Advertisement
The commonwealth gets its closeup in 'Made in Massachusetts'
The commonwealth is ready for its closeup in “Made in Massachusetts,” a project from filmmakers Adam Roffman and Vatche Arabian that’s screening for free this Sunday, March 9 at the Somerville Theatre. It’s actually 192 closeups, to be exact. This sprawling, compulsively watchable collage chronicles 102 years of local moviemaking, offering quick snippets of nearly 200 films and television shows photographed in and around the Bay State over the past century and change, serving as a travelogue and a history lesson while showcasing the fine work of area production crews who keep the Massachusetts film industry thriving. If you think Boston moviemaking begins and ends with Afflecks and Wahlbergs, think again.
Did you know that seven years before Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder shot “The Crucible” at Plimoth Patuxet Museums, Richard E. Grant and Julian Sands had a magic duel to the death there in 1989’s “Warlock”? You might not remember that in 1994 Pat Morita beat the crap out of Michael Ironside in front of Boston Harbor in “The Next Karate Kid.” Or how about when John Cusack and Demi Moore jumped a speeding car onto the Woods Hole ferry in 1986’s “One Crazy Summer”? Everyone knows their favorite scenes from “Eddie Coyle,” “Hocus Pocus” and “The Town,” but do any of you recall an impossibly young Michelle Williams screaming at Christina Ricci about “an accidental blowjob” in the middle of Harvard Square during the misbegotten 2001 adaptation of “Prozac Nation”?
Beginning with “Down to the Sea in Ships,” a silent 1922 whaling drama shot in New Bedford, and ending with last year’s ignominious “Madame Web” taking a tumble off the Chelsea Street Bridge, “Made in Massachusetts” offers three hours and 45 minutes of local sights and sometimes surprising appearances by Hollywood movie stars on our neighborhood streets. (Yes, that’s Burt Reynolds as an undercover cop dressed as a nun on a Public Garden bench in 1972’s “Fuzz.”) With the film titles and shooting locations handily identified in the lower left corner of the screen, it’s an indispensable, chronological guide to Massachusetts motion picture history, something professional film workers Roffman and Arabian at first assumed would be of interest to insiders only.
The project was originally intended just as something for their union and Massachusetts film organizations to show at local industry events, “just to sort of celebrate and recognize all of the work that we've done here and what the people who came before us did,” Roffman said. “But when I went to Emerson, I remember a professor specifically telling the class that you have to move to L.A. after you graduate if you want to work in the industry. And I've never lived in L.A. and I've made a living in Boston for close to 30 years working on movies. So then we felt like this might be a great thing to show at local film schools so students would have the realization, ‘Oh, there's a s--- ton of movies that shoot here, I could actually stay in Boston and make a living here.’”
Roffman is a co-founder of the Independent Film Festival Boston and served as its program director from 2003 to 2013. He’s also worked as a set dresser on just about every big Massachusetts production from “The Departed” to “The Holdovers.” Arabian is a videographer and editor who co-hosts Boston Open Screen, the monthly open mic night for local filmmakers at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. Roffman explained, “I pitched this to Vatche by saying, ‘We're not going to make a single dime from the project. It's going to be an extremely huge time suck. You're going to be spending many, many days and hours on this and we're probably only going to show it to a very limited audience only in Massachusetts.’ He said, ‘Great, I’m in.’”
Starting out with former Boston Herald film critic Paul Sherman’s essential 2008 book “Big Screen Boston” as a guide, the two pulled clips from hundreds of titles — an early assembly edit ran five-and-a-half hours — while Roffman scoured the IMDB credits of “the oldest people in my union” to make sure all the area shoots were covered. Most of the rarer titles were researched through the Minuteman Library Network or its university counterpart, but they had to resort to eBay to find a VHS copy of the 1989 Bronson Pinchot-John Larroquette psychic buddy comedy “Second Sight,” an unwatchable mess with a pretty nifty car chase on Commonwealth Avenue. (Roffman claims he donated the tape to the library when they were done making the film. I’m not sure I believe him.)
Advertisement
“Good Will Hunting” arrives around the 90-minute mark, after which an explosion of Boston productions signals the arrival of the Hub as a big time Hollywood player. (Side effects include an unfortunate preponderance of Ryan Reynolds.) The sheer volume of locally shot titles means that sometimes the filmmakers had to play favorites to keep things under four hours, so those looking to see the splendor of the Burlington Mall on the big screen again might be disappointed. “We didn't forget ‘Paul Blart: Mall Cop.’ We chose not to put it in,” Roffman sighed. “Vatche continually threatens to slip it into the edit to see if I notice.”
Both were surprised when the Brattle Theatre’s Ned Hinkle first suggested screening “Made In Massachusetts” for the general moviegoing public last year, and they’ve been delighted by the enthusiastic crowd response. The 225-minute running time probably sounds daunting on paper but it’s a surprisingly breezy sit, and it’s not like you’re watching a narrative, so you can dip in and out as you please. “At every screening, I would say at least 90% of the audience stays for the whole thing and then wants to stick around and talk afterward,” said Roffman.
Editor Arabian thinks that’s because “every minute or two you are onto a different movie,” and these screenings can be boisterous events, with crowds laughing out loud at either local landmarks misidentified in films trying to pass Boston off as somewhere else, or gawking at appearances from now-famous young actors before they were stars. “There's all kinds of commentary going on in the theater, so it becomes a really fun crowd experience, and that's been gratifying to see.”
This critic personally found “Made in Massachusetts” to be an almost Proustian reverie, full of long gone places and half-remembered movies and shows. There’s Tony Curtis standing in front of the old Boston Garden during 1955’s “Six Bridges to Cross.” A couple of clips from TV’s “Spenser: For Hire” feature not just a pre-stardom Samuel L. Jackson but also Sullivan Stadium and the Combat Zone’s Pilgrim Theatre. I had a bit of a moment spotting a BayBank sign behind Liam Neeson and Diane Keaton as they exit the Cambridge Courthouse in 1988’s “The Good Mother,” directed by the West End’s own Leonard Nimoy. Neeson returned six years later with co-star Meryl Streep in Barbet Schroeder’s “Before and After,” visiting the Charles Street Jail before it became the Liberty Hotel.
“After our first screening, I saw someone online say, ‘Wow, they sure make a lot of bad movies in Massachusetts,’” Roffman laughed. “And first of all, you can say that about literally anywhere that films are made. Try Los Angeles. Or New York. Wherever movies are filmed, there will be more bad movies than good movies. There are more bad books than good books. That's just how it works.
“But you know, that's not what this project was about. It's about the work and all of these different artisans in different crafts whose skills are all coming together to make this film. If a movie doesn't have a good script, it's most likely not going to be a good movie. But there are going to be some incredible sets, incredible costumes, amazing shots and lighting, great stunts. All of this work goes into it, mostly done by locals here in Massachusetts.”
“Made in Massachusetts” screens for free on Sunday, March 9 at the Somerville Theatre. Donations are welcome and will benefit the Independent Film Festival Boston. Adam Roffman and Vatche Arabian will be in attendance for a Q&A following the screening.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified the location of the Chelsea Street Bridge. We regret the error.
This article was originally published on March 06, 2025.
