Who is responsible for the voice of Chewbacca?
I feel sorry for the Jar Jar Binks guy. I remember seeing little shorts on the Star Wars site leading up to the release of episode 1, where the Jar Jar guy would take us around and show us stuff on the set. I’m sure he was thinking about how great it was going to be as a permanently remembered part of the next great Star Wars trilogy. Now I’m sure he dreads going over his resume. It’s not like showing off a Golden Raspberry award is going to garner a lot of job interviews.
“Wait, you’re that guy?!”
“Yes, I’m that guy …”
“Dude … I’m sorry.”
” It’s okay, I’m over it now - just don’t ask me to do the voice, okay?”
The guy who did the voice for Chewbacca, however - he’s probably invited to enough parties to be swimming in chips and guacamole every day of the year.
“Come on, do the growl one more time!”
“Well, it’s actually more like a gargle and clearing the throat at the same time.”
“Whatever man - do it like where he’s mad and ready to go wookiee and rip my arms off!”
“Oh, all right …. (growl/gargle/clear throat)”
Funny story - I just did some searching to find out who ‘owns’ the voice of Chewbacca, so I could link him in above. Well, it turns out that the voice of the Wookiee was actually a mix of sounds put together by sound designer Ben Burtt, and consisted of animal sounds from walruses, camels, bears, and badgers. One of the more important voices was that of Tarik, a black bear from the Happy Hollow Zoo in San Jose, California. Kind of sad, really - to discover that there’s not a real voice out there that is responsible for the voice of Chewbacca. Despite, that, however - that hasn’t stopped just about every young man from the age of 12 to, um, 99 from trying to wookiee up and make the sound themselves.
This guy seems to be closer than anyone else I’ve ever seen:
You’ll be looking for a long time
The voice of chewbacca was made by a mix of bear, walrus, camels and badgers.
yeah, I know
- you may have missed it in the post but that’s what I discovered when I began to dig through the history of where it came from. There was one Black Bear in particular, Tarik, that contributed one of the more important voices.