I Let My Fists Do The Talkin’

I tried to wait until I had a decent sound or video clip of this to prove my point, but I couldn’t figure out how to capture just 5 seconds off a DVD (Thanks a lot, Handbrake) and ended up with 25 minutes of extra material I don’t want.

My project of the last three months or so is to watch tons of Ancient Roman Epics & Dramas. Tons and tons of them. From the ridiculous (ABC’s miniseries Empire) to the divine (wonderful I, Claudius).

I am struggling my way through the supra-gigantic cast o’ thousands Hollywood epics at the moment. In the midst of Spartacus I was honored to unearth the most amazingly wooden, inappropriate delivery on film:

“I don’t know how… I can… ever repay you.”

It’s early in the movie—the very last scene of chapter 5 on the DVD —when these nobles come to the Gladiator school. One of the men is Laurence Olivier, the other is an underplaying Paul Lynde doppleganger*who was hit with a stupid stick.

He fares a little marginally better with his other lines, but he seriously sounds like developmentally disabled adult doing an impression of PeeWee Herman in the movie-within-a-movie in PeeWee’s Big Adventure (“Paging Mr. Herman…”).

Ridiculous Larry-esque.

*I looked up his relatively short filmography and his only other role of note was as one the coded-homo murdering couple in Rope. Typecasting?

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 29th, 2005 at 5:41 pm and is filed under Adventures in Media, Comedy.