Film: "Steal This Movie"
Discuss it here --
posted by lljudge @ 7:55 AM
.:theReelblog:.
Previous Posts
- Look at who she found.....
- Watch "Steal This Movie" on Google
- If you're in Manhattan......
- Received a photo and autograph ~
- Film: Thumbsucker
- Dr Park Dietz: Dangerous minds
- Film: Claire Dolan
- Film: The Whole Wide World
- Hollywood Reporter July 19-24 issue
- Goren on the Ground
Privacy Policy
25 Comments:
WOW! This movie really took me by surprise! Steal This Movie was nothing what I expected. The little I knew of Abbie Hoffman was influenced by news articles of him and his extreme approach to life and government. Because of this limited knowledge I had no desire to view this movie. But now, it is one of my favorite movies of all time. Got to trust Vince and his choices of movie material. So far he is NEVER wrong!
So many things lept off the screen with significant impact upon me. One was the scene with Abbie and Private Randall Kendall. It was a very tender moment. Abbie really cared about these men who were deployed or being deployed to Vietnam. It wasn't just hype. He really cared. Then seeing that this soldier was killed in Nam really sent the point home and made it very personal. Brilliantly done!
I loved how devoted Abbie was to Anita in the first half of the film. He not only passionately loved her (oh can Vincent kiss!), but was very protective of her in the rallies and even when he was forced to go underground. It was really beautiful.
What a poignant, but cute moment when Anita asked what Abbie was going to do if he got everything he wanted. His response was "You mean when there is liberty and justice for all? I'd be out of a job and have to start organizing closets!"
The movie focused more on Abbie's personal life rather than his political one. But the scenes that depicted his highs and lows with the government/America (the country, not the son) spoke volumes! When he was in the court room and speaking of him being a revolutionist and how important his values were---then pointing to the wall of pictures of former revolutionary giants in America--George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. If that moment didn't validate Abbie's passion--nothing could. It was brilliant!!! But other scenes where he was being beaten by the police for wearing a shirt made of flag symbols then flashing onto a tv spot with Dale Evans & Roy Rogers--two of America's beloved celebrities, wearing clothing similar to Abbie's. How profound that was! What a sad commentary on Americans or American media influence!
Knowing that Vince stays in character, emotionally, when filming must have had such a frightening impact on him personally. Watching the extreme anguish when Abbie was in the depths of his bipolar depression was done very real to life. It was heart-wrenching! The scene when he was crying out that he was Abbie Hoffman, over and over and over again--so passionately and with so much frustration/rage,desperation and intensity was so disturbing to watch for both what Abbie must have gone through and also for what Vince had to put himself through to get there. Incredible acting, but at what cost to Vince personally!?
Sorry for going on so long. This movie was very thought provoking and so brilliantly portrayed by Vince. A must see!
I understand Hoffman was a very slightly built man and congratulate Vincent on taking a role than I am sure some must have said was not 'physically' right for him". I enjoyed this film immensely, as the 'Yippies' and the Chicago 7 were icons of a generation that had so much influence on the next, my own.
This is one indie which I wish somehow could have garnered a bigger budget - big enough to have actually filmed a scene for which Hoffman was (in)famous - the raining of the dollar bills down to the NY stock exchange floor, and the notorious 'scramble' on hands and knees for the minor denominations that resulted.
The film had to handle it simply (and inexpensively) by showing a newspaper headline of the event - what a pity the resources weren't there to re-stage that lark. I'd have loved to have seen VD'O toss that one off. But it was one of those times your attention is clearly drawn to the budgetary constraints of independent filmmakers (and increased appreciation results).
Now Vincent's accent for the role -- I will get to that one later. :)
firefligh: where's your blog honey?
I don't have time to expand on this film for the moment, but realise I have been drawn to the biographical roles vdo has played and there is a common thread to both. IMHO these two films are his best performances.... barring the taxi scene in Claire Dolan and I have a very soft spot for Valentino..... oh and Bobby, Bobby, but that's on a different level.
