Once, as a younger man, I went to a Red Sox game at Fenway and found myself sitting behind a bunch of guys about my age and biting through my tongue to keep from laughing out loud. The game was in a rain delay and I’d started listening to them talk, and sumbitch if they didn’t sound exactly like a Saturday Night Live sketch. It was wicked awesome.
I know that they only sounded that way to my touristy ears; I know that I couldn’t hear, anymore than the comedians could reproduce, all sorts of shading and phrasing and inflection.
That’s why even the best actors will spend weeks or even months on a movie set, speaking all those lines, in take after take, with a Bad Accent. They don’t bother, or aren’t able, to learn the little quirks of a locality; they paint only with the broadest brush.
I’ll be honest with you – I almost feel guilty about our two finalists for the Dixie Babble Bad Accent Championship. Neither one was making a realistic ‘slice-of-life’ movie, by any stretch of the imagination (at least, dear Lord, I hope not). Both clearly were straining for over the top, and got there. Both accents are so broad they barely fit on the screen.
So here they are, the last drawls standing in the Dixie Babble Bad Accent Tournament:
Oscar-winner Robert De Niro in Cape Fear, versus Oscar-winner Nicolas Cage in Con Air.
Come out, come out, wherever you are, put the bunny back in the box, and place your votes to decide our champion.
Dixie Babble 