Video of the Day 2: Ben Kingsley in Jonathan Glazer's Live Aid Commercial
3/22/2007 5:00:00 PM
We had a bit of fun yesterday and today with Sir Ben's bizarro accent in Sneakers. (And we may well have more fun before it's all through, as one talkbacker reminded us of his goofy-ass accent in Lucky Number Slevin, too.) And our journey into the world of strange movie accents isn't over yet; tune in tomorrow for a couple more good ones.
But for now, we have to also give credit where credit is due: if you're looking for someone to play a bloke drowning his sorrows in a bar, look no further than Ben Kingsley, as this Live Aid commercial by Sexy Beast director Jonathan Glazer proves.
— Bilge Ebiri
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The Movie Moment: NASHVILLE (Robert Altman, 1975)
3/22/2007 4:15:00 PM
Since I first saw Nashville, I’ve considered it to be Altman’s greatest achievement. With a career like his, that’s saying something. So what makes Nashville stand out from his other classics, like McCabe & Mrs. Miller, California Split, Short Cuts, Three Women, and the made-for-TV Tanner ’88? Perhaps it’s that, more than anything else Altman made, Nashville feels like the ultimate Altman movie, a summation of what made him such a legendary filmmaker — impeccable ensemble acting, a keen sense of place, political engagement, and a love of performance in all its forms.
Nashville is often described as a film with two dozen protagonists, but while there’s no principal character in the story, the world we see in the film revolves around Barbara Jean, a country superstar played by Ronee Blakley. Many of the big events in the film focus on her — the ceremony at the airport at the beginning, her onstage nervous breakdown, and the concert/campaign special gone bad at the finale. But while we see Barbara Jean throughout the film, we rarely get to see her outside the public eye. She smiles beatifically for the camera, but this is just play-acting. Who is she? Does she even have a last name? The film never says.
It’s mainly for this reason that, when I tried to come up with this week’s Movie Moment, I kept coming back to her one private moment, away from her fans and the press. After the collapses following her airport reception, Barbara Jean is rushed to the hospital, and as a result has to cancel an appearance on the Grand Old Opry radio show. As her replacement, Connie White sings in her stead, Barbara Jean and her husband, Barnett (Allen Garfield), sit alone in the room and listen. We don’t find out until later that Barbara Jean and Connie have a professional rivalry, never appearing together on the same stage, but hearing Connie on the radio angers Barbara Jean, and she demands that the radio be switched off. Barnett insists on listening, saying that he needs to listen so that he can properly thank Connie for stepping in for her. This sets Barbara Jean off:
“You’re going over there, and I know why… so you can hobnob with everybody, and I ain’t got not friends, I gotta sit here in the goddamn hospital. Everyone’s gonna be talking about me, saying how I’m a nut, how I had a- ‘Barbara Jean had another collapse…’ You know what? Why don’t you take her some of my flowers?”
One thing that’s immediately apparent in this scene is how fragile Barbara Jean really is. Much of modern popular music, country music in particular, is founded on the belief that its stars are just like regular people. While the film’s other stars, like Connie White and Haven Hamilton, can act the part, Barbara Jean is a natural — Altman and Ronee Blakley see that she smiles big for the camera not because her fans want her to, but because she’s genuinely happy to be in the spotlight. But it’s because she’s the genuine article, because her public feelings are real rather than faked, that success and fame have taken a toll on her in ways they wouldn’t for others. Later in the film, mid-breakdown, she relates to the audience that she began singing as a child, and it’s clear that she never grew up.
But just as fascinating, if less apparent on first viewing, is how this scene illuminates Barnett’s character as well as Barbara Jean’s. Our first impression of Barnett is as an angry, short-fused man, tagging along with his wife and seemingly leeching off her success — your standard-issue husband/manager. However, if you watch this scene carefully, we see that there’s more to him than that. Allen Garfield’s performance shows us a man whose life is concerned almost entirely with taking care of his wife, both in good times and bad. He proclaims, “Don’t tell me how to run your life; I’ve been doing pretty good with it,” not as a bitter rejoinder, but as a statement of fact. When he insists on leaving the hospital to thank Connie White, it’s because he’s trying to keep up appearances even when Barbara Jean cannot. “I don’t like to go over there and hobnob with them phonies,” he says.
If Barnett speaks to Barbara Jean like a child sometimes, it’s because she is essentially a child, and the little game they play as he’s leaving — “I’m walkin’ out now… what do you say? Say bye-bye” — is a perfect encapsulation of this. Barnett, who had appeared such an unsuitable match for Barbara Jean, is shown to be exactly the kind of husband she needs — simultaneously manager, father, nurse, and giver of tough love. Garfield’s performance, which at first glance fades into the background of the film, comes into sharper relief the more you watch Nashville, and is a great argument in favor of Altman’s assertion that his films be watched over and over.