I also consider the films Vincent has had a business interest in himself are his finest and I would love to see him do more biopic roles. I expect his Orson Welles is formidable if us mere mortals could have the opportunity to see it.
Robert E Howard and Abbie Hoffman are both manic depressants a condition that plagues a very close loved one of mine. Did Vincent study the condition? Did he try to understand the highs and lows? I saw him on the screen and I recognised the sickness. The pacing, the futility, the frustration... and the creativity and the drive and the grandiose ideas and wanting to show the world...
This film should have been classed as one of the "greats" of moviedom... why wasn't it?
Vincent did Abbie proud.
Here is another role that Vincent should have been nominated for-he did a fantastic job and had to perform so many different emotions and in almost every scene in the movie-I especially loved the scenes with america-he played them so tenderly when he was a baby and then so proud and really dad-like when he was older and finally told him he was his Dad-I think the reason the movie itself wasn't more popular is because people really don't want to be reminded of the sixties, whether you lived through it or not-Vietnam is just such a tough subject to deal with and frankly since we don't seem to learn from our mistakes, we don't want to relive them either.
It's a good movie and a great performance, but it does ignore some of Mr. Hoffman's politics. He was an anarchist, against any authority, and to my way of thinking that's not a great political philosophy. That aside, I think we need people like Hoffman and films like this. And certainly like Mr. D'Onofrio's performance.
Good to see people's comments on this one because it's another one that I'm on the fence about seeing; not that I'll really have time to devote to movies between now and December.
One comment, however, is scaring me a little....
firefligh - You mention an accent. Fearing the worst, I turned to our Wikipedian friends and see that, yes, the man was born in Massachusetts. Lord God, PLEASE tell me that he's not doing one of those friggin' Kennedy-esque Boston accents through the whole thing!?!? If he is, Hell No, I won't be watching it.
Why do people -okay, actors (sorry guy!)- not know that THEY are the only freaks from Massachusetts who really talk like that!?! At least no one in Boston-proper does; Cape natives do not belong to us. Sheee..., all I've ever heard is that I basically don't even have an accent until I get mad and start firing bullets. And, yes, I do pronounce my R's in all the appropriate words in normal day to day conversation, without ever having had to work on doing so... Words can't really capture how much I truly and deeply hate affected Boston accents. I still cringe when I think back to that Bridges boy in Blown Away (wanted to see what they filmed around the Tobin and I think Pitt was in it - you know, back when I didn't him). AWFUL!!!!
whoa naydi, calm down, lol!!!!
Until we actually check out some old Hoffman interview soundbytes, we don't know what his particular Worcester accent sounded like..so VD'O has to get the benefit of any doubt - he must have listened to the man's speech before portraying him.
But yeah, it's pretty much a "Bahstin" as compared to "Bawstin" take...as has been said a million times...why does the Kennedy accent stand as the prototype when only the Kennedys sound like the Kennedys? The mistake of using the lower mid-back vowel sound in 'stop' instead of the slightly higher and further back vowel sound in 'bought' that most of us use in southern NE. Among other elements...it also helps to add an 'r' to words like 'idea' when doing NE, not just dropping them in 'pahk the cah'. :)
If you saw the CI epis "Badge" and Fico di Capo" you heard Vincent haul out a close variation of what he did in Steal, tho in those epis he was going for Southie cop rather than third generation Worcester.
But again, until we hear some old clips of Hoffman, we can't say V, didn't get it right, or close to right.
Worcester accents tend to go more toward the central New York than the Boston...so who knows.
On Hoffman's anarchist creed - he hardly qualified as a child of Kropotkin or even a colleague of Chomsky. Abbie owed more to Lenny Bruce than to Trotsky, and his real contributions were in the free speech/guerrila theatre area, not in political philosophy.
