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Johnny Depp news pushes one New Yorker to the breaking point

Please God No More Boston Gangster Movies:

Sweet Jesus for the love of all that his holy, I beg you, Boston film people, on behalf of the rest of America, PLEASE GOD stop making movies about Boston gangster. There are gangsters. In Boston. They're Irish. OKAY, WE GOT IT.

Gone Baby Gone. The Departed. The Town. Mystic River. The Boondock Saints. And all of the Whitey Bulger movies and Dennis Lehane screen adaptations to come. Some of these are very good stories. Some are great movies. So can we all, together, accept that the "Irish Boston gangster" movie has been done? It has been done. Again, and again, and again. Did Ben Affleck grow up in Boston, I wonder? Sometimes I wonder.

Actually, Ben Affleck didn't grow up in Boston (true, Cambridge, but that'd be like wondering if Woody Allen grew up in Passaic), but you get the idea.

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Comments

We were plagued with the same damn Woody Allen movie over and over again for years. We have been plagued with the same New York set romantic comedy for years. We have been plagued with the same black gangster in Harlem movie for years. The same Italian gangster movie set in Little Italy or Brooklyn for years, on and on and on. Now we have the beachhead of the Brooklyn-is-hell-and-wonderland genre; Girls. Expect more media like this going forward.

Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone were about child abductions, not gangters, though there were characters in both who were gangsters; Sean Penn and the guy who played Cheese in GBG. He was Hatian in the movie, Scandanavian in the book. Not Irish.

Gawker, please join that dolphin in the Gowanus when you get a chance. Happy Truck Day, Go Sox.

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Thank you. After almost a century of New York settings and New York characters (there was always a kid from Brooklyn or the Bronx in every WW II movie, wasn't there?), I think Americans can deal with more Boston movies then they can count on one hand.

New York featured in so many Hollywood films (and television shows) because so many of the writers were from New York, and knew nothing else.

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I felt that, for all kinds of reasons that I won't post here (it would take up much too much space), I felt that The Town was more like a feature-length, made-for-TV soap opera than a regular movie.

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While it's true a ton of movies are about New York (especially NYC), they at least mix it up. I think the main complaint is having too many movies about Irish gangsters in Boston.

I could be wrong, but I can only think of three movies set in Boston lately that weren't all about gangsters -- Good Will Hunting, 21, and The Social Network -- and they were all about students.

So maybe some variety would help.

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Yea but Good Will Hunting is still about Southie! This guys first couple paragraphs are on point. It's all rehashed garbage. You wanna make a movie/tv show about Boston leave southie out of it. Its been done to death.

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how many scripts could be written about the Albanians in Roslindale Village? Or the Brahmin on Beacon Hill? Or Poles and Lithuanians on Geneva Ave in the 60s? That's some high drama, there.

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You know it's been done to death when it's got its own page on TVTropes: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Southies

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Incidentally, no two Boston residents will agree exactly where Southie begins and ends. Is the Waterfront part of Southie? How about Dorchester? Is Dorchester "really" part of Boston or is it a suburb? What about the other suburbs? Have we put way too much thought into this? (Note that the actual compass direction "South" hardly factors in.) In fact, many residents feel that "Southie" and "South Boston" are two different areas, with Southie being a tight knit Irish community and South Boston being the yuppie area right next to it*]]. The short version is "if you're in Boston and surrounded by working-class Irish, you're in Southie."

Just so many varieties of wrong in that.

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n/t

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That Good Will Hunting is now about 15 years old. Amazing.

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Didn't we just talk about this?

If you're just talking about non-gangster movies that were box-office successes, then you have to add Fever Pitch, A Civil Action, The Verdict, and Ted. All set in Boston, all have N. American grosses of over $40M. Ted is still making significant money through DVD sales ($54M and counting).

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as is Cambridge and the surrounding metro area. Never mind the fact most Americans are a mix of ethnicities. So it's not like Boston doesn't have 'diversity' like NY. That said, how many Goddamn movies and TV shows about ITALIAN mobsters in NYC are there? I'll answer my question; A LOT. There are of course gangsters and criminals in NYC who aren't 'Italian' [I suppose they mean American of full or part Italian/Sicilian descent], including of course 'Irish' [American of Irish or part Irish descent]. And the same applies in Boston. And I know many 'Italians' and 'Irish' in NYC and Boston agree with me. It has in 2013 especially become hackneyed and is long past it's due date.

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How about no more Johnny Dep movies?

Boston is a fine city; Johny Dep is not a fine actor.

Am I to take seriously something written by a person named Hamilton?

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Who is forcing you to watch his movies?

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I hate to say it, but let's put the blame where it's deserved. I loved The Friend of Eddie Coyle but that is the movie that made the racist Mick mobster the sine qua non of successful Boston movies. (except for The Verdict, of course).

Two things about this:
First, as everyone has pointed out, this ignores every other ethnic group in Boston. And it ignores the loss of both Irish criminal power and Irish political power in Boston. It ignores that among Euro ethnic/national groups that have influenced Boston and the Northeast, a good argument could be made that the Portuguese and the French had as much influence as the Irish.

Second, lots of things happen in Boston that do not involve organized crime or attending college. And not every white person in the city is a bigot. Boston has some serious racial problems. But if I were brown/black thinking of moving here, based on the movies I'd no unreasonably assume I'm only safe on a few streets and any group of more than three people with freckles will beat me up. I'd also assume that the only two jobs available are as a bagman, a bartender, or a professor.

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isnt it great that we have first world problems, hunger....nah well tackle that later, but first whats up with all the boston movies

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