Omnipotence over his chosen world is the right of any filmmaker, but precious few really exercise that right. What made Altman truly great (and inimitable, despite hundreds of attempts) was his knack for peering into even the most remote corners of his films in order to study the lives of the characters that lived there. The final moments of my chosen scene sum this up perfectly. Just after Barnett has left the hospital room, Barbara Jean sits cross-legged on her bed, a shell-shocked look on her face. She turns her head toward the door and whimpers after him, “Barnett?” While many filmmakers would have left the room with Barnett, this would have been a mistake, done in the interest of keeping the story moving instead of illuminating the characters. Altman knew better, and these final few seconds are the final brushstroke that makes the scene perfect and complete.
— Paul Clark
Previous Movie Moment columns:
- March 15, 2007 -- A Fish Called Wanda
- March 8, 2007 -- 8 Women
- February 22, 2007 -- The Girl Can’t Help It
- March 1, 2007 -- Tree of Wooden Clogs
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Video of the Day: How To Break Up With Your Girlfriend in 64 Easy Steps
3/22/2007 3:15:00 PM
Big ups to Anthony Kaufman at The Daily Reel for alerting us to the awesome San Francisco-based animator Lev Yilmaz, and his hilariously unsettling hand-drawn cartoons. This is an installment in Yilmaz’s “Tales of Mere Existence” series, other episodes of which are also on YouTube.
— Bilge Ebiri
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Hot Fuzz, Hot Damn!
3/22/2007 2:00:00 PM
IFP sponsored an advanced screening of Hot Fuzz last night in New York, and without giving too much away I will just say that this movie is fucking hilarious and completely exceeded my expectations. I honestly cannot remember laughing that hard or having that much fun in a movie theater in a long time. Shaun of the Dead fans have absolutely nothing to fear. The boys got a lot more money this time around, but spent it well, ramping up the film with all the camera effects and action movie accoutrements one would expect from a comic valentine to high-octane Hollywood flicks.
Afterwards director Edgar Wright, star and co-writer Simon Pegg and co-star Nick Frost came out for a Q&A. When asked about inspiration for the film Wright said, “Well there’s not a lot of these type of cop films at all in the UK. But there have been a tremendous amount of British gangster movies over the last 15 years so we thought of this as kind of the antidote to the British gangster movie. And we also thought it was about time for UK cops to be a little more badass!”
He went on to talk about some of what went on before filming got started. “There was a lot of hard work involved. I think we watched 138 DVD’s and normally you wouldn’t consider watching movies hard work, but when you’re delving deep into the catalogues of Stephen Seagal and Chuck Norris, you end up earning every penny. We also did some proper research for the first time. We did interviews and even ride-alongs with cops ,and the funny part of that was not only did we get our heads around what it would be like to be a cop out in the sticks, but we were able to run story ideas by them and talk about some of these movies we had been watching, and see what their reaction was to those films. Part of what’s funny about this movie is this rather absurd mix of the mundanity of being a beat cop versus, say, Will Smith running around with his shirt off. It’s a bit like mixing Agatha Christie with Jerry Bruckheimer…” Nick Frost then chipped in with, “We had to make stuff up because there’s not a lot of crime in West Country that’s not related to alcohol. Crop circles, some animal fiddling…”
When one audience member asked about bringing a parody of a US movie genre to the US, Wright replied, “As stupid as it sounds, America is these movies to me. When I went to San Francisco the first thing I thought of was, ‘This is Dirty Harry’s territory.’ When I went to Los Angeles I was thinking of Robocop and Beverly Hills Cop.”
When asked about the other members of the cast, Simon Pegg described the joy of beating up James Bond (Timothy Dalton). Edgar quickly corrected Simon, “You mean beating the living daylights out of James Bond,” referencing one of Dalton’s Bond titles. Nick Frost then added, “Leather and wealth. That’s what I like to call him. It’s the odor I imagine he exudes. Particularly around Christmas time…”
The trio genuinely seem to be having fun with their fame and newfound fortune. Hot Fuzz opened in the UK on February 14 and has already brought in over 19 million pounds (roughly $40M). With the winning combination of action and broad comedy I expect to see it do well here in the States, too.
When asked about what genre the team plans to tackle next Edgar replied, "I think this time round we're going to keep our cards a little closer to our chests. Last time we said the name Hot Fuzz and the basic concept a bit early, and for the nine months we were agonizing over the script, everyone we saw on the street was on about, 'How's the Hot Fuzz coming?'”