Hard to believe folks like Cleaver and Brown suffered him lightly, and for those who consider him too anti-authoritarian, let's remember the Stalinist branch of the left thought him as 'dangerous' as the FBI did. Tho he studied under Herbert Marcuse, it was Abraham Maslow who was his guru. Hoffman was psyche oriented, not a conventional 'revolutionary' by any means...he was about adding humanism to the hard liners - imho, that was his greatest contribution.
I am glad the movie went into his personal saga rather than primarily his political....I doubt any filmmaker would be able to do justice to the diverse influences on AH in two hours. He was a fascinating man portayed by another fascinating man.
PS Who I really would have loved to see VD'O play a while back was Che Guevara. The genuine revolutionary Jean Paul Sartre once called 'the most complete man of his age'..but I am happy I at least got Hoffman :)
Ann, I deleted my blog..going back to work and neeed to eliminate the temptation to blow off any more time there. I know where to find you tho! :)
FIREFLIGH said: If you saw the CI epis "Badge" and Fico di Capo" you heard Vincent haul out a close variation of what he did in Steal, tho in those epis he was going for Southie cop rather than third generation Worcester.
Which dialogue in Badge or Fico was it that connects to what he said in this movie, firefligh?
Like Ellie, I hesitated to see this movie, but after seeing it on Google video Sunday, I rented it from Netflix.
I urge you all to rent this movie and check out the commentary from Vincent and Janeane Garofalo. In addition to being hilarious, there is a lot of insight revealed. About the accent, Vincent kept kidding about sounding like Jerry Lewis. And there was a lot of refilming later, so his accent was sometimes stronger than others.
He and Janeane sounded like they had a great time, teasing each other, but there was a lot of serious comments about Anita and America and how they felt while portraying Abbie and Anita. I can imagine it was hard to do something like that, portraying someone so famous while their relatives looked on.
Made me love him even more!
Dani, I'm going to have to get that dvd version now...:)
Keiko, in those two episodes Vincent used an accent that we most commonly associate with an Irish cop from South Boston. :)
In the US, unlike in most counties, the status dialect is not that of the centers of economic or political power - it is the midwestern dialect, with a crisper consonant articulation and what some consider more sonorant vowels that functions as the 'standard'. The east coast accents were more heavily influenced by more diverse linguistic groups - comparable to 'hokkaido -ben'in Japan. Vincent used what sounds to me like a New England via Brooklyn accent in Steal.
In "Badge" he used a rendition of it when shaking down a drug dealer in the presence of the lady security guard who was the perp (and in another scene later)..in "Fico" he used it briefly at the end when arresting "Chops". I think he may have pulled that accent out in a third epi, too, but can't recall which it was..
The accent was very similar to the one he gave his Abbie Hoffman character, only on CI he was obviously having a good time with it, and was much more 'over the top'.
BTW, D'Onofrio's voice is imo one of his greatest assets as an actor, and he seems to have a more effective control of the nasal quality than most folks do. The work he did on the Goren voice is obvious when you compare the first few epis to later ones. Early Bobby was higher-pitched, more nasal, a little strident, and lacked the delightful pause effects. Later Bobby was wonderfully mellowed, paced, lowered, nuanced, and SEXY. :)
VD'O doesn't seem to have the accent gift some actors do..imo his best job was in TWWW. But his voice itself has always made me feel he's got an angel stuck somewhere in his larynx. :)
firefligh: you are the linguist expert and I bow to your knowledge. Is it really necessary for an actor to do the whole accent thing in order to portray the character, particularly if their forte is as a character actor?
I wouldn't know one American dialect from another and I do have to strain my ears and concentrate very hard to understand the diction.
Vdo's English accent in Case of Evil... well I always say, if you can't say something nice, say nothing. He looked great in costume and think he would make an awesome Mr Rochester, but the English accent no no no. Even when mimicking Nicole Wallace, "you know bloody well" neither of them should try an English accent again.
