Ultimate Disney did a great article with Interview with John Musker and Ron Clements: The writing-directing duo behind The Princess and the Frog where they said some wonderful things about working with Jim Cummings. I’ve just pulled out the quotes specifically about Jim Cummings below but I do encourage you to read the whole article here. It is a great read!

Q: I had the pleasure of interviewing Ray’s animator Mike Surrey a few months back. He said Jim Cummings made his job easy. What made you choose him for Ray? 

John Musker: Jim Cummings was a riot to work with. We have worked with him in the past but what we didn’t know was that he had spent years in New Orleans where he worked alongside Cajuns whose speech patterns he picked up.

Q: Being a Louisiana native, it’s eerie and extremely entertaining how well you got the Cajun character down. Was there a lot of research involved in Raymond and the film as a whole?

John Musker: We wanted to do right by Louisiana and the culture there including the great Cajun populace. John Lasseter really wanted authenticity, so we took several trips down there. We met with a number of people including a man named Reggie who was our bayou tour guide. We noted his speech patterns, and picked up more phrases at jazz Fest. We also did research where we read stories written in a “Cajun” voice and found Cajun glossaries online. Best of all though, we cast Jim Cummings as our firefly. When he auditioned, he did a great Cajun accent and we learned he had a home there for several years and had worked with Cajuns in the Merchant marines. He was able to improvise in his Cajun speak, so he added a lot of flavor to our gumbo.

Just a friendly reminder from your friends at The Cult of Cummings that Jim Cummings’ new movie, Disney’s The Princess and The Frog opens nation wide tonight. From the people who got to see it when it was in limited release, it’s getting great reviews with many review citing Jim Cummings as the best part of the film so it is very exciting.

You can read all the reviews as they come in over at Rotten Tomatoes.

But I want to know what YOU think! Did you see the movie? Did you like it? Let us know and share your thoughts below!

By Karen Lindell
Sunday, August 23, 2009
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When Jim Cummings is sick, Winnie-the-Pooh disappears.

Cummings’ vocal cords give life to Disney’s animated Winnie-the-Pooh, the Bear of Very Little Brain created by A.A. Milne.

“Pooh is not quite a falsetto; he’s kind of like a high tenor, or a low tenor with a lot of rasp in there, just like a wind blowing through the cattails sort of sound,” the voice actor crooned in perfect Pooh timbre. “If I get an allergy or a cold, Pooh goes away, so I have to eat my vitamin C.

Pooh might suggest a remedy that soothes both the throat and tummy: honey.

Agoura Hills resident Cummings, 56, is a cartoon chameleon. He has been the voice of Pooh for Disney since 1988, then took over as Tigger.

Pooh and Tigger, however, are just two of the characters listed on Cummings’ 10-page “voiceography.”

You might have heard him as Kaa the snake in “The Jungle Book 2,” Ed the hyena in “The

Lion King” and assorted characters in “Aladdin,” “Antz,” Babe: Pig in the City,” “Bee Movie,” The Little Mermaid,” Pocahontas,” “Shrek” and “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.”

For Warner Bros., he’s Taz the Tasmanian devil (“the anti-Pooh,” he says). Other credits include “Animaniacs,” “Pinky and the Brain,” ”Curious George,” “King of the Hill,” “The Simpsons” and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”

And wildfire-prone California is proud to call him one of the voices of Smokey Bear.

“I do all the better bears,” said Cummings during an interview at his home.

Next up is his role as Ray, a laid-back, lovesick Cajun firefly in “The Princess and the Frog,” a new, traditionally 2-D animated Disney film set in New Orleans. The film, a musical, will have a score by Randy Newman and, in a first for Disney, a black princess. The movie, also featuring the voice of Oprah Winfrey (as the princess’ mom), is still in postproduction and scheduled for a December release.

This week, however, Cummings’ attention is on a certain boisterous tiger.

