"Some Scottish guy"

[steepholm]

I've only lived in Bristol for 25 years, but I must say I get a bit annoyed on the city's behalf when George Lucas describes David Prowse's accent as "hilarious" (to say nothing of "Scottish"). Why shouldn't Darth have a Bristol accent, as much as any other?

What's even more annoying is that even when he was Green Cross Man Prowse was still overdubbed by an actor with something closer to Received Pronunciation.

Just to note - if ever I get to cast Alexander the Great he will have an Inverness accent, as is proper. Alfred the Great will be pure Somerset.

Comments

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

Alfred the Great will be pure Somerset

I need to see this epos performed.

[sovay]

Just to note - if ever I get to cast Alexander the Great he will have an Inverness accent, as is proper.

+1.

[sue-bursztynski.livejournal.com]

As I recall, the last time there was a film about Alexander, all the Macedonians had Irish accents. The argument was that Macedon was to Greece what Ireland was to England...?

When you think about the fact that Sean Connery has played everything from a Berber to a Lithuanian captain with a Scottish accent, it's strange that Dave Prowse couldn't get away with that Bristol accent, isn't it?

Dave Prowse has had a weird experience over the years - just his body was used for Darth Vader, not even his face when Vader asked to have his mask removed. I recall Mr Prowse saying at one con I attended that his line in Empire Strikes Back was "Luke, we can rule the universe" or some such, and he had no idea that it would be dubbed as "Luke, I am your father." He didn't seem too ruffled about it, though. And he did get to do some Shakespeare with his own voice( Charles the Wrestler in As You Like It) and the security guard in Hitchhiker's Guide To a the Galaxy.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

The argument was that Macedon was to Greece what Ireland was to England...?

I don't see how that analogy works at all! No, Macedon is clearly Scotland. Ireland would be, if anything, Sicily.

[sue-bursztynski.livejournal.com]

Fair enough, but that was their explanation for doing it that way.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

As for the Bristol accent, it's pure snobbery - initially by the British themselves, who routinely mock that accent much as they do the Brum, but indirectly by the Americans, for whom it is not among the few British accents they recognize (hence I assume Lucas's managing to confuse Scotland and southwest England). That's all the more reason to cast him, though, in my opinion. Without role models, how will real Bristolians ever grow up to believe that one day they too could command a Death Star?

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Just to note - if ever I get to cast Alexander the Great he will have an Inverness accent, as is proper. Alfred the Great will be pure Somerset.

This makes me so happy.

Nine

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Why would Alexander the Great have an Inverness accent? I suspect I am missing something.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

More likely you're not missing enough, and crediting me with more meaning than is to be found. I chose Inverness purely as a metonym for highland Scotland and a metaphor for the kind of wild, mountainous fastness Macedonia was in the minds the Greeks - a place inhabited by people who spoke a weird-ass version of their own language and had strange barbarous customs, and from which raids and invasions might be regularly expected; a place (in short) not unlike that of Scotland in the English imagination.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see; thanks.