— Bryan Whitefield
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Color Me Frewin: A Q&A with Anthony Frewin, Writer of Color Me Kubrick
3/22/2007 1:00:00 PM
 | | Color Me Kubrick |
Anthony Frewin might not be an immediately recognizable name to most movie-buffs, but he has played a big role in making some of history’s greatest films. As Stanley Kubrick’s friend and personal assistant since the days of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Frewin was the legendary director’s right-hand man, responsible for everything from sorting through the thousands of news clippings Kubrick received, to doing art department research, and to overseeing dubbed versions of his films. He was also, as luck would have it, the person entrusted by Kubrick to deal with one Alan Conway, a smalltime con man who spent part of the 1990s going around England pretending to be Kubrick (even though he looked nothing like Kubrick, barely knew anything about him, and apparently didn’t even care for his films). Those experiences have now borne fruit in the screenplay for this week’s Color Me Kubrick, starring John Malkovich as Conway and directed by Brian Cook, another longtime Kubrick collaborator. The jump from dealing with Conway to writing a story about him shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone familiar with Frewin’s career as a crime novelist (he’s penned the acclaimed books London Blues and Scorpian Rising). ScreenGrab interviewed Frewin via email for the film’s release.
 | | Anthony Frewin |
What kind of knowledge did you have of Alan Conway or those who had been swindled by him during the period you worked for Stanley?
In the early 1990s a message was passed on to me at SK’s house in Hertfordshire by the Warner Bros offices at Pinewood Studios. This was from a ‘friend’ of ‘Stanley’s’ who was trying to contact him. The name meant nothing to SK and he asked me to find out what was going on. I phoned the guy and he was achingly sincere and felt ‘abandoned’ by ‘Stanley’ who had changed his telephone number. I had no doubt that this person genuinely believed he had met SK. Obviously someone had impersonated SK. We thought nothing more of it. Then, a couple of weeks later, more friends of ‘Stanley’s’ started calling Warner Bros trying to contact him and we realized we had a serial impostor.
One of the friends said he had visited Stanley’s house many times and from him I got the address of an apartment in the dingy north-west London suburb of Wealdstone and from that I went to the Electoral Rolls and found the place was occupied by someone named Alan Conway.
SK asked me to find out what I could about this Conway and keep a record of all those who had been conned by this aptly named character, and soon I had a thick file. Conway, I discovered, was a predatory gay bankrupt travel agent with a rap sheet six blocks long that started with offences from around the age of 14 onwards. It was all petty stuff: cheque kiting, fraud, embezzlement, burglary, and lots of importuning in gents’ lavatories.
More and more people contacted us who had thought they had met the real SK. I would interview them and put all the details in the file.
Conway played a ‘short con’ – it was a con for drinks, meals and sex. He did not play a ‘long con.’ It was immediate cons. On the strength of his name he would promise young men parts in films or the opportunity to work on films or through his ‘contacts’ an entrée into Las Vegas and so on.
Did you ever have any interactions with him?
Our attorneys advised us that under no circumstances should we have any direct contact with Conway himself as he could turn this to his own advantage.
There was one legal option open to SK and that was to get an injunction against Conway, but in order to obtain this we would have to prove to the court that Conway was indeed doing what we accused him of, and in order to do that we had to produce witnesses who would stand up and say they had been conned. Well, of course, nobody who had been conned wanted to go public.
Conway’s undoing came about in two ways: first with Frank Rich at Joe Allen’s restaurant (‘A Table too Far’ as SK described it) and secondly by Conway signing a legal document (the lease for a gay bar in Soho) in SK’s name, a criminal offence. When the police moved in on him he admitted himself to a psychiatric clinic and the prosecuting authorities abandoned the case.
What made you decide to write a film about Conway?
[After] the end of Conway’s SK impersonations, I was left with a fat file detailing his exploits. Now, I had always been interested in con men and frauds and impostors and for several years I had been struggling with adapting Herman Melville’s novel, The Confidence Man (1857) for the screen. What was I to do, deep-six the file in a filing cabinet or . . . ? What I did was write a screenplay based on Conway from my notes as an exercise, and then I deep-sixed that in the filing cabinet and forgot all about it (we were making Eyes Wide Shut at the time). I did not mention the screenplay to SK at anytime as he would probably have said I was wasting my time. He died in 1999 not knowing about it.
It was a year or so after SK’s death that I came across the screenplay when I was clearing out the office and I gave it to Christiane, SK’s widow, as I thought she might find it amusing. She did, and she said it should be made into a film. I then gave it to Brian Cook.
What was Stanley’s reaction to Conway?
Well, pretty pissed off as you can imagine, but also somewhat philosophical acknowledging that this sort of thing might be expected when you were in his position.
We learnt that Conway had only ever seen a little of one of SK’s films and did not like it at all. SK said, ‘What an ingrate! If he’s going to steal my identity at least he could pay me the courtesy of watching my films and liking them!’