As the free-spirited Tigger on Disney Channel’s “My Friends Tigger and Pooh,” which airs each morning, Cummings has received a 2009 Daytime Emmy Award nomination for outstanding performer in an animated program. The winner will be announced Saturday during the Creative Arts portion of the awards at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles; the more mainstream awards (such as honors for soap opera stars and talk show hosts, etc.) will be handed out Aug. 30 at L.A.’s Orpheum Theatre and televised on The CW.

Notice the Emmy category is titled “outstanding performer in an animated program,” not “outstanding voice.”

Cummings and his brethren truly are actors, not just script readers.

Brian Hohlfeld, executive director of “My Friends Tigger and Pooh,” said that, to be a good voice actor, “you have to be an actor. People forget that. It’s not just the voice. There’s such a small group of people who do this because it’s really hard.”

With Cummings, he said, “you can see the physical changes in his face and body as he’s doing the voices.”

Cummings calls his work “acting for the ears.” Cartoons, he said, “are not called ‘animated’ for nothing.

“A lot of people think they draw the movie or cartoon first, but the fact is they record the voices first, then they animate to that,” he explained. “You can’t really draw comic timing out of thin air; you’ve got to hear it and go, ‘Oh, that I can draw.’”

Finding his voices

Cummings started out at the top of the cartoon chain, landing at animation exemplar Disney in the 1980s. Born and raised in Ohio, Cummings said he listened to Paul Winchell (the original voice of Tigger) and Mel Blanc (voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and many others) as a kid and thought, “Man, they’re having a great time.”

He didn’t have any formal stage or voice training, aside from a book about ventriloquism, but did act in plays as a child.

Onstage, he said, “I would rather be the wizard than the prince because the wizard was a little more interesting and had more cool stuff to do. I was doing accidental research for my career later in life.”

At age 19, after attending Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Cummings moved to the Big Easy. He worked as a deckhand on riverboats, and fulfilled his artsy side by designing and painting Mardi Gras floats, and performing as a drummer and singer in bands.

In 1979 Cummings, his first wife and their two daughters moved to California, where from 1979-84 he ran a video store in Anaheim Hills. While there, he made a demo voice tape, and was fortunate to get it into the right hands: a customer who was a movie producer.

“I got an audition out of that without an agent,” Cummings said.

He first real role was a plum Disney one, playing Lionel the Lion in “Dumbo’s Circus,” a TV show featuring live-action puppets.

Halfway through his 120-episode stint on “Dumbo’s Circus,” Cummings hired an agent and started working in radio and TV. (He also does voice-overs, movie trailers previews and commercials, everything from J.C. Penney to AutoZone.)

He moved from Anaheim to Westlake Village and the Santa Rosa Valley, then to Agoura Hills about three years ago. He and his wife Stephanie, who’ve been married for eight years, have two daughters, Gracie, 4, and Lulu, 2; Cummings’ older daughters are in their 20s.

Ducks and dust bunnies

Cummings is proud of some of his lesser-known roles, such as the title character in “Darkwing Duck,” an Emmy-nominated animated Disney program that aired in the early 1990s. Darkwing, “the terror that flaps in the night,” was a bumbling superhero in the town of St. Canard.

He’s also fond of a monster named Mr. Bumpy from “Bump in the Night.”

“He was this funky little guy who lived under the bed and thought eating dust bunnies was a delicacy,” Cummings said. “He was as cool as he could be, and ate dirty socks.”

In 1995, Cummings received an Annie Award nomination for voice acting as Mr. Bumpy but was beaten by Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson.

The competition is stiff for this week’s Emmy Award, too, with celebs better known for their live-action work nominated in the animation category. Cummings is vying for the award with Amy Poehler (as Bessie Higgenbottom in “The Mighty B!” on Nickelodeon), Joan Rivers (Bubbe in “Arthur” on PBS), Vanessa Williams (Mama in “Mama Mirabelle’s Home Movies” on PBS) and Jim Ward (Eyemore in “Biker Mice from Mars” on Fox).

“This year I’m going with either Vanessa or Amy,” Cummings said, summing up his competition. “I think folks go down the line and go: ‘Jim Cummings? I don’t really know who that is. Oh, Joan Rivers, Vanessa Williams, I love her; let’s vote for her.’ You can’t fight that. I understand why they do it.”

