Steve carell on aiSle five

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dispatch …Letter from Marshfield
Steve carell on
aisle five
For years, celebrities—like the guys from Aerosmith—have flocked to Marshfield to fade
into the idyll of this South Shore hamlet. But ever since Steve Carell bought the old general store,
the townsfolk have been in an uncharacteristic tizzy. By alyssa giacobbe
CELEBRITIES MIGHT BE, WITH
special thanks to Us Weekly for so
successfully working the phrase
into the American vernacular, just
like us. But they generally don’t
make the best of neighbors. In the
past few years, Leonardo DiCaprio,
Lindsay Lohan, Lauren Conrad,
and Rihanna, among others, have
been threatened with lawsuits or
injunctions by their unfamous
blockmates for such things as property damage, disturbing the peace,
bringing their overbearing MTV
camera crews home with them,
using other people’s front lawns as
parking lots, et cetera. That’s why
most small towns that manage to
successfully adjust to a celebrity
newcomer end up becoming magnets for other famous people. This
has been the story in Sun Valley,
Idaho, and Carmel, California,
the latter a city that once, in the
’80s, elected Clint Eastwood as
mayor. Dirty Harry served a single
term before the townsfolk realized
exactly what they’d done.
Closer to home, the South
Shore town of Marshfield, population 25,000, has developed a
reputation for being particularly
celebrity-friendly, a place where
regular people (“civilians” in
gossip mag–speak) and their more
fabulous brethren can coexist in
peace—a sort of Sun Valley of
the East. Most residents describe
Marshfield as an open, welcoming,
low-key town where celebrities are
treated no differently from anyone
72 boston august 2009
else. “Nobody’s starstruck,” says
Brad White, who’s lived there for
20 years. “We have so many fun,
vibrant, artsy people in general
that we just look at celebrities as a
regular part of our community.”
The more notable residents have
included Animal Planet host Jeff
Corwin, former Congressman Joe
Kennedy, defense attorney F. Lee
Bailey, NFL players Ryan Gibbons
and Sean Morey, a long list of writers and artists of moderate fame,
and three members of the band
Aerosmith, who for years have
been allowed to wander the streets
in skinny jeans, undisturbed.
If he so much
as urinated in a
stall at a restaurant, it became
an item of local
fascination. For
Carell, the feeling
is mutual: “I am
obsessed with the
people of Marshfield. I hope they
don’t feel weird
about that.”
And yet despite the seeming
lack of notice paid to such boldface
names, something different—
something quite un-Marshfieldian,
in fact—has marked the town’s
embrace of Steve Carell, its newest
celebrity. As a television and
movie actor, Carell plays characters so awkward they’re nearly
unwatchable, whether he’s making
off-color jokes as The Office’s
boobish Michael Scott, suffering
through a chest-hair wax in The
40-Year-Old Virgin, or Frenchkissing Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson in the Get Smart remake. In
} page 74
real life and onscreen,
illustration by heather burke
he’s unassuming and average-looking.
He’s the kind of guy who’d wear
Banana Republic corduroys to red
carpet events; his shirts are by Vineyard Vines. “I have no demons,”
Carell has said. “I’m as boring a person
as you’ll meet.”
And yet, the people of Marshfield
can’t get enough of him. In 2005,
the year The Office debuted on NBC,
Carell and his wife, Nancy Walls, an
actress raised in Cohasset, bought their
first place in Marshfield as a getaway
from the Los Angeles home they
share with their two young children.
The family was soon a local fixture
over holidays and summer weekends.
Instantly, Marshfield was transformed,
transfixed; Carell’s every move chronicled via word of mouth as he made
his way through the coastal town on
foot (he jogs) or by car (a Volvo SUV).
Internet chatter focused on banal
reports of Carell shopping for luggage
and shoes at the Pembroke Kohl’s,
sitting down to lunch at the Green
Harbor Lobster Pound, and playing
in the yard with his son. If he so much
as urinated in a stall at a Marshfield
restaurant, it became a matter of public
discourse. Everyone had a Steve Carell
story, even those who’d never met him,
which is most of the people in Marshfield. Yet rather than seek to avoid the
attention, Carell seemed to embrace
the town right back. He’s fully aware
that he’s an object of fixation, but
insists it’s not discomforting; in fact,
quite the opposite. “I am obsessed with
the people of Marshfield,” he says. “I
hope they don’t feel weird about that.”
