The Only Living Boy In New York
At a friend's party, Thomas bumps into Johanna with yet another man. He calls her a hooker, but she explains her date is gay. He impulsively kisses her. An affair starts and Thomas begins to fall for Johanna. He tells her that since he was a child, he has aspired to be a writer, but Ethan told him that his essays were only 'serviceable'.
At one such soiree fronted by happening couple Ethan and Judith (Pierce Brosnan and Cynthia Nixon, silver and bronze), clever banter sails around the table like flying saucers. Judith laughs proudly at a particularly pithy sally produced by her son Tom, also an aspiring writer. Tom, the only living boy, etc., is having issues even though he is played by Callum Turner, who resembles Eddie Redmayne cross-bred with a young Richard Gere wearing the serious-minded spectacles that people of intellect are known to do, whether writers or not.
This drama is nicely written, but it's far from original. For one thing, the introduction of a mysterious character lamely foreshadows that character's importance. On the plus side, The Only Living Boy in New York deeply echoes the overall feel of Crossing Delancey, in which an aspiring young woman steeped in the literary world of New York bookstores and publishing also makes iffy choices in her complicated love life. And Mike Nichols' revered The Graduate reverberates in Thomas' aimlessness and his affair with an older woman. The Simon and Garfunkel theme song also nods at that earlier (and better) film. But unlike The Graduate, which at least suggested that its society's obsession with success and materialism was part of a larger social crisis, The Only Living Boy in New York dwells not on Thomas' advantages but on his petty concerns. There's no acknowledgment that the New York City allegedly lacking "soul" today probably does so mostly because it's only publishing house owners and successful novelists who can afford to live there. This obliviousness makes the story a little difficult to take seriously.
SUBSTANCE USE - We see a line drawing of an unconscious person with a syringe next to him on the ground, a man makes reference to the temperature it takes to cook heroin properly, a man says that the only thing missing in his adult son is an Opium habit, a man smokes a marijuana cigarette and shares it with a young man, a man makes reference to wine and Quaaludes, and a young woman refers to having been on Molly. Two men drink wine, a man drinks whiskey, a man drinks wine and whiskey in most scenes, people drink champagne at a wedding reception and at a company anniversary celebration, a man drinks whiskey and smokes a cigar on a bench outside an apartment, a woman smokes a cigarette and drinks whiskey in an apartment, and we hear song lyrics that include "Send out for whiskey, send out for gin." A man smokes cigars in a few scenes, a woman smokes a cigarette on a balcony, a woman smokes a cigarette in bed, and a young man says that his father can't get his mother to quit smoking.
So it doesn't matter that the firm has just brought on Yusuf as Of Counsel, Yusuf who was a partner at his last firm and is clearly only missing the title now because the higher-ups have to wait a bit to avoid ruffling feathers. It doesn't matter that he's heading up a case for big tobacco and his fucking sister won't speak to him because his father died of lung cancer. It doesn't matter that he doesn't bring in new clients, choosing instead to wrack up so many billable hours that half the other attorneys think he's a robot. It doesn't matter that he comes home every night to his empty apartment and his empty life and doesn't have the time or the energy to look for anything more--it doesn't matter that he has screaming fucking nightmares about dying alone amidst piles upon piles of legal paperwork.
This is the thing about Yusuf: Arthur should hate him. Arthur wants to hate him, actually. Yusuf is more experienced and more qualified and is clearly only Of Counsel because the firm d