I was out of town last week, and took my daughter to a museum that played taped interviews with Southerners from the 1960s.
This reminded me that, sometimes, yeah, we really do talk like that.
But only in isolated, individual cases, so Dixie Babble will not let the historical record stop us from making fun of celebrities.
The Elite 8 of the Dixie Babble Bad Accent Tournament features successful – sometimes even acclaimed – actors who, for whatever reason, can’t bring themselves to talk like actual human beings from the Southeastern United States. Round 2 brings us –
Renee Zellweger in Cold Mountain, having upset overall #1-seed “Half the Cast of Fried Green Tomatoes” in the first round, takes on Robert “Come oyut, come oyut whuhever yew ahhr” DeNiro as Max Cady in Cape Fear.
The second match sees Keanu Reeves in The Devil’s Advocate – in which buying him as a Southerner requires a greater suspension of disbelief than buying him as the son of Satan – against the otherwise great Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
In the third match, Marlon Brando in Reflections in a Golden Eye (really, though, his accent is less “bad” than “deeply weird”) faces Canadian Gentile Dan Aykroyd as a Georgia Jew in Driving Miss Daisy.
And in the last match of the second round, Kyra Sedgwick in The Closer – who’s character apparently isn’t even supposed to be from the South – goes up against what has to be the overwhelming favorite Bad Accent from this point on, Nicolas Cage in Con Air. Even though I’m not entirely certain Cage even deserves to be in this tournament, since I can’t be sure his accent wasn’t supposed to be that bad.
Place your votes to see which Bad Accents move on to the Final Four.
Dixie Babble 