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Post by * See UserName In Post * on Jan 30, 2008 22:39:38 GMT -5
Posted by
sacbab
(7/5/06 9:14 am)
a convo vandonovan and i were having in the thread on sean maher (for those of you who are saying "who?", rent the firefly box), i wanted to bring this into it's own post, since i read a few people thinking the actor who plays brian needs to be british and i was wondering what all else think?
fwiw, i can't see any reason why the actor NEEDS to be british! yes, the actor needs to nail a british accent, style, etc... but there are great actors who can do that who aren't british, right?!?
anyone else agree with me?
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Post by christine~ on Jan 30, 2008 22:41:33 GMT -5
Ask any Englishman ~ he'll tell you he can always tell the difference, and will scorn any faked accents, especially by those silly Americans. The English use regional accents as the main factor in separating and judging people. It's not right or fair, but it's a basic unchangeable fact. I feel this movie will be very closely scrutinized by the British, and if the actor isn't originally from England, they may very well jump on that as the starting point to pick it apart. The movie is planned to debut in Liverpool. 'Nuff said. By the way, Brian's accent was unusual ... originally speaking with a Liverpudlian accent, he took his teenhood elocution lessons extremely seriously, and ended up with quite a hybrid upper-crusty manner of speech. Listening to various actors' voices, and to as many samples of Brian's voice as I could find, I'd say the closest I've ever heard from an actor was Jude Law when he was reading Brian's diaries on The Brian Epstein Story documentary for BBC's Arena. And still, he didn't get it right. So could you imagine a non-Brit faking it? Feh. The closest a non-actor ever came to sounding like Brian was his "Personal Assistant" (myself, I consider Alistair Taylor more as his PA, but...) Peter Brown. Folks used to ring up Brian's house and when Brown answered they often mistook him for Brian. But then, Brown seemed to aspire to be a clone of Brian, and frequently spent long periods of time by his side. Brown is most definitely not an actor, however. He's now an American citizen, and co-founder of the PR firm Brown Lloyd James. More on Peter Brown |
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Post by Emily Shore on Jun 5, 2008 16:41:16 GMT -5
Count me as another one who thinks that a British actor is essential. I can't hear that much of the Liverpudlian in his speech, but that sort of really old-fashioned RP is hard enough to do even if you are British. The only person who sounds remotely like Brian Epstein these days is the Queen herself. Even the younger members of the royal family don't sound that posh anymore. It's a very, very hard accent to do without descending into complete parody, which is not what we want.
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