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closeCHICAGO — JoBe Cerny, most famous for being the voice of the Pillsbury Doughboy, was on one recent rainy morning sitting in a studio at Cerny/American Creative, his production company/recording studio on Illinois Street in Chicago. He was drinking coffee, nibbling at some doughnuts and listening to the voice of Jesus Christ as he died on the cross.
“Sounds amazing, doesn’t it?” he said.
Well, in a word: Yes.
Jesus’ voice was actually the voice of actor Jim Caviezel, one of the hundreds of voices that are part of one of the most ambitious audio projects in history.
“The Word of Promise Audio Bible” is the King James Bible in its entirety: a 79-CD set of more than 98 hours of dramatic audio theater, with an original score by Stefano Mainetti, feature film quality sound effects, narration by Michael York and the work of 600-some actors, including such stars as Richard Dreyfuss (Moses), Gary Sinise (David), Marisa Tomei (Mary Magdalene), Stacy Keach (Paul), Louis Gossett Jr. (John), Joan Allen (Deborah), Max von Sydow (Noah) and Luke Perry (Judas).
Martin Jarvis, a relatively unknown British actor, had perhaps the most daunting part: He plays God.
It began four years ago when Cerny was approached by an old Chicago friend, Carl Amari, a moviemaker and radio show producer.
“I just never thought this would take four years,” said Amari, who got the idea when visiting his friend Caviezel on the set of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.”
Amari started recruiting other actors, but there was one man for the job of director.
“JoBe is one of the greatest radio guys there is. He did all the sound design on (the Amari-produced syndicated radio show) ‘The Twilight Zone,’ ” he said. “He gets all the credit for this.”
The first part of the project appeared in 2007 with “The World of Promise New Testament Audio Bible,” a mere 20-CD/21-hour package. It was named the Christian Book of the Year for 2008 by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association. It has sold more than 700,000 copies.
And while it was selling, Cerny & Co. kept working. Cerny estimates that there are 3,600 characters in the Bible, “but thank goodness not all of them speak.”
As the director, Cerny saw his mission as one that “turns these characters into real characters, have them played with full emotion, with context. To put these in the moment in time when these words were first spoken.”
It took more than 6,000 hours of studio time and thousands more hours of mixing and editing.
Craig Lee was there for all of it. He was the head sound engineer for this project and for the hundreds of other chores for movie companies and advertising clients that he has worked on during his 15 years with Cerny.
“When we first started it was a little scary,” he said. “I was in awe of this project. We just plugged away, day by day. It’s been a very meaningful experience.”
Cerny nibbled another doughnut before saying, “The days were sometimes endless. It was an honor for me to be asked to dig deep enough to make this happen. I knew it was in me somewhere.
“We have a lot of other projects here but now there isn’t this huge pressure. It almost feels like there’s nothing to do.”
Amen to that.
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