Well, you would if you live in Philadelphia or anywhere close to the place because the paper of record, The Philadelphia Inquirer, has become obsessed with pointing out such information, ad infinitum, in reviews, interviews or any other pieces of scintillating journalism involving a celebrity with a local connection, even if the connection is tenuous. Aubrey Plaza is from Wilmington. Taylor Swift is from Wyomissing. And Will Smith and Lee Daniels and David Lynch and Seth Green are all ... Philly's Own!
Why, I'm sure Meryl Streep even crossed the Ben Franklin Bridge once. That counts, right? I mean, she would qualify even though she's from, well, Summit, New Jersey. Jersey is a suburb of Philadelphia, isn't it?
I know, I know - I'm being snarky. But I just don't understand this brand of unbridled pride. Do the paper's readers really care and do they have to be informed, over and over again, that Cooper was born in Philadelphia?
Lately, the Inky (as it is know locally) has been especially keen on promoting the local connection of "Ardmore's (and Friends Central's) own Benj Pasek" who penned the lyrics with his writing partner Justin Paul for the six songs in Damien Chazelle's "La La Land," yet the latest attempt to revive that eternally misunderstood genre, the movie musical.
Every piece - and there have been several of them - have referenced this. The connection has been shoehorned even into wire stories written by non-Inquirer reporters. And exacerbating this rather tacky bit of hometown chauvinism is the fact that the person who wrote the music for "La La Land" is never mentioned. That would be Justin Hurwitz who (no surprise) isn't from Philadelphia and who attended Harvard (with his friend Chazelle), rather than the University of Pennsylvania. Bad form.
For the sake of full disclosure, I hasten to note that my second newspaper job was in Philadelphia. It is more than 30 years since I worked there but even then, there was this outsized pride in the place. Case in point: When Grace Kelly died, it wasn't enough to run an obit or an appreciation. No, there had to be a separate pullout - about a dozen pages celebrating a movie star who made only a handful of films, half of them negligible, and who was competent at best as an actress. But she was Philly royalty, see?
And then there's "Rocky," a solid little film that has been transformed locally into a work of art as significant as Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel.
An editor - a carpetbagger brought in from out of town to tweak the features section - once theorized that the incessant bragging was probably the result of Philadelphia being situated between Washington, D.C. and New York in more ways than one - that there was this desperate need to either call attention to itself or forever live in the shadows of N.Y. and D.C.
So, is this kind of horn-blowing a part of New Journalism or is Philly unique? I'm not sure. It may be routine in other cities as well. I don't regularly access the sites to papers in Boston or Chicago, for example. However, I do know I've never seen "hometown references" in either The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times or The Washington Post. And when I worked in Northern California, I certainly was not expected to mention that Tom Hanks was a local boy in any of my reviews of his films.
But I am more than aware that Kat Dennings is from Bryn Mawr, and that Alan Goldberg (creator of TV's "The Goldbergs") is from Jenkintown and that, yes, Blythe Danner and Bob Saget are also two of ... Philly's Own!
Compulsively so.
13 comments:
Yo, Joe. Long-time fan. Always read you in Philly back in the '70s and '80s and liked the way you think. Just happened to find your blog and glad to see that you are still telling it like it is. I moved a couple years ago to Seattle but I do remember the Philly papers always mentioning when a celeb has local roots. We don't get that here in Seattle. But Philly people are special and take extra pride in their town, so I accepted it. But when it's done repeatedly, I guess it can be a bit much. I look forward to reading more of The Passionate Moviegoer.
Having worked at a number of papers, I don't think that these on-going references are something that a writer would work into his or her story. I'd say that it happens during the editing process if it is as prevalent as you say it is.
It's my understanding that newspapers have style guides and it may be a given at The Philadelphia Inquirer that local connections be mentioned in all stories, not just those involving celebrities.
not fair to compare editorial standards at a paper in Philadelphia to national and even global papers like NY Times, LA Times, Chicago, Washington, etc. Philadelphia is more in line with Boston, Houston, Phoenix, and similar-sized regions. And I'm one of Philly's Own!
Excuse me, but didn't Grace Kelly win an Oscar??? She was certainly more than competent!!!
Yes, Deb, she did. For "The Country Girl" - indeed her best performance. She did three films for Hitchcock and was merely charming in two of them ("Rear Window" and "To Catch a Thief") and, yes, merely competent in the third ("Dial M for Murder"). BTW, Kelly took on a dowdy look for "The Country Girl" and may have been a trailblazer by doing so. Think of all the actresses since then who drabbed down their natural good looks and won Oscars as a result. Can you say Charlize Theron - or Nicole Kidman?
I live in Philly and have had the same reaction that you have. The word I use for it would be obnoxious
I'm from Philly, too, Joe, as well as a retired journalist who worked for the Bulletin. I can guarantee you that your editor's observation about Philadelphia's inferiority complex is not a solitary one. That theory has been around for ages and there's probably some truth to it.
I live in Philly also. Sickening is the word that I would use to describe all the bragging
Another Philly person here. I've also noticed the non-stop local refrences in the Inky's arts section. Much worse are those TV ads for Action News on channel 6 - "I'm more Philly than you!" Embarrassing.
Everyone is born somewhere.
Joe, I think the "nativesonism" is peculiar to Philadelphia. I never saw in the Yorkshire Post, say, "our own Judi Dench" or "East London's pride, Michael Caine." I think Philly has always had this underdog mentality. Maybe it's because it is between NYC and DC - a "try out" town. I was never quite comfortable there because I felt even the wealthy people had to show off more than rich people from NYC. I guess pretty soon the Inky will start bragging that D. Trump went to college in Philadelphia! Anyway, great column!
Very cool!
Post a Comment