Also, Finn as a Scottish linguist student would know better, but I thought vdo's Scottish Gavin wasn't too bad.
The beauty of vdo's acting is his voice. I recommend sometimes just listening to him... no watching, no peeping at the screen, put up the volume and walk out the room and just listen.... magical.
Oh Vincent it would never pay much, but would you consider a BBC Radio 4 play, please?
Hey, fire - (just got in from a lovely ER observation day with a bonus trip to watch a cardiac cath procedure... no, there will be no sticking to standard floor nursing once i get the obligatory year of med/surg under my belt!) Well, me being me, I ended up seeking out snippets of Hoffman's voice after my anti-"Actor's Boston Accent" rant. Conveniently, they actually had a link through Wikipedia at the bottom of the page. In listening to it, Abbie sounded like he had more of a (please forgive me, folks) stereotypical Long Island jewish type of accent rather than Bostonian, with a bit of the '-aah' thing thrown in there.
I know exactly which times you're referencing from Fico di Capo and the other episode because my skin crawled PAINfully each time he went there, LOL!!!(the LOL is, only cuz I actually speak the honest truth here) One 'lil tip that I would like to share, here and now, with all actors -the professional and the on their way toward being professional- who may read this blog: SOFTEN THE SH-- UP!!!! It's not "-EEHYAH", it's "ah": Short, quick, and to the point, as in 'cah' (notice i use a 'c', not a 'k'). Even if you find a real Bostonian (i.e., not a Kennedy) who drags the syllable out, it's still soft as in 'caaaahhhh..'; it's not 'KEEEHYAH'!!! Okay??? Please!??!! ':-{ I'm begging you from the bottom of my born and bred heart. And, yes, I will tell you that is even okay to USE an 'r' every now and again. That's right, folks; it really is! Sometimes, the 'r' drops fluctuate from word to word, from the same person, in the saaaame conversation, even. Aaaand, sometimes, the drops aren't even there at all in those who speak like me (we are many; we ask you to assimilate). 'Aren't' for me is, honest to God, 'AREnt'. I am not lying to you. It's not 'ahnt' and its definitely nowhere close to being 'EEHYAHnt'.
So please; I ask you: Be kind to us Bostonians. Don't make our ears bleed no more, 'kay? We are a good people.
(end of PSA)
****.....the more you know, the more you grow....***
Love,
Nadine
I can’t answer that question Ann - only an actor could explain the relative importance of the accent, and entire dialect, to the role.
I can answer as a viewer, tho, that I enjoy the attempts very much, regardless of who claims they were or were not successful. For example I thought Zelwegger's British accent (there is just too darn much variety across the pond..it's refreshing to hear you suffer the same confusion re North American accents) in Bridget Jones was err, smashing, but she got mostly 'passable' reviews in England. I was also stunned how Streep got taken to task for not sounding suitably Danish in that dynamite role in Out of Africa, when Redford didn't even bother to sound British.
I'm too easily pleased, I guess, because I can get a kick out of a legendary joke like Tony Curtis' "yonduh lies da cassel of my fahduh", or poor Al Pacino's 'Brooklyn' colonist in the Revolutionary. And the more they pick on Sean Connery, the more I enjoy him,
I appreciate the efforts it takes to modify speech patterns, and think the only meaningful reviews are not those of my colleagues, and certainly not any film critic's, but the natives of the region . The Texan woman who maintained in the TWWW thread here that Vincent's accent in that film was realistic is my court of last resort, as no one, but no one can set him/herself up as an authority on more than a few dialects. (Unless of course, it's Bobby Goren's linguist friend 'Steve' from Princeton. I really have to laugh at some of the 'insights' CI has had Goren make….from one brief (awfully delivered) phrase of Chinese, Goren detects Thai glottals!!!)
