time at KSTP-AM as the production director. At age 22, he was hired to work at KABC-AM in Los Angeles. A couple years later, he moved into television at the syndicated entertainment program, "Extra."

When that didn't work out, he decided to try to break into the voice-over business.

"I have not stopped working since 1996 and I'm grateful for it," said Johnson.

He also works from a studio inside his West Hollywood home. On the day we visited, Johnson voiced two movie trailers and two dozen television promos, including some for CBS and WCCO-TV.

"It's not so much that it's difficult," according to Johnson. "It's that it's incredibly precise. It's not being able to get close to what it needs to be, it's getting it to precisely what it needs to be."

When he's not behind the microphone, he's down the hall, working on his daily Internet video blog.

He calls it "Life on the Left Coast" and he says he's "looking to find [his] voice as a commentator and political hack."

Johnson has a full television set with three cameras, four plasma monitors and a veteran of Minneapolis public access television as his editor, Brad Theissen.

"I never do anything half-way," said Johnson.

A busy voice-over artist doing movie and prime time television would easily make millions of dollars a year.

The Screen Actors Guild and AFTRA union minimum for a promotion or movie trailer is $220 for each spot.

Don LaFontaine said a busy talent could easily do 30 of those a day. That would net $6,600. Multiplied by 250 workdays in a year, the total take would be $1.65 million.

According to LaFontaine, he and Johnson both make well over the union minimum.

 

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