From Nessie and Piaf to Calcutta The Boston Film Festival celebrates its 20th BY BOSTON PHOENIX STAFF

Settling into middle age as it reaches 20, the Boston Film Festival seems to have forgone all ambition to emulate its peers in New York, Montreal, and Toronto. There’s no red carpet at the BFF, no juries of industry superstars and internationally recognized critics to hand out coveted prizes, and few celebrities worthy of being sighted. What we get instead is a sneak preview of some of the studios’ major fall offerings along with a few dark horses and the always intriguing packages of short films. All of which is not to be sniffed at: last year, Sue Brooks’s Japanese Story, Lone Scherfig’s Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself, Isabel Coixet’s My Life Without Me, Robert Altman’s The Company, Sylvain Chomet’s Les triplettes de Belleville, Errol Morris’s The Fog of War, and Billy Ray’s Shattered Glass screened at the festival. And this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award is going to Annette Bening, who’ll be in town on Monday to collect it at the first screening of her Being Julia. Here’s the line-up for the festival’s first week.

FRIDAY 10

***A Phoenix Pick***

INCIDENT AT LOCH NESS

Screenwriter Zak Penn has made a fortune writing screenplays for appliance-sized blockbusters like X2, but early in this problematic documentary, he says he wants to make a movie that will give him credibility. It might be the only true statement in the film. Ostensibly the account of Werner Herzog’s investigation into the crypto-zoological mystery of the title, Penn’s directorial debut meanders among genres, from a documentary about a traumatic film production like Burden of Dreams to a fraudumentary like The Blair Witch Project to a mockumentary like Waiting for Guffman. The tension among these competing approaches might provide the film’s greatest pleasure next to the great Herzog himself extolling "ecstatic truth" as embodied in one’s belief in Nessie and dismissing such side issues as globalization and whether the monster actually does exists as "television." You’ll smell a rat long before Herzog does; by the end, Incident is neither truth nor television but something in between. (94 minutes) Screens tonight at 7:15 and 9:45 p.m. and tomorrow at 3:30 p.m. at the Boston Common. Zak Penn will be present at tonight’s 7:15 p.m. show.

— Peter Keough

***A Phoenix Pick***

PRIMER

Shane Carruth’s tightly wound conundrum requires more than one viewing to follow, but I haven’t decided whether I’ll be accepting that invitation. For one thing, it’s not very easy on the eyes or the ears: set mostly in a garage and an industrial park, and edited with jarring jump cuts and ellipses, the dialogue overlapping à la Robert Altman, Primer doesn’t make the job of comprehension especially pleasant. A group of young entrepreneurial engineers are developing some new invention, but they aren’t sure what it is or what it does or what its application might be. Is it an anti-gravitational device? A fungus incubator? A time machine? Eventually, two of the team discover a function that affords them virtual omnipotence but with grave existential and metaphysical consequences. A Back to the Future without special effects or a Donnie Darko without innocence, Primer is the minimalist 2001 for the post–Bill Gates generation. (78 minutes) Screens tonight at 8 and 10 p.m. at the Boston Common. Shane Carruth will be present at the 8 p.m. show.

— Peter Keough

***A Phoenix Pick***

UNKNOWN SOLDIER

Without much in the way of dialogue, plot, or commentary, Ferenc Tóth’s accomplished debut follows the Job-like trials of Ellison (Carl Louis), a fresh-faced Harlem teenager of average means and prospects. He has a stable and resourceful girlfriend, a hardworking and understanding dad, a few raffish friends, and not much ambition beyond having enough pocket money to keep his girl entertained. But when his father dies suddenly of a heart attack, the city evicts him from his apartment, and Ellison finds himself first crashing with his diminishing network of friends, then checking into a shelter, and finally sleeping on the streets. He decides to cross the line and work for Ezekiel (Postell Pringle), the local gangsta whose black SUV appears at key moments like an angel of death. Tóth’s bleak, poignant portrayal of urban realities creates a contemporary counterpart to the great novel Invisible Man by his hero’s namesake, Ralph Ellison. His refusal to preach or sentimentalize gives conviction to the film’s fleeting moments of hope and lyricism. (78 minutes) Screens tonight at 7 and 9:30 p.m. and tomorrow at 1 and 3 p.m. at the Copley Place. Ferenc Tóth will be present at tonight’s 7 p.m. show.