The boldest manifestation of the
love affair came this past January,
when news broke that the 46-year-old
actor had bought the 156-year-old
Marshfield Hills General Store, a
faded yellow and white Colonialstyle storefront attached to the post
office on Prospect Street. Carell’s
$575,000 purchase got him not just an
800-square-foot space ripe for selling homemade muffins and assorted
knickknacks, but also the heightened
affection of his already adoring local
} page 76
fan base. (As one online
74 boston august 2009
commenter swooned, “Anyone can buy
stock...buying a ‘mom and pop’ store,
and hiring relatives to run it, makes it
so much more human.”) He put his
sister-in-law, 13-year Marshfielder
Tish Vivado, in charge of day-to-day
operations and seven employees.
The Marshfield Hills General
Store does what a general store should,
providing everything you’d need for
a picnic, power outage, or last-minute
hostess gift. There are things like
wineglass charms and cute games for
kids and pets, as well as prints by local
artist David Brega. Neighbors who
have chickens sell their eggs. Vivado
chooses what to stock, with input from
her brother-in-law boss, whose directives have included making the store
Visitors to the general store
may breeze past Aerosmith’s
Steven Tyler, as he hums to
himself on the front porch.
young, fun, and community-oriented.
“Steve has a lot of opinions,” Vivado
says. “He has many ideas for the direction the store could go in. He calls all
the time. He didn’t just buy it to not be
involved.” His first order of business
was a full-on (though by all accounts
tasteful) renovation, currently in
progress, meant to help preserve the
original structure.
Over the past few months, the store
has seen traffic from shoppers seeking
penny candy and a Steve Carell sighting. On the way in they may breeze
right past Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler,
who frequently can be seen tapping out
songs and humming to himself on the
front porch. Sometimes visitors come
in solely to ask if Carell is working.
“People have traveled from all over the
country,” not to mention from right
across town, says Vivado.
Which, of course, is the irony.
The general store, in historic terms, is
itself a symbol of the unchanging New
England small town. It’s meant to be
practical, unflashy, and basic. It is,
quite plainly, everything that celebrity
is not. The very act of a megastar’s
} page 78
getting involved with
76 boston august 2009
a general store—even with the best
intentions—changes its character in
some inevitable ways. For one, the
Marshfield Hills General Store is
undoubtedly more of a focal point in
town than it used to be. According
to the Marshfield Building Department, its renovations will cost around
$250,000; it has been name-checked in
Us Weekly; it is gaining a national notoriety that, at least in the eyes of some
residents, it neither needs nor wants.
there are nine villages within
Marshfield, and several have their
own general store—the Brant Rock
Market, the Green Harbor General
Store, and so on. Marshfield Hills,
whose self-declared nicknames include
both “The Hills” and “02051” (not
making this up), is known for being
the most steeped in history. The main
road of the village, Prospect Street,
was once the thoroughfare used by
Pilgrims traveling from Plymouth to
Boston, and equestrian types can still
be spotted clip-clopping their horses
up and down the street. Many houses
here are more than 200 years old.
According to Brad White, there
are over 4,000 dogs in Marshfield,
and he owns three of them. White also
loves his celebrity neighbors. “Every
year, Steven Tyler is one of my first
trick-or-treaters,” he says. “One year
he dressed like Elvis. Another year he
was just Steven. He likes candy, too.”
White describes the general store as
a place where people help each other,
like when someone needs a baby-sitter
or when someone dies. “I always say,
‘If you know one person, you know
3,000 at the general,’” he says.
As a kid growing up in Concord
and Acton, Carell would often go
with his parents to a general store in
Sudbury called Boker’s. Mr. Boker
stocked bins of penny candy, household staples, and simple toys, and
poured a good cup of coffee—or so
Carell’s parents said. There was a
single gas pump out front. “I have
always had such fond memories of that
store,” says Carell. “Sadly, while I was
} page 80
still a boy, Mr. Boker
78 boston august 2009
passed away, and the store closed.
The town lost something, and so did
our family.” And so when he learned
through Vivado that the Marshfield
Hills General Store was for sale, he
“jumped at the chance” to buy it.
“The place is a Marshfield landmark,”
he says. “A needed gathering spot. A
real sense of community lives here.
My wife and I thought that preserving such a place was important.”
Indeed, Carell is far more earnest and
sober-sounding than one might expect
of a comedian who once declared that
the key to great acting is performing
in underpants full of warm oatmeal.
He might be the most famous person
in town, but he’s quite possibly the
most normal, too.