One day SK said to me, ‘I’m going to get my own back on Conway!’ How was he to do that? ‘Easy. I’m going to go around pretending I’m him!’ SK’s humour never deserted him.
Obviously, the film is not a fact-based account of Conway's escapades. (The subtitle of the film is “A True…ish Story.”) To what extent did you stick to the historical record? Did you at any point consider making a completely fact-based film?
The film is a fact-based account in terms of all the major events but, of course, a lot of the detail was unknown to us and we had to surmise based on what we knew.
What kind of encouragement or advice did Stanley give to the filmmaking ambitions of those of you who worked with him? I know that a number of people who worked for him earlier, such as Andrew Birkin, became filmmakers in their own right.
The ‘encouragement’ was in observing SK work. Either you were interested and learnt something or you didn’t.
You and Brian had worked together for many years assisting Kubrick. How did your relationship with Brian change when the two of you became writer and director. Kubrick himself was reported to have had somewhat complex relationships with his writers.
How did my relationship change with Brian? In a word, it didn’t. We’d both worked with SK and knew how to go about it. You just get on with it and, as SK always said, never let your ego get in the way of a good idea! I don’t think SK had ‘complex’ relationships with his writers. Some of his writers may have thought they had a complex relationship, but then this is down to their own psychology.
John Malkovich's amazing performance is so central to this film:Did you write with any particular actors in mind? And did you wind up having to tailor the script to Malkovich's strengths?
The script was written as an exercise with nobody in mind. And it was not re-written when John came aboard. However he did adapt, change and contribute greatly once the film was in production, as befits an actor of his stature. I cannot think of anyone who could have played the role better.
I'm curious if you've ever seen the Iranian film, CLOSE-UP, by Abbas Kiarostami, which is based on a real-life incident in which an emotionally disturbed man posed as the film director Mohsen Makhmalbaf and convinced a Tehran family to let him live with them in order to do "research."
I’d never even heard of the film but I’ve just ordered a DVD from amazon. Thanks for telling me about it. This would certainly make a great double bill with Colour Me Kubrick!
The subject of impostors and con-men has always been a rich vein for writers and film makers to mine. Recently we’ve had that Philip Roth novel, Three Degrees of Separation and a couple of films by Mr Mamet. It makes us think about reality and illusion and what we know and what we think we know. And don’t forget the Melville title already mentioned and his Benito Cereno.
Colour Me Kubrick is really a riff on celebrity. A lot of the people Conway conned were sane, rational, intelligent people but the moment they touched the hem of fame (ie Conway) these qualities deserted them. It wasn’t that Conway was a good con-man, it was that his ‘marks’ were only too wiling and eager to be taken in. Thus the modern power of celebrity.
When you tell people that you were Stanley Kubrick's assistant, do they believe you? And if so, do you ever sometimes feel, on some strange level, like you're getting a taste of the power Conway must have felt?
Do they believe me? Well, I think they do, but perhaps they are conning me! A taste of power? If only…
— Bilge Ebiri
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Talking Back at Vintage Trailers: An Outspoken Post by an Indiscreet Blogger!
3/22/2007 12:15:00 PM
I try not to watch trailers. They tell me more than I want to know about the plot of a film and very little about whether or not I’ll enjoy it. At the theatre, I’m the woman with her eyes closed and her fingers in her ears through most of the previews.
I’ve always thought trailers just couldn’t be worse than they currently are — bloated with clips, revealing the best shots of a movie, showing you far more of the story arc than you need while simultaneously misrepresenting the film’s actual tone or depth or genre.
I was wrong.
I watched the Joan Crawford comeback vehicle Mildred Pierce last night on DVD. One of the special features was a load of old Warner Brothers’ theatrical trailers. I thought modern trailers were bad, but 1940s trailers are incomprehensible.
I love watching old movies — smart and verbose characters exchange witty repartee with more of the same. The trailers, however, take the love of words to a whole other level. Despite growing up in an advertising age full of inane claims, I wasn’t prepared for the bizarre on-screen text and voice-over of the Mildred Pierce trailer.
Of course, sex sells, so the trailer presents the film as three sordid affairs and a dead guy. (BEGIN SPOILER ALERT!) This noir/melodrama is actually the story of a mother sacrificing all for a spoiled child. It’s a class war within a single-parent family. (END SPOILER ALERT)
The trailer begins with a clip and then the following voice-over:
“Mildred. A name gasped in the night. The one last word of a dying man. But one word that tells a thousand stories of a woman - who left her mark on every man she met.”
Er — the film is one story… with three men. That’s 999 fewer stories than advertised.
And the on-screen text is even worse, interspersed with clips of Crawford in a bikini, a housecoat, the arms of various men:
"Mildred Pierce — The Intimate Affairs of a Woman who Refused to Live by the Rules...”