— Peter Keough

SATURDAY 11

THE ALMOST GUYS

The Almost Guys is an almost movie, agreeable, largely forgettable, a decent debut for director/star Eric Fleming, but mostly a reminder of the class of septuagenarian actor Robert Culp. Fleming plays repo man Rick Murphy, a good guy but a negligent dad and a pitiful ex-husband. His luck and that of his doddering partner the Colonel (Culp) seem to change when they repossess a car with a kidnapped major-league baseball pitcher (James Edson) in the trunk. In a series of twists too tiresome to relate, Rick and the Colonel involve Rick’s neglected son in a scheme to collect a bundle from the pitcher’s team, which needs his services in the upcoming World Series. All this is the long way around the block so Rick can bond again with his young boy and learn lessons in perseverance, karma, and the dubious value of running gags (i.e., they don’t always get funnier with repetition). (98 minutes) Screens tonight at 7:15 and 9:45 p.m. and tomorrow at 4 p.m. at the Boston Common. Eric Fleming will be present at tonight’s 7:15 p.m. show.

— Peter Keough

EASTER EGG ESCAPADE

I’d be tempted to say that this rare festival foray into children’s animation lays an egg, but it offers a few agreeable tunes, some amusing poultry puns, and enough allusions to Dante’s Inferno to go over easy. Plus it boasts an impressive cast of voices. Local author John Michael Williams, who adapts his own children’s book of the same title and provides the music, must have some clout with Hollywood, since the credits mention Will Ferrell, Brooke Shields, and Joe Pantoliano (too bad they don’t say who voices whom). The story takes place in Egg Town, where bunnies and chickens live in harmony and every year manufacture the contents of the Easter baskets that, we presume, the Easter Bunny will deliver on Easter Sunday (it’s ambiguous). As in The Village, though, evildoers dwell outside, renegade chickens called the "Take Its" who steal the eggs. Will this state of affairs give "Boring Benedict Bunny" the chance to prove his mettle and win the heart of the spinster schoolmarm? As befits a non-religious film about Christianity’s most important holiday, self-sacrifice, redemption, and sung platitudes triumph. Too bad looking at the sub-par animation is like watching a painted Easter egg dry. Screens today at 1 p.m. and tomorrow at 2:15 p.m. at the Boston Common. Nancy Kerrigan and Joe Pantoliano will be present at today’s show.

— Peter Keough

EASY

I can’t remember hearing the word "slut" in this mildly amusing comedy about female discontent, but I think that’s the implication of the title. Unless it’s the attitude of first-time director Jane Weinstock toward the film’s tougher issues and emotions. Jamie (Marguerite Moreau) can’t say no to whatever jerk offers a semblance of love or security. Otherwise, she seems pretty well off with her career of naming oddball products (this gives the cast opportunities to wear funny headgear and play with toys) while accepting advice from her acupuncturist and her sister and some woman in a neck brace (for me, the film’s redeeming touch). Then along comes John (hunky Naveen Andrews), the sexy former teacher and very bad poet, and Mick (Brian F. O’Byrne), the vaguely creepy Irish guy from the comedy channel. Which one will win Jamie’s heart by allowing his to be won by her? Can she halt her self-destructive pattern of promiscuity and learn to trust someone? How does this relate to her mother’s suicide many years before? Easy is the kind of film that balances such matters with cute shots of copulating pet turtles and a subplot about a cheery lesbian mother. (99 minutes) Screens tonight at 7 p.m. and tomorrow at 2 p.m. at the Copley Place. Jane Weinstock will be present at tonight’s show.

— Peter Keough

PIAF . . . HER STORY . . . HER SONGS

Edith Piaf was the voice of France, the tiny singer in a black dress who mesmerized her audiences with the passion, pathos, and power of her songs. Raquel Bitton, who’s regarded as one of her best interpreters, channels the Parisian chanteuse in this live stage show that’s been turned into documentary directed by George Elder. Bitton intersperses songs with tales from the Sparrow’s harrowing life, from being abandoned by her mother, raised in a bordello by her grandmother, and performing on the street with her acrobat dad to being picked up to work in one of Paris’s swankest cabarets, becoming the highest-paid performer in the world, and dying destitute at 47. Footage from a luncheon with Piaf’s friends, family, loves, and composers at a bistro near her grave is woven throughout the film. Stories flow, and you might get the sense that there’s much from these conversations you don’t get to see. Although Bitton’s performances evoke the singer, additional footage of the people who knew Piaf in place of a song or two would’ve been more revealing. (94 minutes) Screens tonight at 7 and 9:30 p.m. and tomorrow at 3 and 5:30 p.m. at the Boston Common. Raquel Bitton will be present at tonight’s 7 p.m. show.

