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Decoder Ring | The Boston Cinematic Universe
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About this episode
This episode is a first for Decoder Ring: a live show, recorded at the WBUR Festival in Boston, Massachusetts. Given the setting, we decided to take on a Boston-based cultural mystery: namely, the “Boston movie.” Beginning in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Hollywood has churned out a whole cycle of films drenched in Beantown’s particularities, crimes, crops, class conflicts, and accents, from The Departed to The Town . Why does a city smaller than El Paso or Jacksonville loom so large in the cinematic imagination? Why does Boston have a movie subgenre all its own? What makes a Boston movie a Boston movie? With the help of three guests—film critic Ty Burr ; Lisa Simmons, founder of the…