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And in a weird way, it makes Anaconda extremely rewatchable.Īnaconda is now streaming on HBO Max and is available to rent elsewhere.A guilty pleasure that's still fun & amusing, Anaconda was one of those famous B-movies that used to air a lot on TV when I was a kid and whenever I caught a glimpse of it while switching channels, I'd usually end up staying till the end. His accent is less believable than the CGI snakes. (Was this meant to make him appear more “Paraguayan'? I could not say for sure, but I bet he thought it did.) Two: He affected the laziest of broad South American accents so he could deliver accidentally hilarious lines like “This river can kill you in a thousand ways” and “They strike, wrap around you, hold you tighter than your true love” and “Danger is exciting, huh Gary?” One: He grew out a gross little ponytail. What did Jon Voight-who is from Yonkers, by the way-do to sink into this role? Two things. They went with the lesser of these two evils, I think, but it certainly does not “work” in many different ways.

Cast of anaconda skin#

“Don’t cast Jon Voight” was the easiest and most correct answer here, but seeing as Columbia Pictures did not do such a thing, there were two options: darken Jon Voight’s skin to have him appear more “Paraguayan,” or present him in his natural hue and hope the audience will buy it. And if you’ve been to Paraguay, or perhaps you’ve watched the World Cup, you know that Jon Voight would be considered…light-skinned in such a country. Because Jon Voight did not amplify his white skin in any way for his role in Anaconda. A time when, quite frankly, studios should have known better.īut it gets tricky from here.

It belongs to 1997, a time when America’s first Black president was enjoying a second term in office. Here’s the thing: Anaconda, as you may have guessed, does not belong to Hollywood’s Golden Age. There’s a context to it, but our modern brains have been conditioned to reject such images on sight. It can be difficult to look back at Hollywood’s Golden Age knowing that its actors (mostly white men, of course) simply donned shoe polish or bronzer rather than hiring actors of color.

Cast of anaconda how to#

As he tells the crew, he was studying to become a priest, but he “needed to see the real world.” (He says this right before chopping up a large fish.) He also says that his calling is “snakes,” which is…diametrically opposed to the priesthood in a fascinating way, now that I think about it.Īs you know, there’s a rich tradition in the film industry of not knowing (or caring, perhaps?) how to portray people of other ethnicities on screen. If it’s been a while since you’ve seen Anaconda (I know you’ve seen it), Voight plays a river tracker named Paul Serone.

But we don’t need to get into all that here in my newsletter.) (I could’ve stopped that sentence at “Jon Voight,” of course. I’m referencing, of course, Jon Voight’s attempt at portraying a Paraguayan man. There’s another thing about Anaconda that is incredibly dated, but I do not find it charming, except as fodder to dissect in a medium such as this. (I find these dated effects charming in many cases, though.) It’s one of those movies that is extremely 90s, especially as it was released during a time when major studios had the technology to render CGI monsters and other spectacles, but they simply could not avoid making them look terrible. A friend’s house, basic cable, maybe even a theater trip.

You’ve probably seen Anaconda, right? It’s just one of those movies that everybody has seen, somehow some way.