I have a generic subclass of Backbone.View which has a close event listener.
Backbone.View
close
var GenericView = Backbone.View.extend({ events
You may find this useful: http://kalimotxocoding.blogspot.com/2011/03/playing-with-backbonejs-views.html
Seconds what I mentioned about _.extend(...) and what you currently have...
_.extend(...)