From the local bar where everyone knows your name in
Cheers to the die-hard Celtics fans who
kidnap the Utah Jazz’s best player in order to win the championship in
Celtic Pride to the story of two cops on
opposite sides of the Boston Mafia in
The
Departed, a depiction of Boston’s Irish tradition and blue-collar attitude
has been portrayed for decades on TV and on the big screen. However, with
stories being consistently stretched for the sake of entertainment, is this an
accurate image of Boston? While interviewing people who have taken part in the
production of these Boston movies and TV shows may be the best way to get an
idea of just how accurate these films are, sometimes it’s best to simply ask
someone right from the heart of Boston; Someone who could paint the perfect
picture of life in Boston and tell whether or not Hollywood got it right in TV
shows and movies. Enter Tim Cochran.
Tim is
a junior at Endicott College with a Criminal Justice major and a minor in Security
Studies. Although he currently lives in North Reading, Tim and his family are originally
from Charlestown. Just how involved in his Irish Boston heritage is Tim? Tim
made it visibly obvious how much it meant to him when I had asked Tim to
participate in this interview in person. The minute he heard me mention Boston
movies, his eyes widened and he smiled. Tim was beyond excited to discuss one
of his supposedly favorite forms of entertainment. Tim’s intense amount of
pride in his Irish heritage and origin was also apparent from just how quickly
Tim showed me his family coat of arms. A quick couple of clicks on his phone
and Tim was showing me a white shield with three boars divided by a red arrow
in it. On top of the shield was a helmet similar to the one on my coat of arms.
I had felt inclined to take out my phone and show him my own family coat of
arms as well: a similar shield and helmet, but with four squares that had a
lion, a hand extending a cross out of the clouds, a ship, and a fish jumping
out of the water.
This would eventually lead into us
sharing stories back and forth about our families, including how we both looked
forward to spending St. Patrick’s Day in Boston this year. For Tim, it was a
bar-hop around Boston and a stop by the parade. For me, St. Patty’s Day meant a
Dropkick Murphy’s concert at the TD Bank Garden with some of my cousins and my father
(a McDonnell tradition for the last couple of years now). However, we had both
agreed that the Charles River was naturally green in the first place and that
they really didn’t need to color it green for St. Patrick’s Day.
Together, Tim and I were able to
share a moment of pride to be a part of the blue-collar Irish tradition in the
North Shore. This pride in coming from a line of hard working Irish immigrants
who came into Boston and made the most out of what they had. The true question
is whether or not this feeling was accurately depicted by Hollywood. We sat
there in my dorm room, ironically decorated with Red Sox and Bruins memorabilia,
a Boondock Saints poster, and, as we drank Arnold Palmer out of Celtics mugs,
we started to discuss Boston on the big screen.
Tim has always been a big fan of
Boston movies. In particular, he is fond of the ones that are related to or centered
around the Boston Mafia. This, as he discussed later, was most likely because
of his family’s long line of police officers in Boston. He looked up to the
ceiling as he tried to think of some of his favorites: Boondock Saints (both the first and the sequel), The Departed, and The Town. However, Tim also stated a certain disinterest in the
Boston movies and shows that, in Tim’s words, “are more focused on character
plot and some kind of a love story instead of stuff that relates to Boston.”
Tim provided examples such as Fever
Pitch, where, although heavily focused on a man’s die-hard obsession with
the Red Sox, heavily plays on a love story behind it. There was also Legally Blonde, where a blonde sorority
girl from California gets into Harvard to try and win back her ex-boyfriend. To
me, this meant nothing but accuracy and cooperation. I began to feel completely
confident and secure in how much thought and consideration Tim gave in
analyzing Boston movies. With such a passion for Boston TV shows and movies based
off of living in Boston as well as an intense pride in his Boston Irish origins,
Tim was the perfect person to interview to get a true snapshot of not only life
in Boston, but whether “Hollywood’s” take on it could be anything close to a
true depiction of actual life in Boston.
One interpretation includes the
making of a Whitey Bulger movie. The project, entitled Black Mass, picked up interest after the capture of Whitey Bulger
in June of 2011. The movie on
Boston’s father of crime is in the process of being produced by Ben Affleck and
Matt Damon, who are both very famously well known for their production and
acting in award-winning Boston films such as The Departed, Good Will Hunting,
and The Town. Tim, an avid fan of
all the movies that had been done by Affleck and Damon, gave his take on a
Whitey Bulger movie, which includes his take on the unorthodox concept of
Johnny Depp now playing the role of Whitey Bulger.
