The Best Outer Borough Movies

My previous post on Working Girl got me thinking about movies set in the boroughs outside of Manhattan. There are a number of films -- some old, some more recent, some great, some not -- set in places where the vast majority of New Yorkers actually live. Here are a few of the most memorable. Please let me know if I'm missing any really great ones. I'm sure there are some I missed that'll make me smack my head and shout "D'OH!"

The Bronx

Marty (1955): A beautiful movie about a lonely butcher looking for love. Ernest Borgnine creates one of the greatest characters ever etched on film. It swept the 1955 Oscars, including Best Picture, Actor, Director and Original Screenplay.

A Bronx Tale (1993): Robert De Niro's directorial debut about a boy in the Bronx trying to live honestly in a world of crime.

Fort Apache, The Bronx (1981): Cops in a war zone, led by Paul Newman. Very controversial at the time.

Awakenings (1991): One of De Niro's best performances about catatonic patients brought back (briefly) to life. Based on the story of Dr. Oliver Sacks.

Finding Forrester (2000): Not a great movie by any means but it does have Sean Connery saying "You're the man now dog!"

The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990): Awful movie based on a great book. One of the great bombs of all times. It does, however, give you a very good idea of what the Bronx was like the late 1980s -- namely, scary.

Brooklyn

Arsenic and Old Lace (1944): A Cary Grant classic about old ladies in Brooklyn Heights who murder people. Ronald Reagan was actually considered for the Cary Grant part at one time.

The Squid and the Whale (2005): Very funny, very sad movie about a miserable family in Park Slope. The best performance Jeff Daniels has ever given.

Moonstruck (1987): Cher's Oscar (Olympia Dukakis got one to). A beautiful film about Italians, baking, opera, and the insanity of love. Classic lines: "Where are you taking me?" "To da' bed!"

Radio Days (1987): Perhaps Woody Allen's sweetest movie. A tribute to childhood in the 1940s, classic radio, and growing up Jewish.

Saturday Night Fever (1977): Gave us John Travolta, the Bee Gees, and polyester. Best line: "You know I work on my hair 'long time and he hits it ... he hits my hair!"

She's Gotta Have It (1986): Spike Lee's first movie.

Do The Right Thing (1989): Spike Lee's best movie.

Smoke/Blue in the Face (1995): Dual movies about the lives of people who frequent a smoke shop. Harvey Keitel was never so sweet.

Dog Day Afternoon (1975): "Attica! Attica! Attica!" Al Pacino's greatest performance ever. Based on a real bank robbery gone very wrong.

Queens

Goodfellas (1990): The life of Henry Hill, a great movie about a very bad man. The best mob movie ever, Scorsese's masterpiece, and the immortal lines, "Funny? Funny how? Like I'm a clown, I amuse you, I make you laugh?"

A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (2006): Strange but touching little movie about life in lower-class Astoria in the 1980s. Robert Downey Jr. gives a lovely performance.

Queens Logic (1991): Never saw it, no one did apparently, but it's an ensemble piece about Queens and it should really help you with that "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" game.

Coming to America (1988): Eddie Murphy's funniest movies about an African prince looking for a wife in, well ... Queens! His best comic performance ever.

The Wrong Man (1956): True story about an innocent man accused of murder. Alfred Hitchcock and Henry Fonda -- need I say more?

Staten Island

Working Girl (1988): A "goil" named Tess with big dreams who gets it all.

Sisters (1973): One of Brian De Palma's pre-Carrie movies. Before she was Lois Lane, Margot Kidder starred in this psychological thriller.

School of Rock (2003): Jack Black comedy about teaching kids how to rock. It was completely filmed in this borough.

Summary

It looks like Brooklyn's got most of the best movies made about it, followed by Queens, followed by The Bronx, followed by Staten Island. But who really cares about pecking order. These movies show that some of the most interesting New York characters in movie history were from the outer boroughs.

Next up -- the best outer borough novels and TV shows.

Robert Caro on the Shapers of New York

If you love not only New York City but its great history, the New-York Historical Society has something wonderful to offer you next year: three lectures called "The Shapers of New York" about the city by the brilliant historian Robert Caro, author of The Power Broker and The Years of Lyndon Johnson books. Caro is a native New Yorker who is the preeminent authority on how this city developed in the 20th century. (If you're a dork like me you actually enjoy lectures, obviously depending on the topic; however, I'm not so much of a dork as not to understand that most people don't enjoy lectures on anything.) The lectures are:

The Mark of Robert Moses
Series: Robert A. Caro on the Shapers of New York

Date & Time: Wednesday, January 14, 2009 6:30PM

If you read my Power Broker review, you'll get an idea of what this lecture is probably about.

