Cool Runnings director was told he’d be fired if the cast didn’t “sound like Sebastian The Crab”
Jon Turteltaub says the characters' accents were a huge point of contention between him and Disney
Aux News Cool Runnings
The 1993 Disney classic Cool Runnings seems like the kind of thing that nobody should want to revisit here in the year 2023. It seemed like a lot of fun and very heartwarming at the time, but things have changed in the last 30 years. Surely the movie about John Candy training Jamaica’s first Olympic bobsled team can’t be wholly unproblematic… and it’s not, but the people who made it still seem to be enormously proud of the film—though things weren’t even wholly unproblematic back when they were shooting Cool Runnings.
Speaking with The Independent for a big piece on Cool Runnings’ 30th anniversary, director Jon Turteltaub talks about the movie’s transition from a harder-edged drama (with “drugs, racism, and the characters were getting laid a lot” according to star Rawle D. Lewis) to a family-friendly Disney movie, and he says that shift brought new expectations from then-Disney boss Jeffrey Katzenberg. Apparently, Katzenberg was concerned that American audiences wouldn’t be able to understand real Jamaican accents, which lead to “near-constant” fights with him, Turteltaub, and the actors.
Cast member Leon Robinson (known professionally as just “Leon”) said that Katzenberg wanted him to sound like “a Black Aladdin,” which is to say a “Disney version” of a Jamaican accent. He says it was “tough,” because it was important to him to be authentic to Jamaican people, but, he says, “I’m a professional and I had to do the job.” The Independent says it all “came to a head” early one morning when Katzenberg threatened to fire Turteltaub if he couldn’t “get these accents to where I can understand them clearly”—which apparently meant bringing them closer to the voice of Sebastian The Crab in The Little Mermaid (who The Independent notes has a Trinidadian accent).
So, with his job on the line, Turteltaub apparently just told his cast to do that: “The next day, I told the cast, ‘I’m going to get fired if you don’t sound like Sebastian The Crab. Please don’t get me fired.” He said they all “joked about it,” but they knew the stakes and ultimately landed on an “Americanized version” of the accents.
Following the thread of those discussions, Turteltaub says that there’s a “zero chance” he’d get the job to make Cool Runnings today, adding, “and I probably shouldn’t get it.” He admits that he agrees with the people who think he probably shouldn’t have even been the one to do it at the time (Turteltaub is a white guy from New York), but they still ended up with a “pretty great movie.”
Turteltaub and the cast also talk about regularly hearing fans—including seven-time Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton, who apparently once called it life-changing—talk about what the movie means to them, with Leon saying he met a 12-year-old fan once who said he watched the movie over and over for 30 days after his dad died because of how comforting it is. As for whether or not there will ever be more Cool Runnings, Turteltaub just says that “there were discussions then and there are discussions now.”
42 Comments
I was never going to watch this movie (as well as its stablemate from the prior year, The Mighty Ducks). Now I’m really never going to watch it.
So does that mean that call center directors are also telling their staff to sound like “Sebastian The Crab” when they call me with “offers”?
The movie is mediocre but the song is a banger
He covered that song 10 years earlier, but it is a good song.
well, if you like that, you may just want to check out another little film called The Harder They Come
I still remember being eleven and thinking it was awesome when John Candy threw that (I’m paraphrasing) “Sorry that four Black guys in a bobsled is such a joke to you” line at the athletic committee. That had been buried under the more “acceptable” ways that people mocked the team (they come from a warm climate, their coach was disgraced, etc.) But it was pretty rad to see someone just throw their implicit racism in their faces.
Apparently in real life, the coach wasn’t disgraced and the other teams were nice to them and didn’t make fun of them.https://www.nationalworld.com/sport/is-cool-runnings-a-true-story-real-events-of-jamaican-winter-olympics-bobsleigh-team-1993-movie-was-based-on-3561127https://www.businessinsider.com/the-real-story-of-the-cool-runnings-bobsled-team-2014-2
I live in Calgary where the Olympics were that year and people fucking LOVED those guys, and still do. I was 10 and it was bananas.
Yet no one would have believed that. Today we’d be criticizing the movie for not addressing the racism black athletes face. So I’m happy the movie chose to not stick to the “official story”Also, I feel like there’s got to be a “…not to their faces anyway” in there somewhere
Real Jamaican accents (my stepmom) can be notoriously hard to understand, so on some degree, I get where Katzenberg is coming from with his studio notes. Especially with it being early 90s Disney, and people were less interested in things being authentic. They’re just trying to make sure the movie has broad appeal and makes money- and since it worked, he was right. To the actors’ and director’s credit, they did their best to not make them come off as caricatures.
(well, ok the one guy kinda comes off that way)
I would also ad that there are cases where people who speak English with a specific accent might tone it down for whatever reason. My aunt’s ex was Jamaican and the accent he spoke when he talked to people like my white Canadian family was way less strong than the way he spoke to his friends when he took me to a local Jamaican restaurant.
I would also ad that there are cases where people who speak English with a specific accent might tone it down for whatever reason.See Mare of Easttown
Yeah, I often work with some Jamaicans in my job and they turn up and turn down their accents a lot. Granted, these are Jamaicans with a lot of international experience.
GWARN!
I was about to say, I get why they wanted to use authentic accents but that exec had a point. Real Jamaican accents can be impossible to understand if you’re not used to them. They would have had to use subtitles.
It seems like they’re doing some sort of reboot/sequel/whatever.
The triple bank shot at about ten seconds in is pretty cool. I wonder how they did it.
The ball must be CGI, but the choreography would still be tough.
It’s none of the above, it’s another “true” story.
It can’t be none of the above, cause “whatever” can be anything.
I saw this at TIFF, and it really did remind me of Cool Runnings: small island nation, washed up coach, true story, etc. The only difference is that it’s very bad.
SCOTT STERLING!!!
Had to look it up.
“The 1993 Disney classic Cool Runnings “
Is it a “classic”….Really?
My kids love it!I think it’s fine.
Yes – one of my 25 year old daughter’s two favourite films of all time.
If you’re a millennial of a certain age (an “elder millennial” if you will) or perhaps a young Gen-Xer, this movie as well as the real-life story was inescapable. I remember it being a huge huge deal when the movie came out, which also meant there were tons of suburban white kids trotting out Jamaican accents. One of my friends was even a “Jamaican” for Halloween, and here we are 30 years later and pretend like that incredibly racist thing didn’t happen. Kid was maybe 11 or 12 so I blame his definitely racist parents more than anything else.
Yes
Yes. 100%
It’s DEFINITELY a classic.
In fairness, they were also given the option of talking like that 7up “never had it, never will ha ha ha” guy – even though he’s not Jamaican.
To quote the wee English feller in Derry Girls, “They haven’t seen Cool Runnings, Michelle. I don’t trust these people.”
I’m guessing Michael Schur is also a fan, given the convoluted way the third season of The Good Place managed to work a Calgary bar fight into the story line.
Sebastian is a lobster.
No, Sebastian is definitely a crab.
You’re confused because HYDRA gave him a metal arm.
OK, who do I cancel over this? Let me have my coffee first.
so long as it’s sanka coffee
You can have coffee, or you can have Sanka.
Unfortunately that tracks — (producer) Dawn Steel was very much under the spell of Katzenberg’s-golden-touch (w anything family-Disney) and absolutely would’ve yield to his persistence.
Cool Runnins maaaan!
It’s a shite movie. always was. always has been.