Incidentally, the store didn’t
entirely need all the preserving Carell
had in mind. Previous owners Sherry
and Bob Bechtold had operated it for
seven years, and during that time renovated the property in the classic, oldfashioned general store model. When
It’s easy to imagine having
Carell over for burgers. Our
very own celebrity BFF. How
great would that be?
the Bechtolds put the building on the
market last fall, they hadn’t actually
intended to sell the business—just
the building, and Sherry planned to
continue managing the store—but the
offer that Carell made was contingent
on the owners’ releasing the entire
property. When the Bechtolds found
out who it was (and how much he
was offering), they vetted his intentions, and Sherry says the decision
was obvious. It didn’t make selling
any less difficult, though. “It was what
I did 24/7, and being in the center of
the world there, you know everybody
and everybody knows you,” she says,
more than once adding, “I’m still not
really over it.” She wistfully recounts
hearing a voice yelling up to her from
her front porch not long after the sale.
It was Steven Tyler, who’d been away.
“He wanted to see how I was doing,”
} page 82
she remembers.
80 boston august 2009
On a rainy Friday at the start of
summer, a trio of old men is perched
outside the entrance to the store.
They’ll be there again tomorrow, and
Sunday. It’s Memorial Day weekend,
and already the place is jam-packed
with tourists and their broods, busy
pawing the candy jars. Near the $5
greeting cards and cat collars and
lip gloss is a small display of Office
merchandise, including autographed
Dunder Mifflin hats and T-shirts.
“You can tell a real Office fan because
they know what this means,” says
Vivado, holding up an XXL tee that
reads “Shrute Farms Beets.” (At
Carell’s insistence, Vivado does not
charge extra for any items that he
autographs.)
Like most people, Vivado describes
her brother-in-law—her sister
Nancy’s husband—as a Mr. Everyman sort of guy. “He’s just a downto-earth, nice, nice person,” she says,
adding that many folks come into the
store expecting to run into Michael
Scott, Carell’s onscreen alter ego.
Though Carell is a famously adept adlibber (it’s a skill he picked up during
his stint on The Daily Show), there will
be no impromptu standup routines at
his general store. The burden placed
on comedians—more than with any
other kind of performer—is that we
expect them to be funny, and on, all
the time. No one’s waiting for Steven
Tyler to break into song in the middle
of a plateful of pancakes at Arthur &
Pat’s. With Carell, however, there is
the anticipation of being entertained
by a guy who’s seemingly too “nice” to
say no, too “normal” to mind, a circus
animal on a country stage. Maybe
that’s why the people of Marshfield
seem so interested in getting close.
Carell is so thoroughly approachable
that it’s easy to imagine having him
over for burgers. Our very own celebrity BFF. How great would that be?
in late june carell stopped in
to, as the locals tell it, stock shelves
and run the register, just as he’d
promised in a joking quote he gave
} page 84
to the Globe when he
82 boston august 2009
bought the place. Brad White wasn’t
there, but he heard about it, and
recounts the story as if it were his
own. “He’s such a fun guy,” he says
of Carell. “Gregarious. Low-key.”
Vivado confirms that Carell was in
town to check on the progress of the
renovation, but that, no, he wasn’t
stocking shelves. “It was totally
impromptu,” she says. “He shook
some hands. It was more of a quiet
reaction.” The aftermath, however,
was not so quiet. “People were in and
out, ‘We heard Steve was here!’” she
says. “One little kid spotted me in
front of the store as he was driving by
with his mother and made her slow
down so he could yell, ‘Hey, wait a
minute! Is Steve with you?’”
The truth is that Carell is not
often in Marshfield, and when he
does visit he’s not exactly parading
around town kissing babies or petting one of those 4,000 dogs, nor is
he manning the register or stocking
shelves. Still, that he spent much of
the summer filming a movie in New
York has given residents reason to
hope he’ll be around more. “I just
drove by his house about a month
ago,” admits Marshfield Chamber of
Commerce head Rich Roberts without a hint of embarrassment, “and I
thought, Is he home or not?”
And if he were? When it comes to
celebrities, an element of be-carefulwhat-you-wish-for is advisable. In
2002, for example, rapper Nelly
considered buying a Missouri town
and renaming it Nellyville. That’s
the thing about celebrities: They just
don’t know when to stop. Which, of
course, is generally why they became
famous in the first place.
But signs point to a different sort
of relationship with Carell. “How
many people who live in Plymouth
go out to Plymouth Rock?” says
Roberts. “There’s a lot of buzz, sure,
but Steve Carell buying the general
store has helped people go back and
remember, even in their own town,
what they have.” He’s talking about
the store, of course, but it really
n
doesn’t matter.
84 boston august 2009