The Story Behind Grand Theft Auto 3's Ground-breaking Radio Station Chatterbox FM
The iconic radio station in GTA 3 was slap-dashed together, but the end result was magical.
byJack Yarwood
Posted Aug. 2, 2021, 11:06 p.m.
Listening to the radio while driving around the boroughs of Liberty City is one of Grand Theft Auto III's greatest pleasures, because of the licensed music, eccentric personalities, and ridiculous ads. It's up there with trying to fly the Dodo or rampaging through the streets in an armoured tank. But while there were a host of entertaining stations to listen to, one became a defining element of weaving through traffic in GTA III: Chatterbox FM.
In contrast to the other stations, Chatterbox didn't play any music. Instead, it broadcasted an hour-long talk show, pitting its presenter, the singularly named Lazlow, against a string of obscene callers. Grand Theft Auto previously included radio stations full of licensed music to listen to, and Grand Theft Auto 2 introduced DJ banter and commercials to the mix, but Chatterbox brought a new, real-life radio style to the virtual airwaves. The show provided goofy, satirical commentary on early 21st Century American culture through the cavalcade of guests Lazlow interviewed. The conversations offered unique insight into the bizarre world beyond the events of the game, and hinted at what all the pedestrians you passed by (or maybe more accurately for the mayhem-minded, ran over) might be thinking about when they weren't running away from our bat-wielding protagonist.
This year marks 20 years since players first got the chance to tune into Chatterbox FM, so, to celebrate, we spoke to those who brought the station to life, including its host Lazlow, and the voice actors Reed Tucker and Frank Chavez. . They told us about how the station originally came to be, the cigarette and pizza-fuelled writing sessions that led to its craziest moments, and the odd celebrity status that accompanied its DJ after the game's surprise success.
But first, we need to talk about Lazlow.
Who is 'Lazlow'?
Lazlow has appeared in multiple GTA games since, but Grand Theft Auto III was his remarkable debut. GTA III saw Lazlow play an exaggerated version of himself - his full name is Lazlow Jones - who leaned into a deadpan delivery and an easy exacerbation with his guests.
While Grand Theft Auto III was in development, Lazlow was working at a digital ad agency in New York called Blue Dingo (named after his dog) while hosting a technology and video game-focused radio show called Technofile. As he explains, he became involved with Grand Theft Auto almost by accident.
Lazlow (image courtesy of Lazlow Jones).
Lazlow and Houser populated Chatterbox FM with a cast of quirky characters to give the fictional Lazlow plenty to play off, including everyone from a British expat named Freddy, who would keep calling the station to voice his nanny fetish, to a concerned parent who insisted video games are warping her son's mind. While most of the humor was crass in nature - very much in step with the tone of GTA as a whole - some moments lampooned more serious topics, such as gun ownership and military conscription. Like the rest of GTA, the goal was to broadly satirize the American experience.
Lazlow explained that they didn't really pull from the news, as things date quickly. Rather, the goal was to touch on a more universal craziness. "It's more that we both discuss how crazy the world is and talk about our past. The first caller on the show is actually my father talking about eating squirrels and pigeons. For the record, we never ate these things growing up in Oklahoma, but we did eat some pretty weird stuff. Like fried gizzards after church."
"The first caller on the show is actually my father talking about eating squirrels and pigeons."
Though scripted, fictional conversations, they were a natural fit for Lazlow given his radio work, and the fact that he'd been obsessed with radio from an early age. Growing up, he had police radio scanners dotted around the house, a product of one of his dad's many jobs - namely from when he was an undercover narcotics agent. He constantly found himself tuning into odd conversations on scanners and FM radios, a habit he keeps even to this day. "I have a habit of constantly scanning the radio dial in the car," Lazlow says. "It drives everyone crazy. But you hear some amazing things. I was driving through rural Oregon recently and heard fantastic tips on how to keep demons out of your home. It evidently involves purchasing several CDs of choir music and putting a CD player in each room that blasts them on repeat 24 hours a day. I wanted to call in and suggest a Sonos or Bluetooth system, but they quickly switched to the topic of BBQs in the Bible."
The typical structure of Chatterbox's segments mirrored conventional radio call-in conversations: callers would phone in and speak to Lazlow about whatever was on their mind, meaning the topics ranged from taxes, to activism, to puppetry. While the conversations would begin civil enough, Lazlow inevitably would grow increasingly annoyed at the caller's inevitable interruptions and outbursts, eventually frustrating him to the point of cutting the caller short to get to the next person on the line.
