AnnieHall has held the title for a long time. Of the course the dialog in STF isn’t as good, and the characters aren’t as deep, but the movie is visually stunning and the plot speaks to me much more now than Annie Hall does, even though both are about west and east coast.
I’m starting to realize just how universal this east-west trope is, but I’m still wondering whether there is something about our time and place that makes it even more central. The director, Marc Forster, says as much in the movie’s promo clips, but doesn’t say why.
I’m sure I’ll see the movie several times, so if you haven’t seen it yet we may see it together.
(Does anyone know the source of the text above Ana Pascal’s cafe, in the pic above? I googled it and found nothing — so it may not exist at all.)
I was listening to the song “Spill the Wine,” by Eric Burdon & War, and it got me thinking about west and east coast approaches to spilled wine and seduction. Before you go any further, crank up the song now, or go get it on iTunes. Really, don’t go any further until the song is playing.
What? You say you’re a scientist who wants a little west coast action, but you’re stuck in your MIT/Harvard/UPenn lab all day? Think you’re still human, but starting to feel like your protein chains hook up more than you do? Check it, especially around 3:00.
This is how life could have been for all of us if this country had let a little more of the free loving west coast into its heart.
(It’s hard to believe now but I don’t think this film was meant to be the least bit ironic.)
The NY Times must be monitoring my mind, because this week’s online wedding section features the most bicoastal couple ever. In fact, their bicoastality is just so out there that it makes a mockery of this entire enterprise. No subtlety!
Some choice bits:
THREE years ago, Dr. Kevin McAbee was different from the man he is today, really different. Back then, he said, he was a cautious, unemotional, even automated veterinary surgeon at the Animal Medical Center in Manhattan.“I left as few things up to chance as possible,†he said, sounding like the uptight Ben Stiller character in the film “Along Came Polly.†“I planned everything I could. I wore clothes buttoned up to the top button. My shoes were laced properly, no loose ends. I always walked the same way to work every day. I never took a different route. I never got coffee at a different spot. Then, all of a sudden my life changed.â€In December 2003, Carley Wellman, a slim woman with an offbeat pixie spirit like Jennifer Aniston’s “Polly†character, arrived at the center with her cat Ursula, which she likes to describe as being purple. (Ms. Wellman, who tends to imbue everything with extra color, poetry and significance, concedes that most people would call Ursula gray.)
Ms. Wellman lived in a tiny Queens apartment with green floors and a collection of four-leaf clovers she had found in the neighborhood and was working as the assistant director of fund-raising at CARE, the humanitarian organization. She was very emotional, basing most of her major life decisions on feelings, “signs from the universe†and consultations with her psychic. Some hinged on whether she had seen any shooting stars recently.
