"Out for Justice" (1991) Opening Scene

Okay, I promise, this will be the last Out for Justice post ever on Mr NYC. This is the opening credits for one of the best bad NYC movies ever made. They just don't make movies like this any more than are this balls-to-wall politically incorrect, nasty, and fun. Today movies take themselves much too seriously. But back in 1991 some movies still had a sense humor.

Anybody Seen Ritchie?

Over the years something'll pop up in the NYC tabloids about Richie Akiva. He's a big club owner/party promoter/nightlife guru whose run clubs like Butter and 10Oak and others. 

Richie has a lot of celebrity friends, was part of Leo's "pussy posse", dated an Olsen twin, and he's just one of the best-connected happening party guys in town.

He's also something of a criminal.

Last year he was busted for driving without a license. He's been involved in all kinds of lawsuits, accused of ripping off former business partners, and now he's been arrested for beating a guy in the head with a metal pipe.

Egads.

Richie's got some problems. It reminds me of that movie I blogged about a few years ago, Out for Justice, which is all about a crime boss named Richie who the heroic cop is looking for -- "Anybody seen Richie?" is his constant refrain.

Here's a interesting postscript: I actually went to school with Richie Akiva way back in the day. We were in 9th grade together but then, I recall, he vanished -- he was kicked out. (I remember it was from Richie that I first learned the term "herb" as being a pejorative.) He wound up a private school for rich juvenile deliquents.

And that's the thing -- Richie's a rich kid.

He was born into a wealthy family who set him up in the club business. He walks and talks, dresses and behaves like a badass, but he's really just a spoiled brat. And it looks like fate is catching up with him.  

Review: "Year of the Dragon" (1985)

The subject of immigration has been a political hot topic for years, decades, now. It's a paradox: America is a country built by immigrants, almost all of us are the children of immigrants, and yet most of this country hates immigrants. 

America is a contradictory country if there ever was one.

But a lot of the war of American immigration comes between those whose families have been here for years, decades, or centuries and more recent arrivals. For a lot of people, the old immigrants (i.e. them or their families, usually white) were great but the new ones (usually not white) ... not so much.

One of my favorite movies about the clash between the Old World and the New, between the nativist Whites and non-White arrivals, is the 1985 crime flick Year of the Dragon that came out in the summer of 1985, forty friggin' years ago. 

It's a tight, fast-paced crime thriller about an out-of-control NYC cop named Stanley White (played amazingly by Mickey Rourke at the height of his 1980's movie career) who is determined to take down the Chinatown gangs, the Triads. The Triads are at war with the Italian mob, the Thai mobs, as well as each other. The main crime boss Stanley is trying to bust is a young, handsome, very smart guy named Joy Tai (played really well by John Lone). 

The problem is that Stanley is being thwarted by his bosses in the police department who are willing to look the other way as long as they get their bribes. Into the mix comes a young, gorgeous, Asian-American TV reporter (played by an ex-model named Arianne) who wants to help Stanley bust the gangs, free the slave labor that the crime bosses exploit, and make Chinatown a crime-free, honest place. (In their first meeting he tells her, "You're a helluva lot sexier than those other broads on the other channels." Sweet man.)

See, Stanley is a tough, politically-incorrect, totally honest, incorruptible cop who doesn't care how the Chinese did things in the old country, or how they ignore law enforcement -- no, he's gonna make them follow the law like everyone else, "even the Polacks." What evolves is a cool story about how personalities, violence, greed, and an overwhelming passion for culture and justice make NYC (and America) a wild place. I won't give it away but the ending chase scene is classic. Quentin Tarantino himself said it's one of his favorite scenes in all of cinema, and that Year of the Dragon is one of his personal favorites. 

Mickey Rourke is great in this movie, a really fun, blazing talent. It's a shame that his movie career became so hit or miss (mostly miss) after this but his perfomance is a reminder of what a talent he is. John Lone was also great in this movie, and shortly after that he starred in the 1987 Best Picture Oscar-winner The Last Emperor because of his performance in this movie. The only sore point is Arianne - she really can't act and she didn't have much a movie career after this. Even the director said afterwards about her performance "I tried ..." But all of the other actors are good, and 

Year of the Dragon was the first movie that director Michael Cimino made after the historic debacle of Heaven's Gate in 1980. Cimino's first movie, the 1974 Clint Eastwood crime caper Thunderbolt & Lightfoot had made Cimino a notable director but then his 1978 operatic Vietnam masterpiece The Deer Hunter made him an Oscar-winning, big-time director. But his attempt to make another epic masterpiece with the Western Heaven's Gate was such an overlong, ponderous and financial failure that he didn't make another movie until this one in 1985 -- and it was a return to form, in a way, back to the taught crime movie that started his career. And interestingly, even though this movie really captures Manhattan's Chinatown well, you really feel and small the streets when you watch it, it was actually all shot on a soundstage in North Carolina!

