Agent Palmer

Until I became a self-sufficient consumer, there was only one movie I had ever watched on opening weekend. In fact, until I could buy my own tickets, it was the first film I’d seen within the first few weeks of release: Jurassic Park.

It was wet. It might have been raining when we arrived or at some point during the film or earlier in the day, but that’s how I remember it. What I know for sure is that I was 10 years old and going to the drive-in with my parents to see Jurassic Park on the big screen. That kind of memory sticks with you.

How proud are you of your home’s impact on film? Are you so proud of your city address that you’d write a book about your city and all the things that were filmed there?

Author Margo Donohue has done just that with her beloved Brooklyn. This isn’t just a list of movies, although it has that, too. It’s a history of film in Brooklyn which is not only rich in industry history, it’s basically the start of it all.

Are we as clean today as our parents were? As our grandparents? What about our great grandparents? Probably not. Are we healthier? I don’t know.

I can answer the first questions, though, because I just finished reading Suellen Hoy’s Chasing Dirt, which “is about us as a people, a people who developed and nurtured over a century and a half a love affair with cleanliness. This book is, in fact, the first general history of cleanliness in the United States.”