Trek guest actors in maybe surprising roles

[Nerys Myk]

Several weeks ago it was the first time I heard someone speaking with a Scottish accent. I didn't understand him first and thought: where is the guy comming from? He isn't from Scotland, isn't he? Yes, he was. I heard a Scottish accent before - spoken by actors. It is very different from native speakers.

When my girlfriend's father comes over, I basically just nod and hope for the best. I know some people criticised Pegg's accent for being too different from Doohan's but if Scotty is from Aberdeen (which I believe is the case) then the eastern accent is far more accurate.

My understanding is that there are two main categories of Scottish accent, highland and lowland.

No, the Edinburgh accent is entirely different from the strong Weegie accent (Glasgow based) both of which are lowlands.

I'm currently reading a TOS novel where it reads: .... to Scotty it was everyone else who had an accent, not him..... What's the difference between `accent´ and `brogue´, by the way?

Brogue refers to particular accents. Irish and sometimes Scottish.

 

[Kilana2]

What's the difference between `accent´ and `brogue´, by the way?

A brogue is specifically an Irish or sometimes Scottish accent (Gaelic in general). It's from the name of the traditional type of shoe worn in those countries.

Thanks. My dictionary offers me the shoe, the Irish accent and "Boston Brogue", but not the Scottish accent. I knew the word "brogue" only in relation to Scotty.

 

[J.T.B.]

"Burr" seems to be preferred for Scottish, "brogue" for Irish.

 

[Christopher]

And I've seen both English and American writers refer to each other's accent as a "drawl." But then, a lot of English people seem to think that all American accents are Southern or cowboy accents (which is what Americans would generally use "drawl" for), to judge from some of the fake US accents I've heard in British TV.

 

[Kilana2]

And I've seen both English and American writers refer to each other's accent as a "drawl." But then, a lot of English people seem to think that all American accents are Southern or cowboy accents (which is what Americans would generally use "drawl" for), to judge from some of the fake US accents I've heard in British TV.

There is no fitting German word for "burr". My dictionary offers me `to burr´as to speak slurred.

Most Germans mix their national dialects with their English (Saxon or in my case Frankonian). It sounds odd. I hate to speak English in front of a camera .

My favorite (German) band is often criticized for their fake American accent in their songs. So what, it's part of their show. They have a band member I mistook for an American. He is from Manchester/England. Ooops. Wearing Stetsons doens't make you American.

 

[trynda1701]

And I've seen both English and American writers refer to each other's accent as a "drawl." But then, a lot of English people seem to think that all American accents are Southern or cowboy accents (which is what Americans would generally use "drawl" for), to judge from some of the fake US accents I've heard in British TV.

That's a fact. And being Scottish, it always make make laugh (or is it cringe?) when you watch either "Murder, She Wrote" or the Voyager holodeck program, in how they both portray Scottish or Irish accents!

Music to the ears it's not!

Mark

 

[Greg Cox]

And I've seen both English and American writers refer to each other's accent as a "drawl." But then, a lot of English people seem to think that all American accents are Southern or cowboy accents (which is what Americans would generally use "drawl" for), to judge from some of the fake US accents I've heard in British TV.

You want a laugh. Check out Quincey Morris's dialogue in the novel Dracula, which is Bram Stoker's idea of how an American cowboy talks:

"Why bust my britches, Miss Lucy, if you ain't purtier than a Texas sunset!"

(Okay, I may be exaggerating slightly, but only slightly.)

There's a reason most movie adaptions leave him out of the proceedings . . ..

 

[FormerLurker]

Francis Ford Coppola used him, and made his dialog more realistically American. He was played by Billy Campbell, our own Outrageous Okona even.

 

[mb22]

You want a laugh. Check out Quincey Morris's dialogue in the novel Dracula, which is Bram Stoker's idea of how an American cowboy talks:

"Why bust my britches, Miss Lucy, if you ain't purtier than a Texas sunset!"

(Okay, I may be exaggerating slightly, but only slightly.)

There's a reason most movie adaptions leave him out of the proceedings . . ..

Francis Ford Coppola used him, and made his dialog more realistically American. He was played by Billy Campbell, our own Outrageous Okona even.

He was also in the 1970 Count Dracula with Christopher Lee (played by Jack Taylor) and the 1977 BBC version with Louis Jordan (as "Quincey Holmwood" played by Richard Barnes) amnong others.

 

[mb22]

And we find it amusing and endearing that Chekov talks the way he does and claims that everything is a Russian invention. But I think it would be a different matter if Sulu spoke with a thick accent and was constantly claiming that everything was a Japanese invention.

Actually, the claims of Russian (and Soviets) inventing everything was a well known joke (based on actual claims).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/88802.stm

 

[FormerLurker]

You want a laugh. Check out Quincey Morris's dialogue in the novel Dracula, which is Bram Stoker's idea of how an American cowboy talks:

"Why bust my britches, Miss Lucy, if you ain't purtier than a Texas sunset!"

(Okay, I may be exaggerating slightly, but only slightly.)

There's a reason most movie adaptions leave him out of the proceedings . . ..

