Somewhere in Queens there is a ...

NYC The Movie Star

This blog has chronicled how NYC and the movies go together like salt and pepper, oil and vinegar, pancakes and syrup -- you get the idea. The most amazing of all cities, the most visually arresting and culturally dynamic and humanly diverse of all places, has easily and magically fit with the most advanced and dynamic of all art forms from the very beginning. 

NYC and the movies are a match made in heaven, a perennial happy marriage.

In whatever movie is set in NYC, the city serves as both backdrop and star. It supports and defines the plot, the characters, the entire raison d'etre for whatever movies it's in. 

This massive article explores the always romantic role NYC plays in the movies -- a role that is sometimes dark, sometimes lighthearted, sometimes mysterious -- along with amazing behind the scenes pictures of movies being shot here over the decades. 

And with cinematic production in NYC booming, expect this love affair to continue forever and for this big movie star never to dim.

Greta at the United Nations

Welcome to NYC, Lebeau

Last year I interviewed the great entertainment blogger Lebeau of Lebeau's Le Blog.

Little did I know then that Mr. Lebeau had never been to NYC before but, recently, he made his first trip to our fair city and, as always, he blogged about it brilliantly. Read it about here! 

They Made the City a Better Place

Apologies if you are starting to think that Mr NYC is turning into some kind of extended obituary page but recently two New Yorkers died who certainly merit recognition -- two New Yorkers who made this city a better place.

The first is a woman named Betty Corwin who, almost 50 years ago, came up a with a simple and brilliant idea -- record Broadway shows and put them into a catalogue at the New York Public Library. She spearheaded this program and ran it for years. Generations of theater fans and professionals were then able to go to the library and watch shows they would otherwise never had seen -- the lightening in a bottle that is great theater, captured forever thanks to her. Rest in peace.

The second is a man named John L. Keenan, a former soldier and NYPD police detective. If you made a movie about this guy's life (someone should) it would be easy to sell: he landed at Normandy as part of the D-Day invasion back in 1944, he was a lifelong buddy of JD Salinger's (fellow D-Day survivor), and then, in 1977, he caught Son of Sam -- he actually made the guy confess! What a life! What a legacy! 

De Blasio Drops Out

Wallis Simpson in NYC 1974

When I hooked up with my wife I made a great sacrifice -- I moved to Queens. I literally crossed a bridge (the Triborough to be exact) to be with my lady love. 

Into Queens for a Queen, you might say. Never regretted it.

All guys do this -- make some kind of sacrifice to get with dames classier than they are (and my wife is WAY classier than me, like that's a surprise). But no one made a greater sacrifice for love than King Edward VIII who renounced the British Imperial throne in 1936 to marry the woman he loved, American divorcee Wallis Simpson. (As King, he was the head of the Church of England and the head of the church couldn't be divorced or married to a divorced woman back then). This guy gave up a crown, gave up a job he'd spent his whole life preparing for, gave up living in palaces and castles, gave up being a world leader, gave up the literal family jewels, gave up ruling an empire that spanned a quarter of the globe -- for a chick!

Even now, 80+ years later, it boggles the mind that someone would do such a thing. Imagine being a KING, a literal real-life KING, ruling an EMPIRE, the BIGGEST EMPIRE IN HISTORY -- and giving it all up, walking away from it all, vacating your destiny, abandoning everything you have including your family, for, you know ... some dame.

I guess I'm just not enough of a romantic to understand it (don't tell my wife). Almost a century later, it still boggles the collective mind that something like that happened.

Edward VIII died in 1972. He and Wallis lived in exile in France for the last 20 years of his life. But in 1974, Wallis made one of her final visits to the United States when she came to NYC. Even almost 40 years after the abdication and Edward's death, she still fascinated the media and the public at large who would besiege her whenever she came back to her homeland.

What was it about Wallis, what magic did she wield, what sorcery did she exercise, what qualities did she possess, that made a King renounce his Kingdom in order to "hook up" with her?

Let's face it -- she wasn't some great beauty. And, from everything I've read, she wasn't some kind of stunning intellect or even a particularly nice person. Her earthly charms seem elusive.

So what was it then?

Pre-verts have speculated that she had some kind of other-worldly carnal power over the King (you know, she gave great "luvin'" and knew "tricks") but this doesn't really wash. Prior to meeting her, the King (then Prince of Wales) had been with lots and lots of women so that probably wasn't it. My theory -- she was like the mother he never had. Edward's own mother was a monster so, instead of truly loving Wallis, she instead filled an emotional void he'd carried around his entire life. And, for that, beacuse of these mommey issues, this not particularly beautiful or interesting woman rocked an empire to the core and changed the course of world history.

When Wallis came to NYC in 1974 she was an elderly widow simply visiting friends and doing some shopping. She could have been and was, in many ways, just about anyone. At this moment, the Watergate scandal was raging and a presidential resignation -- much like the abdication, something that had previously been thought of as unthinkable -- was on the horizon. And yet the fascination with Wallis and her role in history remained unabated even then -- and even today, more than 30 years after her death.

Elizabeth Warren Rocks NYC

Eddie Money RIP

As a kid in the 1980s, listening to the now-gone radio station WPLJ, I loved the songs of Eddie Money. 

The child of an NYPD family from Brooklyn, Money went his own way, breaking into the music biz and moving to California, then turning out a string of big hit songs like "Think I'm in Love," "Two Tickets to Paradise", "I Wanna Go Back" and -- my two favorites -- "Walk on Water" and "Take Me Home Tonight."

