Costner's accent is horrible
Its like a mix between Forrest Gump and Chief Wiggum from The Simpsons.
shareyeah, the accent was pretty lousy
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MovieChat Forums > Thirteen Days (2001) Discussion > Costner's accent is horrible
yep. sometimes he doesnt even do it
Is there woman on the face of the Earth nastier than Rosie O'Donnell? I don't think so.
You have to realize though how hard it is to tackle down a Boston accent. It is a hard accent to do, but Kennedy's and Bobby's accents in the film were fine.
shareI realize that a Boston accent is probably one of the few most difficult to learn, but Kevin Costner did a horrible job. I wouldn't be surprised if Jessica Drake (dialect coach) never got another job.
I mean, come on, Leonardo DiCaprio did a good job with it in The Departed.
As a Bostonian, I agree with that statement about Leo. Actually, the whole cast (not hard for Damon or Wahlberg, considering they are from Cambridge and South Boston) did a fine, fine job in The Departed.
I also think the cast of Mystic River did a good job, notably Tim Robbins.
Yeah Costner couldn't pull it off, but, as others have mentioned, it's a tough accent to learn.
This would have been an excellent movie, where it not for Costner's hack-job on a Bahston accent. I swear if you close your eyes, you can hear Elmer Fudd saying: "Scwewy WWabbit!!!". He also over-acted, just getting in the way of the other characters. KC should just stay in Aspen and count his money instead of ruining otherwise good movies.
What a dork.
his accent kinda sounds more like JFK then the guy playin JFK
shareI thought he sounded like Mayor Quimby. After his fine voice work in Robin Hood and JFK, I don't know why any director would ever have Costner do an accent.
shareI always thought that Costner really didn't have to use an accent at all because O'Donnell wasn't "famous" in the way the Kennedy's were. Practically everyone has seen or heard films of both JFK & RFK speaking, so an accent was essential for Greenwood & Culp. But practically no one has ever seen or heard a Kenny O'Donnell speech (if there were any?), so using the accent really was pointless and its abscence would probably have gone uncriticized, except for die hards from Boston. At best, Costners accent attempt is frustratingly distracting and since it was utterly unnecessary, its all the more annoying. Still love the movie though.
shareAfter reading the whole thread, I have come to the conclussion that no one really knows what the heck they were talking about, or ridiculizing.
Three different posters, ALL from the same area, stated that Kevin pronounced a word, "card," by one as "caaaaaaaaaaaaaad," by another as "Cawd," and by the third as "cahhhhhhhhhhhhd."
If all these guys were from the same area, with the same accent, that word's pronunciation should have been one and not three different ones!
It doesn't matter how he pronounced the words if they were authentic or not, he sounded like someone "trying to do" an accent. It sucked.
shareIt didn't even sound like a Boston accent. Bruce Greenwood and the guy who played Bobby Kennedy had much more convincing accents, because it wasn't an enormous distraction and didn't stand out, but when you really listened to them to talk, you could hear them pronounce it like a Bostonian does. Kevin Costner sounded like a moron. They did a good job acting, but Costner just never fixed that annoying accent.
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...& the funny part is that they have interviews with the real Kenny O'Donnell on the DVD, & as far as I remember (it's been some time since I looked at the DVD extras, but I re-watched the movie last night), he didn't have much of a Boston accent at all.
shareyeah, i thought the accent was pretty distracting- he could have dialed it down a bit. it seemed unnecessarily "accurate".
but i thought the kennedy accent was equally distracting, in that he didn't have one (that i could tell). in fact, his voice was weird- he seemed to speak in these low grumbles. it was one of the least kennedy-like performances i've ever seen- not once did i think of kennedy when i saw him.
pretty good movie, though.
It really sounded like Costner was shooting for a Mayor Quimby from the Simpsons sort of thing.
I think the film survives Costner's atrocity of a performance, but just barely. It saddens me that a grade Z hack like him gets to be such a major star while professionals like Bruce Greenwood do not.
Compared to the 2 actors playing JFK and RFK, the accent's pretty bad. For the other 2 it was an element of the character. For Costner it's front and center and overpowering.
Dear Mr. Newman, Short people DO have a reason to live.
Costner's ALWAYS had trouble doing accents: see "JFK" or "Robin Hood" for examples. He should either quit trying or try a lot harder.
shareLet's face it, accents aren't Costner's strong points. Even if O'Donnell had the Bostonian/New England accent in real-life, he could have canned it for this movie. In the midst of everything with this crisis and how close we came and how they were struggling for some way out, is anyone going to care much if O'Donnell doesn't have his accent. I mean, you don't always find a perfect match when portraying a real-life character. Despite his superb portrayal as T.E. Lawrence, and it is a great model for real-life portrayals, Peter O'Toole was not a perfect match for T.E. Lawrence. He was taller than Lawrence, with more blond in his hair, and a fairer complection.
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I don't care about the accents. You listen to the audio commentary of the real Kenny's voice, and it doesn't sound New England at all, so I don't know why he felt he had to do the accent in the first place.
Thing is, I think this movie is one of the most underrated of the last decade or so. It tells a great story very compellingly, and the acting and writing, if not the elocution, are wonderful.
By the way, the only attempt at a Boston accent that takes me out of the movie was when Bruce Greenwood, after meeting with Gromyko, calls him "lying bahstahd." That accent was horrible.
YES thats exactally what it was. forrest gump and chief wiggum. i watched this (some of it) in history class. hearing him talk was pissing me off.. so i went to sleep