Stage fright & other shock tactics: Robin Hood & the Republic of Doyle
Robin Hood is opening against Ironman 2 and naturally Russell Crowe's nervous. Russ is usually alright, but when he starts getting nervous his temper can get the better of him, & he can get impatient. Strange things can happen like phones start flying through the air. He might even wind up drinking and song writing in small east coast Canadian cities (Many of us have done our time on George Street, St John's, NAL., it's just that most of us didn't fall so far to get there. Personally I just fell out of the driver's side door to get there. Russ does keep his word though and his good buddies Doyle & co., alias Great Big Sea, were signed on to write music, with Crowe, for the soundtrack. Crowe has described Doyle as the first person he's enjoyed writing music with in over 15 years - & Crowe's been to Xanadu and back!). Crowe might have mastered the stage fright but those opening night jitters can still send him for a loop.The temper's tempters & a good Robin Hood?
For instance Russ was recently getting grilled by the BBC, or 'the Beeb' if you wanna put on a few little airs. The guy asked Crowe about Hood's accent and Crowe respond 'basically Irish' (So the accents have come from his George Street Blues days too! A period that personally enriching deserves a movie of it's own!).It's an honest answer - Robin Hood is about the 'aboriginal British' at a time when William the Conqueror's grandchildren were settling in and the Doomsday Book's ink was finally drying. Celts are the aboriginal English, so they become a reasonable source for the accents, as opposed to Michael Praed's (& don't get me wrong, until I see Crowe in the role Praed is still the best Robin Hood ever, and his successor Jason Connery the 2nd best. Connery was one of the best at being second best. Unfortunately he squandered his gift for TV by following his father's footsteps into the movie world. Sean doesn't help and Jason has never been more than a Blister: a B LISTER that is) received pronunciation (RP is an 'artificial accent' dreamed up by the public schools back in the days of Pygmaleon. The idea behind RP was to create Standardized Upper Class English and weed out the local dialects. Example of RP would be Jaime Murray - the Dexter actress and not the tennis player - and Ian Anderson. The Scots really took to P with a vengeance though the English were less enthusiastic about their own idea. Lack of enthusiasm about their own ideas is part of the English charm, along with passive aggression & and low key sardonic humor! Low key sardonic humor is sarcasm that's too apathetic to have an 'attitude'.). Worse still would've been Kevin Costner's accent in Robin Hood: POT. That was only marginally better and much less entertaining than having Young Tony Curtis Brooklin up Sherwood Forrest. Short answer - even though Crowe gave a reasonable answer some how tempers got frayed again. Just listen to a recording of the interview from the Beeb.
Dealing with the media can be rough, especially when they're more interested in playing gotcha than they are in asking serious questions. Short of laying down a headslap on them, what can you do. Well you've got to be savvy. Here's NFL Hall of Famer David the Deacon Jones explaining how he originated the term 'sack' for tackle, shortly after developing the headslap. Jones' shrewd understanding of the media resulted in a pay raise for NFL defensive linemen.