What does he think about the trend of celebrities taking on the lead voice roles in animated movies?

“I have some calls out to Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Eddie Murphy,” Cummings said, laughing. “I said, ‘I won’t star in any blockbuster films if you stay out of animated films.’ They just won’t call me back.”

Cummings does get feedback, however, from another telephone venture, this one for charity.

Hundreds of sick children each year receive a phone call from one of the Hundred Acre Woods’ (and Agoura Hills’) famous denizens, Winnie-the-Pooh or Tigger, aka Cummings. He works with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, which grants wishes to children with life-threatening illnesses, and Famous Fone Friends, which connects sick kids to entertainers and athletes via phone.

Cummings recalled one such phone session with a little girl with cancer, not quite 3, who had been on chemotherapy for six months. “I had to gear up for that one,” he said. “‘I love you, Winnie-the-Pooh,’ she said. Stuff like that is so rewarding; it’s the greatest thing in the world.”

Keeping it fresh

Cummings models his Pooh and Tigger voices after the men who first voiced the characters: Sterling Holloway and Paul Winchell, respectively.

(Holloway died in 1992. Winchell, a Moorpark resident when he died in 2005, lived in Ventura County for more than 15 years.)

“That’s one thing I think Disney is right on the money with — they keep their characters sounding the same,” Cummings said. “They could run a Winnie-the-Pooh from the ’60s and one from 2008 and have the consistency there.”

Still, he said, “you don’t want to stagnate. You ad lib and do different things to keep it fresh.”

“My Friends Tigger and Pooh” director Hohlfeld said Cummings is “true to Sterling vocally, but he’s made it his own as well. Pooh is still the befuddled bear. Jim just brings more heart to it; his Pooh has a little more warmth.”

One thing you might not want to hear, however, is Pooh as pugilist.

Cummings “does a fantastic Mike Tyson imitation,” Hohlfeld said. “Sometimes he’ll do Pooh’s lines using Mike Tyson’s voice.”

He doesn’t even need to alter Pooh’s “I am a Bear of Very Little Brain” line.

Jim Cummings holds daughters Grace, 4, and Lulu, 2, near a garden statue of Taz the Tazmanian devil — he calls him “the anti-Pooh” — for which he also provides the voice.

In his 25 years being often heard and seldom seen, Jim Cummings has voiced a host of characters and won many honors. He’s up for a possible Daytime Emmy this year as outstanding performer for his work as Tigger’s voice.

Jim Cummings, a voice actor who´s done numerous animated characters since 1984, carries his daughter Lulu 2, out of their Curious George playhouse July 23, 2009.

Voice actor Jim Cummings rehearses a current project in his home studio in Agoura Hills. He’s been the voice of Winnie-the-Pooh for Disney since 1988 and does Tigger, too.

By Mark Pattison, Catholic News Service
July 24, 2009
SOURCE

Catholic voice actor Jim Cummings is pictured in an undated publicity photo. Cummings is up for a Daytime Emmy for outstanding performer in an animated program for his work on the series “My Friends Tigger & Pooh.” (CNS photo/handout)

WASHINGTON – Jim Cummings didn’t exactly study his chosen career field during his 12 years of Catholic schooling, but he certainly honed his craft.

The thrice-Emmy-nominated voice actor was a relentless mimic when going to Immaculate Conception and St. Columba grade schools and Ursuline High School, all in Youngstown, Ohio.

“I’d be doing dolphin sounds in the background,” Cummings recalled during a July 22 telephone interview from Los Angeles with Catholic News Service. Cummings then proceeded to do some dolphin clicks and chatter straight out of the old “Flipper” TV series.

“Sister Mary Agnes would say, ‘We don’t allow dolphin sounds in the classroom, Mr. Cummings,’“ he said.

Cummings, a member of St. Jude Parish in Los Angeles, got reprimanded over the course of his scholastic career for his mimicry. But he doesn’t hold it against his teachers or principals. The feeling is apparently mutual.

“I have a scholarship at my old school in my dad’s name, so they don’t seem to mind me anymore,” Cummings said.

