No one need speak.
What we carry in our heads makes our hearts heavy.
Several of the people on the Tribune-Review Fall Broadway Trip took a subway down to the site of the former World Trade Center.
It isn't possible to get close. The street blocks leading up to the devastation area are cordoned off and guarded by police. Some areas are surrounded by high fencing, some of which is covered by canvas.
Mourning there is like trying to do so a block from a cemetery. The necessary distance is understandable in this case, if a bit frustrating.
In the distance, on a drizzly morning, the site continues to be hosed. All over Manhattan, and especially near Ground Zero, you find tributes to the fallen police officers and firefighters - photos, prayers, banners, flowers and notes of remembrance.
American flags are visible everywhere. T-shirts, caps, flags, pins and even jewelry address the nation's renewed sense of patriotism. Maybe the money paid for such trinkets goes to no one but the manufacturer and the appreciative salesman operating out of a tiny storefront that was there even before Sept. 11. Still, there's some satisfaction in having a remembrance of the shared grief and the spectacular effort to rescue and rebuild.
In Rockefeller Center, about three miles north in midtown Manhattan, the mammoth Christmas tree is decorated exclusively with red, white and blue lights. For the first time, the sight is not just uplifting, but touching as well.
Hotel and motel patronage is down dramatically, especially at places with a heavily international clientele. The ranks of hotel staffs were thinned in mid-September; more cuts are expected after New Year's. In some hotel departments, everyone has been kept on but is working a four-day week for 80 percent salary.
The cab driver who took me from the Crowne Plaza Hotel to LaGuardia Airport wore a turban and said "please" and "thank you" during our few early-morning exchanges.
As I left his cab at the airport, he slipped a brochure into my hand and asked me to read it later. It pictures Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh American who was shot and killed Sept. 15 "as a result of mistaken identity."
"Throughout America," the brochure explains, "the only people who wear turbans are followers of the Sikh religion. Sikhs are from Northern India (Punjab) and are neither Hindus nor Muslims.
"The Sikh religion is monotheistic, stressing belief in one supreme God, free of gender, absolute, all pervading and eternal. Equality of men and women is an important virtue."
BROADWAY SHOW RANKINGS
Neil Simon's "45 Seconds From Broadway" fared better, ranking third, drawing a mixed response and a consensus that it's second-drawer Simon.
The two effusively cheerful musicals, "Mamma Mia!" and the revival of "42nd Street," won over almost everyone. I expected the vote to be close on which was the favorite, but "Mamma Mia!" won handily.
NEW NAME, FILMS, PRICES
The day before Thanksgiving, the longtime eight-screen bargain house changed its name to Northway Mall Cinemas and inaugurated a first-run policy.
National Amusements of Massachusetts, which owns and operates the 10-screen Showcase East, the
12-screen Showcase West and the 11-screen Showcase North, had been using Super Saver as a "subrun" or "moveover" house for pictures that played first run at Showcase North.
Every time one or more new movies opened at Showcase North, the films that were bumped out traveled south on McKnight Road to Super Saver for an extended life at a lower price, which over the years crept up to $3.25.
Now, both multiplexes are first-run, and National Amusements is dividing the weekly largess of new films between them. More movies will open with multiple prints (there were four at North for "Harry Potter"), and more will stay longer, but at full price - $8 after 6 p.m.
New seats were installed in all auditoriums even before the changeover.
WRONG "KID" TO BE RIGHTED
Charlie Tavesh, the Atlanta-based vice president of TCM, says it was "absolutely a mistake that we showed the wrong version."
He explained that TBS and TNT, which run commercials and are the sister stations of commercial-free TCM, do use edited versions of some pictures, particular of newer movies that have elements some viewers might find objectionable.
"We at TCM never intentionally show a film edited. Maybe once a year one slips through."
He says that in the case of a movie that might spark a reaction, it is run only after 10 p.m. or even only after midnight, depending on content.
The print of "The Cincinnati Kid" that slipped into use on TCM was the one normally run on TBS and TNT, a situation he says will be corrected when it next appears on TCM at 4 p.m. Jan. 13.
