Comments on: GIMME SOME CAW-FEE!

By: Peter

Peter — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 21:33:57 +0000

Alan, I loved reading this. You are neglecting a lucrative side career as a dialect coach for theatre and film actors. On Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins:
//CNN: Did Andrews or David Tomlinson [who played Mr. Banks] mention things to you about the accent? Or did they just go with the flow?
Van Dyke: They just went with the flow! It’s funny — I was concentrating on the dancing, mostly, and they had given me a [voice] coach who turned out to be an Irishman, and his Cockney wasn’t much better than mine. During the making of the picture nobody kidded me about the accent, but I sure took it afterwards. [One British poll named Van Dyke's accent the second-worst British accent ever; Van Dyke observes, however, that he was beaten out by Sean Connery's "Untouchables" performance.]//
I felt bad about Peter Postlethwaite being on the list for “Usual Suspects” If his character was a Pakistani who learned English from a someone with a British accent, his accent was perfect (that’s why so many Saudi sheiks have British accents).
Final thought: It was an eye-opening (ear-opening?) experience to learn that historians think the the English spoken in Elizabethan times, when Shakespeare’s plays were first performed, sounded nothing like an English accent today. Don’t know how “historians” could know that, but I remember hearing in a lecture once that Shakespeare’s cast would have pronounced the word “war” in “Henry V” to rhyme with “car.” Did Hamlet the Dane sound like Captain Hook?

By: Zachary

Zachary — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:01:15 +0000

Just following up on my Leo criticism. From AO Scott’s review of “Shutter Island” today:

‘Mr. DiCaprio, having grown perhaps overly fond of his accent from “The Departed,” brings it along for the ride, and it spreads through the movie like a contagious disease. Teddy’s partner (pahtnah), Chuck Aule, played by Mark (Mahk) Ruffalo, is supposed to be from the Pacific Northwest but he seems to have left all his R’s back in Seattle.’

http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/movies/19shutter.html?8dpc

By: Jody

Jody — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 02:28:59 +0000

Great piece, Alan. I’m so sorry that you aren’t able to watch “The Wire”—and even sorrier that Dominic West is the reason. Reading about his audition prep made me furious!

Two other notes:

As for impressive American accents, I nominate Olivia d’Abo (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001882/), who played Kevin’s older sister, Karen, in “The Wonder Years.” I saw her later on in something else and remember thinking that she was doing a flawless British accent, only to discover that she’s a Brit by birth!

I did a summer study-abroad program in London during college, focusing on theater. One night, we saw a production of Eugene O’Neill’s “Desire Under the Elms.” All of the actors seemed to have been doing their best (read: worst) Texas accents. I remember thinking that it would have been fitting if each character’s costume had included a cowboy hat. Oh, and the play is set in New England!

By: Alan

Alan — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 02:00:00 +0000

Relevant to this discussion: the Wall Street Journal ran an article about the current film “Invictus” in which both Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman are called upon to do South African English.

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2009/12/10/as-invictus-opens-a-look-at-acting-waterloo-the-south-african-accent/tab/article/

“More subtle than an English or Australian accent, spiced through with traces of the native Afrikaans language, the South African accent has challenged, provoked and, on occasion, overwhelmed a who’s-who of Hollywood stars, including Danny Glover (”Mandela”), Denzel Washington (”Cry Freedom”), Tim Robbins (”Catch a Fire”), Marlon Brando (”A Dry White Season”) and Whoopi Goldberg (”Sarafina!”)”. I think they both sounds pretty good, but my South African friend who saw the film begs to differ…

By: Alan

Alan — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 01:13:03 +0000

Zach – thanks for the explanation for the Aussies – that makes perfect sense. Once again, when one cannot immediately come up with an explanation for human behavior, the answer is often economic…as for Leo, now that you mention him, his accent in “Gangs of NY” was a mess, all over the place, as I remember

By: Zachary

Zachary — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 00:54:32 +0000

TERRIFIC article, Alan. I really enjoyed it, and although I worship The Wire (as you know), Dominic West drove me nuts throughout it.
Couple of notes. You mention that maybe, “…[an] Australian actor can’t have a successful career, or come to Hollywood, unless he/she has already demonstrated a convincing American accent in the first place.” This is close to the truth. I actually had an Australian teacher in grad school who also teaches at NIDA, the premiere graduate acting program in Australia. He told us years ago we should drill, drill, drill our accents for employment purposes, and that our competitor Aussies would be flawless in American English upon graduation. He said it is seen as a crucial way to further their careers, since opportunities in Australia, while they exist, are limited by comparison to Hollywood, and there is an unspoken prejudice against Aussies in London acting circles. If you take this argument a step further, it seems logical to assume that the reason the English aren’t as good at American accents is because they don’t feel a *need* to specialize in them—they have a very prolific TV/Film/Theatre scene waiting for them right after graduation.
Second: I can’t believe nobody mentioned Leonardo Di Caprio, who has had laughably bad accents in every period piece he’s ever done. And my own personal “worst accent” on TV these days belongs to Kyra Sedgwick in The Closer.

By: Ben

Ben — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 00:46:17 +0000

I also don’t think Kevin Costner quite deserves to be on the list for Robin Hood, primarily because as far as I can tell, he wasn’t trying to do an accent at all. (Rumor says he did try, and it was so bad the director figured it would be better if everyone just assumed that Robin of Lockesly was from Iowa).

As far as people who do accents well, Brian Cox deserves a nod. While there are Scots who always sound like Scots, I do think a lot of Scotch actors are reasonably good at doing an American accent. This is primarily because a lot of them have learned to ditch their own accent to get acting work.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:57:07 +0000

Great article, Alan. As a frequent moviegoer, I enjoyed all the examples, most of which I agree with (though it is your loss that you cannot appreciate The Depahted). I can’t believe no one included Harvey Keitel, who macerated an American Southern accent in Thelma and Louise, and then didn’t even try playing New Zealand in The Piano or anything resembling classical English in The Last Temptation of Christ. He always sounds like he is straight outta Brooklyn.
–The valedictorian with the terrible accent

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:53:05 +0000

Mike O – I take your point on Dick Van Dyke, but I think the critics
put the performance in context…here you have a movie populated entirely by British actors who speak like real British people (Julie Andrews, Elsa Lanchester, those little kids, etc.) – except for ONE character who is a “caricature/fairytale” fake Brit – - might really distract if you were a British viewer.

By: Ned

Ned — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:23:10 +0000

Mickey Rooney made the list as Mr. Yunioshi in Moon River. Like you said about Dick Van Dyke, Mike, if the whole point is caricatured ethnic stereotyping, then accuracy was probably not the director’s goal. Like putting a linebacker in drag, it was broad-brush and played for a cheap laugh. But it still boggles as one of the most tasteless and over-the-top Anglo-as-Asian performances out there.

I still like Spencer Tracy in “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” He’s playing an English doctor in London. The other Londoners are English actors. And Spencer Tracy just plays it straight ahead with his American accent. Problem solved: I’m not doing the accent – get over it.