'Big Screen Boston: From Mystery Street to The Departed and Beyond' by Paul Sherman -- Summer website special: $16 including shipping!

Book excerpt: 'Black Irish'

Brad Gann's Black Irish, a good little movie that had a very limited theatrical release last year and is not yet out on DVD, gas just become available for viewing on iTunes. Here's the excerpt from Big Screen Boston about it.

2006. Written and directed by Brad Gann. With Michael Angarano, Brendan Gleeson, Melissa Leo, Tom Guiry and Emily VanCamp. Cinematography by Michael Fimognari.

WRITER-DIRECTOR BRAD GANN isn’t Irish and he isn’t Bostonian. But his Black Irish, a coming-of-age tale set in South Boston, is a modest success, partially because it has a light touch with its Irish “isms.” The family at its center, the McKays, is the result of a marriage between an Irish-American (Brendan Gleeson) and an Irish immigrant (Melissa Leo). While some movies portray the Boston Irish as if they live in an Irish bubble far removed from everyday American life, Gann does not, and such an approach gives his movie a universal reach and a resistance to nagging clichés.
    After all, its first images are of 15-year-old Cole (Michael Angarano) throwing a baseball into a painted strike zone on a schoolyard wall. There’s no doubt he’s American through and through, even if he is an altar boy contemplating studying for the priesthood. Part of the premise of Black Irish is that Cole is too nice for his rough-and-tumble family: an emotionally remote, hard-drinking dad who’s always searching for work, a mother who’s lost control of her husband, a big brother (Tom Guiry) who’s a belligerent jerk and a big sister (Emily VanCamp) whose life has been derailed by an unplanned pregnancy. It’s typical of the movie that Kathleen’s pregnancy doesn’t result in stereotypical hysterics from her Catholic parents, even when she’s thinking of having an abortion. Instead, the pregnancy is just another obstacle to be maneuvered around, like making ends meet and keeping Terry, the big brother eager to pull Cole down to his level, in check. Such problems mesh when the price of “sending away” Kathleen to a home for unwed mothers (from which she soon bolts) means Cole has to leave his Catholic school for Terry’s public school —jeopardizing his seminary plans and forcing him to have to make a different, better baseball team. He’s more concerned about the latter.
    Amidst all these little dilemmas is the main one, and that’s whether “good kid” Cole can retain his essential goodness. Angarano, who has the dark features of Shia LaBeouf, and Gann convey Cole’s goodhearted nature without making him too naïve (the running gag of Cole leaving a little trail of accidentally dead animals in his wake prevents him from being goody-goody). Aside from his outrage during one scene in which he sees his father humiliated, Cole is pretty levelheaded, and he’s an engaging underdog.
    Cole’s levelheadedness epitomizes the entire movie’s restraint. Gann has enough faith in his words to let his cast underplay the drama. Some of the characters have brief near-monologue moments, including Cole’s mother and his brother, but they’re not delivered as “big moments.” And when you have an actor as sturdy as Gleeson (1997’s The General) you don’t need to get fancy. As several crises come to a head and other opportunities arise for the characters, Gann’s restraint becomes especially effective in the optimistic yet open-ended resolution.
    Black Irish is not as hardcore a South Boston neighborhood movie as Good Will Hunting or Southie. It makes use of several local businesses, though, including Skip Scaro’s Barber Shop, the Galley Diner and Casper Funeral Home, while some of its baseball action is at Foley Field (also seen in Good Will Hunting); the other baseball diamond, seen at the end of the movie, is at Tufts. But the movie mixes and matches a variety of neighborhoods: the family’s house is in Dorchester, school scenes take place at East Boston High (as does the police station scene) and the church is St. John’s Episcopal Church in Jamaica Plain (with the church office scene done in the mansion at Borderland State Park on the Sharon-Easton border). Waltham’s Ristorante Marcellino is also central to the story, as is Roxbury’s Jewish Memorial Hospital. Charlestown, Everett and Chelsea also appear, the last during the car crash scene.
►Locations: Dorchester, South Boston, Charlestown, Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, Boston; Waltham; Everett; Sharon/Easton; Somerville/Medford.
►Accents: None of the lead actors is local, but Brendan Gleeson, Michael Angarano, Tom Guiry and Emily VanCamp do a good job with their pretend accents, while Melissa Leo does a dandy faux Irish accent. It’s ironic to have Irish Gleeson doing an American accent and American Leo doing an Irish brogue, yet the two do such a good job it’s inconsequential.
►Local color: Perhaps because of budget limitations, there isn’t a lot of public action here (since that involves things like blocking off streets and hiring more extras). Most of the neighborhood scenes could have been filmed in any Northeastern blue-collar neighborhood. But the smattering of Southie businesses and parks on display bolsters the story’s credibility.

