In movie scenes depicting large crowds, it is common practice for extras & background folk who don’t have actual lines of dialogue (but are supposed to be chatting, talking, etc.) to silently or very quietly mouth the words “watermelon, cantalope, watermelon, cantalope…” and on & on.
The reason for this is that their characters (as in RL) would be carrying on normal conversations about unrelated subjects. But being mere background, they shouldn’t distract from actual written dialogue being spoken by the central characters. (Were extras allowed to simply improvise dialogue, they run the risk of inadvertanly acting out in character, and thereby causing a distraction.)
The infamous ‘mess hall’ scene from Alien is one particular instance of this: before the evil little thing bursts out of Kane’s chest, there are some brief shots of the relaxed crew (apparently believing the emergency is over) sitting around eating, smoking cigarettes and shooting the breeze. The first line of actual dialogue is when Parker states (paraphrasing): “this stuff tastes like shit…” Before that, the crewmembers are quietly mouthing the word “watermelon, watermelon, watermelon” over & over again. Check out the brief shot of Tom Skerrit (Dallas) and watch his lips, you’ll see what I mean.
Has anyone else ever noticed this, or can cite instances where they’ve noticed this on screen?
Is that what that is from? There’s an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (Prince of Space?) which features a crowd of men murmuring. Mike and the bots add this bit:
“Watermelon.”
“Cantelope.”
“Bak Choi.”
“Cabbage.”
There’s also an episode of Duck Dodgers (which is filled with in-jokes) in which the title character attempts to fake an oath in which he includes the line “Watermelon, cantelope, yaddy yada.”
David Gerrold in his book on making “The Trouble With Tribbles” wrote that when he was in on-screen conversations one person would say “nadder nadder nadder” and the other would say “grommish grommish grommish.”
"Watermelon, watermelon, cantaloupe, cantaloupe" (adj.): (also the shortened ‘Watermelon, watermelon’) Used to indicate obviously bogus ‘crowd’ murmurings. Taken from the venerable stage tradition of informing extras to say the above to each other to indicate mass communication, so that they wouldn’t ask the director, “What should I say?” This is especially amusing when the ‘watermelon’ noises are overlaid with obviously dubbed-in and spotlighted dialog. EXAMPLE: As in On Deadly Ground, when the generic ‘watermelon, watermelon’ sounds of the assembled Press are overlaid with lines like “Answer the questions, you weasel!”
Here’s another link that suggests “rhubarb” is at least in the running. I’ll concede to their being multiple words, phrases and nonsense used in the situation.
A guy I used to work with who, in a former life, tried to make it as an actor in Hollywood, told me that the magic phrase was “Sassafrass and rutabagas”.
I saw a movie once, probably twenty years ago, in which one character is a Hollywood old-timer who’s known in the biz as the World’s Greatest Extra. Another character says, awestruck, “He invented the ‘Courtroom Walla’!” It’s explained that in courtroom dramas, when the verdict is announced, everyone in the courtroom softly says, “walla walla walla,” creating a nice, low-level hum of excitement without anything really discernible in it.
I have no idea what film that was in, though. I think I saw it on TV, and I think the scene in question took place in a lunchroom of some kind.
Oh, and when I acted in an indie film once, we needed to record some generic background sounds of a roomful of people talking excitedly. The director had seven or eight of us sit in a circle around a microphone and, all at once, complain about our jobs for a few minutes. The effect was pretty cool.
When a friend of mine was in school (around grade 3) he was in the choir. He was told by the teacher to mouth “watermelon” instead of singing when they performed.
This was probably intentional, but a Chinese comedy film had some monks chanting a tongue twister (“Chi1 pu2 tao2 bu4 tu3 pu2 tao2 pi2”, "eating grapes without spitting out the skins) in a funeral sequence.