March 11, 2009
gateway words
Two words I use to allow me to imitate Sean Connery: Seabiscuit, submarine. I find if I nail one of these, I can get my mouth in the right place to follow up. Anybody else have specific words they use to jump-start an impersonation?
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How about a string of words? I like to jump-start Bobby Darin with Looked a lot like Che Guevara/Drove a diesel van.
You can get a good W. C. Fields going with: I wander’d lonely as a cloud/That floats on high o’er vales and hills,/When all at once I saw a crowd,/A host, of golden daffodils.
I’ve spoken with the judges and they will accept that.
I read the title and thought you meant a kid trying “crap” and one day moving on to harder words like “fuck”
I’m so bad at impersonations that I don’t even try.
Katherine Hepburn with “you old poop” or “you’re my knight in shining armor”
Carol Channing with “diamonds are a girls best friend”
Borrowing from SNL once I could get a Christopher Walken started with “get yourself some skittles” haven’t really nailed that in quite a while though
A beginner attempting William S. Burroughs could do worse than to start with: “Narcotics have been systematically scapegoated and demonized.”
I guess we’ve kinda moved away from individual words, haven’t we?
Sorry.
Okay. Young Katherine Hepburn. Calla lilies.
To get into character for my Deron impersonation, I say, “I’m sugary Sam! And I LOOOOOVE my little sailor suit!”
I like to start my English accent with ‘I shall not tolerate such rubbish’ (english butler.)
Connery: “Things in here don’t react well to bullets.”
Forrest Gump: “Jenny!” and “I was running.” Oh and “Lieutenant Dan.”
Jimmy Stewart: “You sit around here and you spin your little webs…”
JFK: “We choose to go to the moon…”
The thing I’ve noticed about impressions is that if you get the cadence right, you don’t necessarily need to nail the voice, although it sounds really sweet if you can.
Kottke nailed it. It’s all in the rhythm.
The day I graduated from UT we took mushrooms and went to Lake Travis. To this day the failproof route to Jimmy Stewart is: Jimmy can’t get out of the water.
“Scotland, for god’s sakes.” Connery in Finding Forrester. It may or may not sound like he’s got a mouthful of [Scottish] marbles, but that phrase is just very much him.
“The calla lilies are in bloom again, such an unusual flower.”
Ah. My Jimmy Stewart always begins with “I’m gonna shake off the dust of this crummy little town…!” and “You want the moon? I’ll lasso the moon, Mary!” My GWB, like that of many, is based around a trope of “heh-heh! heh!”