2022 marks the 35th anniversary of the release of G.I. Joe: The Movie, a major event for “children of the Eighties” which saw the G.I. Joe team, complete with new recruits, facing the secret and ancient organization behind COBRA known as “Cobra-La.” The opening sequence of the film is still an all-time favorite for many fans, and the movie itself brought in almost all of the G.I. Joe roster at one point or another.
One of the most popular characters from the Sunbow/Marvel G.I. Joe animated series run was Flint, the warrant officer voiced by Bill Ratner. The character is so memorable that Ratner has been called upon to reprise the role on such series as Family Guy and Robot Chicken. G.I. Joe only scratches the surface of Bill Ratner’s many accomplishments – he’s an accomplished poet, essayist, and writer who has received awards for his spoken word performances. If you’re not familiar with G.I. Joe, you’d still recognize his voice from many commercials and programs he has narrated, from Marvel and Pixar trailers, to television programs such as Air Crash Investigation, awards specials, and even news programs across the country. Here in Los Angeles, when you hear a promo for ABC7 Eyewitness News, you’ll probably notice the voice sounds familiar.
KSiteTV’s Craig Byrne had the opportunity to speak with Mr. Ratner and the best way to present this, of course, is to share the video. You can see how and why Mr. Ratner is known as an expert storyteller, with recollections of his time doing G.I. Joe and beyond being seen below. Transcribed highlights from the interview can be found underneath the video.
Bill Ratner will have a memoir out in the near future, and some of his poetry can be found in the collections Fear of Fish and To Decorate A Casket. Additionally, samples of his work can be found at BillRatner.com which we highly recommend checking out.
Here are some highlights from the interview:
On getting stopped by someone who recognizes his voice: “You know, it’s actually very rare, which which is lovely, because I’m sure I’d become a paranoid personality.” With that said, Ratner shared a few stories: “I was buying a cheap suit in downtown LA, where you can buy what looks like a $1,200 suit for like 99 bucks, And the guy fitting me was kind of a wiseacre ease. He said something [like] “you know, it doesn’t fit’ and I said, ‘Well, now I know, and knowing is half the battle.’ And he goes ‘wait a minute, man. Are you..?’ Was a we had a fun chat.”
Another incident happened at a comic book store on Eighth Street in Manhattan in New York. “A young guy was manning the store small place, and I said, ‘do you have any G.I. Joe comics or action figures?’ And he looks at me like ‘what is this old creep doing in my store?’ And he said no. I walked away, and I think I did the same thing: I said, ‘now I know, and knowing is half the battle.’ He turned around and looked at me with this kind of look of terror, disappeared, and came back about five minutes later with a mint unopened G.I. Joe comic book with with Lady Jaye and Flint on the cover and said, ‘I want to apologize! I’m sorry! I didn’t know! You have 10% lifetime discount in our store, and I’d like to give you this comic book and have you sign another?’ But that’s it, Craig. It never happens. I go through my life unrecognized!”
On getting G.I. Joe: “That was the coolest gig I’ve ever had. It’s like 1983 and they auditioned literally hundreds of us in Studio City at the Wally Burr recording studio – this tiny little place just a half a mile from Universal Studios. It was a nice Spring day, but there are literally a hundred people lined up out the door of the studio, down the steps and down the sidewalk, all of us holding these kinds of crude black and white Xeroxes of drawings of the characters were auditioning for. I had one of Flint with his beret and his big pectoral muscles, and Mary McDonald-Lewis who I knew, was close to me and she was going ‘Yo Joe! Yo Joe!’ We didn’t know really what it was we were auditioning for: a [five-episode] mini series. They called my agent at about four or five weeks later, and we did five episodes. Michael Bell as Duke, Mary Mack as Lady Jaye… and then that was the end of it. The networks did not want it because parent groups had actually become active in in protesting and saying ‘we’re not going to buy any Hasbro toys if you have this war show on television. We don’t want to see people die.’ They actually altered some of the scripts so instead of dying in plane crashes, they would just parachute out over the horizon.”
“In a couple of weeks, because the networks didn’t want it, Sunbow and Hasbro had to literally wear out tons of shoe leather, sending their sales forces around to large and small TV groups all over the country saying you know, ‘we’ll give your kid a G.I. Joe action figure if you hear this’ and they were successful enough so that probably got 60 stations around the country [picked up the show],” he continues. “I think we’d record 13 episodes at a time, and then when months would go by we’d do 13 more, and then suddenly one day a producer said ‘here’ and handed me a slew of papers that were all ending with ‘now you know, and knowing is half the battle’ – these 30-second scripts about ‘come on, buddy. Don’t throw baseballs through your neighbor’s window.’or ‘Sally might get hit in the head and you want to be a good neighbor.’ They said ‘you’re not gonna get paid extra; just read them! They’re public service announcements to advertise the show, and as a sop to the parent groups to smitigate any any growing anti-G.I. Joe protest movement.’ Disney used to do that in the back of their their books, these awful little morality stories. And anyway, so that’s that’s that’s the story of the casting of G.I. Joe. Transformers was done exactly the same way, at the same time.”