Cimino was an intriguing figure -- a director of both great talent and great sloppiness. I've blogged about his bizarre life and career many times over the years but when he hit -- like with Thunderbolt, Deer Hunter and Year of the Dragon, he hit the bullseye. 

Even though this movie came out forty years ago, I think it's more relevant than ever. Watch the whole thing below and let me know what you think!

Mr NYC in China

In 2008, when this blog was less than two years old, I made a trip to China that I blogged about here. 

It was the second time in my life that I'd gone to China and, for literally years afterwards, I've been meaning to do another post about my first visit. 

The problem is that my first visit was in 1985 when I was eight years old and we were there for a month. So I don't remember everything about it and couldn't, I feel, do a post justice.

But, finally, I will do a post -- picking up random shards of memories from long ago, providing impressions, of my first trip to China 40 years ago with my dad.

What I remember is that, back then, China was still coming out of its first years of hardline Communism. Mao had been dead for less than a decade, and the country had yet to experience the massive economic growth and wealth that defines it today. I remember everyone riding around on ringing bicycles, most people living in small thatched houses like huts, and lots of people walking down the street eating out of rice bowls.

It was, obviously, a very different world from 1980s NYC. Whe started our trip in  Shanghai and I don't remember much about it except that, in the hotel lobby, they were playing Madonna's "Like a Virgin" in Chinese and that there was the first of several-to-be-encountered pitchers of boiled water in our room.

Later on we visited cities like Chongqing and also saw the amazing, historic Terracota Warriors that had only been discovered 11 years earlier in 1974. 

I remember we went to Beijing and saw the Forbidden City for the first time -- and then one night ate Peking Duck and went to the Chinese circus.

I remember walking around Tiananmen Square, four years before the exploded in deadly riots.

I remember seeing pandas in the zoo for the first time, also the Summer Palace. 

I remember we stayed somewhere at a hotel by the river and they would catch fresh fish from the river and serve it in the hotel dining room -- and I'd mash it up into rice and cover it in soy sauce and it was delicious.

I remember we took a cruise down the Yangtze River for more than week, and I'd stand at the prow, pretending to pilot the boat like any eight year old boy would.

I remember long, long train rides where we'd stare out the windows at farmers with huge water buffalo worked the land.

I remember visiting the house that my family built in a city on the sea back in the early 20th century -- and lots of Chinese school kids doing exericess on the beach.

I remember lots of rescheduled Chinese domestic flights on CAAC, the official Chinese airline, that everyone joke stands for "China Airlines Always Cancels."

I remember long drives where I would listen to tapes of "The Chronicles of Narnia."

I remember ending our trip in Hong Kong which was still a British colony at the time. The streets were even narrower than NYC, the wealth of the city fully on display. One day we went to the Royal Yacht Club for a drink -- that was cool! And I remember the huge, gorgeous harbor and the huge boats on it, glowing on the water at night. 

I remember that, on our trip home, we flew from Hong Kong to Tokyo and then, flying westward, I remember that my last view of Asia was the gorgeous Mount Fuji shining bright in the night sky.

I remeber that Beverly Hills Cop was the movie being shown on the flight and, after it was over, that another movie called Iceman started but then I fell asleep and, when I awoke, we were back in NYC.

And I remember when I got back that I told everyone about this amazing trip I took -- and no one really cared.

China really is just amazing -- and it's more than a country, it's a civilization with a history we can't even begin to understand. You should go.

And if you want to understand the 20th century history of China, you should watch the 1987 Best Picture Oscar winner The Last Emperor about how the long, long, long reigning Chinese monarchy fell and it led to decades of war, leading to the Communist revolution and country that exists today.  

I hope to go back to China one day -- and blog about it better then!

Review: "Wolfs" & the NYC Night Movie

They don't make movies like this anymore -- well, okay, they do, but they don't play in movie theaters anymore; instead, they pop up on streaming.

But it's always great to see a fast-paced, character-centered flick with great movie stars -- especially when it involves them running around NYC.

Wolves stars George Clooney and Brad Pitt -- thirty-years removed from their starmaking roles on the TV show ER and in the movie Interview With the Vampire, respectively -- as two "cleaners" or "wolves" (like the one Harvey Keitel played in that other 194 classic Pulp Fiction), whose job is to mop up crime scenes, dispose of bodies and evidence, and make sure that the guilty get away with it and justice is denied to the victim. In Wolves, this crime scene involves a dead kid, a backpack full of drugs, and a hysterical female District Attorney (played by the wonderful Amy Ryan) who is running for reelection and needs this problem solved pronto. 

