Has anyone seen the brilliant new movie "Traffic" yet? There is a scene in which Michael Douglas' character (the US drug czar) wakes up to discover that his daughter has stolen many of the valuables in his house to feed her serious drug addiction. After his wife has taken a look around the house to see what is missing, she announces that the errant youngster has purloined not only her jewelry, but also her Leica!

Kind of a pointless post, I know, but it's just so rare that Leica surfaces in popular culture these days that I had to mention it :-)...

-- Buzz Andersen (buzz@scifihifi.com), January 14, 2001

Answers

It's often used a symbol of art photography as in Ally Sheedy's film "High Art" or Natalie Merchant's video "Carnival", in which the song takes the POV of a street shooter whose style is similar to William Klein'

-- david m. kelly (kellyco@teleport.com), January 14, 2001.

SLR Leica also was used in the movie RONIN. I saw TRAFFIC and frankly was not impressed. Yes you are correct, a Leica was stolen, but was porbably the the R8 since I could not see "her" character using a completely manual camera...didn't seem the type.

-- Don (maldos@home.com), January 14, 2001.

I noticed the reference too, and immediately thought of Ally Sheedy's character in High Art.

I think they wrote in a Leica to further underscore this family's relative wealth and class. After all, theirs was the story of the toney, uber-privileged class that was, of course, also a victim of the drug scene.

The nouveau-riche San Diego family didn't seem like a Leica family.

I would hope as a prospective Leica owner I won't have as bad luck as Sheedy's character or this family!

-- Tse-Sung Wu (tsesung@yahoo.com), January 14, 2001.

The brilliant new movie "Traffic" is a literal remake of the brilliant not-so-old TV serial "Traffik", which played on PBS in the early '90s.

The kid has hope-she knows the value of a Leica...

-- Mani Sitaraman (bindumani@pacific.net.sg), January 14, 2001.

There used to be about a year or more ago a fantastic commercial (in monochrome)on tv here in new zealand, for Heineken beer that featured a Magnum photographer (I think) using his M6. This ad ran for about a minute and showed our hero taking photos of his kid brother, Bosnia, some African country and oil fields. His motto was he tells us 'people wonder why I don't use long telephotos and I tell them "I just get closer". Some beautiful shots and a superb advertisement for Leica if not for Heineken.

-- matt veld (mahv@xtra.co.nz), January 15, 2001.

My posting above hasn't much to do with the original question. Got carried away I guess, sorry about that.

-- matt veld (mahv@xtra.co.nz), January 16, 2001.

What was the name of that art film, of about a year ago, in which a young woman living in near-poverty photographs a series for a magazine, of herlady-friend, with her M3?

-- Bob Fleischman (RFXMAIL@prodigy.net), January 18, 2001.

What was the name of that art film, of about a year ago, in which a young woman living in near-poverty photographs a series for a magazine, of herlady-friend, with her M3?

I think you might be referring to High Art with Ally Sheedy.

Was that an M3 she used? I thought it was an M6.

Her "lady friend" was indeed her lover. (To someone who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, nice euphenism did not go unnoticed!

;-)

-- Tse-Sung Wu (tsesung@yahoo.com), January 19, 2001.