Five times before, I’ve reeled off a series of movie and TV moments referencing New Haven.
Here’s part six, which Siskel and Ebert—the names of my left and right hands for the purposes of this joke—give two thumbs up:
The Great Gatsby (1974), 5:54: As Nick Carraway arrives at the “glittering white palace” of his college friend Tom Buchanan—the latest stop on the Buchanans’ tour of “wherever people played polo and were rich together”—it soon becomes clear what college the friends went to. “Where’s your place?” Buchanan asks. “Across the bay,” Carraway replies, adding that “it’s just a little cottage I got for $80 a month.” “$80 a month?” Buchanan exclaims. “Our beer bills at New Haven were more than that.”
Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna (2006), 29:34, 1:30:50, 3:03:51: “All the characters, incidents and places in this film are fictitious,” a text overlay says, but, as a point of fact, this partly English-language Bollywood film was partly filmed in New Haven’s Union Station. Union’s first scene, which begins in Grand Central before slyly shifting locations, sees married father Dev Saran excoriating his son for running off… acidly enough that he’s mistaken for a kidnapper by his also-married soon-to-be love interest, Maya Talwar… who then attempts to rescue the boy by actually kidnapping him. It’s a memorable meet-cute, with other longing meetups to follow, including twice more at Union Station.
The Perfect Couple (2024), S1E6, 20:14: Ruthless celebrity author Greer Winbury’s spoiled husband, Tag, torpedoes his wife’s latest book launch—and possibly her career—by giving a viral drunken rant that lifts the veil of the couple’s carefully crafted image. Looking to do some damage control, Greer’s publicists visit Tag at the Winburys’ luxurious seaside estate, where, whiskey in hand, Tag pitches lines for announcing a forthcoming trip to rehab. “I love my family, I love my wife, I love our marriage,” he riffs. “And because of that, I’ve made the very difficult decision to spend the next few weeks reflecting and healing at Promises Malibu.” “Ooh, no, uh-uh. It’s not relatable,” one of the publicists interjects, suggesting a facility called New Era instead. “The one in New Haven?” Tag replies. “No, absolutely not. It’s a shithole… Can I tell them that I’m going to New Haven and go to the one in Malibu?”
My Dinner with Andre (1981), 1:12:35: Wallace Shawn, playing a version of himself, laments to his dinner companion, Andre Gregory, also playing a version of himself, that the theatre is in decline, as are theatre audiences. This is a problem, he says, because “I really do think the theatre can do something very important. I mean, I do think the theatre can help bring people into contact with reality.” And Gregory has something to say about that, as he must in a movie built around a single, circuitous, often absurdist conversation. “I mean, of course that’s what the theatre should do. I mean, I’ve always felt that. You know, when I was a young director, and I directed The Bacchae at Yale, my impulse, when Pentheus has been killed by his mother and the Furies, and they pull the tree back, and they tie him to the tree and fling him into the air, and he flies through space and he’s killed, and they rip him to shreds and I guess cut off his head, my impulse was that the thing to do was to get a head from the New Haven morgue and pass it around the audience. Now, I wanted Agave to bring on a real head and that this head should be passed around the audience, so that somehow people realized that this stuff was real, see? That it was real stuff!”
Suits (2011), S1E9, 10:25, 36:52: World-beating corporate attorney Harvey Specter’s first showdown with arch rival Travis Tanner sees him representing an unusually sympathetic client: a town sickened by the energy company Tanner represents. Specter’s associate Mike Ross, a savant with a secret (that he never went to law school), looks their enemy up. “Travis Tanner: went to Yale—undergrad and law, honors in both… [H]e was the youngest senior partner at Clyde McPhee. This guy’s record is off the charts. He specializes in breaking class-action lawsuits.” Later, in a return of Tanner’s best volley, Specter secures a loan for his clients to prevent them from taking a lowball settlement offer. Ross passes Tanner the loan check as Specter twists the knife: “I don’t know if they taught you math at Yale, but that’s 5 million—25,000 dollars a plaintiff. Exactly what you tried to buy them off for.” He then pulls out a blackmail recording that could wreck Tanner’s career, forcing Tanner to settle for $2 million a pop. Which makes you wonder why Specter needed the loan—or the off-smelling Yale quip—at all.
Miller’s Girl (2023), 23:30: Set in Tennessee, this controversial film about a May-December flirtation gone south carries a dream of somewhere north. “Tennessee is a fuckin’ tar pit, no offense,” precocious high schooler Cairo Sweet tells her English teacher and crush, Jonathan Miller. “I think you’ll appreciate it when you’re older,” he says. “Maybe,” she retorts, “from afar. As it burns. Like Nero.” “Huh. So uh, how far are we talkin’?” “Yale far.” “Yale far? My god! What, so you can eat pot brownies and read Joan Didion or what?” “Because I hear the literacy rate is high.”
Written by Dan Mims. Image features Dev (Shah Rukh Khan) and Maya (Rani Mukerji) in Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna.