The twist in this movie is that these two now middle-aged wolves are called to clean up the same crime scene unbenowst two each other. And when they clean up the scene and get the dead kid's body out of the downtown Manhattan hotel they were called to -- well, it all goes sideways and mayhem ensues when it turns out the kid really isn't dead.

Wolves then turns into a very fun, almost two hour yarn of car chases, shootouts, sleazy nightclubs, oddball characters, snappy dialogue, chowing down in diners, and everything that makes a good pulpy story. Most of all, it's great to see Clooney and Pitt act their hearts out, their chemistry palpable, in an original story not based on IP. It's just an entertaining movie. Remember those?

But other big thing I love about Wolves, as you might guess, its that it's a real NYC and a real NYC night movie. The story starts downtown but before you know it our heroes are zooming around Chinatown and Lower Manhattan, then they're out in the wilds of Queens. It's a movie that gives you a sense of the whole city. 

And the whole thing takes place at night, when the city falls into a sense of sexy mystery, a place of danger and excitement, a whole other NYC. I think it's fair to say that Wolves joins the company of other brilliant NYC night movies like After Hours, Taxi Driver, Night on Earth, While the City Sleeps, the Whit Stillman classics Metropolitan and The Last Days of Disco, The Warriors, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist -- heck, I'll even throw in Eyes Wide Shut. 

Review: "Face Value: The Marla Hanson Story" (1991)

The hottest thing in American popular culture today isn't superhero movies -- it's hours-long true crime podcasts, documentaries, and TV series.

In the last few years, tabloid scandals from the past about Jeffrey Dahmer, Andrew Cunan, Robert Chambers, OJ, and many others (more recently, the Menendez Brothers) have become massive hits in various multi-episode formats. And all of them seem to be about tabloid stories from the late 20th century.

But before the era of streaming and podcasts, where hours and hours could be devoted to telling these trashy tales, such stories would become network TV movies -- and instead of waiting years, these "ripped from the headlines" events became hastily-made, two-hour flicks. 

One such story that, as far as I know, has yet to become a 21st-century multi-hour podcast/documentary/streaming series is about the June 1986 attack of Marla Hanson.

A Missouri-transplant and aspiring model, Marla Hanson was living in a Manhattan apartment, attending glamorous parties, pursuing romance, living the NYC dream, until one day her landlord, who was obsessed with her, slashed her face, ending her modeling dreams. It was a big, scary story about obsession, beauty, and the "face value" of human worth. Her attackers were eventually sentenced to prison, but not until she was, in her words, badly treated by the criminal justice system. 

And this is why the 1991 TV-movie about the incident was called Face Value: The Marla Hanson Story.

This movie falls squarely into the now gone-and-forgotten sensationalist TV-movie with bad writing, bad acting, bad production values, and bad music. It's amazing to think anything this low-rent would get made today but, thirty-odd years ago, this was the stuff that millions of people watched when the big network TV hits went on hiatus.

There are, however, a few interesting things about this movie that make it worth watching (you can see the trailer and full movie below).

First, it's a real-NYC movie that, in its ways, captures the allure and danger of the late 20th century, pre-911 city. 

Second, the cast.

Marla Hanson is played by an actress named Cheryl Pollack, who "had a moment" in the early 1990s. She was in the 1990 movie Pump Up the Volume, a memorable episode of Quantum Leap, and later on was on another show called The Heights. She continued to pop up in TV shows throughout the 1990s until, it appears, she left acting. 

Marla's landlord/slasher was played by an odd-looking, odd-sounding actor named Kirk Baltz. And ironically, the very next year, he'd make movie history as the victim of a fictional slashing -- he's the guy who played the cop who memorably got his ear cut-off in Quentin Tarantino's directorial-debut Reservoir Dogs (while "Stuck in the Middle With You" played in the background). It must have been ironic for him to go, within a year or so, from playing a slasher in a totally forgettable TV movie to playing the most famous slashing victim in movie history -- and in a cinematic classic.

Then there's Marla's love interest. He's played by a very handsome actor named Dale Midkiff. His career caught fire in the 1980s when he played Elvis in a TV-mini-series, and then was in the 1989 hit movie Pet Semetary. But big screen stardom elluded him and it was back to TV. Not long after making this Marla Hanson TV movie, Dale starred in a very silly but massively entertaining show called Time Trax. It was about a cop from the year 2193 who is sent back in time to 1993 to find criminals who escaped from his time, hiding out the past, and sending them back to the future -- and justice. After Quantum Leap, it was my favorite time-travel show ever (although nowhere as good as QL), and he was really good in it. It only ran for two-years but it was fun to watch (interestingly, Time Trax premiered on January 20th, 1993, the same day that Bill Clinton became president).

As for Marla Hanson, after this horrible incident, she appears to have gone on and lived a nice quiet life. She married, had a child, worked briefly as a screenwirter, and seems to have had no interest in having a public profile in the almost 40-years after she was thrust into the headlines. And good for her! 

