Lighten up, it's just a movie

To the Editor:

It would be nice to hear something about the adaptation. Maybe the dialogue was too forced. Or was it the casting that irked you? Nope. One of the complaints that seems to come most often from fellow Dot natives about Gone, Baby Gone is the depiction of the characters who inhabit our 'hood.

Catherine O'Neill ["A Shameful Caricature of our People," Op-Ed, 10/1/07] seemed particularly upset at the idea that anybody from our neck of the woods might be portrayed as illiterate or as being "too busy drinking, doing cocaine and eating Hostess Sno-Balls" to care about anything.

To this I say: Lighten up. This was not a documentary. Were things shot darkly, in smoke-filled rooms and with slightly twisted camera angles to communicate a sense of malevolence? Yes. What do you expect from a Hollywood film? Some kind of deconstruction of the eccentricities of Dorchester? I've seen Once Upon A Time in China, but when I visited Beijing I didn't see a town overrun with kung-fu fighting monks.

Let's try to remember that the whole point of the movie, and the protagonist's existence, is to explore the seedy underbelly of society. The niche of Dennis Lehane's character is one who can operate in areas where the police can't because of pervasive crime, neglect and a code of silence. What good would it do for the story to show Patrick Kenzie charging into Dorchester House, guns drawn, interrogating seniors waiting for an eye exam? Not much.

And finally, fellow Dot Rats (man, did I ever love seeing that t-shirt!), get over yourselves! It's not all roses, teddy bears and scrappy working class stiffs out there. Seedy underbellies exist in every city around the world. Even Dorchester. In fact, while some of us were at the K Club meeting , Neponset River cleanup or politician's fundraiser, there were destitute families scraping by in run-down apartments. Some of them eat junk food. While the "good" kids were enjoying recess at St. Will- um, Blessed Mother Theresa, there were other kids ditching from Dorchester High to meet up with fellow gang members to deal drugs or settle a score.

I'm not sure, but I'll bet that Ms. O'Neill didn't grow up across the street from a crack house, or that she has ever experienced, up close, a multi-agency, tactical, balls-to-the-wall raid on a home by folks who could double for black-ops troops in Afghanistan. Has her home ever been burned down by thugs? Has she seen a gang of toughs beat-down a victim, or been on the receiving end of one herself? I wonder if she's ever been in a situation where she had to inflict damage upon another human being under the real threat that her life might be forfeit if she didn't strike hard and fast.Maybe if she'd ever had those experiences she would be able to relate to the atmosphere that Ben Affleck was trying to portray. Then again, she could remember that it's just a movie.

Mike Shaw

Neponset

Seeing ourselves in Gone Baby, Gone

By Alberto Pina

You know you are Cape Verdean when you get excited when you see Cabo Verde on the Weather Channel. I experienced that same feeling last Friday night while watching Ben Affleck's movie Gone Baby, Gone.

The movie was shot last summer and fall in the heart of  Dorchester's Cape Verdean community: Upham's Corner (East Cottage, Pleasant, and Dudley Street, Columbia Road, and the surrounding area). Thus Cape Verdean and Irish venues from the neighborhood were all over the movie. I couldn't resist being a disturbance to the rest of the audience by identifying, in a loud voice, the bars and business as they come up.

The big Cape Verdean moment that got me crazy happened near the beginning of the flick when Casey Affleck's character, one of two detectives investigating the disappearance of a 7 year-old neighborhood girl, stated something like this regarding the heavy presence of police on that case: "In the last two weeks, four Cape Verdeans got killed in this neighborhood and nobody seemed to give a [expletive]."

When I heard the phrase Cape Verdeans, everybody around me found out I was one of them. I jumped off my seat and screamed to my wife, "Oh my God! Did he just mention Cape Verdeans? What did he say about us? What? What? ..."

I completely forgot I was in a theater where you &emdash; as I was warned by an introductory message&emdash; are asked not "spoil the movie by adding [my] own soundtrack." I kept going on and on loudly about the fact that Casey mentioned CVs. It wasn't me. It was the emotion of the moment. My patient wife had to calm me down and literally tell me to "be quiet."

I know I went over the limit but you have to give me a break here. Most of time, Cape Verdeans are mentioned in the media around this town in a negative manner. Although this one wasn't sweet either, it was a reference in a highly anticipated movie premiere that was being watched at that exact moment nationwide by millions of people and had the potential to be number one at the box office. So my silent reply to my wife was, "Go Casey, go! Put us on the map!"

As the movie went on, I kept seeing Cape Verdean faces all over. I could even recognize people from the neighborhood: kids playing on the streets, old folks hanging outside, young girls looking out from their second floor window, etc. A bunch of spots from the neighborhood kept coming up: New York Fried Chicken on Hancock Street, the bar right by Las Americas Barbershop, most of the businesses on Columbia Road, the mural painting depicting Malcom X near the Police Station on Dudley Street and the one by the side wall of the old Dudley Pizza now Antonio's (Cape Verdean) Restaurant at the corner of Dudley and East Cottage St. &endash; my hood.

