the ambient soundtrack of "Rear Window," except with more traffic noise and... children! Lots of children! I don't have an issue with the children, who are preternaturally wholesome. They are outdoors. They have skateboards and jumpropes and chalk. One of them has a kazoo tonight. I ask you, did you think that any modern child would have the wherewithall to figure out a kazoo? 18 levels of your hardest video game, yes, but I would have forecast that they'd all be stumped by a kazoo. Not only that, he seems to be enjoying it. It's all so very '50's. I feel like I live in the set of "Rear Window," except that not one of my neighbors resembles Raymond Burr.
None of them really fill the role of the loony sculptress, either. Which I think is odd. You would think that Brooklyn would be liberally sprinkled with loony sculptresses. My neighbor does have a canary, but it just doesn't have the same impact without the loony sculptress.
No, my question was, where were the children in "Rear Window"? Were the apartments in Jimmy Stewart's little community just too damn small? I remember a lot of studios, but the salesman had a railroad apartment, and I'd wager that some fairly affluent children are, even now, growing up in smaller homes somewhere in this city.
At this point, my practical accounting mind intervenes and decides that children were probably a Big Hassle. Child labor laws and that sort of thing. I know Hitch worked with kids in other movies, where they were bona fide characters, but I bet if you don't need a kid in your movie it's wiser not to have any. Still, it's odd, because the neighborhood is practically its own character in "Rear Window." What, they couldn't get a kid to skip rope when Thelma Ritter ran to get the name off the moving van? I think I may have to watch that movie again.
Fear not, sometime soon my furniture will arrive and I will have something to do besides look out the window. Although I've already missed the first episode of "Hell's Kitchen," which Fox is heartlessly failing to broadcast on MySpace. Losers.
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I miss the sounds of the city outside my open window on late nights. Yes, even the car alarms at some point (as long as they were far enough away) were comforting. Hearing a whole lot of nothing in suburbia can be depressing. Not that I live there anymore, thank God.
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