Francis Ford Coppola used him, and made his dialog more realistically American. He was played by Billy Campbell, our own Outrageous Okona even.

He was also in the 1970 Count Dracula with Christopher Lee (played by Jack Taylor) and the 1977 BBC version with Louis Jordan (as "Quincey Holmwood" played by Richard Barnes) amnong others.

Various different stage and film productions have given us combinations of Doctor John Seward, Quincey Morris and Arthur Holmwood, the three suitors of Mina's friend Lucy Westenra, usually all-in-one as either John or Arthur Holmwood. I even remember a comic book adaptation for Classics Illustrated that did this. They most often use the Holmwood surname as he was the one that had won her hand before Dracula turned her into a vampire.

 

[MGagen]

Francis Ford Coppola used him, and made his dialog more realistically American. /QUOTE]

If only Coppola had used Stoker's Dracula character in Bram Stoker's Dracula, rather than the lovelorn lost soul pining for his girl that he gave us. Given the title of the movie, I'd say we have standing to make a charge of false advertising under the U.S. Code...

 

[Forbin]

If I had a nickle for every movie that promised it was faithful to the source material and turned out to be some director's self-indulgent "vision"...

 

[Christopher]

Well, of course, there's no way the novel Dracula could be translated verbatim to the screen, because its structure is far too specific to the print medium. It's an epistolary novel presented as a compilation of articles and interview transcripts, an investigative document constructed by Mina Harker as a tool to help Jonathan and Van Helsing solve the mystery of Count Dracula. So the process of the manuscript's own creation is itself a key plot point within it, and at times it's practically an advertisement for that amazing new invention, the typewriter. It's basically the print equivalent of a modern found-footage movie like Chronicle. Its story is so intimately entwined with its medium and structure that you can't translate it to another medium without losing key elements or rendering them meaningless distractions. So any screen or stage adaptation has to be only an approximate telling.

 

[Greg Cox]

What's really funny is that there was a novelization of Bram Stoker's Dracula (by Fred Saberhagen), as opposed to, you know, Dracula by Bram Stoker.

This, of course, led to Saberhagen being billed on later book covers as the "New York Times Bestselling Author of Bram Stoker's Dracula."

Really.

Oh, just to bring us back OT, here's a trivia question: Which TOS guest-star also played Dracula?

No, William Marshall as "Blacula" doesn't count.

 

[johnnybear]

Charles Macaulay was Dracula in Blacula I believe! Landru and Jaris!
JB

 

[Greg Cox]

Charles Macaulay was Dracula in Blacula I believe! Landru and Jaris!
JB

And we have a winner!

 

[FormerLurker]

Well, of course, there's no way the novel Dracula could be translated verbatim to the screen, because its structure is far too specific to the print medium. It's an epistolary novel presented as a compilation of articles and interview transcripts, an investigative document constructed by Mina Harker as a tool to help Jonathan and Van Helsing solve the mystery of Count Dracula. So the process of the manuscript's own creation is itself a key plot point within it, and at times it's practically an advertisement for that amazing new invention, the typewriter. It's basically the print equivalent of a modern found-footage movie like Chronicle. Its story is so intimately entwined with its medium and structure that you can't translate it to another medium without losing key elements or rendering them meaningless distractions. So any screen or stage adaptation has to be only an approximate telling.

While there are 'articles and interview transcripts' in the book, it is actually mostly composed of journal and diary entries, and letters between the principals. One of the first, if not the first, is the one Dracula sends Jonathan Harker, that is the opening voiceover in Coppola's film. At the time this motif of storytelling was popular, and Stoker apparently thought it best to express his story this way.

 

[Christopher]

^Yes, of course epistolary novels were common at the time. Frankenstein is essentially in the form of a character narrating a story of how another character narrated a story of how a third character narrated a story. Edgar Rice Burroughs always passed off his novels as true accounts related to him by the parties involved. And of course Dr. Watson was the purported author of Sherlock Holmes's adventures. And so forth. But Dracula took it to another level by, as I said, making the construction of the narrative itself a key plot point of the narrative, rather than simply a way of documenting it after the fact.

And yes, you can do a voiceover reading of a text passage in a film, but if you tried to do an entire film that way, to do a literal, line-for-line transcription of the novel, it'd be a boring and poorly structured movie, because prose and film are different media with different strengths and requirements. So the only thing that's really "Bram Stoker's Dracula" is the book itself. Any film, no matter what you call it, is going to be someone else's alternative way of telling the story. And that's exactly what it should be.

 

[Greg Cox]

^Yes, of course epistolary novels were common at the time. Frankenstein is essentially in the form of a character narrating a story of how another character narrated a story of how a third character narrated a story. Edgar Rice Burroughs always passed off his novels as true accounts related to him by the parties involved. And of course Dr. Watson was the purported author of Sherlock Holmes's adventures. And so forth. But Dracula took it to another level by, as I said, making the construction of the narrative itself a key plot point of the narrative, rather than simply a way of documenting it after the fact.

Stoker is generally believed to have been inspired by Wilkie Collins, author of The Moonstone and The Woman in White, who employed the same epistolary structure in his highly popular mystery-suspense novels.