But I will add that accent is only part of a dialect, and the less gifted in mimicry can make up for it if the morphology, syntax, and semantics ring true. And in that regard I often find myself disappointed with films - in NE, an 'it's wicked good', or a 'grinduh' reference do a lot to add to the authenticity. :)
I find accents to be very individual and personal...listen to southern accents sometime...I mean, real southern accents.
With actors attempting accents (say that ten times),trying to stay in character and remember lines, it's kinda like rubbing your stomach and patting your head at the same time. Some are more talented than others.
I feel the same way as some of you do about Southern accents. So many actors do a canned generic accent that makes us sound ignorant. But there are some dialects that sound like that. Dialects are so personal and individual, and are dependent on social and economic class, region and education. Where I live, people who live 20 miles apart have different dialects.
I checked out a link on "The Action," an Abbie Hoffman site with audio from the Chicago Seven Trial, and I feel he didn't do a bad job. Hoffman sounds a lot like that, pronouncing certain words with a heavy Boston accent, and at other times sounded somewhat homogenized, like he was trying to hide his accent.
Find a link with his voice. Then compare it with Vincent. You'll see what I mean. The only thing, Vincent's pitch is higher than Abbie's. But I'm glad he didn't try to sound like him. It would have taken away from all the sponteneity we've come to expect in his performances.
Ha! I didn't read all the post. I have to clarify; I looked for and listened to Abbie's accent immediately after publishing my rant post. Still, I stand by my original words about fake Boston accents regardless of the fact that Abbie's wasn't really Bostonian.
That said, I'm sorry, but I need to dispel a few further notions in there, about the Boston accent. The pronunciation "idear" isn't prevelant. On THAT it would be appropriate to use the 'idehyah' combination misused everywhere else by non-natives. Grinders isn't used here either outside of a few older sub shop menus. As I just typed, we call them 'subs'. As far as 'wicked', you've gotta go to Revere, a teenager here or there, or to people who never, ever get all that far from Southie. Otherwise, that word's been dying a pretty steady death since the '80s! Also, let's keep in mind that 'park the cah' is another, very authentic use of the 'r' drop, if someone's going to use it. It's not always all or nothing. Actually, a lot of times the 'r' is really in there; it's just not as hard a glottle stop as in other parts of the country.
na
..or palate lift, whichever - Point is the 'r's there but softer!
i'd so rather be done and not have to be walking onto MGH neuro at 6:30 tomorrow morning... Good night people! na
naydi, I didn't use 'idear' as typical of Boston, but as a prominent feature in much of New England..certainly in my own state of RI it is extremely common. I won't pull rank because I have a doctorate in linguistics, :) but if you don't believe added 'r' is common, listen to any region of Massachusetts talk radio and see how many folks call a certain Caribbean island country "Cubar".
Boston is a major metropolis with so many transients and transplants that it has lost much of its appeal as a source of New England authentic speech. In addition, there is tremendous diversity of vowel articulation within southern NE..some areas distinguish between the classic 'caught' and 'cot' pronunciation, and in some areas just a few miles away they are homophones.
There are also much studied and isolated NE accents, notably Martha's Vineyard's (truly unique), and as dani noted, a relatively small geographical area can yield quite a linguistic variety - Fall River and New Bedford accents, for example, being fairly distinctive (and the accent most of the actors in "The Perfect Storm" best approximated.) North and South shore are also easily distinguished.
Boston, as I mentioned, is no longer primo territory for authentic NE dialectical research, but I can ensure you 'grinduhs', 'cawfee cabinets', and 'clam chowduh that's wicked good' are still fairly popular her in my dear provincial Providence. :)
Props to you both for checking out Hoffman's speech..I am going to trust your judgements that Vincent did a good job wih it. :)
Funny you should mention "the perfect storm"...I was thinking about Mark Wahlberg while I wrote my post and how exaggerated his accent sounds sometimes...and he's from massachusetts!!
I must say, since I've been watching Vincent's movies, I've done a lot of thinking and research. That can't be a bad thing!!