— Nina MacLaughlin

SEPTEMBER TAPES

Christian Johnston’s debut feature degrades both the memory of September 11 and the documentary form. As eight video tapes are purported to have been discovered on the Afghan/Pakistani border, the film records the attempt by a determined (as he keeps reminding us) journalist, Don Larson (George Calil), to hunt down Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice. The result is a kind of Rambo-esque computer game, with each tape requiring another level of skill as "Lars" and his cameraman and faithful, if anxious, translator Wali make contacts with bounty hunters and get closer to their quarry, ultimately swapping the camera for an AK-47 and some serious ass kicking. The point-of-view cinematography, shot apparently on location and in the hallucinatory style of Michael Winterbottom’s In This World, does not make up for the pseudo–Apocalypse Now voiceover narration or the bogus manipulation of grief, anger, and fear. (95 minutes) Screens tonight at 8:15 and 10:15 p.m. at the Copley Place. Christian Johnston will be present at the 8:15 p.m. show.

— Peter Keough

Z CHANNEL: A MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION

Does good taste in movies make up for murdering your wife? Jerry Harvey was programming director for the Z Channel, the legendary, pioneering LA cable station that in the early ’70s started to broadcast independent, foreign, and esoteric Hollywood films to an audience consisting largely of Hollywood cognoscenti and the powers that be. He chose films that formed the sensibilities of such auteurs as Quentin Tarantino, showcased new talent like James Toback, resurrected forgotten films like Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and salvaged director’s cuts of such mangled movies as Heaven’s Gate, Once upon a Time in America, and 1900. Director Alexandra Cassavetes (daughter of you-know-who) has put together an oral history from many of the above-mentioned as well as Harvey’s friends, colleagues, and lovers. (More interesting, perhaps, is who’s omitted: where are Bertolucci and Cimino?) She integrates all this with lengthy clips from Harvey’s favorite films and sizable digressions into the œuvre of Antonioni and the like. Instructive, perhaps, but not as compelling as what prompted Harvey to shoot his second wife in 1988 and then kill himself. Obsession gets to those events eventually, but I’d like to see another director’s cut of this film in which the subject is more Harvey’s madness than his mania. (121 minutes) Screens today at 2:30 and 5 p.m. at the Boston Common and Thursday September 16 at 7:15 and 9:45 p.m. at the Copley Place.

— Peter Keough

SUNDAY 12

***A Phoenix Pick***

BARBECUE PEOPLE

Neither the title nor the description invites much confidence: a comedy about the assorted revelers at a cookout celebrating Israeli Independence Day in 1988, the year of the first Palestinian Intifada. But Yossi Madmoni & David Ofek’s The Barbecue People is a comedy the way Pulp Fiction is, as the directors employ Tarantino’s mordant irony, not to mention his skewed structure. The film starts near the end and moves sideways, weaving together the stories of family members, the interrelated narratives connecting at key moments repeated from a new point of view. A Jewish Iraqi immigrant travels to New York to find a witness who can prove that he was a hero in the Zionist underground. His wife receives an overture from her distant past. His son in Manhattan gets deported when his slasher movie cuts too close to home. And his daughter debates whether to tell her parents she’s pregnant or just have an abortion. The film’s tone starts out bumptious, then grows more sinister, and the proceedings beguile even after the line of plausible coincidence is crossed. That may be because unlike Tarantino, the filmmakers root their world not in movie esoterica but in local color and clamor. There’s something reassuring about a movie in which the fates of its characters, and the nation at large, hinge on the price of meat. In Hebrew with English subtitles. (102 minutes) Screens today at 1:30, 4, and 7 p.m. at the Copley Place.

