If you love movies, love NYC, and really love movies set in NYC, then you'll want to listen to this special episode of Marc Maron's WTF podcast with film historian Jason Bailey.
Recorded live at the Paris movie theater -- the last single-movie house in all of Manhattan (maybe the whole city) -- Marc and Jason discuss the history of American film as it relates to NYC and why the city is always a great backdrop to just about any film set in it.
Most of all, Bailey makes a point how any NYC movie is two things -- a story about people in NYC as well as a document about the city at that time.
You can back and look at movie set in NYC in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s and see how different the city was back then. Movies like Midnight Cowboy (1969), Taxi Driver (1976) and Slaves of New York (1989) really capture what the city was like at the moment they were made, the gritty reality of a different time. But go back even further, to King Kong in 1933, when the massive ape takes hold of the Empire State Building, burnishing the building into cinema history. What's important to remember is that, in 1933, the Empire State Building was brand new, more of a curiosity than an iconic image at the time.
Movie change, NYC change, but NYC and the movies is marriage that will last forever.
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