These days the network TV movie seems to be a thing of the past. But this movie capture an era of TV, and NYC, that seems both far in the past and very familiar. 

Mr NYC in Boston

For reasons that defy logic and simple comprehension, in my nearly half-century wandering the earth, and despite travelling multiple times to Europe, Asia, and all over the USA ... I never made it to the city of Boston, just a few hours away.

Last month -- finally! -- I did.  

And I loved it! It's a great town, and very much an East Coast city -- compact, dense, highly walkable, history bursting out of every corner. Having spent time in Midwestern (like St. Louis) and Western cities (like Kansas City, Denver, and Phoenix), which are much more spread out, much less dense, much less walkable, much more industrial, and much less historic, Boston shares an obvious kinship with NYC but also feels distinct with a much more British, much more Old World feel.

I did and saw a lot when I was there and it'd be exhausting to write about it all but here are some of the many highlights that I saw, including a few snaps that I took:

We got around town on the T, Boston's subway/trolley system that is actually the oldest urban subway system in the USA (starting in 1897, about seven years before the first NYC subway line opened). I loved how, when the train approached, it dinged -- love me some dinging! 

One of our trips on the T took us to the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum. Built by its namesake in the style of a 15th-century Venetian pallatzo, it houses a great collection of European and Asian art, all in rooms that are made it look like part of great historical houses. It also has a gorgeous, greenhouse-like courtyard and stainglass windows, just a beautiful and invigorating place to enjoy gorgeous art.

The museum is also the site of the biggest art theft in American history which happened on March 18, 1990 -- and remains unsolved. 

Later we walked around Beacon Hill, the central historic and upscale residential neighborhood of Boston, and also the location of the State Capitol. It is full of gorgeous Federal-style townhouses (notable residents include poet Robert Frost, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Homes, Daniel Webster, Senator John Kerry, and many other historic figures), and it's also the location of the bar from Cheers -- which still draws a crowd more than 30 years since it went off the air. 

Nearby we also visited the Old City Hall, just a gorgeous building, to the Old Historic Meeting House -- a Colonial building that is perhaps the single most important single building in American history. This is where the first protests against British rule were organized in 1768 and where the Boston tea party was planned in December 1773. The sparks for the American Revolution were lit here, history turning on its axis in this building, the world we live in today formed in this modest place.

Other places we saw but I didn't get good pictures of are the Paul Revere House, home of the famous rider along with the Faneuil Hill marketplace, a place where lots of Revolutionary protests took place and that, today, houses perhaps the best food court I've ever eaten in.

We also walked all over the main park of Boston -- Boston Common -- and also passed by the first Macy's store ever opened in the USA.

The last big place we visited was the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. It is located on the waterfront of the Dorchester neighborhood, and it's surprisingly modest and simple, considering what a glamorous figure he was and what an outsized impact he left on American history. Since Kennedy's presidency was rather short, a lot of the exhibits are about his time fighting in WW2, his time in the Senate, his marriage to Jackie, and then his winning presidential campaign in 1960. There's also an entire film and exhibit about the Cuban Missile Crises, where JFK's role in saving the world from nuclear armaggedon in October 1962. My favorite part of this exhibit and everything we saw in the museum were JFK's personal notes he took during the crises where he wrote, on the top of the right-hand page, he wrote and circles "Missile, Missile, Missile." There's nothing about his assisination or, obviously, all the broads that he banged (no video of Marilyn Monroe breathily singing "Happy birthday ... Mister ... President" ...) but the museum does a good job summarizing his life, legacy, and aspirations for the country and the world.

Last but not least was the Brattle Book Store, the oldest and largest used book shop. It's located right by Boston Common and is totally unpretentious -- until you discover that it first opened in 1825 and was a favored bookstore of JD Salinger. In fact, it also appears in the new Oscar-nominated movie The Holdovers. 

So that was my trip to "Bahhston." Great town, great sites, great streets (just let's not get into the NYC/Boston sports rivarlies 'cause that means war). And as we drove into town our Spotify played a little joke on us ...

                                                        

And, speaking of jokes, we also saw clowns and pants. 

That is all.

P.S. Even though a lot of it was filmed in NYC, the 2006 Oscar-winner The Departed takes place in Boston -- and it's Jack Nicholson's last great movie and performance.

Review: "The Equalizer" Then & Now

In the late 1980s one of the more curious drama shows of the decade popped up on network TV: The Equalizer.

Set in modern-day NYC, it was a show about a mysterious person with a secretive past -- it is understood that he worked for the CIA or MI6, simply referred to as "the agency" or "the company", some kind of spooky blackbag-jobbing government outfit -- who is now trying to redeem himself by using his vaguely criminal skills to help out ordinary people who find themselves in difficult situations. It was basically a serial with lots of stand-alone episodes, one-and-done storylines, following this flawed hero helping flawed people find justice that would otherwise be denied to them by a corrupt system.

