#ThrowbackThursday: Princeton in the Movies

The list of fictional Princetonians adds another famous face this week with the release of Runner, Runner, a movie that stars Justin Timberlake as graduate student Richie Furst. After the dean (Bob Gunton, who played the warden in The Shawshank Redemption) reprimands Furst for his gambling habit, he makes a final wager to raise money for his tuition, loses it all, and flies to Costa Rica to confront the man he suspects of cheating him out of the money (played by Ben Affleck).

In honor of Furst and the many faux-alumni who came before him — Bruce Wayne, Osbourne Cox, Mary Matthews, and Joe Cable, to name a few — we present PAW’s Feb. 28, 1977, cover. The khaki-clad, long-haired Princeton primate paleontologist Jack Prescott (Jeff Bridges) stands before his vanquished foe in a still from the 1976 production of King Kong. “No matter that Princeton doesn’t have a department of primate paleontology,” Alexander Wolff ’79 wrote in the cover story. “… Princetonians can take Prescott’s characterization in stride; at Hollywood’s hands they have suffered much worse.”

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