Sounds like “the lingerie of a con artist”. Well, Mildred does separate from her (cheating?) husband and start her own business. Not exactly against the law, though.
“She tried to Kiss Off a Crime!”
The word kiss tries to add romantic overtones where there aren’t any.
“She bought a Love she could NEVER OWN!”
That happens to me all the time. Old Mil trades a third of her business to marry a bankrupt heir. But the love she’s after that she can’t “own” is maternal, not romantic.
“The Outspoken Story of an Indiscreet Woman.”
This one made me hit “pause”. Oh, those outspoken stories. Not a bold story, mind you, not a brave story, an outspoken story. Most of the movie is a series of flashbacks as Mildred gives a statement to the police. Hardly outspoken — more like cornered. And of all the adjectives that Mildred, the character, calls to mind, indiscreet is not one of them.
“A Different Kind of Story from the Pace-Setting Studio of Warner Bros!”
That explains everything. I didn’t understand this was a different kind of outspoken story. Now I get it.
If there’s one thing I love, though, it’s that Warner Brothers still had a sense of competition as a studio. Nowadays, studios carefully match their logos to the opening credits of a film, which is a cool and simple way to make a statement. I just wish that studios even wanted to be seen as “pace-setting” — they’re usually more concerned with presenting as “profit-making”.
At least, I thought, as I researched trailers on line, the days of the teutonic LaFontaine voice-over seem to be gone. The scripts he used to intone are now animated as on-screen text. But in the dozen current trailers I watched, none of them were nearly as confusing or as entertaining as the trailer to Mildred Pierce.
— Pazit Cahlon
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An Open Letter to John August, Shazam! Screenwriter
3/22/2007 11:00:00 AM
Dear Mr. August,
Congratulations on the Captain Marvel/Shazam! gig. It's clear from your blog that you're excited by the project, and I think you have the right sensibility for it. Captain Marvel is one of the few superheroes left who hasn't been tainted by the general trend towards angst. Don't get me wrong. This is great for the likes of Batman and Wolverine, but Captain Marvel is the one character who takes the underlying subtext of superheroes — wish fulfillment for kids — and makes it text. Captain Marvel means joy, and I think the writer of Go and the Charlie's Angels movies knows something about that.
Now I know that, as you say, "most movies don't get made". I know that there are more than just artistic considerations that go into making a movie, especially an expensive franchise picture. I also understand that listening to people who have nothing better to do than bitch and moan about comic book characters isn't the road to success. Still, I'm moved to make this one plea:
Please include Mr. Tawky Tawny.
For those who are unfamiliar: Mr. Tawky Tawny is a tiger. A tiger who speaks English and walks upright. A tiger who decided to leave the jungle, dress in tweed, and join Western civilization as a productive member of society.
There's a word for this. That word is "awesome".
Tawky is awesome because, other than the fact that he's a tiger, he's utterly, utterly ordinary. He isn't a genius; in fact, he really isn't that smart, just smarter than a regular tiger. He's not fierce; he tries to be urbane. All he really wants is to make some money and enjoy the pleasures of modern living. In a sense, Tawky is the mirror image of Captain Marvel. While Marvel is an adult with (literally) a kid's spirit, unburdened with the day-to-day banal responsibilities of the grownup world, Tawky was born wild, unconcerned with anything but eating and sleeping — yet he throws that life away to become a regular joe. But he's a tiger. He'll never be completely comfortable. He'll always be yearning for something outside of himself, but forever limited by his awkward body. He is the human condition. We are Tawky Tawny.
Is this too heavy for a superhero flick aimed at kids? I suppose. He can (and should) still be the goofy sidekick, Frasier Crane in a cat's body, but the genius of Mr. Tawky Tawny is that you don't have to say one word about his existential crisis. It's already encoded into the character. All we, the audience, have to do is look for the subtext — which should be our job anyway.
So, Mr. August, I beg you: put Tawky Tawny in your script. And not that recent version, that whole Calvin-and-Hobbes-I'm-really-just-a-stuffed-toy bullshit, either. I mean the real one. We all want a kickass superhero story, but this is a chance to go beyond that and do something different. I'll understand if it doesn't happen — this is wish fulfillment, just like the Big Red Cheese himself — but if you could find a way, you'd make at least one person very, very happy.
Sincerely,
Kent M. Beeson
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Morning Deal Report: MPAA’s Dogs Hunted By Pirates, Oscar Sets Dates, Russell Crowe Directs
3/22/2007 10:00:00 AM
- Those Malaysian movie pirates who got their CDs and DVDs busted by the MPAA’s disc-sniffing canines have now put a bounty on the dogs’ heads. Looks like somebody forgot to pay for a public relations adviser…
- The Academy announced its “key dates” for 2007 and 2008. Next year’s ceremony will take place on Sunday, Feburary 24th. Nominations will be announced Tuesday, January 22nd, thus making Wednesday, January 23rd National “Zodiac Wuz Robbed” Day. (Hat tip: Movie City News.)