It wasn’t all trips to the principal’s office for Cummings. He also parlayed his talents into championships for Ursuline during state and regional speech and oratory contests.

Cummings has been plying his trade for 20 years in Hollywood. He’s been involved in more than 300 different animation projects, performing multiple voices on many of the shows, according to the Internet Movie Database.

He’s up for a Daytime Emmy for outstanding performer in an animated program for his work on the series “My Friends Tigger & Pooh” – although he’s up against bigger names such as Joan Rivers, Amy Poehler and Vanessa Williams.

You probably wouldn’t know him if you saw him. Because he has been a voice actor, his face has rarely been on screen. “I’m a stealth celebrity,” he joked.

Cummings created the voice of title character Darkwing Duck, a popular Disney cartoon series of the 1990s. He also has moved into more hallowed territory, taking on the voice of Taz, the Tasmanian Devil originally voiced by cartoondom’s original man of a thousand voices, Mel Blanc, but also the voices of Tigger and Winnie the Pooh, the latter’s voice originally done by actor Sterling Holloway.

It’s a challenge to stay true to the voice created by another actor a generation or two earlier, Cummings admitted.

One of his biggest challenges was to record practically every conceivable child’s name for a talking Winnie the Pooh toy. “Esquire magazine gave it a prize for ‘most interesting name’: My Interactive Pooh,” Cummings told CNS.

At the end of a long day, when Cummings said he must have done “25,000 names where Winnie the Pooh would mention your name,” he came home, answered the phone when it rang, and slipped into his Pooh voice. It’s been the only time he’s slipped into character when he wasn’t supposed to play one, he said.

One of Cumming’s upcoming projects will hit the silver screen later this year. It’s a new Disney movie called “The Princess and the Frog,” in which Cummings plays a frog with a Cajun accent named Ray. The project – which also features the voice talents of Oprah Winfrey, John Goodman and Terrence Howard – will be Disney’s first cartoon movie to feature African-American lead characters.

“It’s a steady gig,” Cummings noted, and if he has any regret, it’s for being too sick to audition 20 years ago when a new cartoon series called “The Simpsons” was auditioning actors who could do multiple voices. “Other than that one, I’m a happy camper. I don’t look back in frustration and anger,” he said. “I hope for the best, expect the worst, and take what comes.”

Cummings’ TV debut came much earlier than his online resume would suggest.

“I was in sixth grade and I remember that Mother Rosemary – who was going to be my speech teacher (in high school) and sort of one of the great shining lights of our scholastic career – she had written and directed a play that they had put on television,” he said. “It was called ‘The Catholic School Story.’ It was in black and white and I didn’t know what to do with myself, I was so happy.”

Another Ursuline grad also performed in the TV special and went on to bigger and better things: Ed O’Neill, who, even after it’s been off the air for a dozen years, is probably still best known for playing put-upon dad Al Bundy in the TV sitcom “Married With Children.”

“I keep meaning whenever I run into him to say I suspect we made our TV debut together. He was a senior in high school,” Cummings said. “Ed played Father O’Neill and I played the cute little kid.”

You all remember the controversy that the original teaser trailer for The Princess and the Frog rained down on Jim Cummings for his Cajun firefly character, Ray. Jim Cummings himself has stated that the character is his new favorite character on his resume.

But, unfortunately, an extended clip of the film that was displayed at the San Diego Comic Con (SDCC) this weekend brought the controversy back to the forefront.

The Council for the Development of French in Louisiana, or CODOFIL, a state agency charged with the protection and promotion of French in Louisiana, is taking issue with the portrayal of a Cajun character in the film, a toothless, lovesick firefly voiced by former New Orleans resident and preeminent voiceover actor Jim Cummings.

“It’s a continuation of the stereotyping of Cajun people, which is inaccurate,” CODOFIL President Warren Perrin said of the character this week from his Lafayette law office. “It has been done in so many movies over so much time, people think that’s the way we are — and it’s just wrong. I can list several other movies where they have portrayed us as backward, toothless, illiterate people who fart.”

