"My Blue Heaven" Memories

Another film from the Great Salvage of Citrus Heights Action, where I liberated a pile of DVDs that my brother was about to free himself of, is My Blue Heaven, the Steve Martin and Rick Moranis buddy flick from 1990. Rick Moranis plays an FBI agent protecting Steve Martin's character, a mobster stoolie who has a difficult time going straight, in a story inspired by Henry Hill's book Wiseguy, which makes it kinda like an illegitimate brother of Goodfellas.

Strangely, Steve Martin was originally going to play the straight-laced Barney Coopersmith, the special agent, and Rick Moranis was going to play the gangster in the Witness Relocation Program. If you have seen the movie, try imaging that.

In any case, I remember catching a scene on TV while living in San Luis Obispo, and saw the grocery store we went to regularly. Upon doing some research, I learned that the film was filmed in San Luis and nearby Atascadero, while minor scenes were shot in recognizable areas of San Diego, where the film took place.

Enjoying it as a kid propelled my to choose it as one of the films I liberated during the Salvage, as well as wanting to watch it from the start knowing where it was filmed.

The use of still frames with plot movement (words that explain what's going on) reminded me initially of Pynchon, since the first one starts "In which I...". That's how sections start in Pynchon's V.

In the opening five minutes of the film, we see the house the feds have moved the gangster Vinnie and his wife, Linda, into, and it's the last house in a line of developments that, to me and others familiar with the area, is obviously Atascadero. In a later scene Barney (Moranis) tells his superior "He's living in the middle of nowhere; he's safe."

After the movie I joked with Corrie about that "middle of nowhere" quote, and she laughed and said, "It's still the middle of nowhere." To many degrees, she's right. In the grand scheme of California population centers, Atascadero isn't quite Firebaugh or Coalinga, but it's pretty much out there.

It was cool seeing Bishop's Peak in the background of certain scenes, as well as the Fremont Theater.

It was also refreshing to realize that the movie didn't age so poorly, and retains some of the humor I remember as a kid.