I can't help but think this would make him happy.
Hey now- as you noted, there is no rank to pull over those who live it, hear it and speak it everyday for years on end! (I'm curious - are you at Brown? I knew a Research Psychologist there for a brief period.) You know, I thought, after the fact, that you may have been referring to RI for the grinder thing, but whereas my rant that got this whole thing a-goin' was on Boston; I automatically made that connection. I've still got to disagree on the 'r' add thing, though. I'm just not hearing it up here; even on the Worcester stations that I'm able to tune into driving to work. If anything, a word like Cuba leads itself nicely to our love of 'aaahs' and uuuuhs'. As for the 'cawfee cabinet' (or 'cahfee cabnit', which isn't all that different) and the 'clam chowduh' -Ooooh, yeah. Guilty as so charged!!!
Now that I know that it wasn't really us that he may have been attempting to do again, I may have to check the film out once I get some time. It's too bad I can't sneak in a watch movies during the fulltime gig - as you can see, I've no guilt about taking all the liberties that I can here! (they'll be getting a new nurse in the midst of a shortage come Jan or Feb, at the latest, so they're not all that apt to complain about a periodically wandering mind!) I'm more than a bit curious about another posters comments on the commentary between Vincent and Garafalo. Having been a cheerleader of hers before she bowed to going blonde a losing half her body weight, I'd LOVE to hear that!
na
dani - I just read your last post. I have to admit that I've not seen all of The Perfect Storm because, well, I just got sick of hearing all the hype around it. (the media up here are like starving dogs when it comes to overpromoting any and all things that Boston can claim ownership of) But the parts that I did see, he was overdoing it a bit. What's amazing is that yeah, not only is from here as you mention, but, on top of it, he's from Dorchester of all places, which is an area not far from South Boston where people tend to have a heavy Boston accent! I'm not sure why he didn't just call upon his own natural speaking tone, unless he'd trained hard to lose it? The only people that I've seen overdo the Boston accent but still manage to keep it pretty authentic are Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in Good Will Hunting (Matt sounding a lot better than Ben). Again, haven't seen the movie all the way through, but, I took in about 20mins to a 1/2 hour purely for the sake of listening to them speak with their having been from here. Again, Ben was a bit over the top in places, but Matt sounded pretty natural using the far-spectrum of the Boston accent.
Going back to the possible accent minimizing thing, though, I was struck by your comments regarding the use of southern accents in the entertainment industry because it sparked recal of something I saw recently. It was a snippet of a sober interview with Stephen Colbert that, I think, was for 20/20. Being the type of person who would bust her a--, currently killing all other aspects of her life for the opportunity to serve as a caregiver; I'm always interested in noting how one person/group's words and actions effect and/or effected other beings in order to pay close attention to how what I do and say could do the same. Well, Stephen Cobert is, apparently, from Kentucky(? I believe it's Kentucky) and the interviewer made an open-ended comment that no one would ever know because of his lack of any accent whatsoever. Stephen said that he worked hard to get rid of his accent because, as a child, every comedy show that he saw on TV portrayed southern-sounding characters as stupid. He said that a southern accent was used as shorthand for total ignorance by popular entertainers and shows. He admitted purposefully working to remove his accent completely, using newscaster as models, because he didn't want to grow up with, as was burned into his child's mind, people thinking he was stupid. Now, regardless of his ability to parlay that voacl work into a successful career as an adult, it's just terrible that any child would have felt the need to have to undertake that type of exercise to avoid expected ridicule. Now, I know that Stephen's not of the same generation as my father, but I know that he, born and raised in Kentucky, had hardly any accent by the time my mother met him here in Boston. Judging by how he talked about living and going back to Kentucky, I can only assume that he struggled with the same externally placed self-esteem burdens.
na
naydi, it's always interesting to see how an audience reacts to any actor doing 'us' - I tend to be amused regardless of the outcome, but many viewers experience the 'that's not ME!!: feeling.