Casey – So, Tim,
tell me about your family and living in Charlestown. Got any good stories to
tell there?
Tim – Well, it
was pretty cool. It started off when my Papa was a Boston Police Department motorcycle
cop. He would work the gate of The Garden back in the day. Then, when my dad
got out of the Army in ’80, he got a job with his two sisters at Fenway. He was
in charge of guarding the money and even got to write his name inside of the
Green Monster.
C- That’s pretty
sick. Any perks like tickets or something like that?
T- Tickets no,
but my Papa did get to meet Carl Yastrzemski and they even became friends, so I
got a bunch of autographed bats, balls and stuff like that. He had even given
my grandmother some jewelry as well.
C – Okay, so I
want to get an idea of your kind of movies to get started. It’ll be fun. You’ve
seen the video on YouTube, “
Shit Boston Guys (Massholes) Say”. They make a
list of the top five actors of all time in their, which includes Matt Damon,
Ben Affleck, Mark Wahlberg, Casey Affleck, and Donnie Wahlberg. Give me your
top five actors right now.
T-(Laughs) Okay,
Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda, Humphrey Bogart, Tom Hanks, and Clint Eastwood.
C- Alright then.
I like the classics. Definitely nothing like "what Massholes say". What are some of your favorite and
least favorite Boston movies then?
T – Well, I
really like Good Will Hunting and
both the Boondock Saints movies just
because I find them incredibly enjoyable films. The Boondock Saints movies are two of the few movies in
Hollywood that actually portray accurate use of firearms (most of the time). I also
like the interviews they do in Boston at the end of the film. One of the worst
Boston movies I can think of is The Zoo
Keeper. It was just annoying and, like those other movies I mentioned
before, it really had nothing to do with Boston. It just felt like a random
setting for a really dumb movie.
C- Okay, let me
ask you about this one: the Whitey Bulger movie. What do you think?
T- Whitey was a
rat who lied and sold out his own men. He used the law to eliminate opponents.
They’re probably going to Hollywood up the movie, make it so that there’s more
untruth then truth, like they always do, and people will see it and think
that’s what happened. I hate when people do that.
C- Perfect lead.
So you feel that when there’s a little bit of a cinematic altering of reality,
it ruins the movie?
T- Sometimes. It’s
something like this where the story is twisted for the sake of making
entertainment. Other times, especially with the movies we’re talking about,
it’s the little things. Like, my mom is quick to point out how no one calls it
The Town (based off the movie on Charlestown titled The Town). It’s “C-Town”. There are also a lot of inaccuracies in
that movie. They show Old Sully’s Exterior but its New Sully’s Interior. They
show Ben Affleck walking around with the money going from street to street,
where those streets aren’t connected or anywhere near each other. Then the
final heist, where Fenway cash room is filled with three Yankee games worth of
cash? Bullshit, my dad worked in the cash room; it gets emptied every three
innings.
C- Well, how
important are those little things in the long run?
T- Honestly, not too
much. Yeah, it bugs me because I know the reality in situations like those, but
these are all things that don’t really affect the story as opposed to what I
was getting at with Whitey’s movie and how they would twist up this whole plot
just for entertainment.
C- Now, I want to
get back to the Whitey Bulger movie if we can for a second. It is another movie
produced and worked on by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and all the actors from around
Boston that have a feel for the culture here. However, there’s news coming out
that Johnny Depp is going to potentially be the one to play Whitey. Do you
think this will work or is it going to ruin the true feel of the movie?
T- You know, I’m
not sure what to think of Depp. I don’t know a lot about how they’re doing the
film, but Depp’s last couple roles have been a little odd and...well, just plain different. If he put that "Tim Burton feel" (director, Edward Scissorhands) to Whitey? It should be
interesting to see what happens.
C- Well if you
could take anyone else to do it, who?
T- I did hear
that if it wasn’t Depp, it would be Matt Damon, but I think Leo (DiCaprio)
could do it.
C- Why Leo?
T- I mean, I know he doesn't get the same credit for Boston movies like Affleck and Damon, but I think he does a great job portraying a Bostonian in these movies. He was in Shutter Island, but I thought he was awesome in The Departed. His character was very believable to me.