— Peter Keough

***A Phoenix Pick***

BORN INTO BROTHELS:CALCUTTA’S RED-LIGHT KIDS

A camera might not be able to redeem reality, but sometimes it can save the soul of the person snapping the picture. Photographer Zana Briski took the red-light district of Calcutta as a subject and lived there for a few years, getting to know the prostitutes and their families, several generations of prostitutes often living and working under one roof. The plight of the children touched her, and being at a loss for any other way to help them, she taught them her craft. In many cases, they responded with enthusiasm and genuine talent, and a handful of the brightest are profiled in this moving and inspiring documentary Briski directed with Ross Kauffman. As touching as it is to see a waif-like 10-year-old girl escape the fate of her mother and her grandmother and enter a prestigious boarding school, it’s more impressive to look at the beauty, pathos, and magic these kids with their cameras discover in their sordid surroundings. Although the film indulges at times in stylized, sitar-backed montages, Briski comes across as a compassionate artist and humanitarian. Screens tonight at 7 and 9:45 p.m. at the Boston Common. Zana Briski will be present at the 7 p.m. show.

— Peter Keough

GO FURTHER

Inspired by 1960s psychedelic missionaries the Merry Pranksters and their cross-country bus trip as immortalized in Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Woody Harrelson and some friends took a 1300-mile road trip dubbed the SOL (Simple Organic Living) tour in the summer of 2001. Traveling down the Pacific Coast in a "bio-fueled" bus and a procession of bicycles, the eco-minded group set out to introduce people not to LSD but to some "simple solutions" to many of the world’s environmental quandaries. Ron Mann’s documentary about the trip is an uneven account that briefly addresses the problems caused by profit-driven environmental politics but gets too caught up in the buffoonery of Steve the junk-food addict. Harrelson touches upon some thought-provoking ideas in his speeches at colleges along the way about the benefits of an organic diet, sustainable energy sources, and hemp as a viable and versatile resource. The film, however, fails to go far enough. (100 minutes) Screens tonight at 7:15 and 9:30 p.m. at the Boston Common. Woody Harrelson will be present at the 7:15 p.m. show.

— Will Spitz

SILVER CITY

Take all the stylistic flash and paranoid mumbo-jumbo from Jonathan Demme’s remake of The Manchurian Candidate and what remains might look like John Sayles’s film. Maybe it needs a little more flash and mumbo-jumbo, or at least a stronger leading man. Danny Huston is no Jack Nicholson as the gumshoe hired to look into the circumstances surrounding the dead body that surfaces while Colorado gubernatorial candidate Dickie Pilager (the name is not Sayles’s least subtle touch) is shooting a campaign ad. As in Chinatown, the investigation leads to a lethal conspiracy at the highest levels of power and even involves a Faye Dunaway–esque loose-cannon love interest (Daryl Hannah as Pilager’s black-sheep sister). But this being a John Sayles movie, the ultimate goal is a politically correct checklist of liberal causes. Too bad: Silver City looks as if it might be another Lone Star, one of Sayles’s best movies, and instead turns out more like City of Hope, one of his worst. It’s well worth seeing, however, for Chris Cooper’s brilliant rendering of Pilager as a Rocky Mountain George W. and Richard Dreyfuss’s reptilian turn as his Dick Cheney/Karl Rove–like campaign manager. (129 minutes) Screens tonight at 5 and 7:30 p.m. at the Copley Place.

— Peter Keough

MONDAY 13

BEING JULIA

W. Somerset Maugham’s pleasant, unpretentiously minor novel of the 1930s British stage, Theatre, has been transformed into an overwrought, extravagantly produced costume drama, with Annette Bening miscast in the title role. Hungarian filmmaker István Szabó and screenwriter Ronald Harwood can’t decide whether their film is a screwball comedy about the backstabbing vanity of actors (à la the Carole Lombard–starring Twentieth Century and To Be or Not To Be) or a touching, tender melodrama (a Bette Davis vehicle, perhaps) about a splendid actress losing herself as she fades into her 40s. The tone keeps shifting, and Bening can’t keep up, especially where she’s required to be brittle and funny. The story has London leading lady Julia Lambert, who’s been married forever to the handsome but passionless Michael (Jeremy Irons), falling hard, against her better judgment, for a young American who has little interest in serious romance. The distraught Julia plots revenge against this womanizer, and that sets up a hideous last act in which her devious, neurotic one-upmanship is cheered on by the manipulative filmmakers like Republican delegates stomping for George W. (105 minutes) Screens tonight at 7:30 p.m. and tomorrow at 5 p.m. at the Boston Common. Annette Bening and István Szabó will be present at tonight’s show.

