The trailer for Meg Ryan’s directorial debut, Ithaca, is here, and serves as a reminder that (A) Meg Ryan is not hopeless, miserable, and dying, as some tabloids love to claim, (B) Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid have a 24-year-old son who acts, (C) Meg Ryan and John Mellencamp once dated, and (D) Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks are still friends.
The movie is set in a small town (Ithaca, NY?) during WW2, and follows... actually, here’s where I share the official synopsis, because the trailer does a crummy job of sharing what exactly this thing is about.
In 1942, Homer Macauley (Alex Neustaedter) is a boy determined to be the best and fastest bicycle telegraph messenger of his city. His older brother, Marcus (Jack Quaid), along with most of the young boys of the city, has gone to war, leaving the families worried. His father died recently and the boy has to take care of his widowed mother (Meg Ryan), his older sister and his 4-year-old brother. Homer becomes the only telegraph messenger of the city, delivering the letters that bring messages of love, wishes, pain and death, hoping that one of them announces the return of his brother.
John Mellencamp provided the music, which is a cute—if bittersweet—little fact that dates the film’s production, as he and Ryan broke up last summer. But, based on a recent interview (with Geena Davis!), they remain on good terms.
“The music is so beautiful. John Mellencamp wrote every note—everything—the tiny little needle drops you hear in the back. He wrote about half of it after I read him the script, and then the next half after he saw the movie. He’s just incredible.”
Now that’s the Meg Ryan movie I want to see. The one about an actress of a certain age who is mulling a directorial debut while exploring a new relationship with a former music star. She’s not sure if it will last or if it’s just a passing fling, but enjoys their evenings reading screenplays and playing little tunes on the guitar. It would be a nice little movie. Now that you’ve got this wannabe prestige film out of your system, make that one next. I think it’d be good, Meg.