Ben Affleck gave Cape Verdeans a national spotlight in a great movie; well directed, perfect cast, with one of my favorite stars: Morgan Freeman. You could tell that his brother Casey Affleck is a local from Cambridge. I was trying to pick a flaw in his accent but couldn't find 'nada'. He was perfect in acting and talking like a Bostonian.

The only accent that wasn't well reproduced was the one by the Haitian drug dealer character, "Cheese" (Edi Gathegi). His imitation of the Haitian Creole was lousy. He sounded more like a brother that just arrived from Kenya than a Haitian immigrant. As for the rest of the cast, they were superb in imitating the tough Irish bar crowd from Dorchester.

Ben Affleck reminded me that though I have integrated and assimilated much of the American culture and society, I'm still a kriolu (Creole- another term used to identify Cape Verdeans) who knows that he's a Cape Verdean when..... [he] gets excited for hearing the word Cape Verdeans in a movie.

Do you want an honest word of mouth about the movie? Gone Baby, Gone is an A-act. You get a superb local drama, crime/gangster flick and rich cultural lesson about blue collar Bostonians for only $10. Harvard would likely charge you hundreds of dollars to teach you such a lesson, but without the local flavor that Ben Affleck was able to capture. Therefore, go see it while it remains in the theaters.

Alberto Pina is the president, editor and webmaster of forcv.com.

Close, baby, close

By Bill Gould
Special to the Reporter

(Nov. 1, 2007)- Director Ben Affleck has gotten a lot of things right in his earnest new adaptation of Dennis Lehane's fourth Kenzie/Gennaro mystery, "Gone Baby, Gone", but unfortunately he's gotten just as many things wrong.

If you haven't had the chance to read the book, the story goes something like this: a little girl goes missing, her aunt hires two Dorchester private eyes to conduct their own investigation alongside the Boston Police, and during the investigation, things get turned inside out and upside down until nobody seems to know which way is up.

Like "Mystic River" before it, things are not always as they appear.

Let's start with what Ben did well. First off, he shot the movie entirely in and around Boston. Not New York. Not Montreal. Boston. Even "The Departed" was half-shot in the Big Apple.

Second, he's assembled a really nice supporting cast. Morgan Freeman, although miscast as Jack Doyle, still lends a touch of class and a ton of credibility to every scene he appears in. Freeman is one of my favorite actors and although I love the slow, deliberate cadence of the man's voice, I love it more when he just "looks" at someone, conveying more with one weary glance than other actors can say with a paragraph of dialogue. Unlike Freeman, Ed Harris is perfectly cast as Detective Remy Broussard. I've been a fan of Harris for as long as I can remember and I don't think I've ever seen the man give a bad performance. Coiled and ready to strike, Harris' Remy Broussard is definitely a cop whose good side you want to stay on. Why Eastwood didn't cast him as Whitey in "Mystic River" is one of those questions for the ages. But I digress.

Another fine addition to the cast and a nice surprise, too, is character actor John Ashton whom you'll instantly recognize as Det. Taggart from "Beverly Hills Cop" and Marvin Dorfler from "Midnight Run." To be perfectly honest, I hadn't seen the man in so long I thought he had passed away. It's good to see him back on the big screen as Remy's partner Nick Poole. He gives a good, solid performance as does Amy Ryan as the missing girl's self-absorbed mother. Ryan does an amazing job of finding and conveying the humanity in a character who could have easily slipped into white trash caricature. She's excellent, and she does a killer Boston accent.

Okay, there's the good stuff. Now comes the bad. I didn't feel like Dorchester was much of a character in this film. At all. Sure there were a few nice shots of three-deckers, but I don't think Affleck captured the neighborhood feel of Dorchester the way, say, Gus Van Sant did with Southie in "Good Will Hunting."

Now, I'm Dorchester born and raised and I live a stone's throw away from where most of this film was shot, but aside from seeing Cataloni's Bar, the old Avenue Bakery (now Lee's Bakery) and the three-decker next to Atheneum Park/Meaney Playground, it just didn't feel like my Dorchester. Where's the Red Line? Where's Saint Margaret's? Where's Gene & Paul's? Where's Dot Ave? Not here, I'm afraid.

Ultimately, the biggest problem with the film lies with the two leads. Michelle Monaghan is a gifted actress and she was actually quite good in "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" but here she's miscast. Too fresh-faced, too young. And woefuly underwritten by co-screenwriters Affleck and Aaron Stockard. Basically, she's nothing more than arm candy (and occasional conscience) for Patrick.

Which brings me to the biggest problem with the film: Casey Affleck. Now I really like Casey as an actor and he was actually pretty phenomenal in "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford", but I simply didn't buy him as Patrick Kenzie. Worse yet, I couldn't "hear" him as Patrick Kenzie. Affleck mumbles so badly throughout this entire film that I literally turned to my buddies a couple of times and asked, "What did he just say?" To which they responded, "I dunno."