— Gerald Peary

BRIGHT YOUNG THINGS

The vain task of adapting Evelyn Waugh’s satire Vile Bodies to the screen is here undertaken by the British comedian Stephen Fry, who did not have the courage to use the book’s title. This banalizing cowardice extends into all corners of the film: Fry changes one character’s name from "Lady Metroland" to "Lady Maitland." The "bright young things" were Waugh and his upper-class circle in 1920s London. Waugh’s book was not a nostalgic romp like Fry’s movie but a concise send-up of a dumb, doomed race. The novel is still timely: it charts the slide of a period of wealth and frivolity into one of depression and war. Fry’s movie is a merely a period piece, its characters rendered as screwballs. The young cast members, Mouseketeers doing Oscar Wilde, are unmemorable; the movie’s veterans (Dan Aykroyd, Stockard Channing, Peter O’Toole) are ineffective. The whole troupe seem possessed by the film’s spirit of niceness and prettification, a spirit, needless to say, alien to Waugh, just as Waugh’s chilled, outraged tone is alien to them. (106 minutes) Screens tonight at 5:30 and 7:15 p.m. at the Copley Place.

— A.S. Hamrah

***A Phoenix Pick***

OVERNIGHT

Halfway through this documentary of his rise and fall of enfant terrible filmmaker Troy Duffy, which is directed by his former colleagues Mark Brian Smith and Tony Montana, the local native says that Hollywood is like a big playground where the biggest bully gets everything. And who’s the biggest bully? Duffy thought it was him, but as it turned out he was more like Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. Moral of the story: don’t cross Harvey Weinstein. Weinstein’s Miramax Studio took Duffy, a bartender from an LA watering hole, and his first screenplay, The Boondock Saints, and gave him everything: he could direct the film, cast it, make the soundtrack with his band. Harvey even bought Duffy the bar he worked in. Duffy was a working-class hero, an overnight success, and the biggest, most foul-mouthed head case in Hollywood. In short order, he alienated Harvey, Hollywood, and his band mates. As for most viewers, they’ll be sick of him within the film’s first five minutes. Be that as it may, the long-suffering Smith and Montana have put together an abrasive and illuminating portrait of Hollywood and megalomania, kind of like Hearts of Darkness without the genius, or Some Kind of Monster without the therapy, or Spinal Tap without the laughs. (115 minutes) Screens tonight at 7 and 9:30 p.m. at the Boston Common. Mark Brian Smith and producer Tony Montana will be present at the 7 p.m. show.

— Peter Keough

TUESDAY 14

FINDING HOME

A young woman (Lisa Brenner) inherits a Maine B&B from her grandmother, but before she can sell it off for some quick cash, she makes the mistake of poking around and gets drawn into a search through the past that will no doubt justify the film’s title. Lawrence David Foldes wrote and directed; Louise Fletcher and Geneviève Bujold also star. (124 minutes) Screens tonight at 7 p.m. at the Boston Common. Lawrence David Foldes will be present.

— Peter Keough

SCHULTZE GETS THE BLUES

And not a moment too soon, as the provincial German retiree of the title shifts genres after a lifetime of playing polkas on his accordion. This bittersweet comedy from first-time director Michael Schorr has Foreign Language Film Oscar nomination written all over it. In German and English with English subtitles. (114 minutes) Screens tonight at 7 and 9:30 p.m. at the Copley Place.