- Looks like David O. Russell won’t be the only short-fused, chair-throwing auteur out there with the name “Russell” anymore. Russell Crowe is getting ready to direct a film about a gang of real-life Australian surfers, called Bra Boys. Incidentally, Crowe is also the narrator of a documentary with the same name about the group, and it’s doing gangbusters business in Aussie cinemas as we speak.
- Jet Li is negotiating to play the villain in The Mummy 3, though presumably he will not be playing the Mummy.
- While the rest of Hollywood tries to remake his films, John Carpenter is apparently thinking about directing the Freddy vs. Jason vs. Michael movie.
- Tim Burton will get a Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s Venice Film Festival. The Festival will also have a “Tim Burton Day.” Seriously, did you ever think you’d hear those words together?
— Bilge Ebiri
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Weekly Top 10: The Worst Accents in Movie History, Part 2
3/21/2007 4:37:55 PM
Angelina Jolie, Alexander
When it comes to compiling Worst of lists, Oliver Stone’s epic and utterly misguided stinkbomb is the gift that keeps on giving. There are so many things wrong here it’s hard to pick just one, but if a junkie Viet vet film director with a history of arrests and a mean streak the size of Idaho pressed a gun to our head and asked us to choose, we’d probably have to go with Angelina’s downright Pythonesque attempt at something that resembles Russian. These scenes rank high on the unintentional comedy scale and give further weight to Screengrab’s recent nomination of Ms. Jolie as the acting equivalent of a nagging toothache.
Steve Martin, The Pink Panther
Remember when Steve Martin used to create unique, original characters who were really funny? Neither do we, but our dusty reference books confirm that it was true, once. These days, all we can remember is his tired white-guy-talks-black shtick in Bringing Down the House, and his hitting the money well over and over again for such “fambly-friendly” fare as Cheaper by the Dozen 14: Die Cheaper. Lame, and harmless enough…but when Mr. Martin chose to play Inspector Clouseau, popularized by the late Peter Sellers, for the Pink Panther, the situation became serious. Now, Sellers was a one of a kind Englishman with a particular talent for accents, and the bumbling Clouseau, with his clogged-nasal-passage-French-tinted English, was his crowning achievement. You don’t just mess with this sort of stuff. The notion of Steve Martin stepping into Peter Sellers’s shoes is about as well advised as Dr. Phil trying to improve Louis Pasteur’s rabies virus: he can’t succeed, and people will surely die in the process. Okay, maybe that’s carrying it a bit too far — Dr. Phil never made Roxanne, after all — but Martin’s version is still awful. It’s a copy of a copy and not a very good one, like something out of the reject pile at West Ridgeville Hill County High School’s Annual Talent Show and Bake Sale. To be honest, unless someone told us, we wouldn’t even know what country’s affectations he was trying to mimic. And yes, we understand his accent is supposed to be goofy. But this shit is downright actionable.
Tommy Lee Jones, Blown Away
In the mid-nineties, for some reason known only to coke-addicted high-level executives, the negotiators in the Irish Peace Process and possibly the Kennedys, Hollywood movies were awash with bad Oirish accents — from Brad Pitt and Richard Gere’s over-emphatic brogues in The Devil’s Own and The Jackal respectively, to Julia Roberts’ half-assed attempt to pronounce “bluuuuuid” in Mary Reilly. But the worst of the lot must certainly be Jones, who cackles and singsongs his way through his first post-Oscar role in this action howler. Like Kevin Costner, Jones tends to be at his best at his least affected, and any obvious accoutrements of performance only get in his way. Unfortunately, he seemed to forget this when essaying the role of the mad-bomber Sean Gaerity, forever building Rube Goldberg-style bombs and toying with cop Jeff Bridges. The character is embarrassing enough, and when Jones whips out his accent, you could be forgiven for thinking you’ve mistakenly stumbled onto the actor’s audition tape for Leprechaun 8: It’s a Long Way to Tipper-Scary.
Danny Nucci, Titanic
“Eeeh, I go to Ah-MEEEEEE-riccaaa!” With all-a the subtlety of a that-a guy who-a served tha Lady and-a the Tramp-a, Danny Nucci brought to Leo Di Caprio’s friend Fabrizio that certain special “I no no-a wha’” that made some of us in the audience stare at each other briefly and ask, “Is this guy for real?” Yes, the spectacular romantic tragedy that won the hearts of millions around the world was eventually able to overcome his goofy overacting, but still, amid our stifled tears we couldn’t help but give a slight little yelp of joy when a portion of the ship finally broke away and landed on poor Fabrizio. Rest-a inna tha piece, my friend-a!