He was, basically, a classy, super-smart, and well-spoken vigilante.

The original Equalizer ran from 1985-1989 and starred a British actor named Edward Woodward whose career was mostly in theater. This show was one of his only American projects and it made him, for a while, an unlikely star. It was one of the only shows made in NYC during this time, a sort of precursor to the decades-long run of Law & Order shows -- fictional crimes being solved by great actors on the real-life streets of NYC. During its short run, a huge array of actors with big careers ahead of them appeared on the show: Macauley Culkin, Kevin Spacey, Steve Buscemi, JT Walsh, one of the Beastie Boys, William H. Macy, Stanley Tucci, Cynthia Nixon, Tony Shalhoub, Ving Rhames, Chris Cooper, Oliver Platt, Christine Baranski, and many more. The Equalizer was never a huge show, it was one of those quiet sleeper hits that ran for a few years before vanishing completely. But then ...

... it had a second act. In 2014 a movie version of The Equalizer starring Denzel Washington came out and was a big hit. A 2018 sequel was also a big hit. And now ... 

... The Equalizer is back on TV! Back to returning justice on the streets of modern-day NYC only this time, instead of being an old British guy, The Equalizer is ... drumroll ... Queen Latifah! Who doesn't love her?

So this moderately popular NYC show that went off the air in 1989 became a big hit movie 25 years later and now a new show. And went from being an old English white dude to a funky American black lady. How weird is that? How great is that? Only in NYC.

Gotta Love New Yorkers

Recently I blogged about how we should do more to celebrate the people who make our city and our world a better place and not "cancel" them.

So here's a great example: Velmanette Montgomery.

She was a State Senator for 36 years representing Brooklyn until she retired last year. When she was elected, she was one of the only black women in that entire legislative body which, at the time and for years and years afterwards, was a white Republican boys club. In her four decades of public service, Montgomery dealt with the challenges of being a minority in the minority party yet she was an effective representative of her district, city and state. She worked to reform the criminal justice and foster care systems in the state -- including making sure that incarcerated woman couldn't be shackled during childbirth. She pioneered needle exchange programs to help reduce HIV/AIDS. She also strengthened laws against "deed theft" to help people from being tricked out of home ownership. 

Velmanette Montgomery is the kind of public servant and New York who, quietly, makes our city a better place to live. 

Mr NYC in France, Holland & England

Memory is tricky. Some things we remember as clearly as a blue cloudless sky. Other things we remember only faintly or not at all. It doesn't matter how long ago or recently these events were -- we remember what we want to, for whatever reason, no matter how long ago. 

I think the memories that fade are those that can't be easily catagorized as "good" or "bad." We remember our traumas and our triumphs but rarely the things in between. 

As our movements in the outside world have been limited by the pandemic, as I've clocked more time at home than ever before, I've spent a lot of time thinking about trips I've taken in the past. Most of them I've blogged about here already but then, quite recently, my memory was jogged about a trip I had taken the summer befor my freshman year of high school. It was a five week student trip to France, Holland and England. For whatever reasons, I honestly hadn't thought about or remembered even going on this trip for years and years and years.

Until now.

I guess I didn't really remember this trip because I didn't like most of the other kids on this trip and there was lots of teenage nonesense (who wants to remember that?). And yet, as I thought about the trip again recently, I realized I didn't remember any of the other kids on it -- but I remember what I saw.

And what I saw was amazing.

First, France. We landed in an airport in Basel, Switzerland and took a bus across the French border to a small town called Argentierre. It was a small, picturesque country town. We stayed in a hostel up on a hill, with a stunning view of the Alps. We would then walk down into the town to get food and change money but we spent most of our time hiking the Alps and beholding the amazing vistas. After a few days we took an overnight train to Paris, emerging into the city in the early morning (in fact both of my trips to Paris, nearly 20 years apart, have involved my arrival by train). We stayed in an old fashioned stone building on a beautiful street with a courtyard, and we walked streets and over the bridges of this stunning city every day. One night we even ate in a Chinese restaurant. We visited the Louvre and, yes, saw the Mona Lisa; we visited the bizarre-looking Centre Pompidou (a modern art museum that is a piece of modern art itself), we walked through the Luxumbourg Gardens and strolled around at night, the city truly living up to its reputation as the city of lights.

