I Have Had It with Mumbling Actors

Here's some for ya ..... not a movie, but still some quality mumbling ....

 

I would say he's a scene-stealer, and it's fair to say there were many years when he cared very little about stepping on the other actors to get the lion's share of the dialogue and the important shots. I think he's painfully aware of all the complaints from Jimmy Doohan, George Takei, and the other Star Trek actors and that Shatner has since gone out of his way to be much more generous and less "piggy" on sets. They told me at Boston Legal that Shatner was a total pro and easy to work with... but that was a show with a big cast, one where he was not necessarily the biggest star.

 

I'm a big Shatner fan. With all due respect to the rest of the cast of Trek, He was the star. His fanatical attention to that role still has people doing Kirk imitations 48 years later.

 

Kill me now....

 

Takei and Roddenberry and many others would agree. It's very possible that if anybody else had played the Captain (like Jeffrey Hunter, originally cast in the pilot), the show might never have become the classic it is now. And maybe Shatner's smug, arrogant attitude helped give his character some style and panache. Given that he was in about 90% of every scene in the old show, Shatner was very aware that all the weight of the show was on his shoulders, and it would succeed or fail largely on how well he played the role.

 

Depends on the character.

 

Absolutely all correct. Like Stallone, Shatner pretty much knew his entire future relied on it. Up until then he was pretty much
going nowhere. And interestingly, like Stallone did not have success until after age 30. On top of that, they both have the wig in common.

 

How about desperate, neurotic, fumbling stammering?

Here's 45 minutes of Woody! Should drive you to kill this Thanksgiving Holiday!



Jeff

 

LOL. Woody gets a pass!!

 

Not when they're implying "here's how I plan to speak." If you walk around going TESTING TESTING TESTING, then it's time to do your line and you say, oh, but I love you my dear... you're so beautiful, that's just an unprofessional jerk who doesn't know how filmmaking works.

 

That's true. When I work I give a level based on what I plan to do on set.

 

Wow; I thought I couldn't understand mumbling because I am not a native speaker.

 

My son.

 

My three nephews. But one of them went to a phoniatrician and speaks much better now. Mumbling is epidemic down here, esp among teens, to the point a lot of people thinks I'm a foreigner !

 

Lol. Ok, there is one.

 

Glad other people notice and im not alone on this. For a while I thought I was just getting old (at 44) and my hearing was going.

 

No, it is real. My wife is 9 years younger than me and can't make out a damn word.

 

Jim Caviezel on Person of Interest is the worst. I imagine he is practicing for some sort of ventriloquism act since he never moves his lips. I turn on the CC on POI and Elementary. It's not that Jonny Lee Miller mumbles, but his accent is so thick, he talks so fast and the lines they give him are so eloquent, I don't want to miss what he's said.

For me, the speed of the dialog on some shows and movies is even worse than the mumbling. The actors in The Social Network talkedsodangfastthatIimaginedtheywerepretendingtobehummingbirdsandtriedtotalkasfastasahummingbirdwouldifahummingbirdcouldtalk. The medical shows are like this too - it's a major reason why I gave up ER during season 11. Well, that, and they fired Alex Kingston - the final nail in the coffin for ER.

 

It has been interesting to me that since I've been occasionally watching Elementary reruns on WGN, I've had little or no trouble understanding Jonny Lee Miller. When I watch first run episodes of the show on CBS, I have all kinds of trouble understanding what he says. Since I watched the show over the same Directv receiver, I'm guessing part of the problem may be with the audio from my local CBS station. However, I still think Jonny Lee Miller needs to speak with more authority.

 

I was just watching The Hudsucker Proxy and enjoying trying to follow the snappy patter

 

Caviezel is definitely a low talker, and he's pulled the same stunt in past roles as well. I think he's a very good actor, but I think he pulls the low-talking thing too often. Every so often, he suddenly talks in a normal tone of voice and his acting is every bit as good.

That's the nature of an Aaron Sorkin script: extremely dense dialogue, lots of literary references, very much at an Ivy League college level. West Wing, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and Steve Jobs are all the same way. My problem with his approach is that everybody tends to talk kind of the same way, and they're all a little too smart, a little too fast, and a little too well-educated and show-offy. But it is very sharp, funny, interesting conversation.

 

Stallone wears a wig?

 

Bald as an eagle. Like Afleck and Travolta. And Springsteen.

 

Agree totally on your take.

 

I can tell you that the sound crew on Person of Interest struggles with Caviezel's low dialogue. You'll notice quite a bit of his conversations are totally looped, at least when they're on the street. Indoors, they make an effort to get Jim's dialogue, whispered or not. Michael Emerson, on the other hand, is a stage-trained actor who understands the need to project and the concept of a stage whisper -- you can understand him from across the room.