— Peter Keough

***A Phoenix Pick***

THE WOODSMAN

Nicole Kassell’s work of quiet intensity stars Kevin Bacon as Walter, a pedophile recently released from prison. Once a talented furniture craftsman, Walter barely lands a menial job at a lumber yard. He’s friendless but for his brother-in-law (Benjamin Bratt), and his therapy sessions begin as monosyllabic expressions of careful boredom. Parole officer Lucas (a sharp Mos Def) shows up to harangue him; tough-talking co-worker Vicki (scrawnily delectable Kyra Sedgwick) seduces and then befriends him while the secretary he rebuffs checks into his sex-offender status. Inevitably, Walter backslides, with splashes of red smearing the blue-gray mise en scène. Kassell wrote the script with playwright Stephen Fechter, and The Woodsman is unstintingly cinematic for a theatrical adaptation, thanks to the director’s restraint and Xavier Pérez Grobet’s lean, tense photography. This film transcends histrionics as one of the planet’s finest actors makes his troubled but ultimately redeemable character come slowly, painfully alive. (87 minutes) Screens tonight at 7:45 and 10 p.m. at the Boston Common. Nicole Kassell will be present at the 7:45 p.m. show.

— Peg Aloi

WEDNESDAY 15

BLACK CLOUD

Actor Rick Schroder makes his directorial debut with this inspirational tale of a young Navajo (Nathaniel Arcand) who aspires to become an Olympic champion boxer. Screens tonight at 7:15 and 9:30 p.m. at the Boston Common.

— Peter Keough

THURSDAY 16

AMERICAN WAKE

The title of the film refers to the celebration held for those leaving the Ould Sod for America, never to return again. It also refers to a book of poems by Greg Delanty, and to judge from the excerpts that are read, they inspire some of the more pretentious and sentimental moments in local director Maureen Foley’s second feature. The film does best when it sticks to the simple business of character and setting, the latter filled by one of the most luminous and authentic depictions of Cambridge you’ll see on the screen. The characters too are genuine, with co-writer Billy Smith like a Boston-accented Ray Liotta as John, a former firefighter with a troubled past who falls for Noy, a Thai immigrant with a troubled present. Less convincing is the love story between the expected Irish immigrant, a talented fiddle player, and a waitress with more problems than the rest of the characters combined. Screens tonight at 8:15 p.m. at the Boston Common. Maureen Foley will be present.

— Peter Keough

GERMANY AND THE SECRET GENOCIDE

Told the world would not tolerate the murder of six million Jews, Hitler is said to have replied, "Who remembers the Armenian genocide?" J. Michael Hagopian’s documentary reveals that one reason the Turkish murder of millions remained secret was that German officers covered it up during World War I, and then many of the same officers participated in the Nazi genocide years later. Screens tonight at 6, 7:30, and 9 p.m. at the Copley Place.

— Peter Keough

GUERRILLA: THE TAKING OF PATTY HEARST

Thirty years ago, the kidnapping of pretty, young newspaper heiress Patty Hearst captivated the country and symbolized the struggle between radicals and the institutions they railed against. Here Robert Stone (whose documentary Radio Bikini was nominated for an Oscar in 1987) uses archival footage of the hysteria that surrounded Hearst’s kidnapping to tell the story of her captors, the Symbionese Liberation Army. Stone doesn’t interview Hearst, and neither does he detail the specifics of her kidnapping, the 19 months she spent with her captors, or her reasons for participating in their actions. He doesn’t sympathize with the SLA or condemn its conduct. Instead, he traces the roots, the development, and the downfall of the mini-movement. Former SLA members Russell Little and Michael Bortin provide inside information and analysis to complement the news clips. Those who don’t know the story will be drawn into the drama — especially gripping is the creepy timbre of Hearst’s voice as she communicates with her parents via taped statements — but are there enough new details to re-engage people old enough to remember those 552 days in 1974 and 1975? (90 minutes) Screens tonight at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. at the Boston Common.

— Deirdre Fulton

***A Phoenix Pick***

RACING AGAINST THE CLOCK

The Masters Championships feature athletes between the ages of 50 to 101 competing not so much against one another as against mortality. Local director Bill Haney’s unsentimental, unpretentious documentary might at first look like outtakes from Cocoon as septuagenarians pole-vault, put the shot, and run the 400 meters. As it enters the lives of five of the women participants, however, the novelty fades and the quiet nobility of their efforts takes over. Especially when two of these fiftysomething athletes boast abs that would be the envy of athletes 30 years younger. Each of the five has already overcome her share of hardships: two are refugees from post-war Germany, one is a sharecropper’s daughter, another a two-time cancer survivor. There can be only be one winner in the race against death, but the specter of the final finish line makes the running that much more beautiful. Screens tonight at 6 p.m. at the Boston Common. Bill Haney will be present.

— Peter Keough