TIM KITZROW
“I knew myself I wanted that same kind of excitement I heard every weekend with the ‘NBA on NBC with Marv Albert,’ because he was kind of the voice of the NBA at that time
Tim Kitzrow”
“Tim Kitzrow from downtown, Boomshakalaka!” is how Tim introduces himself. “I began as an actor in high school, then on to Purchase College to study acting in a fine arts conservatory. I studied all the classics – Shakespeare, Chekov. I went out to Albany, New York and worked in an outdoor Shakespeare theatre, and then to Los Angeles, and so I thought I was going to be doing classic stage work for the rest of my life. And as life takes its funny turns, I ended up in Chicago, and went to Second City Theatre to study with some of the greats there at the time – Chris Farley, Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell, so it was an exciting time to be in Chicago.”
What would you say are your influences, when it comes to your sense of humour?
Monty Python, that’s probably the biggest one. Coming of age, when I was 11 years old and I saw that, it was like discovering The Beatles – their off-the-wall absurdity. And SCTV – Second City TV, that’s why I wanted to go to Second City. There was John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Rick Moranis, Dave Thomas, and Katherine O’Hara, all those guys. That was the best American – Canadian, actually – comedy TV that anyone could hope for.
How did you get a job doing the voices for pinball?
On the weekends, I was playing drums in kind of a ‘weekend warrior’ rock-and-roll band [The Lazy Boy Rockers], and one of the guys in the band was working at Midway/Bally/Williams and needed someone to do Mr Howell for a Gilligan’s Island pinball game. I did a little, ‘Gilligan!’ And I started out doing pinball games. I did Twilight Zone, Popeye, Attack From Mars, Judge Dredd, World Cup Soccer, NBA Fastbreak, and many others.
What was it like working on
