Have you seen the 2014 movie Annie? It’s the story of a young girl who is the foster child of a rich man, Will Stacks, who takes her in to improve his image as he runs for the office of mayor of New York City. You probably know that the movie is a freshened up version of a movie from 1982 as well as a Broadway musical. You might even know that Annie was also the subject of a comic strip.
But you might not know that the movie from 2014, starring Quvenzhané Wallis and Jamie Foxx, contains a reference to one of the worst natural disasters New York City has ever seen.
It was 14 years ago this week that Superstorm Sandy made landfall in the United States. Sandy was a huge tropical cyclone that devastated the Caribbean in October 2012, causing death and damage in Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and other places before heading toward the East Coast of the United States. States and the federal government began to prepare, with flights cancelled and President Barack Obama signing emergency declarations for the states they expected to be affected. Governors of those states also declared a state of emergency, and many residents began to evacuate.
The storm slammed the East Coast and affected 24 states before it was done. New York City itself experienced flooding and other damage, and the New York City Marathon, originally scheduled for early November, was cancelled. So perhaps it’s no surprise that two years later, a couple of New Yorker movie characters referenced the event.
In the movie, Will Stacks decides to adopt a dog for Annie as part of his quest to look more approachable for voters. As the two stand in front of the press, the dog Annie chose chases her own tail. A reporter asks Annie, “What are you gonna name it?” Will looks at the dog and comments it’s “like a hurricane,” and Annie replies, “Sandy. Her name’s gonna be Sandy.”
Annie as a character had always had a dog named Sandy. The real reason for the name was the dog’s sandy color, but the 2014 movie gave new meaning to the name and made it more relevant for a modern audience.
