Bennies in the film cede "to South Jersey some valuable territory in Monmouth County." Here http://tinyurl.com/5b29g7 <http://tinyurl.com/5b29g7> or below. You can comment at Steve's film blog. North Jersey or South? A Search for the Line By ROBERT STRAUSS, July 13, 2008 STEVE Chernoski grew up in Mercer County, as, he said, a confused boy.
"We got New York TV and Philadelphia TV. Some people rooted for the Giants and others for the Eagles," he said. "I really didn't know if I was South Jersey or North." Mr. Chernoski teaches at Millburn Middle School, clearly in North Jersey, but the 30-year-old filmmaker has decided that it is his mission to explore New Jersey <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/national/usstatesterritoriesandposse\ ssions/newjersey/index.html?inline=nyt-geo> 's bifurcation. To that end, he and a small film crew spent the last year putting together "New Jersey: The Movie," which considers the conundrum of what is up or down, north or south, in his home state. Mr. Chernoski is hoping that the film will have appeal beyond the Garden State. He has been showing it at film festivals and is working to get a distributor and to get it on television or into theaters by the fall. As small as New Jersey is, Mr. Chernoski said, there is a distinct sensibility determined by whether one lives north or south of a certain line. The problem is, he says, that line can be awfully vague at times. "Is it the old 609 or 201 area code line? Is it at the far northernmost Wawa convenience store? Is it where you can last buy Philadelphia Phillies baseball caps?" he said. "I felt it necessary to find out." In the film, Mr. Chernoski, who teaches leadership and technology, goes to experts and plebeian citizens alike for answers. He asks his subjects certain questions to determine their northern- or southernness. There is the "hoagie-sub" question: "Hoagie" is a South Jersey term for a sandwich on a long roll, while a sub is the North Jersey version. No self-respecting North Jersey resident would know the Philadelphia Eagles fight song, and no South Jersey fan would wear a Giants T-shirt. Wawa stores dot the South, while North Jersey folks get their caffeine at a 7-11. There is, of course, little agreement among those in the film about where the dividing line is drawn. Several North Jersey residents in the film put the line at the Driscoll Bridge on the Garden State Parkway, ceding to South Jersey some valuable territory in Monmouth County. Some South Jersey residents told the filmmaker that Southern New Jersey ends at Long Beach Island and Princeton, maybe even giving that university town to the north. In a scene set at a football tailgating session at Rutgers in the north by any standard "New Jersey: The Movie" tries to unite the two halves of the state under the state university banner. It works for a while, with some agreement, but then partisanship rears up and the Scarlet Knights <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/rut\ gers_the_state_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org> divide on their native geographical lines. Mr. Chernoski enlisted the assistance of two Philadelphia-based friends, Andrei Litvinov, the film's editor, and Alena Kruchkova, who served as director of photography, to help him with the technical aspects of the film, which he said has so far cost about $11,000, mostly out of his pocket. He has a blog and a place to leave comments on the film's Web site, www.newjerseythemovie.com <http://www.newjerseythemovie.com/> . For now, though, he is still collecting information, just in case. He was in Haddonfield and visited the home of Alfred Driscoll, one of the state's few governors from South Jersey, for whom the Driscoll Bridge was named. Mr. Chernoski is unsure of his feelings about Long Beach Island, which seems to have interchangeable hoagie and sub hangouts and gets TV reception from both New York and Philadelphia. But then, there was the time as a youth he wore a New Jersey Devils jersey a North Jersey affectation to a Phillies game and got razzed. New Jersey is still, as Ben Franklin wrote, a barrel tapped at both ends, he said. "I don't know how important it is to everyone, but it can bring up larger questions of identity," he said. "I hope the film makes people think." Or at least decide whether it is appropriate to wear a Mets cap to Wawa to pick up a hoagie.