Mickey Rooney, Breakfast at Tiffany’s
True, without Audrey Hepburn’s charm and Henry Mancini’s music, Breakfast at Tiffany’swouldn’t be nearly as beloved as it is. However, it could be Citizen friggin’ Kane and it still couldn’t wash off the stench of Mickey Rooney’s absurdly racist performance as Mr. Yunioshi, one of the most vomitous creations ever committed to film. Had Mickey Rooney ever even seen a Japanese man? Donning yellowface and buckteeth and constantly bumbling around his flat, Yunioshi comes off not so much as an Asian stereotype as a cross between a caricature and a mouse. His role exists solely to be annoyed by downstairs neighbor “Miss Gorightry” and to constantly threaten to call the police. Watching him bang his head innumerable times on the paper lantern above his bed, we couldn’t help but think that Rooney makes Krusty the Klown’s “me so solly” bit look positively enlightened.
HONORABLE MENTION:
Here are two accents that didn’t make the final ten. In one case, it was because we still carry fond memories of the performance itself, and in the other because we’re not exactly sure that the actress was even trying to do an accent.
Dick Van Dyke, Mary Poppins
Compared to Mickey Rooney’s Mr. Yunioshi, Dick Van Dyke’s Burt in the Disney classic is a distinct improvement — at least both character and actor are white. However, taken on its own merits, Van Dyke’s accent is pretty dreadful, barely worthy of a road-company performance of Oliver! Attempting to capture Burt’s Cockney background, Van Dyke leans heavily on “guvna” and “mate,” occasionally dropping his h’s and adding s’s to his verbs. But it never really works, since Van Dyke never really makes it part of the character. And because it’s so bad, it becomes a distraction, taking the audience completely out of what is otherwise a perfectly good film, and inadvertently schooling several generations of kids in How to Make Poor Fun of the English. (Incidentally, in a film that’s largely cast with British actors, who thought it a good idea to make Burt the exception?) Still, we’re inclined to cut him just a wee bit slack, cause he sings so well.
Jessica Simpson, The Dukes of Hazzard
It was only a matter of time before some genius in Hollywood decided to package Ms. Simpson’s generous T&A and stick it in a movie. Well, that chance came along in the brown stain Warner Brothers called The Dukes of Hazzard. Now, while there are many other things in this movie perhaps more worthy of criticism (they should have brought back the original Roscoe P. Coltrane dammit!!!) and any man with a pulse would be a fool to complain about Jessica in a peach bikini, we found it more than a little disheartening that a girl born to a Baptist minister in Dallas, Texas couldn’t pull off a believable Southern accent. Which also begs the question: when they decided to go with an all new cast for the straight-to-DVD sequel, is it possible the studio was actually trading up?
— Paul Clark, Bilge Ebiri, Bryan Whitefield
PREVIOUS WEEKLY TOP TENS:
- March 14, 2007: The Kinkiest Films Ever Made
- March 7, 2007: The Most Dangerous Films of All Time
- February 27, 2007: The Best Nude Scenes of 2006
Permalink : http://www.nerve.com/nerveblog/screengrabblog.aspx?id=107e9986#9986 |
Weekly Top 10: The Worst Accents in Movie History, Part 1
3/21/2007 3:10:56 PM
The bad movie accent is a most mysterious phenomenon. Sure, some regular offenders, like Keanu Reeves or Kevin Costner, just don’t seem to have that je ne sais quoi that allows them to speak with the lilt of another land. But then there are actors — your Kingsleys, Malkoviches, and Brandos — who really should know better. Either way, watching these performers — be they outmatched pretty boys or master thespians — fall on their faces is one of the most exciting and entertaining spectator sports in the film world. But we also have to give these poor souls some props. In our list of bad accents, we are not including those actors who simply chose to stick with their own intonations for inappropriate roles. So, you won’t find Tony Curtis talking Brooklynese in the swashbuckler Black Shield of Falworth here, even though its mythical (and non-existent) line “Yonda lies duh kingdom of my fadduh” has become something of a rallying cry for bad movie accents. Nor will you find Harvey Keitel’s Noo Yawk Judas in The Last Temptation of Christ here. No, these are all actors who decided to go with an accent. They trained and rehearsed and researched. Some of them probably even hired dialect coaches. And they failed. Oh dear, sweet god how they failed. Without further ado, here are our choices for The Ten Worst Accents in Movie History.
