Entertainment Weekly celebrates National Library Week by taking a look at 18 library scenes! Be sure to visit the entire list at http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20190897,00.html, but here are my favorite!
GHOSTBUSTERS (1984)
The New York Public Library’s ghost is not nearly as scary as the mess she leaves in her wake. Who’s going to re-shelve all those books and reassemble the scattered card catalog? Not the Ghostbusters, who run screaming from the nasty hag…and their responsibility to the Dewey Decimal system.
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (1991)
Nope, that’s not a library Belle visits in the beginning of the film. The local bookseller just lets her borrow because she’s probably the only person in that town who reads. As a young bibliophile, I nearly died seeing the library that the Beast gives to Belle. Books stacked so high it’s probably a hazard to even attempt to get them down. All girls should be so lucky.
PHILADELPHIA (1993)
Libraries are not always the perfect environments we would hope them to be. In one of the many heart-breaking scenes from Philadelphia, Tom Hanks’ character Andrew Beckett endures the suspicious and fearful stares of other library patrons and the librarian who helps find a book about AIDS discrimination. Witnessing the struggle, Joe Miller (Denzel Washington), who had previously declined to take Beckett’s case, agrees to the job.
Great post! I think Music Man is my favorite!