Four times before, I’ve reeled off a series of movie and TV moments referencing New Haven.
Now I’ve recorded enough for a fifth—with the hope that, unlike most film or TV series that make it to five, the quality hasn’t dropped entirely off a cliff.
30 Rock (2009), S4E6, 3:13: TV writer Liz is appalled to discover that one of her staffers, Frank, who it seems went to Yale, has been urinating in jars and storing them in his office. “Do you know about this?” Liz asks Toofer, Frank’s Harvard-man officemate, who replies, “We have a gentleman’s agreement. He gets the jars, and, in return, he’s agreed to allow a Yale sweatshirt to be our designated fart dampener.”
The Holdovers (2023), 1:00:10: It’s just past Christmas, in 1970s Boston. Jaded idealist Paul, a teacher at the prestigious Barton Academy, has taken his troubled student Angus to a bar, where Angus butts heads with a young army veteran who’s missing a hand. Paul buys the vet a beer to deescalate the situation—a choice Angus later questions, prompting a question in return. “How many boys do you know who’ve had their hands blown off?” Paul asks. “Barton boys don’t go to Vietnam. No, they go to Yale, or Dartmouth, or Cornell, whether they deserve to or not.”
Infinitely Polar Bear (2014): It’s 1970s Boston (again), where husband and wife Cam and Maggie have separated following Cam’s psychotic break. Finding it impossible to support their two school-age children on her own, Maggie applies and wins a scholarship to Columbia Business School. But she can’t afford to take the kids with her, so, in a poignant show of faith, she asks a recovering Cam, whose faith in himself has been shattered, to look after them. As Maggie pulls away for the drive to New York, Cam runs alongside and shouts some advice he’s remembered from the life they used to share: “At New Haven, shoot across 34 West to the Wilbur Cross! It becomes the Merritt Parkway! You can avoid Bridgeport and the trees are twice as green!”
Tunnel of Love (1958), 0:00:35: This movie actually shows the Wilbur Cross Parkway, as married couple Augie and Isolde Pool drive their convertible through New Haven’s own Heroes’ Tunnel. Upon arriving home in Westport, they announce to the neighbors that they’ve put in an application to adopt a child through a New Haven-based agency named Rockabye—“you know, where the Marshalls got theirs.”
Carriers (2009), 12:08: It’s a pandemic—a much deadlier one than COVID. Brothers Brian and Danny have just carjacked and then joined up, sort of, with fellow survivor Frank, who tries to make conversation after hearing Brian ding Danny as “Ivy League.” “Where’d you go to school, Danny?” he asks. Brian interjects: “He got a scholarship to go to Harvard.” Danny corrects him: “Yale. It was Yale, actually.” “It doesn’t really matter, does it?” Brian replies. “A little something shut the place down before freshman orientation.”
CBGB (2013), 1:22:37: Hilly Kristal, the debt-strapped owner of the original NYC punk club CBGB, has just bankrolled an album and a tour for punk band the Dead Boys. He’s then shown talking into a camera, saying, “These kids have something to say. We really should listen.” But, if anything, the docudrama suggests the band—or at least Hollywood’s interpretation of it—had almost nothing to say, including during a hard-to-watch tour montage that has the Boys on stage addressing their various audiences: “Hello Poughkeepsie.” “What’s up Cleveland?” “Fuck you, New Haven!”
Written by Dan Mims. Image features Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) giving Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa) some perspective in The Holdovers.
