This is Not a Movie Review
Everything you need to know—as a Saratoga-phile—about Owen Wilson and his movie 'Paint.'
Since you’re reading this (you’re the best), you presumably live in/near Saratoga or have another reason to love our beloved small town. So I implore you: Go see the movie Paint. In the theater.
Seeing our town up there on the big screen…you’ve gotta do it.
I say this despite some bitterness about not being able to entice you all there with a big red carpet screening. I had visions. Big visions. I would fill the theater with locals who could ooh and aah (“Look—Spot Coffee!” “Wow—is that really Lucy’s?!”) together, after having their photo taken for the magazine on our red carpet with a giant blow-up of Paint star Owen Wilson’s Saratoga Living cover—and with local people who were in the movie or who owned a local business that was.
But our local AMC theater—you know, in the town where this flick was filmed—wasn’t even booked to show the thing until days before, and a few phone calls generated no interest or return calls. The lovely executive producer who was a big help while writing our cover story, Richard J. Bosner, hopefully suggested we do it in Albany instead.
No.
(If anyone from AMC is reading this, make events a thing. Saratoga Living has, and our events have been both a beautiful thing to bring people together and a way to bring in some extra money to help keep our local journalism efforts alive.)
I digress. Let’s shake that all off and go to “a special place” with Carl Nargle, Paint’s Bob Ross–like main character.
Let’s get this out of the way: The reviews haven’t been the greatest. Ignore them.
The movie is refreshingly less than two hours long, a slow, silly story of a washed-up TV painter who never left the ’70s, down to his enormous perm and free-lovin’ ways. As he drives through town in that annoying (to Saratogians; it’s hilarious in the movie) brown van that during filming represented closed-off streets and irritating traffic jams, out the window you’ll recognize every house and street corner and yes, Spot Coffee.
It is so fun!
When he tends to that perm of his, which he does often, his barbershop is actually Caroline Street bar Lucy’s, a personal fave.
Go see what they did with the place!
As Carl/Owen dates his way through the fictional PBS staff of women, he brings them to “The Cheesepot Depot,” which everyone here will instantly recognize as Olde Bryan Inn. Some of the funniest scenes are in what is undeniably Desperate Annie’s.
Just GO!
I wrote in my cover story on Owen that the whole town was clamoring for a sighting of the star, and during my interview with him read him some of the posts and described the memes from the then-modest What’s Going on Saratoga Facebook group. And yet, now the movie’s out and nary a peep. (Shout-out to Cathryn Quantic Thurston who posted yesterday—after I started writing this—encouraging people to go see it. As you’ll see below, she was one of my foursome who hit the theater over the weekend.)
The Facebook group that was once on fire with the excitement of Owen sightings has become more devoted to bitching and moaning about who knows what—hardly anything at all about this movie that was filmed in our town, the exclusive interview Owen gave our town, the small businesses that have fun stories to tell (keep reading for a few of them) about being in a movie starring our town.
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