Kevin Costner, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
We don't know what's more grating — Kevin Costner speaking with an abysmal, pretentious British accent, or Kevin Costner speaking with his own Southern California drawl while playing a Medieval British outlaw. Unfortunately (or fortunately, for note-taking, schadenfreude-addicted cynics like us), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves gives us both, resulting in a catastrophic now-you-hear-it-now-you-don't mishmash, some of which might have been the result of reshoots and post-production infighting between Costner and his friend, director Kevin Reynolds (the two would split for good during the production of Waterworld). Then again, Kevin Costner actually sticking with an accent is in another realm of cinematic pain altogether: witness his comically thick Boston Irish accent in the political thriller Thirteen Days, where he played real-life Presidential adviser Kenneth O’Donnell and made him sound like Diamond Joe Quimby from The Simpsons. And now that we think of it, that 19th century Yankee twang he had in Dances with Wolves ain't so hot, either. Y'know, it may simply be that Kevin Costner is simply a bad accent unto himself.
Keanu Reeves, Bram Stoker’s Dracula
If a close reading of film history proves anything, it’s that Francis Ford Coppola has a massive set of balls — from his peopling The Godfather with a cast of relative unknowns, to his transforming a corner of the Philippines into his own drug-addled, war-engulfed fiefdom for Apocalypse Now, to his staking everything he had in the world on a mega-budget musical comedy starring Teri Garr. But perhaps the greatest risk our man ever took was casting Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker, the affable 19th century clerk who travels to Transylvania and comes face to face with Gary Oldman’s vampire in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. “Ted” had already proven he wasn’t exactly cut out for period pieces through miscast roles in films such as Dangerous Liaisons and Much Ado About Nothing. Still, some of us had hope: we went into that darkened theater convinced that Coppola, who after all had discovered so much young talent throughout the 70s and 80s (think Pacino, Cruise, Cage, Swayze, Dillon…um, Macchio), would be able to fix whatever was wrong with Keanu. Then the lights dimmed. And we heard how he pronounced “Byuuda-pesht.” And “You-rope.” And, “I say, is the cahstle fahh?” All we could do was stare blankly. Here’s how bad Keanu’s accent was: he made Gary Oldman’s and Anthony Hopkins’ similarly outrageous accents in the same film seem okay.
Delroy Lindo, The Devil’s Advocate
How can Keanu Reeves playing a Southern lawyer and Al Pacino playing Satan himself in full-on “Hooo-aaah!” mode both be upstaged by a brief cameo appearance from an otherwise-reliable character actor? It happened here: 28 minutes into Taylor Hackford’s over-the-top classic, we get an uncredited Delroy Lindo, with an impenetrable Cajun twang and stealing the show right out from under its megawatt stars. If you can understand him, let us know. We’re still wondering just what the hell he said.
Ben Kingsley, Sneakers
He played Gandhi and that Iranian dude in House of Sand and Fog, and he even rocked a weirdly compelling Greek in Pascali’s Island, so we know the man can do an accent. He’s a knight, for chrissakes. (Then again, so is Roger Moore.) So how in hell do we explain what happens about halfway through Sneakers, when Robert Redford’s security expert character wakes up to discover that the villain he’s been fighting all along was his long-lost college hacking buddy, now played by Sir Ben Kingsley sporting what must be the strangest inflection imaginable (not to mention the Ponytail from Hell). For starters, we’re not even sure what it’s supposed to be: it appears to be a weird mixture of British, New England, Brooklyn, and Jewish, with possibly even a bit of Indian tossed in. Or, as Kingsley’s character himself might call it, a “dizeas-tah” of Costnerian proportions. But still, Sir Ben is smarter than this: we can’t quite shake the notion that he might be doing it all on purpose. Which would qualify this as not just one of the worst accents ever, but also one of the scariest.
John Malkovich, Rounders
Malkovich is one of those performers — like Brando, or some kind of tormented actor-superhero wrestling with his sociopathic alter ego — who can use his ability to go over-the-top for good or for ill. (See this week’s release of the engaging Color Me Kubrick for an example of “Malkie” goofing around with his well-known propensity to overact.) Sometimes he knocks it out of the park, as in In the Line of Fire or Dangerous Liaisons. And then there’s John Dahl’s gambling drama Rounders, in which our man played the villainous Russian loan shark Teddy KGB with such a thick Russian accent that it stopped the film dead. Forget bluffing a flush, how Matt Damon kept a poker face sitting opposite Malkovich in these scenes we’ll never know.
— Paul Clark, Bilge Ebiri, Bryan Whitefield
(Part Two will appear later today.)
PREVIOUS WEEKLY TOP TENS:
- March 14, 2007: The Kinkiest Films Ever Made
- March 7, 2007: The Most Dangerous Films of All Time
- February 27, 2007: The Best Nude Scenes of 2006
Permalink : http://www.nerve.com/nerveblog/screengrabblog.aspx?id=107e9985#9985 |
