MovieChat Forums > Diggity: A Home at Last (2002) Discussion > Note to all Directors re: southern accen...

Note to all Directors re: southern accents


If the role has to be a southerner, get a g..d.. southerner to play the part. Are you deaf while you are directing the movie? (As a Maine boy, I have cringed at the attempts to copy the Maine accent (which no one, NO ONE, has ever done), but I also cringe when I hear actors try to do a southern accent. They think by drawling the whole sentence that it makes it sound southern. No, you sound stupid.

There! Having got that out of my system, if you can get past that stupid accent, the film is good.

"We're going to need a bigger boat..."

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I have to agree with you. As a southerner(TN) born and raised I noticed the fake accents. This has become so common in movies/shows lately. I don't get why they can't just cast people in the roles that actually fit them. That aside it didn't take away my enjoyment of the movie. For a family movie it was very good, not cheesy at all.






"I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way"

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Someone who speaks of "the Maine accent" hasn't traveled much in Maine. I lived in East Vassalboro and Waterville until I was 14, and only once met someone who spoke with the Down East accent -- at Pemaquid Beach, I think it was; the dialect I grew up speaking was heavily influenced by Canada. You know about Canada, eh?

Granted, Andrew McCarthy's accent in this movie sounds as much Down East as it does Georgia.

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Well, apparently I have travelled a whole lot more in Maine than you have. I grew up in Lisbon Falls, went to Bates College in Lewiston, and taught school in Dixfield. I have lived in several towns in Maine, including Lewiston, Brunswick, Bowdoin, West Bowdoin, Dixfield, Rumford, Orono, Farmington, Jay, and have spent summers in Brunswick, Poland Spring, Winthrop, Millenockett, Wiscassett, and Boothbay. I have climbed Mt Kathadin, hiked the Maine part of the Appalachian trail, canoed the Androscoggin, the Penobscot, and the Kennebec and sailed my sailboat on several of the larger lakes in Maine, camping out all along the way. I have fought forest fires, brush fires and grass fires all over the state and have spent days in the woods of northern Maine searching for lost hunters.

For years, I owned a inboard and kept it moored and stored at Boothbay Harbor. With that boat I travelled all the coastline of Maine from Boothbay to Bar Harbor. I am or have been close friends with forest rangers and maine guides. I own a hundred acre tree farm in central Maine which is logged off by local loggers. I have worked as a logger, a teacher, a woolen mill worker and a paper mill worker, a summer camp counselor, a caddy master, a waiter, and a land surveyor, all in Maine. I have spent my youth in various parts of Maine haying, picking blueberries and beans, and dug potatoes in Aroostook county. I have motorcycled most of the main roads in Maine from Portsmouth, NH to Fort Kent. I have hunted deer, coon, ducks and other game all through the state and fished most of the streams in central Maine.

I was a personal friend of John Gould and went to school a couple years ahead of Stephen King. The stones for Kirstie Alley's stone fireplace in her Maine summer home came from my farm in West Bowdoin and I know the lowlife local punks that stole it.

Now, I don't know what you think you know about Maine accents, but you don't know much. All you need to do is spend some time with any of the old farmers, loggers, or fishermen of the state and you will hear the accent I am talking about. And its not a "down east" accent. Its a Maine accent and its real.

Proof of your ignorance is the fact that you think Andrew's accent sounds as much down east as it does southern. The Maine accent sounds nothing like Andrews drawl. More proof of your ignorance comes from your comment that the dialect in East Vassleboro and/or Waterville was influenced by Canada. Unless those towns are heavily French Canadian, there is no Canadian influence in the Maine accent (except maybe way up north near the border). There is a french canadian dialect spoken by french canadians living and working in Maine, and then there is the Maine accent. Two totally different accents.

Next time post something you know a little more about before you go accusing others of not knowing what they are talking about.

"We're going to need a bigger boat..."

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