The sexiest G.I. Joe could get: “There was a kind of a sexy scene with Flint and Lady Jaye on the roof of the Joe Headquarters. A ‘you could borrow the sunscreen’ scene with Lady Jane. That was the sexiest the show got. But apparently – not apparently, factually – suddenly, their daughter appears in Transformers.” Could audiences have seen Marissa Fairborne’s origin story right there?
Directions when recording dialogue: “By the actor, they really cast for type, and at the casting session, Wally Burr and some of the Hasbro people were very specific: ‘faster, more action. I know you’ve got a space dinosaurs strangling you – you’re about to die. Get angry!’ So they knew what they were getting. Unlike television, where they’re willing to gamble on younger, inexperienced actors because they look right, most of us were a little bit older and more experienced. You knew what character you were playing. Wally’s direction almost exclusively consisted of ‘slow down! You get angry here! Shout louder! Don’t overlap!’ I think one of the reasons for the success of both Transformers and G.I .Joe the TV cartoons was they were really among if not the only American television cartoons that employed a naturalistic vocal style from the actors. We weren’t Smurfs – we weren’t doing character voices; we were doing naturalistic characters. Ultimately they developed about 85 different members of the Joe team, all of them with different crazy names. Snowflake, Dog Breath…”
When they did G.I. Joe: The Movie, did things ever get so far as recording dialogue that Duke had died? “I don’t know if if this is history or myth, but I heard what sounded like a factual report that a print of G.I. Joe: The Movie was screened during Comic-Con out in the suburbs of San Diego, and a bus was provided by Hasbro and Sunbow. [In this version], Duke was killed, and there was a massive protest. I think some editing audio and video might have been done before they minted the prints and sent them out for national distribution. I think it went straight to VHS or Betamax. ”
On Seth MacFarlane recruiting Ratner to voice Flint in an episode of Family Guy: “Seth MacFarlane, by that point, was was a big star. I don’t know if he had hosted the Oscars yet, but he was big stuff with Family Guy. My agent called and said ‘Family Guy wants to do a Flint episode!’ I said, ‘oh, exciting!’ but we went back and forth, because these days, voiceover guys like myself are kind of stuck in our basements… we can’t get across town, and FOX was way across town. I wanted to do it. But I said ‘I don’t know how we can do this’ because they wanted to record it in their own facility on the lot of 20th Century Fox, which is certainly fancier than my basement. Finally, they said ‘alright, they’ll do it. You can record in your studio and just send in the file.’
“Soon, Seth MacFarlane is on the phone. ‘Would you hold for Mr. MacFarlane?’
‘Yeah?’
Hi, is this Flint?’
‘Yeah, who’s this?’
‘Seth MacFarlane.’
‘Hey, Seth. Nice to meet you!’
“I was kind of intimidated. He’s a big star! And he was nervous!I think he called me Mr. Ratner – and he said ‘I just want to say I was a huge fan,’ and I went, ‘the tables have turned’.” Ratner’s Family Guy episode led to him doing some episodes of Robot Chicken with Seth Green, and a few years later, Community did a G.I. Joe episode as well.
In the interview, Bill Ratner explains why so many of the Sunbow-era G.I. Joe voice actors didn’t continue with the series when the show went to DIC. He also speaks about how he got into spoken word performances and writing. “I began competing, [and] I got hooked,” Ratner recalls. “Some of them are dramatic, and some of them are funnier than that. Some of them are fascinating and the themes are different every month.” Ratner has performed all over the country, from Austin to Miami, New York to L.A, Portland to Seattle, San Francisco, and more.
Ratner also speaks about helping the community. “Right before shutdown in March of 2020, I was trained as a volunteer grief counselor,” he explains. “I lost my family as a kid and ended up in public schools in L.A. working with kids who had lost someone in their family in the last year, to death from gang violence, to Grandma dying of cancer.”
His poetry is easily available to check out: “I just happen to have my full collection called Fear of Fish available now wherever books are sold. Find it on my website, you can go on an Amazon [and] Barnes and Noble [too]. And for those of you who aren’t depressed enough by COVID: To Decorate a Casket.”
As mentioned earlier, he also has a memoir coming up, and it’s called “Announcing the Apocalypse.” He recalls how his father, an advertising man who passed away when he was 13, would comment about the commercials on TV, and how that connected to his own life and career, as heavily merchandised as G.I. Joe had been. “He explained the economics of television to me [with] advertising and the selling of children’s toys before I was six,” Ratner believes. And as you can see below, perhaps his most famous alter ego has been immortalized in plastic since 1985. Yo Joe!
You can visit Bill Ratner’s website here.
