We’ve all had those moments where it seems like the whole world is conspiring against us and things couldn’t possibly get any worse. Strangely enough, most of these times, at least for me, occur in major cities. Though this may not seem like a coincidence since I have spent the majority of my life in one city or another, there’s still something undeniably infuriating about urban centers that can irritate me down to my very core. But is it really surprising that hectic city life drives people up the walls? Don’t get me wrong, rural and suburban communities certainly bare their fair share of wackos, but the modern American city breeds a special kind of crazy. While I love living in cities, especially Chicago, and have devoted much of my college career to studying them, I still can’t seem to find the Zen-like patience that some city-dwellers exhibit when confronted with even the most mind numbingly irksome situations. Maybe it’s simply that everyone has his or her own breaking point, but no one else’s seems to coincide with mine. Call me self-centered, but whether shuffling onto a crowded El car or circling around Lincoln Park for twenty minutes looking for a parking space, too often I seem to be the only one on the verge of going absolutely berserk. Admittedly, I have little patience for delay and that patience has been tested time and time again during my tenure in Chicago.
Now, I know what you’re thinking – an out-of-towner, right? True, but my native city of Dallas is hardly the sticks (despite popular opinion north of the Mason-Dixon line). In fact, Big D is the third-largest city in the state of Texas and the ninth-largest city in the United States. As of 2005, U.S. Census estimates put Dallas at a population of 1.2 million. The city is the main cultural and economic center of the 12-county Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington metropolitan area, which, at over 5.8 million people, is the fifth-largest metropolitan area in the United States and the largest metropolitan area in the state of Texas. By contrast, the city of Chicago is home to over 2.8 million inhabitants, with the greater Chicagoland area encompassing nearly 9.4 million souls, making Chicago the third-largest metropolitan region in the United States behind Los Angeles and, of course, the mother of all American cities – New York. The five boroughs of NYC contain over 8.2 million people and the New York metropolitan area 22.4 million, making it one of the largest urban centers in the world. Comparing Dallas to New York or Chicago just isn’t fair. The look and feel of these cities are different almost to the point that one might question whether the same civilization had built them. True, Dallas has a downtown, but it’s skyline pales in comparison with New York’s. The Dallas metroplex is spread out, with plenty of room to breath. In contrast, New York is so intensely dense that it almost suffocates those not yet accustomed to its immensity. For anyone not native to a major metropolis like the Big Apple, simply maintaining one’s sanity can be a tall order. But I find solace in knowing that I’m not the only one to ever be manhandled by the big bad city. At times like these, I remember the Sisyphean struggle of George and Gwen Kellerman in Arthur Hiller’s 1970 film adaptation of Neil Simon’s The Out-of-Towners and remember that things could always be worse.
The film, like many narratives, begins with a journey. Up for the vice-presidency of the New York office of a plastics manufacturing company, George (Jack Lemmon) with wife Gwen (Sandy Dennis) in tow, leaves the relative comfort of suburban Twin Oaks, Ohio for New York City and, presumably, a better and brighter future. The trip is anything but smooth, however, and the duo end up stranded, wet, mugged, and broke within mere hours of arriving in the Concrete Jungle. The film straddles a thin line between comedy and tragedy and the couple’s tribulations are both gut-wrenching and hilarious; gut-wrenching in their uncanny evocation of Murphy’s Law (anything that can go wrong will) and hilarious both in Jack Lemmon’s comic over-determination and stubbornness and also simply by nature of the fact that the viewer doesn’t have to physically endure all these hardships. Indeed, if I were put through a similar series of misfortunes, at least one homicide would most definitely be added to the list of maladies. Being a Neil Simon play, the film is low on violence, but rich in dramatic monologue. One scene in particular sums up all the feelings of exasperation I’ve ever had while stuck in traffic, lost, berated by irate drivers, or simply caught in bad weather. In all these situations, I’m often inclined to ask, “Why me God?” George Kellerman does one better – not only telling the entire city of New York to go fuck itself, but also proclaiming his unflappable desire to stay and get what he came for. As his wife Gwen prepares to give up and go home, she makes the mistake of saying, “We surrender, New York. You win” – which promptly sends George on his tirade. Standing in the middle of Central Park West, he furiously exclaims:
"No surrender. We don’t surrender. Ya hear that New York! We don’t quit! Now how do you like that! You can go ahead and rob me and starve me and break my teeth and my wife’s ankles, but I’m not leaving! You’re just a city. Well, I’m a person and persons are stronger than cities! This is George Kellerman talking. And you’re not getting away with anything. I got all your names and your addresses!"
I can’t count the number of times I’ve cursed out the city of Chicago, but I can tell you it does little good to get mad at a mass of buildings and people. I may be a person and persons may be stronger than cities, but cities also don’t care. They don’t get tired and they don’t stop. This is the realization that Gwen, always the voice of reason, comes to at the film’s end. After having gone through hell and high water to get to his interview on time, George returns to his suite at the Waldorf-Astoria to inform Gwen of the good news. After rattling off a laundry list of benefits that would be theirs were he to accept the job, George asks Gwen how she thought he responded to the offer. Looking despondent, as one is want to do after having spent the night sleeping under a tree in Central Park, Gwen remarks:
"I was hoping you would say no. I was hoping you’d say that you and your wife don’t really belong in New York. That you wanted to live the rest of your life in Ohio and that you never wanted to see a big city again as long as you lived. That you don’t want to live here or in Chicago, or San Francisco, or New Orleans, or Paris or any other place where people have to live on top of each other and they don’t have enough room to walk or to breath or to smile at each other. And you don’t want to step on garbage in the street or be attacked by dogs or have to give away watches in the middle of your sleep to men in black capes. That you were through traveling on trains that had no place to sit in and no food to eat and you didn’t want to fly in airplanes that had no place to land and no luggage for you when you land there. That you wish you’d never came here and the only thing you really wanted was to pick up your wife and carry her to the airport and fly home and live happily ever after. That’s what I was hoping you would say, George."
Staring lovingly into his wife’s eyes and curt for the first time in the film, George responds, “That’s funny. That’s what I told’em. Word for word.” I couldn’t have said it better, myself.
- Cortland Rankin