These were rousing, musically dense, and heart-wrenching songs. Money's voice was full of longing, anguish, love, and determination. He was a crooner, a balladeer, the kind of popular singer who don't really have today but was big once upon a time. After a run of huge success, Money's fame receded but he kept touring, kept performing, and even appeared earlier this year on the new Netflix show "The Kominsky Method." 

Eddie Money died today from cancer at the age of 70. I couldn't find out much about his life since it appears that he was married to the same woman for 30 years, had 5 kids, and never got arrested or sued or into some big accident. He seems to have lived a stunningly normal life for someone who was such a talented singer and big star. But he was part of my childhood that is sadly gone and, both as a son of NYC and a singer, he'll be missed. 

Take your ticket to paradise, Eddie. You earned it. 

NYC 2019 Timelapse

Remembering Windows on the World

Today is the 18th anniversary of the 9/11/2001 attacks and, as always, solemness reigns. The names of those killed are published and read out, tributes are paid to the first responders who saved lives and recovered bodies and cleared the massive debris, and people are forced to reflect  on how NYC, the country, the world, and the course of history was forever altered.

And in remembering 9/11, particularly nearly two decades on, it helps to remember the tangential casualties, the places and things that ceased to exist in the wake of nearly 3000 deaths. 

One of them was Windows of the World, the fashionable restaurant at the top of the towers.

On 9/10 it was thriving and on 9/11 it was gone, vaporized into history. Windows on the World, or WOW, was a popular and famous eatery where the food was secondary to the experience of dining a quarter mile into the sky, the entire city at its patrons feet. WOW was actually the highest grossing restaurant in the country until 9/11, and people clamored to take the long, head rushing elevator trip to eat overpriced food against an amazing view. As I recounted once before, I went to a party there once and the food was forgettable but the views were memorable. This was about two years before the tragedy and, in the years afterward, I couldn't believe that a place where I had once been was now totally and violently erased. 

This article recounts the story of WOW, it's beginning and its sudden end. Interestingly, WOW didn't open until 1976, about three or four years after the World Trade Centers opened. It was created, in part, to generate visitors and business to the towers. It worked -- big time. Amongst the tragedies, WOW was planning to celebrate its 25th anniversary in October, 2001 -- an anniversary that never happened, along with all the almost 3000 birthdays and life milestones that were also extinguished that day. 

It might be easy to say, "Well, who really cares about a restaurant?" when so many people died . But it's important to remember that some of the people who died worked and ate at WOW. Also, WOW wasn't just a business but a community of employees and patrons -- people loved going there and people loved working there. It was a unique place and a unique experience, one that can never quite be replicated -- just the like the World Trade Centers, just like NYC before 9/11/2001, and just like the past itself. 

Classic Mr NYC

Once upon a time, as social media was becoming more and more prevalent in our lives, the concept of "crashing" -- people invading events they weren't invited to, then posting these escapades online in order to get clicks, attention, media coverage -- seemed to be a hot topic. A weird couple had crashed a White House state dinner, then posted their pictures of it on Facebook -- and all hell broke loose.

Well, like many things, what once seemed outrageous today now seems normal.

People are always crashing and disrupting events, then putting it on social media -- and no one really cares. It happens all the time. It's boring. But in 2010, I wrote what I thought was one of this blog's better posts about the topic of "crashing", it was still somewhat novel.

To me, people who "crash" are pathetic. As I said in the post, why go somewhere you aren't wanted only to look like the very kind of desperate, pathetic loser that would naturally not get invited to such events? Why announce to the world, "I'm an outcast! No one likes me!" Do people think they're going to win sympathy from people doing this? They just look like jerks.    

Gillibrand Drops Out

The Passing of Giants

In the last couple of weeks, two giants of NYC passed on -- the radio DJ Paco Navarro and the midtown movie theater The Paris.

Both defined an NYC that, as always, is vanishing.

So who was Paco?

He was an old-school personality DJ. He was also, in his small way, a transformative radio DJ. See, in the late 1970s he became a DJ at WKTU and made the suggestion that it switch to full-time disco music. The ratings for KTU exploded and the ratings for WABC -- up until then the king of music radio in NYC -- plunged. By 1982, WABC ceased to be a music station altogether, instead becoming a talk station, paving the way for the likes of Rush Limbaugh and the revolution of Republican talk radio. Of course, by 1982, disco had also withered so KTU became a classic rock station -- WXRK or K-ROCK -- and soon became the home to Howard Stern for 20 years. So Paco was unintentionally responsible for much of the shape of NYC radio for the last four decades. He was also notorious -- in the late 1980s, he was busted for drugs and spent some time in jail before getting out and triumphantly ending his career in Spanish language radio. He was a trailblazer, an icon, and he'll be missed.

Granted, the Paris movie theater was not person but its closing feels like a death to me.

Unlike most movie theaters that are big spaceship like multiplexes, the Paris was a modest single-screen theater that reflected its upscale setting (59th street and Fifth Avenue, across from the Plaza Hotel, Central Park, and Bergdorfs). It was beautiful, elegant, understated. It had a velvet screen that would rise just before showtime, and it showed art and foreign films (Merchant Ivory, etc.) for an affluent and cultured crowed. You don't remember most of the theaters you see movies in but you never forgot seeing a movie at the Paris -- I saw Howard's End, The Remains of the Day, Life is Beautiful, and The Company there. It was always great to see a movie there at night and walk out of this magnificent theater into the starry and light-filled world of modtown Manhattan. It made you feel great to be alive. But, alas, rising rents and changing viewer habits wrecked havoc on the Paris' business model. It couldn't keep up. And so, another giant of NYC, has passed into history.