Yuppies can satisfy their preoccupation with educated eccentrics and New York a la Woody Allen through actor-director Stanley Tucci’s tribute to Joe Gould, a man immortalized by writer Joseph Mitchell in The New Yorker back in the 1940s. After spotting a rumpled and almost penniless Gould emptying a bottle of ketchup into a bowl of soup, Mitchell inquired about the aging man. Discovering that the magna cum laude Harvard grad wandered New York’s Greenwich Village compiling The Oral History of Our Time, an unpublished tome he has forgone employment to write, living solely on the kindness of others, Mitchell wrote a short story, “Professor Seagull,” to add to his collection of strange character profiles. This began a 10-year relationship between the intellectuals, which culminated in Mitchell’s “Joe Gould’s Secret,” published after Gould’s death–an article considered by some critics to be one of the best character profiles ever written. If historical drama is not your bag, catch another Allen-esque flick, the film festival darling, Judy Berlin, also opening this weekend. See “Opening Friday” for theaters and times.
