Looking for Bedford Falls ... in The Terminal

In a previous essay, I made the case that Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (1998) is a dystopian reimagining of Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). Christof, the show’s creator, tries and fails to make Truman Burbank a version of George Bailey and the town of Seahaven a version of Bedford Falls. Comparing the two films and understanding why Christof fails reveals some of the challenges that modern American life, represented in an extreme form by Seahaven, poses for genuine, flourishing community as represented by the Bedford Falls ideal. Toward the end of that article, I began to ponder how we could sustain community even in the midst of those challenges. To that end, I now propose looking to a third film, Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal (2004). 

Read More

Looking for Bedford Falls ... on The Truman Show

One third into Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (1998), Truman Burbank, the unwitting star of a reality TV show, is made by his fictive wife and fake mom to sit down and watch television. The program on air is “Golden Oldies,” a spoof of Turner Classic Movies. Tonight’s entertainment, the host announces, is “the enduring, much-loved classic, Show Me the Way to Go Home: a hymn of praise to small town life, where we learn that you don’t have to leave home to discover what the world’s all about, and that no one is poor who has friends.”

For anyone who has ever been within earshot of cable TV in December, this synopsis should sound familiar: Show Me the Way to Go Home is a knock-off of Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946).

Read More

Arsenic and Old Lace (Review for FilmFisher)

“What’s your favorite film?” It’s the question every cinephile delights to hear, yet also dreads. Delights, because finally someone made this social function less awkward — and besides, who doesn’t want to extol their loves before others? Dreads, because who can pick just one movie? Asking a film-lover to choose only one favorite out of dozens is like a landlord telling the lady in Apartment 108 she can only keep one of her 36 cats — and must decide in seconds.

When I am asked this question, I may haggle with my interrogator to expand the field the five films. But this evasion only works half the time, because most people aren’t asking for an article, just one recommendation for their watchlist. (They may also be trying to size up your taste and sort you into a group. You aren’t one of those people that liked Green Book, are you?) So sometime in middle or high school, realizing I’d be dogged by the question (and awkward social functions) for the rest of my life, I decided on a standby: Frank Capra’s 1944 adaptation of the Joseph Kesselring play, Arsenic and Old Lace, starring Cary Grant.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE ON FILMFISHER.