It’s unfortunate that “The Rewrite” won’t be screening in Binghamton theaters this week, but the University did a good job of transforming the Anderson Center into the closest thing we’ll get to the Ziegfeld. It would have been enough to get just Marc Lawrence here, but the University also landed Hugh Grant and a handful of other actors from the movie for the premiere. Our biggest complaint is that we didn’t get to see Oscar-nominated J.K. Simmons, which isn’t such a big deal considering he was accepting a BAFTA (the British “Oscars”) at the time.
The movie will be on demand and on iTunes this weekend, and hopefully the movie’s distributor will book some local theaters soon. But on Sunday, the screening of “The Rewrite” was a Binghamton-centric cultural event of the variety that hasn’t been seen here in many years.
Lawrence, who graduated from this school in 1981, has returned to campus several times to speak to students. But this time, he’s immersed himself in the place by writing a script about it. “The Rewrite” is partly about a failed screenwriter falling in love with a character played by Marisa Tomei, but it’s also about Binghamton.
Binghamton, it can be said, is the third character in the movie. Professors get spiedies for lunch, Grant and Tomei’s characters fall in love at the Rec Park carousel. Lawrence clearly fell in love with this place, because he found something special in it. His love comes across onscreen. The school has changed a lot since 1981, but there’s a spirit here that doesn’t.
That spirit has lingered because there is something special about this place. For students, it’s removed from the hubbub of the world, it’s away from New York City. It’s where people can transform themselves and discover what matters while looking forward to that one sunny day when the seemingly ceaseless rain and snow come to a halt. There’s a culture distinct to this place. It’s the birthplace of the man who invented “The Twilight Zone” and of virtual reality; it’s where grilled cubes of meat can be put into an Italian roll and eaten as a delicacy.
Hugh Grant’s character’s experience in Binghamton isn’t so different from a lot of students’. He never really wanted to be here, but he had to come anyway because he didn’t have a lot of money. And then he found out that it’s a pretty cool place, after all.