Making an Impression: Francisco Creates Comedy

Pablo Francisco is an eclectic impressionist, human jukebox, and stand-up comedian. Best known for his parody of movie previews, Francisco has a knack for imitating everyone from Jackie Chan to Kermit the Frog—except, according to the comedian, for one man. “Everyone can do a Christopher Walken, but mine just sounds like a Jewish deli lady,” he quips. Returning from a tour across Europe, Francisco will be performing at the Wilbur Theatre in Boston on November 21.

Francisco, now 35, began his career as the pizza guy who delivered to a stand-up club in Arizona. Until then, he recalls, comedy was “always something I was curious about, but I didn’t know you could make a living from it.” He has since become a comedic sensation, now a familiar face and voice on MadTV, Comedy Central, and Family Guy. Francisco attributes his popularity—which has garnered him recognition in even London, Amsterdam, and Sweden—to Internet exposure; clips of his sketches, which can easily be found on YouTube and other popular video sites, gather millions of views. “The Internet,” he explains, “is my TV.” Online fame has taken Francisco to unexpected places; he once landed a gig that paid over $20,000 to do an entire show for a single Indian family in North Carolina. “That was kind of crazy,” he recalls.

Francisco’s material often lampoons contemporary movies, music—he can produce compelling “techno” using only his voice—and culture. His ability to impersonate famous personalities, various ethnic accents, and characters from films has primarily contributed to the success of his satire. According to Francisco, developing this talent stems from self-assurance: “Once you get a couple impersonations down, you start to feel confident that you could probably go further.” Although these impressions appear effortless on stage, they often require a good deal of practice before they sound convincing. “Dennis Hopper came naturally,” Francisco says, slipping into the actor’s voice as he says Hopper’s name. “But Chris Rock—that took weeks.”

What separates Francisco from the rest of the impressionist pack, however, is one particular talent—the ability to mimic the ubiquitous voice of the “movie preview guy.” Otherwise known—albeit to a limited audience—as Don LaFontaine, “movie preview guy” has an unmistakable, almost superhuman voice that can be heard in more than 5,000 previews and nearly a quarter million commercials. LaFontaine’s deep cadences have long set the standard for the voiceover industry. As Ashton Smith, the man who narrated the promos for “XXX” put it, “When you die, the voice you hear in heaven is not Don’s. It’s God trying to sound like Don.” LaFontaine was seemingly inimitable. That is, until Pablo Francisco came along.

A couple decades ago, while joking around with friends and parodying the deep-voiced memory-training guru Harry Lorayne (who at the time peddled his techniques by radio), Francisco discovered that he could do “the movie guy.” This talent has incorporated itself into one of his greatest acts. On stage, at will, Francisco can drop his voice several octaves and intone, “Coming this summer. Action. Adventure. Romance.” In one sketch, Francisco invited the audience to imagine the voiceover to an upcoming action flick actually being honest: “Jean-Claude Van Damme is back in the same crap you’ve seen over, and over, and over again.” Coupling his ability to mimic LaFontaine to a repertoire of actor imitations, from Keanu Reeves to Al Pacino, Francisco is perhaps the only stand-up comedian who can act out an entire movie trailer live. His most famous faux cinematic concoction is “Little Tortilla Boy,” an action flick starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a street vendor trying to protect his tortilla business from the mob. The “trailer” ends with Francisco beatboxing a pounding bass while running in place in slow motion from an invisible explosion—showmanship that offers a glimpse at the sort of frenetic energy Francisco brings to the stage.

Francisco proved so apt at imitating LaFontaine that the vocal artist once invited Francisco to his home after seeing him perform on “The Tonight Show.” “He was really cool about it,” Francisco says, “and he looked at me and said, ‘You do me better than I do me.’” In fact, since LaFontaine passed away in 2008, Francisco has taken over some of his commercial duties.

But pillorying the movies as the “movie preview guy”—rather than advertising them—remains Francisco’s passion. For him, the choice to be a comedian was simple: “It pays good money, you can talk about anything you want, and you’re your own writer, director and performer—where else can you get that?”