My Dubuque is Different From Your Dubuque
Happy Accidents (2000), starring Vincent D’Onofrio and Marisa Tomei, is another quirky romantic comedy in which Dubuque is a “running gag.” It’s similar to Sex in the City, but with a sci-fi twist, complete with cameo by 80s “nerd-of-choice” Anthony Michael Hall.
Neurotic New Yorker Tomei falls for Joe Cockeresque D’Onofrio, even though D’Onofrio insists he is a time traveler from the Dubuque of the future. Due to climate change, D’Onofrio informs Tomei, Dubuque will be located on the East Coast by 2470.
Writer/director Brad Anderson explains in the DVD commentary: “People in Iowa might not appreciate the joke about D’Onofrio being a Dubuquer, but it’s funny in Manhattan!”
An excerpt:
D’ONOFRIO:
Okay, look, I’ll say it. All right? I’m not from Dubuque.TOMEI:
Okay. You’re not from Dubuque. So where are you from then?D’ONOFRIO:
Dubuque.TOMEI:
[screams]D’ONOFRIO:
I’m not from Dubuque in the way you think.TOMEI:
How many ways are there?D’ONOFRIO:
I’m not from your Dubuque.TOMEI:
Since when is Dubuque mine? I’ve never been to Ohio!D’ONOFRIO:
Iowa.TOMEI:
Whatever.D’ONOFRIO:
I’m just saying that my Dubuque is different from your Dubuque.TOMEI:
How?D’ONOFRIO:
It doesn’t exist.TOMEI:
You just said it’s in Idaho.D’ONOFRIO:
Iowa!TOMEI:
So your Dubuque doesn’t exist?D’ONOFRIO:
Yet.TOMEI:
Yet!D’ONOFRIO:
Yet.TOMEI:
So when will your Dubuque exist?D’ONOFRIO:
2470 . . . AD . . . That’s in 471 years . . . from now.TOMEI:
471 years?D’ONOFRIO:
Not counting leap years.TOMEI:
. . .D’ONOFRIO:
See, when I say “my Dubuque,” I don’t mean the present Dubuque . . . which is your Dubuque. I mean the future Dubuque, which is where I’m from.
September 22, 2007 at 2:10 pm
Though born in Dubuque into an extended family that has been around there . . . well, almost from the beginning . . . I have lived off and on (mostly on) in Phoenix since 1958, when a Dubuque doctor dispatched my dad out here for the “dry desert air.” (It did seem to help.) In any case, over the years I’ve had ample opportunity to be asked about my hometown by various coworkers, professional colleagues, friends, etc. Oddly, in almost every case, they have heard of Dubuque, which is pretty good for a smallish Midwestern city of 57,000. It seems everyone knows about Dubuque, for whatever reason . . . and Peoria, Illinois, the place in which things may (or may not) play.
September 25, 2007 at 11:18 pm
Thanks, Joe. The purpose of the Dubuquer blog is to determine whether the mystique or meaning of Dubuque has greater resonance within popular culture than that of places like Peoria, Paducah, or Kalamazoo, and if it does, to develop a hypothesis as to why this might be the case. Any ideas, anyone?