Decoder Ring | The Boston Cinematic Universe

Slate Culture

Slate Podcasts

Arts, Tv & Film, Music

4.4 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 June 2025

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode is a first for Decoder Ring: a live show, recorded at the WBUR Festival in Boston, Massachusetts. Given the setting, we decided to take on a Boston-based cultural mystery: namely, the “Boston movie.” Beginning in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Hollywood has churned out a whole cycle of films drenched in Beantown’s particularities, crimes, crops, class conflicts, and accents, from The Departed to The Town. Why does a city smaller than El Paso or Jacksonville loom so large in the cinematic imagination? Why does Boston have a movie subgenre all its own? What makes a Boston movie a Boston movie? With the help of three guests—film critic Ty Burr; Lisa Simmons, founder of the Roxbury International Film Festival; and Boston University linguist Danny Erker—we look closely at the history and heyday of the Boston movie: how The Friends of Eddie Coyle set the template, Good Will Hunting shoved the door wide open, and Mystic River ushered in an imperial phase. We discuss the importance of race and class to the Boston movie and the city itself, the role of homegrown movie stars like Ben Affleck and Mark Wahlberg, and, of course, the best and worst of Boston accents on film. This episode of Decoder Ring was produced by Willa Paskin and Max Freedman. Our team also includes Katie Shepherd and supervising producer Evan Chung. Merritt Jacob is Slate’s Technical Director. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at [email protected], or leave a message on our hotline at 347-460-7281. Films referenced in this episode: The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) Love Story (1970) The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) The Brink’s Job (1978) The Verdict (1982) Quiz Show (1994) Good Will Hunting (1997) Squeeze (1997) Monument Ave. (1998) The Boondock Saints (1999) Southie (1999) Lift (2001) Blue Hill Avenue (2001) Mystic River (2003) Fever Pitch (2005) The Departed (2006) Gone Baby Gone (2007) The Fighter (2010) The Town (2010) Ted (2012) Ted 2 (2015) Black Mass (2015) Spotlight (2015) Want more Decoder Ring? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock exclusive bonus episodes. Plus, you’ll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of the Decoder Ring show page. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, it's Willa.
0:01.8	And this episode is a first for decodering.
0:04.7	It's a live show.
0:06.2	At the end of May, we were invited to be part of the WBUR Festival in Boston.
0:11.1	WBUR is one of Boston's public radio stations, and it's celebrating its 75th anniversary.
0:16.4	We thought it would be fun to take the opportunity to explore a Boston-specific mystery, the result of which
0:22.9	is this episode about Boston movies. Warning that many of these movies contain a ton of cursing,
0:31.2	some of which you will be hearing very shortly. In other words, this episode contains explicit
0:36.7	language.
0:38.1	So please, enjoy.
0:40.2	Here's Decodering Live from the WBUR Festival in beautiful Boston, Massachusetts.
0:50.1	Hi, thank you so much for being here on this sunny, rainy day.
0:58.0	So Decodering's whole thing is that we crack cultural mysteries.
1:01.3	We take a cultural question, habit, or idea, try to figure out what it means and why it matters.
1:06.0	And given that we are here in Boston, we would thought we would take on a specifically Boston-based mystery,
1:12.7	which is we thought we would take on the mystery of the Boston movie. So when I say a Boston
1:17.7	movie, I don't mean a movie that just happens to be set in Boston, a movie that could just as
1:22.4	easily be set in New York or Chicago or Toronto. I'm talking about a movie drenched in Boston's particularities.
1:29.2	It's crimes.
1:30.2	It's cops.
1:31.4	It's class conflicts.
1:32.8	It's accents.
	...

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