Two August screenings at Video Underground in J.P.

I'll write about these more at a later date, but Jamaica Plain's Video Underground has scheduled two screenings of Boston movies with yours truly introducing, as well as selling and signing copies of Big Screen Boston. Scroll down to see info about these and several other backyard screenings at this truly indie store.

'Steve Sweeney Show" this morning!

I'll be doing local comedy icon Steve Sweeney's show on WWZN (1510 AM) this morning, talking about Boston movies from 9 to 10 a.m. Of course, Steve is mentioned in the book several times. Give us a call if you can.

'Walk East on Beacon!' reactions

So... now that the little-seen (and not on VHS/DVD) Walk East on Beacon! has had its TCM airing, I'm  interesting in hearing people's reaction to Boston's unwitting contribution to the early 1950s' Red Scare. Let's get some comments going here.

Also--sales pitch time--click on the PayPal rectangular box on the right sidebar to take advantage of the $16 Summer website special on the book.

'Walk East on Beacon!' on TCM, July 24

I've been surprised that several people have come up to me at my signings/screenings and wanted to talk about 1952's Walk East on Beacon! Never released on video, it's pretty obscure. It's one of the first Hollywood features made in Boston, and the Red Scare drama is certainly the most hysterical. But its documentary style and its taste for "realism" (the quotes included because the movie is pure propaganda) mean that it's usually shot in bright daylight with little creative lighting, which makes it very handy for taking a gander at the city, post-war and pre-urban renewal (it's the only commercial movie with a glimpse of Scollay Square, albeit a brief but tasty one). It's on rare display this coming Thursday on Turner Classic Movies, as part of the cable channel's series coinciding with the FBI's centennial. So "enjoy" it while you can.

Book signing and screening July 12 @ Cornerstone Books, Salem, MA

I'll be signing books, talking up Boston movies, answering questions and showing one of my favorites--Beth Harrington's one-of-a-kind featurette The Blinking Madonna and Other Miracles (not available on commercial home video)--at Cornerstone Books in Salem, Mass. this Saturday [July 12] at 7 pm. Join me in the Witch City for a cheap but fun Saturday night out...

Check out Ty Burr's review!

Boston Globe movie critic Ty Burr's review of Big Screen Boston went up on boston.com today. He says, among other things, "An essential purchase for Bay State cinemaniacs, this does what all good movie books do: Makes you want to run out and see the movies." Pre-BSB, Ty wrote one of the more extensive looks at movies made in Boston, in the Globe magazine a few years back.

Book excerpts--and plenty of them

There are a whole lot of excerpts from Big Screen Boston up here, though most of them are in past months' archives. Here are links to some of those excerpts:

• Introduction: The 'Beanstreet movies, Part 1, a look at the gritty local dramas of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
• Mystery Street, the 1950 film noir--the first fictional feature to take advantage of predominantly Greater Boston locations.
• Introduction: The 'Beanstreets' movies, Part 2, a look at the impact of those movies.
• Girltalk, Kate Davis' unforgettable 1987 documentary.
• Billy in the Lowlands, Jan Egleson's ground-breaking 1979 drama.
• The Brink's Job, 1978's amusing comic take on the 1950s robbery and--perhaps more importantly--the fiasco-like production that soured Hollywood on Boston for years to come. 
• The Blinking Madonna and Other Miracles. Beth Harrington's one-of-a-kind personal documentary.
• Titicut Follies, Frederick Wiseman's still-disturbing 1967 documentary about Bridgewater State Hospital.
• The Thomas Crown Affair, the impossibly urbane Steve McQueen picture.
• Walk East on Beacon!, the hysterical (but scenic) Red-baiting 1952 "thriller."
• The Dark End of the Street, Egleson's equally engrossing follow-up to Billy in the Lowlands.
• The Friends of Eddie Coyle, the best movie ever made in Boston, Period. And still not on home video!

