Buy Or Don’t Buy

Both Burr Steers and Noah Baumbach have used Park Slope to define cold, alienating childhoods.

Early scenes from Igby Goes Down (young Ryan Philipe’s hair blinds!) follow Bill Pullman’s xter walking down tree’d streets with his two peacoated sons. The film goes on to Manhattan and DC to illustrate their parents’ two failed routes in raising their sons: mental hospital and overbearing to the point of death.

The PS area reached some more anachronistic redemption in 2005 with Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale. Set in 1986 Park Slope, the movie follows two self-edifying parents vying for their sons’ favor.

Over ping pong:

“You don’t want to be like Ivan–Ivan’s a philistine.”

“What’s a philistine?”

“It’s a guy who doesn’t care about books and interesting films and things. Your mother’s brother Ned is also a philistine”

“Then I’m a philistine.”

“No, you like books and movies and things.”

On Bernard’s new house:

“It’s a place across Prospect Park.”

“Is that even in Brooklyn??”

Although Baumbach’s strained conversations can be a little exaggerated, kinda ruining the awkward realism at times, the lines are all pretty amazing.

I didn’t grow up like these characters, but I sure like watching them unfold, don’t you? Besides the hunch that the modern version of these kids would be way more hypo-allergenically taken care of and maybe slightly vegan, both employ pretty screwed up families already in their working model of Fort Greene’s early lamer neighbor. My point? It’s an area rife w/ brokenness, and in my bite-size ability to shallowly control my surroundings in this lifetime, I will continue the crusade for not buying Park Slope til the end of my days.

(Sorry,  couldn’t find any brownstone/street shots for these two flicks, but you can remember them!)