POST-GAZETTE - Res Publica

Hurray for Hollywood

by David Trumbull

June 4, 2004


You're getting out of town during the Democratic National Convention, aren't you?

Better leave early. According the city's official http://www.boston04.com/home.asp website the road closings will affect I-93, Route 1, the Tobin Mystic River Bridge, the Sumner Tunnel, the Leverett Connector, and portions of Storrow Drive and Memorial Drive. In addition, there will be lane restrictions on the Mass Pike. North Station will close also, disrupting commuter rail service, Orange Line subway service and Green Line trolleys. I'm taking the boat!

I'll be on the Cape where I plan to sit by the bay and enjoy the sunny last week in July far from the Fleet Center. In the event of rain, I'll bring along some movies to watch. Several readers have given me some exceedingly apt suggestions.

Marc Pascucci of East Boston reports that he plans to be "far away from Boston and its environs during the convention, watching Jackass the Movie (2002)". According to AOL's Moviefone, it's "Rated R for dangerous, sometimes extremely crude stunts, language and nudity." --Sounds to me like a description of the DNC.

North End resident, and Boston comic, Ben Joplin found it hard to choose among the many appropriate movies to celebrate a city full of fat obnoxious Democrats and Kennedy wannabes. His suggestion: Dumb and Dumber (1994).

Four Cambridge readers sent in suggestions. Edward W. Wagner recommends I'm All Right, Jack (1959), the Peter Sellers comedy about dysfunctional socialist Britain. Steven Jens speculates that the traffic in Boston during the DNC could look like the Sci-Fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). Pamela Siska suggests Titanic (1953) and asks, "Will the DNC in Boston be a disaster of similarly gargantuan proportions?" Robert Collins offers Groundhog Day (1993), because, "the Dems offer the same damned thing over and over again ad nauseum.”

I'll end with my own choice --Duck Soup (1933), in which Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx) romances rich Mrs. Teasdale (Margaret Dumont). His conduct as dictator of Freedonia, gives a preview of what a John Kerry maladministration might look like.

David Trumbull is the chairman of the Boston Ward Three Republican Committee; he may be contacted at (617) 742-6881 or chairman@ward3boston.org. Boston's Ward Three includes the North End, West End, part of Beacon Hill, downtown, waterfront, Chinatown, and part of the South End.

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