“Connecticut in the Movies” Drops Today

I have multiple reasons for being excited about Illeana Douglas’s new book Connecticut in the Movies: From Dream Houses to Dark Suburbia, which is being released today.

One is the author, who I knew way back (the late ’80s) when we were members of something called The Comedy Corps at the Manhattan Punchline Theatre, an institution that is sorely missed. We acted in scenes together, participated in classes together, and interacted once a week for about a year, like ya do. At the time I knew she was related to somebody important I think, but not that she was Melvyn Douglas’s granddaughter. Even at that early stage (I was in my late ’20s) I had seen the elder Douglas in numerous movies, a couple, like Being There and Ghost Story, because they were then quite recent — I saw them during their first run at cinemas. It was around this time or immediately afterwards that she and Martin Scorsese became an item, and she thrilled us all by becoming a screen star herself. (Just a couple of days ago I found myself wondering whether it was she who introduced Marty to Street Trash. I mean, how else?) Illeana’s appeal to Scorsese was obvious: her intense love of Hollywood films, her own movie star genes, her unrestrained humor, and her exotic beauty, which clearly did not come from Melvyn. She’s Italian and Romanian on her mother’s side. Her mother came from Astoria, Queens, a neighborhood I’m currently in love with, since I’ve been doing shows at QED, and that just adds to what we love about her.

Secondly, well, my mother’s family has lived in Connecticut for nearly 400 years. (I grew up in Rhode Island; my father worked at the submarine shipyard in nearby New London). And my ex’s family (mother of my sons) was deeply involved in Connecticut politics. Her dad was a Congressman and Mayor (of Waterbury) and her brother wrote speeches for the Governor and was editor of Connecticut magazine. I am deeply steeped in the history of the region, but I will say that it’s so basic to me it seems the opposite of exotic. I have found its use in any brand (e.g., Connecticut Muffin) to be so quotidian as to be unintentionally humorous, so when I see a book title like this one, it sounds to me like an article from Yankee magazine. It’s the subtitle that redeems it for me.

Which brings me to the third element that excites me about the new book. As I wrote in this extended essay a couple of years ago The Swimmer has become one of my favorite movies. And here it shows up on the cover of her book! Anyone who has seen Illeana’s commentary on TCM knows that she’s both deeply intelligent and knowledgeable about screen history. You’d have to be to even think up this book topic in the first place. I’ve often remembered an episode of I Love Lucy where Lucy and Ricky move to “the country”. Hilariously (to me) the “country” for them is Connecticut…which I grew up knowing (as you did) as a section of the Northeast corridor that has been slashed in half by I-95, dotted with small cities, billboards, malls, etc. It has its pockets of picturesque, old fashioned charm to this day, but it’s no, ya know, Idaho as far as pristinity goes. But you would be astounded to know how rural it was up until the post-WWII era. Automobile culture transformed it the way it changed the rest of America, and it only truly did so about 10 years before I was born. And to New Yorkers, who come from a city so large that any of 50 neighborhoods is larger than the largest Connecticut city, the State has never stopped being idealized as a nearby haven and refuge. I’m aways secretly surprised and amused when I hear that some New York friends have taken a holiday in some random town I grew up around and always took for granted.

Anyway that very role (and its evolution) is what Douglas takes on in the new book, treating of such films as 1948’s Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (which co-starred her grandfather), OF COURSE Christmas in Connecticut (1945), The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit (1956), The Stepford Wives (1975), Mystic Pizza (1988), The Ice Storm (1997) and Revolutionary Road (2008).

Why did she choose this of all things as a subject, you may wonder? Douglas grew up in Massachusetts but also spent a lot of her childhood and youth in Old Saybrook, which is about a half hour from where I was born. 20 years ago, Woody Allen wrote a play that was set there (another example of the precise way Connecticut captures the imagination of New Yorkers).

More on Connecticut in the Movies and Illeana Douglas here and here.