Book excerpt: 'The Departed'

Here's the book's take on the other movie in the subtitle. It's one of the book's more famous movies, but it's no ordinary Boston movie: it's a remake of a Hong Kong movie directed by a moviemaker strongly associated with another city, not Boston. Of course, with screenwriter William Monahan, Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg involved, it's not as if there aren't any locals involved.

2006. Directed by Martin Scorsese. Written by William Monahan. Based on Infernal Affairs by Alan Mak and Felix Chong. With Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Ray Winstone, Vera Farmiga and Alec Baldwin. Cinematography by Michael Ballhaus.

MARTIN SCORSESE’S AWARD-WINNING crime drama is one of the best Boston movies. But, like many others, it’s a mix of real Boston and fake Boston. After all, Mean Streets, Raging Bull and GoodFellas director Scorsese is the foremost New York director of his time. And more of The Departed was shot in his hometown than in the city where it takes place.
    But Bostonian William Monahan wrote it, putting a Boston overlay on Infernal Affairs, the cleverly plotted 2002 Hong Kong movie about a crook pretending to be a cop and a cop pretending to be a crook. And homegrown Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg are in its cast. Take The Departed out of Boston and you wouldn’t just lose the repressed atmosphere in which everyone, especially the two moles, is stingy about personal details. You’d have to lose one of its essential scenes, and its best Boston moment. That’s when State Police sergeant Dignam (Wahlberg) tries to goad just-graduated State Police cadet Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) into going undercover in the South Boston mob by targeting Costigan’s embarrassment over coming from a family of underachievers, and his identity crisis from having split his youth between his “lace curtain” remarried mom on the North Shore and his downscale father in Southie. “You had different accents,” Dignam prods. “You did, didn’t you, you little fuckin’ snake?” Dignam  has found a weak spot to squeeze and he won’t let go.
    The scene doesn’t just mark Costigan as a character who could only be from within the confining loop of Route 128. It also taps into Bostonians’ tendencies to skip the pleasantries and rub each other raw. This isn’t the playful “You talking to me?” or “Whadya mean, I’m funny?” Scorsese cursing by Robert De Niro or Joe Pesci. It’s a hailstorm of dropped-R, in-your-face, smart-ass expletives worthy of the verbal sparring in George V. Higgins’ The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Yes, I’m talking to you. These Staties are like hockey dads, with guns. They’re just looking for an excuse to go after somebody.
    The writing in the scene and the specific Boston qualities of Costigan are among the best instances of The Departed embellishing Infernal Affairs. Almost all of the plot comes from the Hong Kong film, from such big elements as a mob boss having a young protege become a cop so he’ll have a friend inside the department (this time, the characters are Jack Nicholson’s Frank Costello and Damon’s Colin Sullivan), to little things such as Costello smashing Costigan’s arm cast (lest it contain a recording device) and two henchmen joking about how you can tell who’s an undercover cop.
    In its bulk-up from Hong Kong action drama to big-budget Hollywood blockbuster, The Departed certainly has problems here and there, though. It distressed this longtime Scorsese fan to see his Mean Streets innovation of using a rock-song score devolve into nothingness—wall-to-wall use of songs in which few of them actually have dramatic meaning—while the expanded character of a female psychologist (Vera Farmiga) comes off like a Hollywood convenience who’s around just to have affairs with the two conflicting male leads.
    One of the local aspects of The Departed that’s been overly doted upon is that Costello is based on one-time South Boston mob boss and longtime fugitive James “Whitey” Bulger. Monahan’s script adds a Whitey-like touch to Costello now and then, including the strong suggestion that he’s an FBI informant. But 95% of the character is from Infernal Affairs and Nicholson, whose trademark leering sometimes detracts from the drama.
    Like the Whitey connection, the locations used in The Departed supply an extra dimension for those aware of them. Scorsese and crew shot here for six weeks, using Staniford Street’s butt-ugly Hurley Building for State Police headquarters, Charlestown’s Flagship Wharf condos for Costello’s luxurious digs and the Quincy Shipyard for the microchip-sale stakeout and the climactic showdown between Costello’s crew and the police. You can also spot Boston Common in the opening rugby scene, Quincy Bay as the remote spot where Costigan has a rendezvous with his police contacts, the exterior of the Moakley Courthouse (from where Costigan makes a phone call), the Lewis Wharf area (where Dignam and his boss confront Costello) and the Park Street and South Station Red Line stations. The rooftop scenes take place in the Fort Point Channel area, off of Farnsworth Street, Costigan pursues Sullivan down Tyler Street and into the Chinatown parking lots bordered by Edinboro, Ping On and Oxford Streets, and such other spots as Charles Street (where the exterior of Charles Street Cleaners was made over as a bistro) and the ever-familiar Zakim Bridge are also visible. Sullivan’s condo with a sweet view of the State House is a fake, though. Those scenes weren’t done locally, and were presumably done on a New York soundstage with a photomural for its powerful “view.”
    With a sequel for The Departed now in the works (featuring Wahlberg’s Dignam) and tax breaks now in place that make it more desirable for Hollywood productions to shoot in Massachusetts, chances are any Departed follow-ups will shoot in Boston more than the original did.
►Locations: South Boston, Charlestown, Chinatown, Seaport District, Beacon Hill, Dorchester, East Boston, Boston; Quincy; Cambridge.
►Accents: Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg amp up their lingering accents and give The Departed a sense of authenticity. Others in the cast are hit and miss. Costigan’s accent is supposed to be weak, thanks to his childhood split between his upwardly mobile mother and his Southie dad, and DiCaprio does fine with the light accent. Nicholson and Alec Baldwin are inconsistent, Vera Farmiga is passable, Martin Sheen just cranks up the Kennedy accent he used playing both John and Bobby in different TV movies and Ray Winstone’s accent is an unpredictable mix of Boston, generic American and his own English accent (big deal—he’s always been a ferocious actor, and he’s a force here). All in all, above average, as nobody is awkward enough to spoil his or her performance.
►Local color: As in Mystic River, there’s much use of the Staties nickname for the State Police. But William Monahan’s script gets even littler details right. It’s just perfect that the Staties’ secretary we see is named Darlene. Who didn’t go to high school in Greater Boston during the 1970s or 1980s with a Darlene, a Darlene that might go on to have a job just like that? Throw in The Dropkick Murphys’ anthemic “I’m Shipping Up to Boston,” a clip from the old Channel 56 news and a Brigham’s reference, and the local flavor gets stronger. And you just have to grin at any line of dialogue describing someone once holding down the job of “carpet layer for Jordan Marsh.”