Second, Holland. We took a train to, if I remember correctly, the Hague but we didn't see any of the international courts of justice. Instead, we got on bicycles and biked for several days around the most hilly parts of this otherwise very flat country. This was the roughest part of the trip for me -- by far. The bikes were big and metal and I had neither the size nor stamina for long stretches of biking (at one point we even biked past some royal palace behind a big gate). At the end of each day, at the various hostels we'd stop at, I would collapse from exhaustion (we did, however, spend one afternoon during our biking adventures at a topless beach -- that was interesting!). At one point, as we were biking, I had a really nasty fall and the skin from part of my left knee was dug out, exposing a vein. It took a long time to heal and I still have a scar to this day. Fortunately, we soon ended the biking portion of the journey and headed to Amsterdam. I love this town. Highly walkable, gorgeous canals, lovely and simple architecture. We went to all of the big museums (I don't remember all of them, sadly), and, of course, we saw Anne Frank's house which was moving, sad, and inspiring. And, yes, we strolled around the notorious Red Light District although obvious we didn't patronize it. Nor did we go into any of the pot cafes. However, I did go into some of the McDonalds and, not for the nothing, I laughed the loudest when the movie Pulp Fiction came out and the Vincent Vega character talked about Royales with Cheese and people in Amsterdam soaking french fries with mayonaise. I saw all that with my own eyes, a couple of years before Mr. Quentin Tarantino did!

Third, England. We took a boat to get there, a boat from Belgium. I don't remember where in Belgium we left from or where in England we landed at. But on the day we landed we took a boat to Cambridge and stayed at the university. Our home was called Sidney Sussex College (British universities are made up of a number of "colleges"), whose most famous alumni (in real life) is Oliver Cromwell and (fictional) is Sherlock Holmes. Again, memories of this time was scarce, but I remember we ate in these huge neo-classical dining halls and we rowed down the River Cam in punts which is a huge tradition there. Next we headed north to the beautiful Lake District where we spent days backpacking around the stunning hills and dales around the lakes, mist everywhere. We also visited Rydle Mount, the modest but gorgeous home of the poet William Wordsworth whose family still owns it to this day. Then we headed down to London and stayed at the University of London, a massive and rather dreary modern-y place. I've been to London several times since then and I honestly don't remember much about this particular visit except that we spent a lot of time hanging out in the city's parks -- including the infamous Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park where, on Sundays, people stand and kvetch about whatever's on their mind. One guy I saw spent his time shouting "I'm perfect! I'm perfect!"

After that, we came back to NYC.

And that's it. That's all I remember. But these vague memories of that trip, a long time ago, has inspired me to go back to France, Holland and England as soon as possible -- and to enjoy it properly this time!

RGB RIP

Sad news for NYC. Sad news for America.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- child of Brooklyn, legal genius, feminist icon -- died on Friday, September 18th, aged 87.

Even if she hadn't spent more than a quarter century on the court (she was confirmed in 1993, after almost 13 years serving on the US Court of Appeals, so almost 40 years total as a federal judge), she would be a legend. Ginsburg blazed a trail as one of the few women graduates of Harvard Law of her era, then became one of the first female tenured law professors at Columbia. In the 1970s she advocated for gender equality in multiple cases before the Supreme Court, winning almost all of them. Then, as a Supreme herself, her votes and decisions on gender equality, gay rights, and other social justice cases helped to make America a somewhat better, somewhat fairer place. She dissented a lot -- such was the make up of the court -- but her voice was always heard. 

And she had a long, happy marriage to her husband Marty, a legal genius himself. I heard a story about Marty and Ross Perot -- after he and Ruth had moved to DC, he became a professor at Georgetown Law. Ol' Ross was have a legal problem and, during one lunch with Marty, Marty solved it for him -- saving the Texas billionaire a lot of money. Ross then endowed a chair for the man at Georgetown. But, in many ways, Marty built his life and career around Ruth, such was his love for her.

I found out about the death of RGB this past Friday evening as I was standing in a deli kiosk at Penn Station. I was holding a strawberry parfait thinking, "I guess I'll buy this and eat it on the train," when the TV above, tuned to CNN, showed "BREAKING NEWS." I've become a little cynical about "BREAKING NEWS" because so little of it is usually news but then I saw them say that RGB was dead -- and my heart dropped. I'll never forget it.

Rest in peace, Ruth. We didn't deserve you, and we were lucky to have you for as long as we did. 

Review: "Sea of Love" & "Crimes and Misdemeanors" (1989)

The fall of 1989 was an eventful time -- not unlike now. Communism in Eastern Europe and the Berlin Wall were collapsing. Apartheid was drawing to a close in South Africa. Here in NYC there was a legendary election raging between three men who had and would be Mayor -- Ed Koch, David Dinkins, and Rudy Giuliani. And our movie theaters saw the debut of two classic NYC crime thrillers: Sea of Love and Crimes and Misdemeanors. Watching them again after 30 years, they more than hold up -- they are examples of great storytelling, brilliant acting, peaks in the arcs of historic careers, and wonderful NYC movies. Despite being thrillers, and being very different movies, they have one big thing in common: they are studies in the trials and tribulations of becoming middle-aged.

