Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/891583
A. 1927 Hoboken Ferry Terminal concept art by David Swayze in Photoshop. B. 1927 Promenade Theater, built on location in Crown Heights, NY. This location was the original Loehmann's department store. The film Wonderstruck is based on a novel by Brian Selznick that intertwines two stories from two different eras. The story of Rose in the late 1920s is told through drawings, and Ben's story from 1977 is told in words. Director Todd Haynes wanted to embrace those periods as their own styles, to look specifically at 1927 and 1977 and what they mean. The reason Brian chose 1927 for the earlier story is because it was the year talkies started, so for Rose, a deaf child, that meant when she went to see her mom in the movies, she was like everyone else and could share in the experience. I don't think she minded her uniqueness; she had a very strong sense of herself as a character and person. Her wayward mother was a silent-film star, and silent films were something special to her. When she comes out of a silent-movie theater and sees that sound equipment will be installed, her rage drives her off into the world of New York City. The city's skyline is Rose's obsession. She sits in a window at home in New Jersey not able to hear, staring across the river at a city beyond her reach, and she recreates it in miniature. That's how the audience meets her, building her dream world, and in the story she goes on to become the person who builds the panoramic model of New York City for the 1964 World's Fair. That's part one, in black and white. B A