According to Lazlow, Dan and Sam Houser decided early on that he should be the host of Chatterbox to add authenticity to the station. This philosophy also extended to the callers, who were mostly made up of neighbors and friends of Lazlow's that were kind enough to lend their voices (including his aforementioned dad). As a result, most of the callers you hear aren't actually actors at all, but people he knew who he recorded over the phone or in person at his home studio.
Meanwhile, for the show's 'authoritative' guests -- the love guru Fernando Martinez and the wimpy self-help author Reed Tucker -- Lazlow brought on board two of his co-workers from his advertising and radio jobs. In contrast to the other callers, Lazlow recorded these interviews in the same building as his digital ad agency, just down the road from the Rockstar offices. Neither performer had done much voice acting previously.
"I was a terrible actor, and not a voice actor, but he was like 'Do you want to do this?'" Reed Tucker said, who played the karate teacher-turned-self-help writer. "I had never even heard of Grand Theft Auto at the time. I think there are two reasons he brought me on board. One because I was his friend and it's cool to work with your friends, and two, because I was sitting two feet away from him."
"I think there are two reasons he brought me on board. One because I was his friend and it's cool to work with your friends, and two, because I was sitting two feet away from him."
Frank Chavez (image courtesy of Lazlow Jones)
Grand Theft Auto III would go on to achieve massive success and launch the series into an institution, and while many aspects of it were lauded at the time, Chatterbox was cited as a particular highlight. " GTA III became the best selling game of 2001, and was so iconic it was ported to mobile phones in 2011.
"The day the game came out, Terry drove by my house and dropped a copy off," Lazlow recalled. "I put it in my PS2 and was blown away – I couldn't believe I was part of this thing. The radio itself was great, but it was a small piece of a far bigger picture. That game was groundbreaking on a lot of levels. And that's because of Dan and Sam's vision, the Rockstar team in New York, and the guys in Scotland -- especially Craig Conner -- who made all the radio happen. I'll always be grateful to them for making me part of the team."
After the launch, Lazlow bought some of the voice actors - mostly his friends and family - PlayStation 2s and copies of the game so they could engage with their work. It was only then that the people involved began to realize the scope of the project, and the part they played in it. To this day, Lazlow, Tucker, and Chavez still receive the occasional bit of fan mail from those who heard them back on Chatterbox in 2001, which often takes them by surprise. For Tucker, in particular, who now writes for the New York Post, it's become a strange footnote in his career, and one that frequently comes back in new and interesting ways.
After the launch, Lazlow bought some of the voice actors - mostly his friends and family - PlayStation 2s and copies of the game so they could engage with their work.
"I remember I was living on the upper east side and I got a fan letter in the mail," Tucker said. "Which I thought was very very strange, because you know, I'm nobody. I'm not a voice actor. You can't look me up. There's no reason why anybody would have thought the Reed Tucker in the game was the actual Reed Tucker. Also then, how do you go about getting my address? I was like 'How are you so attached to a dumb character that we voiced in 30 seconds in a game that is an expansive world?' I think that's when it clicked for me, 'Oh, this means a lot to people.'"
Chavez, meanwhile, has had his own fair share of fan encounters, with most people requesting he speak like his character for them.
"As far as the notoriety is concerned, it was unbelievable," Chavez recalled. "A friend of mine took me to a bar in the village, and he said to the bartender, 'Do you know who this guy is? This guy is Fernando from GTA.' The guy was running around screaming, 'Oh my god, I can't believe it's Fernando.'"
Following Grand Theft Auto III, Lazlow and Fernando became mainstays of the series, with Chavez even getting his own station, Emotion, in follow-up Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Chavez has since appeared in every subsequent game, except for Grand Theft Auto IV -- something Rockstar immediately rectified in Grand Theft Auto V after a successful fan campaign for his return.
And while Chatterbox FM has clearly become integral to the DNA of GTA, it also clearly inspired the wider open-world genre, too. Almost every huge city-based game features radio stations, like Mafia 3 and Watch Dogs: Legion, used to flesh out the world and entertain the player. But Grand Theft Auto III's Chatterbox FM set the template, created its own stars, and forever cemented its wild conversations as a key part of the fabric of Grand Theft Auto.
Jack Yarwood is a freelance feature writer who writes primarily about the video game industry. He has written for Fanbyte, Wireframe Magazine, and The Washington Post, among others. You can follow him on Twitter @JackGYarwood.
Developer: War Drum Studios
Publisher: Rockstar Games
Platforms: Android, iPhone, Macintosh, Pc, PlayStation 4
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