R.I.P. George Carlin

If you're of the right age--and I was--George Carlin's comedy albums were an important part of your adolescence. Class Clown was huuuge in the early 1970s, the sort of album you and your friends listened to when the adults were out of the house. Sure, the "7 Words You Can't Say on TV" was our taboo pleasure, but the rest of the album was hilarious, too, and the comic's distaste for hypocrisy actual made his comedy unusually ethical [Carlin would've laughed that his AP obit said he was from "Morningside Heights" on Manhattan, since he joked on that album that "Morningside Heights" was just the acceptable euphemism for what the neighborhood really was, Spanish Harlem]. You also looked forward to Carlin's many Flip Wilson Show guest shots. Later, of course, you realized that Carlin was part of a larger comic tradition of outspokenness, and that he and Richard Pryor carried the baton that Lenny Bruce almost singlehandedly fought to get to them through routines like this [available on the amazing Lenny Bruce: Let the Buyer Beware boxed set]:

By the end of the 1970s, Carlin had already become self-parody in a sense (I remember Rick Moranis nailing the Carlin cliches during an SCTV sketch). But even as he became more accepted and did all those HBO specials, he still kept much of his outspokenness, particularly in his rants against organized religion.

Here's a typically brilliant Carlin Tonight Show appearance from May 1972, during his most influential period. Enjoy: