Could I be more excited about Charlie Kaufman's new film, which has just debuted in Cannes and which is going to win the Palme d'Or in a sort of indifferent fashion? No, I could not, because although Synecdoche, New York has been described in the Guardian as "difficult to say and even harder to understand" it is set in my very own funny little home town of Schenectady, New York. You have no idea how thrilling this is...
Located at the intersection of the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers, about three and a half hours' drive north of Manhattan, Schenectady was an erstwhile haunt of Thomas Edison (lightbulb inventor, innit) and indeed once a booming hotbed of home appliance production down at the General Electric plant, until they discovered the joys of outsourcing manufacturing overseas and the place became all crumbly and depressing and riddled with unemployment. Today it boasts a thriving Guyanese immigrant community and a not very good school system and one or two quite bad home-style Italian restaurants. It had few redeeming qualities. Until Hollywood discovered it!
Says Philip Seymour Hoffman, the star, on the film "there is a sense of continuous heartbreak that you can't put your finger on," which pretty much describes my little hometown to a tee, also. I hope they are giving Kaufman and Co a key to the city: I can't help but swell with pride at the prospect that cinema-goers around the world will be able to feel the tragedy of that little, never-very-good-in-the-first-place-but-definitely-now-rubbish-city that I grew up in and escaped. I just hope the town still has a cinema to screen it in.
[Photo courtesy Matthew Bradley's Flickr stream]
Says Philip Seymour Hoffman, the star, on the film "there is a sense of continuous heartbreak that you can't put your finger on," which pretty much describes my little hometown to a tee, also. I hope they are giving Kaufman and Co a key to the city: I can't help but swell with pride at the prospect that cinema-goers around the world will be able to feel the tragedy of that little, never-very-good-in-the-first-place-but-definitely-now-rubbish-city that I grew up in and escaped. I just hope the town still has a cinema to screen it in.
[Photo courtesy Matthew Bradley's Flickr stream]
Leave a comment