Sea of Love: Al Pacino stars as a Manhattan cop named Frank Keller. He's a classic movie detective: getting older, divorced, drinking problem, wondering if he should "put in his papers" to retire at "his 20" (years on the force that is), and generally depressed about his life. Meanwhile he's investigating a series of murders -- men who had answered personal ads turning up dead, shot in the head. The latest victim had a 45 record playing when he was found -- "Sea of Love." Frank and his new partner Sherman (investigating a similar murder in Queens) start an undercover operation where they will place a personal ad in the paper, meet up with women at a restaurant, and then take the glasses from the dates to swab them for prints. They hope that this will link them with the killer. But then Frank meets a woman named Helen on one of these dates -- and they fall for each other, hard. Suddenly Frank finds a new unexpected love, a new joie de vivre, but there continue to be more murders and Helen starts to look more and more guilty -- until he finds out the truth and solves the case. (I remember the tagline for this movie: "He's found somone who's either the love of his life ... or the end of it!").

This movie was a big deal for Al Pacino -- his career had been in decline for most of the 1980s, after his triumphs of the 1970s and early '80s (think The Godfather to Scarface period). Sea of Love was his comeback, a big hit that started the next act of his career. Meanwhile John Goodman was breaking out from Roseanne and his performance as Sherman made him a big movie actor too. Ellen Barkin was a star then too, and few performances are as sexy and frightening as her's in this movie. What's fascinating about this movie is that, while it's certainly a sexy thriller, it's also a working class NYC movie, set largely on a still-then middle-class Upper West Side. It's both extremely familiar and also exotic -- it's about becoming middle age, trying to find a new happiness, figuring out life, working hard for a living while also trying to find excitement and thrills. 

Crimes and Misdeameanors: Woody Allen has made nearly 50 movies, many of them great. This may very well be his masterpiece. Woody has directed numerous comedies and a few dramas but this was his first movie to combine both comedy and drama. In fact, the movie contains two stories -- one comic, one tragic -- and the endings of each make them come together in a way you wouldn't expect. The drama centers around a man named Judah (played by Martin Landeau who got an Oscar nomination for it), an extremely successful eye doctor who has recently overseen the opening of a new opthalmology wing at a hospital. But Judah has a dark secret: he has been conducting an affair for a few years with a former airline stewardess (a scary Angelica Huston) who is making increasingly desperate demands that Judah leave his wife or else she'll confront his entire family about his adultery and also reveal his financial chicaneries. Judah calls up his brother Jack -- a dissolute character with underworld connections -- who sets up a hit to kill the mistress. Will Judah get caught and the scheme unravel? You need to see the movie to find out! Meanwhile, the comic story concerns a man named Cliff (played by Woody), a struggling documentary filmmaker who also has a failing marriage (although no mistress) who is making a TV special on his very successful brother-in-law, a pompous Harvey Weinstein-like producer named Lester. One of the producers on the TV special is a woman named Hailey who both Cliff and Lester fall for -- will she choose either man or reject both of them? Again, you need to see the movie to find out! And how do the stories relate, one makes them link-up? Again, only Woody Allen would make the connecting character a rabbi who's going blind ...

Woody Allen is not only one of our greatest directors -- he's also probably the most brilliant screenwriters of all time (he's been nominated for more screenplay Oscars than anyone in history). The Crimes and Misdemeanors script is perfect -- specifically the way that these seemingly unrelated stories are interrcut and made to relate to each other, the tightness and swiftness of the plots, the enormous amount of character development and emotional complexity in a few lines of dialogue, it is simply the best kind of storytelling you can ever encounter. The major overarching theme of this movie is seeing -- looking at what's in front of you and also trying to see something that may or may not be there. This is a movie, in some ways, about people who are looking not only for love but also for mercy and justice and order in the world -- a kind of God -- and not finding it. I remember reading that this is the movie where Woody looked for God and "found Him not there." This movie won't make you find God (in fact, his absence will only be confirmed) but you will certainly see a truly great movie by one of NYC's best filmmakers.

Review: "Out for Justice" (1991)

There are many great NYC movies. Out for Justice is NOT one of them.

But while it's a very DUMB movie, it's also a very FUN movie. Lemme 'splain why:

Steven Segal, one of our great screen thespians, plays a goomba cop from Dyker Heights, Brooklyn named Gino Felino (yes, that's the fellow's name). Anyway, Gino's from da' neighba-hood and he's determined to bring down a goomba mobster named Richie Madano who's murdered Gino's goomba partner Bobby Lupo. (It's a movie that consists entirely of Goombas, many years before "Jersey Shore" mainstreamed them.) Anyway, the whole movie consists of Gina prowling around Brooklyn, lookin' for Richie, committing much violence along the way. "Anyone know why Richie did Bobby Lupo?" is Gina's constant, unanswered refrain, usually delivered before hurting someone really bad. Then he finds Richie, more violence ensues, and it's over. Complex it is not. 