And the blame has to go squarely on big brother Ben for this. Note to Ben: "Tell Casey to take the marbles out of his mouth. Thank you." All in all, I'd give the movie 2 and 1/2 stars. It's a fairly decent crime/police procedural for 90 minutes, but it really comes alive in the last 25. And it poses a hell of a question at the end that I've already flip-flopped on a half dozen times in my own mind. So kudos to Ben for not taking the easy way out. But better luck next time.

So has the definitive Dorchester film finally been made? No, because Bill Gould hasn't made it yet.

Bill Gould lives in Dorchester.

A shameful caricature of our people

By Catherine O'Neill

(Nov. 1, 2007) - "Shame is God's way of letting you know you have done something wrong."

That is a line Patrick Kenzie's character delivers in "Gone Baby, Gone." Just in case you have had a major case of Red Sox fever, or Denver altitude sickness, and have been blind to all else in the last couple of weeks, "Gone Baby, Gone" is the movie Ben Affleck shot in Dorchester, recently released by a major studio.

The movie script was an adaptation of a book written by one of our former neighbors, Dennis Lehane. I am only comforted by the notion that Lehane may have made some money on my $7.50 and &emdash; if he didn't &emdash; I'm grateful I sneaked into a matinee and they didn't get the ridiculous $10.50.

If God's not going to let Ben and company know they should be ashamed at their portrayal of Dorchester residents, I will. Actually, it's not a portrayal as much as an exploitation. If you haven't seen the film, and intend to, perhaps you shouldn't read on.

I see a lot of films. I love movies. I recently spent a year at Emerson College in a graduate program learning how to write them. Netflix is right up there with my car's inboard navigation system and spell check as among the greatest innovations ever.

"Gone Baby, Gone" could very well be a directorial debut tour de force. The script worked and hit the key points scripts are supposed to hit with a couple of twists in exactly the right places. But other than that, the movie didn't have one redeeming quality except the Dot Rat tee shirt (not going there) and the Dot sticker on an often-used door (good for College Hype).

I used to hang around with one of the actors in the movie and this may be his breakthrough role so I'm not telling you lightly how I hated it.

But what am I worried about? If, in fact, the characterizations of Dorchester residents in "Gone Baby, Gone" are realistic, most from our neighborhood can't read anyway, and if they can read they are too busy drinking, doing cocaine and eating Hostess Sno-Balls to read anything except comic books, so my seven hundred words will very likely go unnoticed.

Why is it that in "Good Will Hunting," a film I believe Ben Affleck co-wrote, a neighboring neighborhood and its male characters can break out of a stereotype and be sympathetic, but in "Gone Baby, Gone," our neighborhood, and especially the female characters portrayed in it, can't? I can't count how many Dorchester women I know, born, raised, and still here, or, God forbid, living in Milton or Braintree who don't resemble whatever was on that movie screen. One female character in the movie did have another dimension other than disgusting, but she moved out of Dorchester by the end of the script. A line of dialogue informs the audience that she had gone to where good women live in the world of this film, Melrose or some such place.

One of my life teachers always cautions me whenever I am annoyed at someone's behavior or actions that if "ya spot it, ya got it." So I did that. I checked all afternoon, and I'm telling ya, if what they put down in "Gone Baby, Gone" was our neighborhood and its people, I'm not picking it up.

And it's more annoying that most of the local reviews indicate the portrayals were "gritty and authentic." Are we so hard up for the revenue from these films that we are willing to call insults art (double down, split the aces)? One night when I was an editorial assistant at the Globe, I had to give directions to the Massachusetts General Hospital to a reporter who was assigned to cover a major emergency. At first, I thought he was joking, and when I realized he wasn't, I thought, "Wow, what does this guy know about us?" Now, I'm thinking the same thing again.

When I think of authentic gritty people from Dorchester I think of the folks I see walking to Savin Hill train station at 5:30 a.m. to go to work, and the children waiting at the school bus stop at the ridiculous hour of 6 a.m., or the restaurant owner catching a delivery at 7 a.m. And I think of John Burke and Peter Needham, who rescued Carol Logan from the Neponset River that June day several years ago when they were being gritty and authentic Dorchester teenagers.

One thing I did like about "Gone Baby, Gone" was the definition of shame, but I suspect that line came right out of the book, which I'm not ashamed to tell you was way better than the movie.

Catherine O'Neill's column appears weekly in the Reporter.


Depiction of Dot- even accents- too extreme

To the Editor:

We saw "Gone Baby, Gone" on Oct. 26th.

We liked the movie but we really thought it made Dorchester look bad. I've lived in Dorchester all my life. I've lived in my neighborhood of St. Brendan's parish for 36 years. No way does my neighborhood look the way it did in the movie.

I know that swear words are used more than when I was a kid but that was ridiculous. I've raised three kids and now my four grandsons are growing up here. One of my kids is a nurse, the other a teacher, and the other is living in California doing construction. He's a very hard worker.

We get enough bad comments when we say we live in Dorchester.  I also think the accent was a bit much. Even Casey Affleck's accent seemed too extreme.

-Marilyn Olitsky, Dorchester