Boston Accents

I got a haircut yesterday. Since I went on a weekday morning, it meant that I got the same crazy lady who's been cutting my hair for years -- the one who told me last year that I could have my lymphoma cured through blood transfusions. Still waiting on that one to come true....

But before it was my turn in the chair, I read an Entertainment Weekly from a couple of weeks ago. One of the letters to the editor was from a reader from Sharon, Mass. who praised an EW article from a couple of weeks before that discussed Boston accents in movies. I looked online to find the article on the EW web site, but it's not there. Bummer. (Or bummah.)

The article reminded me that, about a year ago, I started a Lympho Bob post on good and bad Boston accents in movies. I think I had just seen The Departed or Mystic River, and was horrified by someone's attempt at a Boston accent. I never did get around to finishing the blog post, because I couldn't find a YouTube clip of Rob Morrow's horrendous Boston accent in the movie Quiz Show. Apparently, he thought that if you talked through your nose like JFK with a head cold, you had that accent down. Horrible. Worst Boston accent ever on film, in my humble opinionation.

As I was googling the EW article, I came across a couple of other opinion pieces on the subject of Boston accents by actors. I liked this one from New York magazine from last January, criticizing Julianne Moore's bad Boston accent in the TV show 30 Rock. I watch the show only occasionally, so I don't know much about her character, but I don't think she does a great job with the accent. You can see a clip at the bottom of the New York piece, or check out this one, which has the added bonus of making fun of Maryland accents.

Anyway, As much as I like Julianne Moore, the writer of the New York article adds her to the Bad Boston Accent Hall of Fame, and is justified in doing so. The piece also mentions some others that I would agree with as being particularly bad, including my Quiz Show choice, plus Tim Robbins in Mystic River, Joe Pesci in With Honors, Diane Lane in The Perfect Storm, Jeff Bridges in Blown Away, and Jack Nicholson in The Departed ("partially because Jack forgot he was doing a Boston accent half the time").

And they praise Mark Wahlberg and Matt Damon for having authentic accents in The Departed. Of course they're authentic -- they grew up in Boston.

Anyway, another article about Julianne Moore says she learned her Boston accent because, as she says, “I worked in a bar called the Up and Up Lounge in Kenmore Square on top of a Howard Johnson’s and that’s how I learned to talk like that. Everyone was from Dorchester or Somerville.”

But I say No Way -- she's lying. No way people from Dot are going to Kenmore Square to drink. Same for Somerville. If they were in Kenmore, it was for a Sox game, and they'd never walk over to Comm Ave for a beer. I know -- I lived about 3 blocks from that Howard Johnson's. You'd pass 12 other bars between Yawkey Way and that Howard Johnson's, and if you went into any of those others, you wouldn't need to wait for an elevator like with the Up and Up. In fact, most are at ground level to make it easier to stumble right in and out of. She's lying, and it explains why she did such a crappy accent.

But I have to say, I loved the line from that article that came a few sentences after her quote about the Up and Up: "This is even better than if Julianne Moore had worked at the Ground Round in Cleveland Circle!"

I'll admit I never drank at the Up and Up, but I sure traveled down to Cleveland Circle more than once for those Ground Round steak fries and mudslides made with vanilla soft serve ice cream instead of crushed ice and half-and-half. Killer. Worth the ride down the Green Line, even if it meant drinking in the shadow of Boston College.

Ah, memories. What's left of them, anyway....