But, you see, Gino's not "out for revenge" -- oh no, he's "out for justice." All of his violence is justified. This was the early 1990s, after all, when crime in NYC and the nation was very high, so the idea of ultra-violent cops delivering punitive justice was a more palatable idea than it is today. Capiche?

The plot of this movie is secondary to the numerous scenes where Segal demonstrates his superior abilities at beating people up. There's a small subplot where Gino gets back together with his estranged wife -- "Are we talkin' reconcilliation, ova' here?" is a real line -- plus we learn that our hero is also an animal lover (the movie ends with his puppy urinating on a man's head which is played for yucks and is one of the more lighthearted moments in the film). Shockingly, this stupid but very entertaining movie boasts a great cast (other than Segal): Jerry Orbach, Gina Gerson, John Leguizamo, a pre-Sopranos Dominic Chianese and a pre-ER Julianna Margulies are all in it. And there's also a great early Beastie Boy's song -- "No Sleep 'Till Brooklyn." 

This is a great movie to watch with a bunch of your friends while drinking heavily and yelling at the screen. In fact, there's no other way to watch it.

Enjoy.

Fight the Power: Caban for Queens DA

In 1989 NYC's racial politics came to the forefront. Though it was 30 years ago, 1989 seems to haunt our present. 

In 1989 we had Central Park Jogger case that led to the wrongful conviction of the Central Park 5. 

In 1989 Spike Lee's great movie Do the Right Thing premiered -- a movie that brutally looked at the racial realities of life in NYC.

And in 1989 Rudy Giuliani first ran for mayor on a platform of racial resentment. He came close to winning in 1989 and finally did in 1993. As this article points out, Rudy as mayor was a forerunner to Trump as president -- white backlash politics, promoting the idea that we were living in some kind of crime-ridden hell hole, blaming the previous black guy who held their office for all their problems, tell lots of lies, and using their power to fight against the demographic changes of the their city and county. The analogy, as this article points out, is imperfect but nonetheless resonant.

The problem for both Rudy and Trump and the people they claim to represent is that, ultimately, they can't change the future -- NYC is very different in 2013 than it was in 1989 (and 1993) and America will be a very different country in 2049 than it is today.

And one way we can make that change is here in NYC, specifically Queens, by voting for Tiffany Caban in the Queens DA race. A social justice reformer, she promises to radically change how we prosecute and handle crime. That's how we can fight the power of the likes of Rudy and Trump -- fight, vote, and make the future we want. 

Mr NYC in Texas

Twenty years ago a buddy and I took a road trip to Texas (followed by some other places). We drove south from college and, after a couple of days, arrived in this vast, fascinating state.

Texas is big. Real big. Like, crazy "wow" big. 

We drove forever, and forever (sometimes I think we're still driving through it). We drove through towns like San Antonio and Abilene, through small towns made up of nothing but trailer parks (I remember one called Sheffield), and through hundreds of miles of west Texas where there was literally nothing at all except roads -- no trees, no people, no houses, no stores, no civilization at all, nothing for miles and miles and miles and miles but flat land ... until you occasionally hit a much-needed gas station. 

Our destination was Big Bend National Park, and it was worth the drive. This is a massive and stunningly gorgeous place with mountains and canyons and stunning natural landscape after stunning natural landscape. We backpacked through the trails and came upon mountain views that went forever and simply stupefy you with their beauty. We did this for a couple of days, sleeping in a tent, until we took off for Houston en route to New Orleans.

Big Bend is not an easy place to get to -- in fact, it's the least visited national park in the country for precisely this reason -- but I urge you to go if you can, words cannot describe how life-changing it is to be there. It reminds you of how amazing the natural world is, how vast and overwhelming, and how us mere people are simply part of a greater design. You feel a great inner peace being in this gorgeous yet quite space. It's very special. (By the way, Big Bend is also the same place where Supreme Court Justice, and New York-native, Antonin Scalia died in 2016.)

We only spent a night in Houston and I don't remember much about it, we got there at night and left early the next day. We ate a Fudruckers and I had perhaps the biggest cheeseburger ever. However, I do recall we drove briefly around downtown and I saw a huge statue of a cello, a modern art exhibit, that seemed very Texas, very non-NYC.

So the saying is true: everything's bigger in Texas. A lot bigger. And, despite its politics, it's a place worth checking out. 

Oh, and if you want to see the definiate movie about Texas, watch Giant from 1956 starring Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor, as well as James Dean in his last movie and a young Dennis Hopper in one of his first.