The Boston Straggler

Over the weekend, I received an email inviting me to a screening of the upcoming Meryl Streep/Amy Adams film "Julie and Julia" Tuesday afternoon in Boston. Having read both Julie Powell's book "Julie and Julia" and Julia Child's fascinating memoir "My Life in France," I was already well-prepared and quite eager to see how writer-director Nora Ephron brought these two stories to the screen (and, frankly, if Meryl Streep and Amy Adams teamed up to do a movie based on the Periodic Table of the Elements, I would probably get in line). I'd never actually been to Boston before -- we tried to go once during a family vacation, but the serpentine freeways ultimately defeated us -- so this sounded like a prime opportunity to get a glimpse of the city as well.

Getting there from the Vineyard is astonishingly simple and not terribly expensive. Take the ferry from Vineyard Haven to Woods Hole and you can catch a shuttle to the Peter Pan Bus Lines terminal, where you can board a bus that takes you to Boston's South Station in about 90 minutes. Consulting Yahoo! Maps, I found the AMC Loews Boston Common, where the screening was scheduled, was only a couple of blocks from the bus depot. Although I'd need to get an early start to make it there by 2 p.m., I decided I would make the trip.

Curiously, it is much easier to make your way to Boston, which is a good 70 miles away, than it is to get to the outer limits of Falmouth, which is much closer. I had been eager to see the new Stephen Frears film "Cheri," which stars Michelle Pfeiffer in a role that's already prompting possible Oscar talk. It opened last week at the Regal Nickelodeon in Falmouth and I had been sorely tempted to go, even though my legs and feet have only recently made a full recovery from my last misguided journey to the Nickelodeon (see the "Friday Getaway" entries for the specifics on that). As it so happens, "Cheri" was also playing in Cambridge, only a few miles from the Boston Common and, when I checked the schedule, I found I could easily make the 4:40 show of "Cheri" and still get back to South Station in time to catch the 7:00 bus. So there was another incentive.

The forecast for Boston called for only a 20 percent chance of rain, so I looked forward to a pleasant day of wandering around, getting a nice lunch and seeing a couple of films. As I left this morning, Vineyard Haven was enveloped in a delicate layer of fog that seemed more along the lines of a heavy mist. It was as thin as the first bursts of steam from a tea kettle; it parted as easily as a beaded curtain.

On the ferry, the TVs were tuned to the "Today" show, which was still fixated on the same subject it was covering when I last took the ferry almost two weeks ago: the untimely death of Michael Jackson. This morning's undoubtedly enlightening updates came from alleged biographers who had cranked out quickie cash-in books about Jackson's final days; "Today" then devoted several minutes to the mystery of what happened to Jackson's former companion Bubbles the Chimp. Glancing at the screen, I thought, "Is there nothing else going on in the world today?" This is the kind of story that would once have been squeezed in at the end of a newscast to fill a minute of leftover airtime. Instead, it was a centerpiece.

All the Peter Pan buses have names that tie into the James M. Barrie book: Tic Toc Croc, The Three Children, Hook's Disbelief, Make Believe, etc. The coaches themselves are a far cry from the shuddery Greyhound buses I used to take back and forth between Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids in the first years I was in college. Those buses always smelled of stale smoke and ashes, and they were nerve-rattlingly noisy. The air in the Peter Pan buses had the faint aroma of candy -- perhaps Skittles? -- even though I didn't see anyone eating anything. The passengers were practically stone-silent, quite the opposite of the Greyhound gang, which gave you an earful of their conversations and arguments, whether you were eager to eavesdrop or not. I used the hour and a half to start Tom Perrotta's novel "The Abstinence Teacher" and listen to my ever-reliable iPod as it shuffled through the 21,000-plus songs in my library.

The skies were clear and bright when the bus left for Boston. Unfortunately, the meteorologists missed their mark today; within an hour, I was watching plump raindrops race each other diagonally across and off my window, and by the time we arrived in Boston, the storm was in full swing, regrettably.

The rain in Boston is similar to the wind in Chicago: It shows no mercy. Instead of a leisurely pre-screening stroll to find a lunch spot, I settled for a roast beef sandwich to go from an Au Bon Pain counter located in the station's food court. While the walk to the theater from South Station wasn't far, by the time I was even halfway there I was already drenched and the paper bag containing my sandwich was starting to feel like a handful of soggy toilet paper. Thankfully, as I turned on to Tremont Street, where the theater is located, the shower suddenly stopped and I managed to get indoors before the bag finally fell apart.

I had arrived more than an hour before the screening was scheduled to start and yet there were still about 50 people in line ahead of me: Bostonians apparently take that "arrive early" line on the screening passes seriously, and I felt like a complete straggler by comparison. While eating my sandwich and waiting for the theater to open up for seating, I had a chance to admire the Boston Common complex, which is opulent in a way only big-city cinemas can be. It's multi-storied, with wide hallways to accommodate weekend crowds and an overhead mural made up of memorable quotes from the movies. The decorative poster cases featured vintage one-sheets that were hauntingly familiar from the years when I worked for AMC ("Dick Tracy," "The Pelican Brief," "Boyz N the Hood," "Aladdin" -- I played 'em all, back in the day). After a month of visiting the, uh, charmingly quaint Vineyard movie houses, it was a great relief to be in an actual theater, with spacious screens, comfortable seats and digital stereo.

Since "Julie and Julia" doesn't open for another month, I shouldn't discuss it in detail, although I will say it was very enjoyable and both Streep and Adams are wonderful in it (and no one will mistake it for their previous collaboration, "Doubt"). I'll also offer these words of warning: First, you will probably want to go out for French food afterward, and second, Streep's dead-on mimicry of Child's distinctive, swooping voice is so superb you may find you want to try out your own Julia Child impersonation on the way out. Say it with me: "Bon appetit!"