Clint Eastwood has just done it again: dished Philly, that is.
"Letters from Iwo Jima," Clint Eastwood's new movie that the New York Times hailed as the best movie released by a major studio this year, fully the equal of "Million Dollar Baby," opened in New York and other cities on Dec. 20. By which hangs a tale. Eastwood's new movie still hasn't opened here.
Anywhere.
Not anywhere in the Delaware Valley. Philly isn't an "opening night" town any more. Nor is Philadelphia a place, as it was for decades, for new plays and musicals to be "tried out" before they opened on Broadway. Diana Krall, perhaps the leading female jazz singer in the country today, made a national tour in 2004, tied into the release of her new album. She didn't perform here. This is, unfortunately for us, part of a pattern. In so many ways, we are not on the national radar screen. If you tune into CNN's "Business Traveler" report on weekday mornings to check weather and airport conditions around the country, Philadelphia is not even on the list as a destination for business travelers.
At all.
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The first step in the process of rediscovering Philadelphia would be to fire the entire marketing department. Seriously. How many millions of tax dollars where spent on a the marketing firm who developed the slogan "Philadelphia - The City That Loves You Back"? As a citizen of Philadelphia, I demand a refund!
The identity problem afflicting Philadelphia stems from being between located between NYC and DC. Philly is the kid sister to NYC, you know the one who constantly tries to immitate her big sister and fails miserably. Philly's own Carpenter Hall may have given rise to the political machinery of our Republic, but it has since moved on to DC. In trying to imitate NYC and DC, Philly has forgotten who she is: A cosmopolitan ciy that has not lost its Old World soul.
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