Boson, Massachusetts (AFP) - After attending a midnight showing of the feature film "The Joker" starring Joaquin Phoenix Boson Mayor Marty Welsh sat down for a late night cup of coffee to talk about the movie with this reporter at Boson's downtown Starbucks.
"I don't go to many movies in theater's anymore," a relaxed Mayor Welsh said as he sat near the window watching the late night crowd stream out of the nearby cineplex. "We have Neflix and Hulu at home, and that's were I usually see movies. I like being able to pause a video to take an important phone call or go to the bathroom. I turned off my phone in the theater as the management asked. During the showing I kept reaching for the remote control before realizing that I was in a different world where I couldn't control the movie."
The mayor hardly touched his buttered croissant and pensively stirred the cup of coffee in front of him. "I'm going to be up all night drinking caffeine this late, or should I say this early," he laughed. "But at my age I sleep less and less. At city hall I always tell them I'll sleep when I'm dead."
The mayor looked out the window and I could see his reflection in the glass window. Mayor Welsh is usually a brash, some might say thoughtlessly impulsive man, but he looked pensive.
"I think this will be a long days journey into night," he turned to me and said in an uncharacteristically soft tone. "Or as they say in French, "Voyage au but de la nuit."
I had no idea the mayor understood, or could quote the French language. I quickly looked up the reference on my phone when the mayor went to the bathroom.
"Honestly," he sighed. "I had a tear come to my eye more than once as I watched the Joker character make his way through the nightmare that big cities can sometimes be. I may be the nominal leader of this city, in the highest elected office, but I can feel alienation, just like anyone else."
"When bad things happened in the film, like when the three Wall Street bankers attacked the Joker on the subway train. I flashed back to my own humiliation when I went to a very upper class boarding school for high school. I may come from one of the richest families in this town, but I was a nobody when I was in boarding school where everyone was wealthy. They never heard of Boson, Mass, and accused me of making it all up."
The mayor asked me if I had a cigarette. "But," I said, "didn't you quit smoking about ten years ago?"
"Yeah," he sighed. "But even now, when I have a lot on my mind and want to think I have the urge to smoke. I guess the coffee will do. I want another cup."
He got up and went to the counter as a few people waved to him and a murmur went through the line. "There's Marty Welsh, the mayor went to see the Joker."
A few people hissed as the conservative Republican who supports Trump is not a big favorite with some of the younger hipsters who attend midnight movies on a Friday night.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he said with a wave of resignation. "Hate me all you want. I'm the face of evil in the city. Pour you misery on me. I'm only happy when it rains."
He sat down with a thud in the chair and leaned back an opened his coat a little. He reached to his neck and unclipped the clip-on black tie he was wearing with his button down dress shirt. "What a farce. I'm in a dark movie theater and I'm still dressed for work playing my character 'The Mayor.'"
A young man with a girlfriend walked by. "You should be ashamed of yourself!" he said in a raised voice as heads turned in the order line.
"And I am," the mayor said. "Aren't we all?"
He turned to me and leaned in close and whispered. "I kept thinking during the movie, is this part a dream, or delusion, or caused by the Joker not taking his medication. It wasn't clear." He took a sip from his paper cup. "And, what does that say about real life. What parts are real? Are we all just actors in some kind of play that we are making up in our head?"
"We have so many conflicts in this city, in Massachusetts, across the country," he said.
"What is it all about? In the movie the Joker inadvertently starts a movement of crowds of people chanting "Kill the Rich." I oppose that kind of populism.
It's like something out of the French Revolution, or Shays Rebellion in Eastern Massachusetts right after the American Revolution. But... the sentiment is about regular people feeling that their lives matter and the upper class 'know-it-all' elitists are simply parasites who can only be controlled by being squashed. And...I'm modestly rich myself, just like our president, who I support. But...." he trailed off and I thought I saw a single tear on his cheek.
Just then Liberal Democrat City Council President Ema Strickland came through the door of the Starbucks with her lesbian partner. Mayor Welsh put his hand up to his face to hide. "Oh, goodness," he whispered, "Not tonight."
Councilor Strickland greeted people in the line as if she was running for mayor, which she is. As she scanned the room she spotted her nemesis Mayor Welsh.
"You should be ashamed of yourself!" she shouted. "What? Are you here to shoot the place up just like the Joker?
"Not tonight," the mayor said. "Not tonight."
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