You know this voice. Deep and flat, with hollow authority and exquisite timing, it wheedles, whines, pontificates. It moans, chuckles, trembles, pleads, patronizes. In recent months it was hard not to hear it on the radio, selling Edwardo’s pizza (“This man is lying through his flossed teeth”), First American Bank (“I want you to name this the Bob and Maggie Gazinski Bank!”), or Empire Carpets in miniature dramas that left you smiling in spite of yourself.
“This is the hardest thing I’ve had to do in my life.”
“Oh, no, I don’t anymore.”
“Yes. I’m giving up Time magazine.”
“Time magazine?”
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“We did one spot for Time in which a man went to a foot doctor,” says Orkin. “The agency said it wouldn’t work, because Time wouldn’t be read by someone who went to a foot doctor. We were astonished. If it had been a fortune-teller or something a little shadier, we could have understood. Two years later we proposed the same spot to Time, and they didn’t raise that question at all.