This week, Perrin sent a letter to Robert Iger, the president and CEO of the Walt Disney Co., expressing his concerns and offering his organization’s free assistance in answering “any questions the movie’s producers, directors and promoters might have regarding the Cajun people, as well as south Louisiana history and culture in general,” according to a draft of the letter provided by Perrin.

Throughout, the letter maintains that same cordial tone, while pointing out that derogatory portrayals of Cajuns wound “the pride and morale of all ethnic groups.”
The movie poster for ‘The Princess and the Frog.’

A studio spokeswoman said the letter had been “referred to the appropriate office at Disney,” although Disney officials had not responded as of Friday.

Of the footage released so far by Disney, the Cajun firefly character — named Ray — figures prominently in only a few seconds of a short teaser trailer. (Watch it at the official “Princess and the Frog” site.)

Set against the backdrop of a beautifully lit French Quarter, he flits into the frame as the movie’s Princess Tiana agonizes over the idea of kissing a frog, prince or no. Ray points a thumb at the couple and says to the camera in a heavy Cajun accent, “Oh, ho! Look like this gonna take some time!”

His jagged, jack-o-lantern smile never shows more than eight or so teeth.

With a Dr. John song as musical accompaniment, the sleepy-eyed Ray then buzzes over to a neighboring building that has a sign emblazoned with the movie’s title. “That’s a catchy title right there,” he says, before a Dr. John lyric — “Dreams do come true in New Orleans” — brings the trailer to a close.

Perrin acknowledged that he is basing his judgment on only a tiny piece of film, but he said if his objections help head off a potential insult to Cajuns, then it’s worth it. “I’m simply saying, ‘Let me help you not make a mistake,’” Perrin said.

[SOURCE]

The article continues on to discuss the controversies that the lead character is not “black enough” (their words, not mine), the anger over her job as a chambermaid (which Disney has since changed) and the multi-racial couple.

The various organizations involved are petitioning to get Disney to change the character or remove him from the film. While I hope they do not remove his work from the film, if everyone is going to jump all over every new clip, it might be best.

What do you think? Are you offended by the firefly?

Kelly Jane Torrance, The Washington Times
July 3rd, 2009
SOURCE

Talking to Jim Cummings is like being in a reverse “Enchanted” — you feel like a real person who somehow has stepped into an animated world.

Mr. Cummings has been a voice actor for a quarter-century, playing some of animation’s best-known characters. He just received a Daytime Emmy nod for his work as the gregarious Tigger on Disney Channel’s “My Friends Tigger and Pooh” — he also voices Pooh. He was Darkwing Duck on the series of the same name and has appeared in films from “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” to “Shrek.” In “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian,” his voice brought a number of characters to life, including Abe Lincoln. In this fall’s highly anticipated “The Princess and the Frog,” he voices a “lovesick Cajun firefly,” as Disney describes his sidekick role. He does movie trailers, commercials and video games.

The genial Mr. Cummings sounds like a man who loves what he does. But how does one get into such a distinctive line of work?

“You start by getting kicked out of class a lot when you’re in grade school. You’re back there doing dolphin noises in the back of the room,” he says. “Sister Mary Agnes knows who that is. Next thing you know, you’re out in the hall.”

He loved cartoons as a child. “I was the guy watching and thinking to myself, ‘This Mel Blanc guy sounds like he’s having a pretty good time. It usually gets me in trouble when I act like that,’ ” he says. “I always knew as a kid I’d be doing something like that. I knew I wouldn’t have a time clock in my future.”

He did at first, though. As he says, “You gotta eat.”

Born and raised in Youngstown, Ohio, he started in a steel mill as soon as he graduated high school. “It must have been three in the morning; I was walking down with snow up to my thighs, and it was 20 below. It was as if God was saying, ‘What do you want, me to drop a piano on your head? Get out of here.’ ”

So he hoofed it to New Orleans, where he created Mardi Gras floats and worked as a riverboat deckhand. It was the perfect place for a voice actor and musician. “It was where I heard so many accents,” he says. “I just treated it as fertile ground for the imagination, accidental research. You put all that together, and you get something new. Besides, if you do a terrible impression of somebody, you get a brand-new character.”

