Quiz Show -- what's with Morrow's accent
Matt Foley
Show", but every time I settled down to enjoy the film, Rob Morrow's
fake Humphrey Bogart accent jarred me from the seat and sent me
running for earphones! Why couldn't Morrow just use his normal
voice (a la Northern Exposure)? I know the character he played
was supposed to hail from Boston, but would the slight oddity
of a non-specific accent on a Bostonian have been nearly as bad
as Morrow's continual switching between Bogart and his credit-card
commercial voice? I say no. The last time I saw such annoying
accents was in "An Interview with a Vampire", where the positively
awful Brad Pitt went from Creole, to slight French, to Mid-American
plainspeak, and back to a cheap "Dracula" impersonation in more
than one scene. Don't get me wrong, "Vampire" was simply a bad
movie and "Quiz Show" deserves some Oscar nominations, but they
both suffer from a similar problem -- bad, and inconsistent, accents.
Comments?
(please respond via e-mail or "Cc" me in the post -- it's tough to
sort through a group with this many threads)
--
Matt Foley mfo...@darwin.cc.nd.edu
University of Notre Dame http://www.nd.edu/~mfoley3/
Bruce Worthen
>From: mfo...@prokofiev.helios.nd.edu (Matt Foley)
>Subject: Quiz Show -- what's with Morrow's accent
>Date: 4 Mar 1995 22:17:38 GMT
>Ack!!! I hate seeing this kind of junk! I liked the movie "Quiz
>Show", but every time I settled down to enjoy the film, Rob Morrow's
>fake Humphrey Bogart accent jarred me from the seat and sent me
>running for earphones! Why couldn't Morrow just use his normal
>voice (a la Northern Exposure)?
For those of us who have never seen Northern Exposure, it wasn't distracting.
Actually it sounded quite good. I know what you mean. Debra Winger's Brooklyn
accent in SHADOWLANDS was a big distraction from an otherwise excellent
performance.
BW
Neel Harish Mehta
Unless it's Melanie Griffith, I'm pretty forgiving with out of place
accents. Rob Morrow's accent struck me as more Kennedy than Bogie. It's
distracting at first, but you get used to it.
Neel Mehta
n...@acpub.duke.edu
"Life is like a bowl of rice in Indochina. You never know if you're
gonna get a cap in the ass."
- Tom Hanks in "Pulp Fiction" (edited out)
AKIS, RICHARD JOHN
> Ack!!! I hate seeing this kind of junk! I liked the movie "Quiz
> Show", but every time I settled down to enjoy the film, Rob Morrow's
> fake Humphrey Bogart accent jarred me from the seat and sent me
> running for earphones! Why couldn't Morrow just use his normal
> voice (a la Northern Exposure)?
I was also annoyed by Rob Morrow's "phony" accent while watching
the film. However, a few weeks later, I saw an interview with the
real person that Morrow was portraying. Amazingly, this guy actually
talks like that! Rob Morrow's impression of his voice was actually
pretty accurate! Of course, since no one else on earth talks that way,
it comes off as phony.
Richard A.
SjT (Stephen J. Truog)
(AKIS, RICHARD JOHN) wrote:
> I was also annoyed by Rob Morrow's "phony" accent while watching
It sounded a little strange at the start, but 5 minutes into the movie, it
didn't bother me anymore. By mid-film, I was fully used to it.
> the film. However, a few weeks later, I saw an interview with the
> real person that Morrow was portraying. Amazingly, this guy actually
> talks like that! Rob Morrow's impression of his voice was actually
> pretty accurate! Of course, since no one else on earth talks that way,
> it comes off as phony.
Thanks for that info! I suspected that, but it's good to know.
>
As Alex said: Great movie, though, huh?
I agree!
Now that HOOP DREAMS has been snubbed, I sincerely hope QUIZ SHOW can
sneak out the Oscar while Pulp and Gump knock each other out. It deserves
the Oscar a little more than the rest and the acting is excellent all
around. The fact that Paul Scofield is the ONLY actor nominated for an
award is unconscionable - especially Ralph Feinnes! I'm so glad to see
that he won the RAMmy award - at least we know who deserves what a lot
better than the academy.
-SjT
Northwestern
Dstone1029
> the film. However, a few weeks later, I saw an interview with the
> real person that Morrow was portraying. Amazingly, this guy actually
> talks like that! Rob Morrow's impression of his voice was actually
> pretty accurate! Of course, since no one else on earth talks that way,
> it comes off as phony.
Interestingly, if you listen closely, Morrow's accent and attitudes in
the film vary depending upon which social strata his character is
investigating. He is acts elitest when dealing with Feinnes character and
more Brooklyn when dealing wtih the other.
Doug Stone
Alex Fung
> Show", but every time I settled down to enjoy the film, Rob Morrow's
> fake Humphrey Bogart accent jarred me from the seat and sent me
> running for earphones! Why couldn't Morrow just use his normal
> voice (a la Northern Exposure)?
Rob Morrow's fake accent really didn't bother me all too much - but then
again, I don't watch Northern Exposure and have only seen him speak
with his normal spoken voice on a late night talkshow, so perhaps that
might be the cause. Actually, it sounded to me like Morrow was doing
a faux-Kennedy (and I mean *faux*) impression rather than Humphrey Bogart,
though.
Great movie, though, huh?
--
Alex Fung (aw...@freenet.carleton.ca)
"Deserve's got nothing to do with it." - Clint Eastwood, on the Oscars
(and in _Unforgiven_, 1992)
JJK
writes:
Guess you guys haven't spent a lot of time in New England - there really
are people who talk like Morrow's character, JFK was one of them(in real
life, I never saw Stone's movie).
JJK
AKIS, RICHARD JOHN
Ah, but the point is that Morrow has been criticized for supposed
doing a "bad" New England accent, for being more like a parody than the
"real" thing. As it turns out, the idiosyncrasies of the real person's voice
I think are deeper than just his accent. I think if this guy had been raised
in southern CA his voice would still sound "funny". I think that Morrow
managed to capture these more subtle nuances.
Richard A.
nel...@delphi.com
>Rob Morrow's fake accent really didn't bother me all too much - but then
>again, I don't watch Northern Exposure and have only seen him speak
>with his normal spoken voice on a late night talkshow, so perhaps that
>might be the cause. Actually, it sounded to me like Morrow was doing
>a faux-Kennedy (and I mean *faux*) impression rather than Humphrey Bogart,
>though.
on the show. I had no trouble with the accent either and I've heard that
apparently Goodwin whom he protrayed spoke this way.
Karen M Frederickson
>
> I was also annoyed by Rob Morrow's "phony" accent while watching
> the film. However, a few weeks later, I saw an interview with the
> real person that Morrow was portraying. Amazingly, this guy actually
> talks like that! Rob Morrow's impression of his voice was actually
> pretty accurate! Of course, since no one else on earth talks that way,
> it comes off as phony.
>
>Richard A.
>
>
This reminds me of the situation with Robert Shaw, as Quint, in _Jaws_.
A lot of reviews asked where his weird mish-mash of an accent came from,
that he didn't sound like a New England fisherman. But Shaw created his
accent by listening to tapes of the eccentric shark-fisherman who Peter
Benchley used as a model for Quint. So there!
Karen