Saw State of Play the other night. The movie. Not the BBC TV series, which is now in my Netflix queue. I hear the series was great. The movie was good. I'm not about to nominate it for a slew of Oscars. Best adapted screenplay, maybe. Best set decoration. Is there an Oscar for that? Best Art Direction then. If for nothing else, then for this:
Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck play former college roommates and estranged friends of the opposites attract sort, Cal McCaffrey and Stephen Collins. McCaffrey's a lone-wolf slob of a newspaper reporter. Collins is an up and coming politician, a hero of the first Gulf War and a rising star on Capitol Hill of Kennedy-esque looks and bearing and Barack Obama straight-arrowness. They're both working class Irish kids from Pennsylvania, but we're told this explicitly. We're only told that Collins now represents a district in Pennsylvania. We know he's a native from a glass McCaffrey has in his apartment.
The glass is the type of short tumbler you used to collect at gas stations or supermarkets or fast food restaurants as part of a set. This one belongs to a set devoted to NFL teams. The only one of the set we ever see clearly is one McCaffrey's drinking out in the first scene between Crowe and Affleck. It has a Pittsburgh Steelers helmet on it. That tumbler is worth a page of dialog.
We've already seen Affleck's office. In it he has displayed a vintage Philadelphia Phillies pennant.
The shot went by too fast for me to tell if the pennant was from the late 70s when the Phillies were going to the playoffs to lose their shot at the World Series or from the days of the Whiz Kids. I hope it was from the late 40s because then it would have belonged to his father and it would have been telling us that Collins is one-generation removed from his working class roots. Either way, though, the pennant is talking to the glass and both are telling us a lot about the relationship between these two characters.
Football fan. Baseball fan. Pittsburgh. Philadelphia. Even if Collins' family background was blue collar, McCaffrey's is bluer. Collins grew up within, at least by virtue of geography, the Northeastern elite establishment he's now a fixture of. McCaffrey grew up in the Rust Belt while the bottom was rusting out completely.
Don't want to read too much into this, but as long as I'm at it I might as well go out on a meta-limb: Note, though, that in their lifetimes McCaffrey's team has been the more winning team.
Who needs writers?
I watched the BBC miniseries this weekend because it heard it was great and wanted to see it first.
If it is everything people said it was, really outstanding right up with some of the best BBC miniseries I've seen (House of Games, Tinker, Tailor, Sailor Spy, etc). Top notch cast. I can't imagine the movie being anywhere near as good, it simply wouldn't be possible in 2 hours.
Posted by: eric k | Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 02:03 AM
Wow. It's the sort of thing that is so great because it's subtle but unless it's spelled out for me, it would be *whoosh* right over my head. So its very subtlety (which makes it so cool) would ensure it wouldn't even be noticed.
And gah! I will NEVER be a complete American unless I get it about sports and I have sadly no interest whatsoever. Or maybe it'll rub off on me via osmosis the longer I live here; in my re-reading of A Man in Full, I am catching so many cultural references that I missed the first time around (my first reading of the book was while I was still in Saudi Arabia), such as mentions of Teamsters and the subtleties of race relations and the significance of plantations, etc., etc.
Maybe, some day, I will notice sports memorabilia and be able to make contextual and historical sense of it. I do have you, after all, to educate me on the finer points of American culture.
Posted by: Apostate | Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 11:36 AM
Another interesting Pennsylvania artifact: When the congressman's wife is on the phone with Cal, she tells him "the tabloids" (or maybe the "paparazzi") are outside. Among the news vans is one for WHYY, the Philadelphia PBS affiliate.
Posted by: Tom C. | Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 04:15 PM
I went to Pittsburgh for a visit last summer. I'd be amazed if you can buy glassware without a Steelers logo in the area.
Posted by: Jim 7 | Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 04:15 PM
Very glad you noticed that the story is told on many levels in a well designed film. The credit for these items belongs in fact to the Set Decorator and crew, very often mistaken as Set Designers.
Posted by: W.D. Arnold | Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 11:08 PM