He finally made his way to California, where his very first demo tape made it into the hands of his idol. “It was the sweetest thing,” he recalls of having a friend who shared an office building with the late Mr. Blanc play the tape for him. “He looked up at the ceiling, shut his eyes, and smiled. At the end of the tape, he said, ‘Tell the kid he’s got it.’ I wasn’t there, but I’ll never forget that one.”

He’s been working steadily ever since.

If you’ve seen anything in animation, chances are you’ve heard Mr. Cumming’s voice — even when you think it’s someone else’s.

“I jokingly refer to myself as a stunt singer,” he says. “A lot of great actors don’t sing, and I’m a pretty good singer and a pretty good mimic, and I put those two together and sing in character for them.” He’s sung for Ed Asner, Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd. When Jeremy Irons’ voice gave out while recording “The Lion King,” Mr. Cummings filled in for him — seamlessly.

He gets to combine his love of music and acting again in “The Princess and the Frog.” It sounds as if the Cajun character Ray was pretty easy for Mr. Cummings to create, having lived in New Orleans for most of the 1970s.

“Randy Newman, the poet laureate of New Orleans, he’s doing the music. It’s set in the jazz age. It’s so up my alley, I can’t even begin to tell you. I’m a jazz guy,” he says. “I’ve been singing my whole life. You combine that with Cajun culture, my favorite city, the first African-American princess in a Disney movie ….” He really knew he had to get the part, though, when he realized his children would be watching the DVD for years to come. He reportedly beat Harry Connick Jr. for the role.

That the film features Disney’s first black princess has put the movie under intense scrutiny – the heroine’s name was changed when critics thought “Maddy,” short for Madeleine, was too close to “Mammy.”

“Some people are in the business of taking themselves too seriously,” Mr. Cummings comments. “It pushes us apart; it doesn’t draw us together.”

Incredibly, one columnist even called Disney insensitive for setting the story in New Orleans, “the setting of one of the most devastating tragedies to beset a black community.”

“Can you believe that?” Mr. Cummings says. “Where would you set a movie that was the birthplace of jazz if it wasn’t going to be in New Orleans? My hometown of Youngstown would have volunteered, but it just wouldn’t be the same.”

Mr. Cummings has played many memorable roles, but his favorites have been the musical ones — he loved playing King Louie. “Speaking of New Orleans jazz, Louis Prima was the original,” he says of the great who first voiced the character in “The Jungle Book.” He also loved doing Don Karnage of “TaleSpin,” “the first Monty Python character in a Disney cartoon” and Darkwing Duck.

He’s enjoying playing Tigger and Pooh, too. “Pooh is kind of the eye of the storm, and Tigger is the storm, so I can keep them separate that way,” he says. “It’s just an honor to me; I feel like I’m a torchbearer for a new generation of kids.”

His own younger daughters, 4 and 2, love it — though his older daughters, 27 and 22, weren’t always his biggest fans. “I remember when the oldest was 5, I was reading voices, and she’d say, ‘Dad, it’s getting late; don’t do the voices, just read.’ ‘That’ll put you through college, missy!’ ” he’d respond.

It isn’t just his own children he talks to in character. One of the joys of the job is getting on the telephone as Tigger or Pooh a few times a week. “I can call up little kids in the hospital over Christmas or their birthdays if they’re ill and put a smile on their faces and make their mom and dad happy again,” he says.

Mr. Cummings has seen a lot of changes in the industry. There’s one that affects him more than any other.

“A lot of big-time celebrity movie stars are throwing their hats into the ring, that’s for sure,” he says. Case in point: Three of the five nominees in his Daytime Emmy category are Hollywood heavies — Amy Poehler, Joan Rivers and Vanessa Williams. Mr. Cummings has a simple solution to the problem plaguing him and his colleagues. “I’ll make a deal with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt. If they don’t do any cartoons, I promise I won’t be the lead in any blockbuster films. Is that too much to ask for?”