PhilPaine.com

Cyra McFad­den’s odd­ball satire of life in Marin Coun­ty, an afflu­ent sub­urb north of San Fran­cis­co, dur­ing the late 1970’s, was made into a film in 1980. I showed this won­der­ful lit­tle piece of cul­tur­al time-trav­el to a young friend. Noth­ing could bet­ter show how much a cul­ture can trans­form in a gen­er­a­tion or two. For him, it was a voy­age to anoth­er plan­et, with incom­pre­hen­si­ble val­ues, cus­toms and jar­gon. Even for me, who was exposed to Marin coun­ty not too many years after­ward, the movie seemed bizarre. A lot of water has passed under the bridge. The film, star­ring Mar­tin Mull in the lead role of a mid­dle-aged hus­band over­whelmed by incom­pre­hen­si­ble trends and psy­chob­a­b­ble, cap­tured the ambiance per­fect­ly. McFad­den’s work was noth­ing like the scor­pi­on vicious­ness of a New York­er’s satirist— it was pure Stephen Leacock.