One film VD'O has done that I have not seen is "Desire" - just saw mention he does a Scottish accent in it? Is this correct? I badly want to see that film, but it's not available anywhere I can find, and my copywrite instincts kick in every time it's offered to me "underground" . Abbie Hoffman, I suppose would have no problem 'stealing' a bootleg. :)
No one wants to discuss the hair..oh well. But did anyone else love the pig scene?
I'm at a private Catholic college full time and moonlight at another college, a gig I really love - applied linguistics - teaching teachers how to teach North American pronunciation to non-native speakers in a laboratory (practicum) environment. Of course, my real career objective is to someday instruct Mr. D. where to place his chief articulator on those low back "Boston" vowels. :)
FINALLY! I got some time to sit down and watch this masterpiece of a film undisturbed in the quiet of my home. Wow!!! There's nothing that I can put into words that will effectively and sufficiently convey how moving this film was to me. My mother was not a hippie/yippie, per se, but she was of that mindset and was a teenager and young adult when all of this counter culture movement was taking place. So I have some idea of what went on back in that day, since I am a child of the late 70's-80's myself. Vincent's performance, of course, was nothing short of awesome. I love the hair. I am still in shock that I saw his arse. OK, but seriously, he really conveyed Abbie's struggles so vividly that you could almost feel them yourself. Again, all I can say is, "WOW!"
Wow, firefligh, I'd love that second gig, too; being able to go beyond basic ESL. Now, I hate the idea of people feeling a need to almost totally assimilate to American culture (still bothers me that Ping and Chuilan Chen felt obligated to name their children Raymond, Charles and a third name that was all-American girl), but, at least, being able to apply a clearer annunciation on their English words will ensure them a little less bull than they could otherwise face. I still remember how rude people were -sticking with Ping- in claiming that they couldn't understand her solely because she spoke with a Mandarin accent. Her english was clear as bell to all of us who worked with her from Day 1, back when I was 18. I mean, for God's sake, she came into the bank branch that I worked at as our Head Teller, so she wasn't just scraping her way by, being held back from professional employment by lack of language skills or something. It as just pure ignorance just because she had an accent. Since having gotten my first lesson in seeing this type of treatment of her, I've seen the same thing repeated over and over again. It's a great service to be able to help people get around the ignorance because, unfortunately, I don't going away on a large enough scale anytime soon.
and, btw, i noticed the hair.. there's no escaping it... it was another, unspoken factor that was giving me pause! ;-D
The reviews here though, have caused me to think that I could just suck it up. Hell, if my retinas managed to recover from the 'Velocity of Gary' extensions, I think they could survive bad hair in what's being reported as a good movie!
Nyadi, i know what you mean about the oriental accents. i've noticed that too, that certain people's hearing seems to become handicapped when dealing with heavy accents. I've never had any problem in that area...it's the young ones around here that think talking with their teeth clenched is somehow cool that I have a hard time understanding.
I think someone mentioned earlier that people moving into an area from different regions affects dialects and accents over the years. I've found that to be true in my hometown. And remember, this movie mainly addressed events during the 60's...I wonder is it possible Boston accents have changed a little since then?
As far as the wig goes...I didn't have a problem with the shaggy one. I like Vincent with hair. But the brillo-pad Afro of the older Hoffman was too much. That was another thing they talked about in the commentaries. At one point, Vincent pointed out where he was holding his wig on when they were getting blasted with water hoses.
The wig wasn't really a distraction for me...not unless it covered his face!!
Correct me if Im wrong but in reference to the movie" Desire"- you might also locate it under the title "Salt on our Skin". In the movie both Mr D and his significant other at the time Scacchi have Scotish Accents. Reference " Steal This Movie" It played late night cable so I taped it. I just enjoy watching the different characters no matter what film . I was around for the "FLower Children- Viet Nam thing so I can relate.
Post a Comment
<< Home