"What Must the Widow Feel?" -- The Compassion of Al Smith
Series: Robert A. Caro on the Shapers of New York

Date & Time: Wednesday, January 21, 2009 6:30PM

Al Smith was New York State Governor in the 1920s and is generally considered the greatest governor in this state's history. FDR once said that the New Deal was basically a federal imitation of everything Smith did as governor.

The Struggle for Power: La Guardia vs. Moses

Series: Robert A. Caro on the Shapers of New York

Date & Time: Wednesday, January 28, 2009 6:30PM

Fiorello La Guardia was this city's greatest mayor and Moses its greatest builder. They were titanic figures and power-hungry egomaniacs who did more to shape this city's destiny than any two people since. You can get tickets for these lectures now. I'll see you there!

Working Girl @ 20

It's hard to believe that Working Girl is twenty years but so it is. Along with The Big Chill, Fatal Attraction, Wall Street and a few others, this was one of those flicks that defined the 1980s. It has now become something of a quasi-feminist classic, with an empowering message to all women: girlfriend, you can have the great man and the great job! As Tess says, any smart, driven woman can have a "head for business and a bod for sin." Uh-HUH!

This is also a different sort of New York movie, one that actually takes place (or largely takes place) in one of the outer boroughs. This is easily the best movie ever made about Staten Island and the Staten Island ferry has been forever immortalized in it. Just take one trip on the Staten Island ferry and doubtless you'll hear someone say "This is just like Working Girl!"

Here's the original theatrical trailer. You might recognize the song that plays in it, "Let The River Run" by Carly Simon that won the Best Song Oscar for 1988.

P.S. It's also one of the first movies that shows a character using something that would become e-mail. Now it looks quaint but I'm sure in 1988 it was cutting edge.

Don't Forget to Vote on September 9th!

Everyone is so focused on the big presidential election this November that it becomes very easy to forget about the other down-ticket races, many for state and local offices, that will also be happening this year. Most of these elections are decided on primary day -- whoever wins the party primary will surely win the general election, case closed.

Sadly, most people don't vote in primaries and miss this opportunity to exercise their real power. The entrenched powers-that-be are happy about this because they are almost always guaranteed to win and therefore can be much less accountable in office.

Don't let this happen! Don't be one of these people! If you're registered in a particularly party, please be sure to vote in the upcoming primaries next week. You can find all of the information you need at the New York City Board of Elections.

The Worst Writing About NYC

Most writers attempt to write well even if they don't (this blog is Exhibit A in the doesn't succeed buts tries hard department). But apparently there's a contest out there that celebrates bad writing: it's called the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest that gives a "three-figure" prize "to the person who fashions the most wretched opening sentence to an imaginary novel."

This year it was for an imaginary novel about NYC. The winning line:

“Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped ‘Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.’ ”

I wish I had entered this contest, I might have been able to win. My atrocious fake opening line:

"He could not apologize enough to her, just like no amount of mustard could make a stale pastrami on rye palatable."

Awful, right? Can you top that?

BTW, Bulwer-Lytton was an English Baron poet/playwright/politician who coined some famous phrases we still use today.

Beautiful Mount Airy Lodge ...

Well here I go showing my age again. Do any of you remember seeing these ads for Mount Airy Lodge back in the 1980s? You might recall the refrain:

"All you have to bring is your love of everything ... beautiful Mount Airy Lodge ..."

I never went there myself but Mount Airy Lodge was a classic Poconos resort where middle class couples from the city used to go for long weekends and honeymoons. Apparently it was a rather kitchy romantic getaway with heart shaped tubs and ceilings above the bed and stuff like that. People like Bob Hope and Milton Berle used to headline there back in the glory days. Obviously those days are long, long past and places like Mount Airy Lodge are no longer economically viable.

Mount Airy Lodge closed in 2001 and it was literally stripped bare and its entire contents sold at auction. (People were actually making bids and taking home the heart shaped tubs!) Now it's some kind of casino. How dreary.

So here's my tribute to Mount Airy Lodge, a part of the old New York world that we never really appreciated until it was gone.

NYC and the Quality of Life

It goes without saying that no one lives in New York for its quality of life -- spending tons of money to live in virtually no space and dealing with the hassle of the traffic, the subways, the dirt, the grime, the crazies on the street -- clearly if all you care about is having a nice home in a nice neighborhood then you should look to reside elsewhere. New Yorkers live here because, except for quality of life, it has everything else.

But some people have found that they can get enough of that everything else elsewhere -- and believe it or not, some people are finding that in, and moving to of all places, Buffalo.

This week's New York magazine has a very thoughtful and insightful story about some New Yorkers who have done just that. You'll faint about how people can rent three-bedroom homes (not apartments, homes) for only $750 a month. Some people can get one-bedroom apartments for $350 a month! Reading this story wasn't enough to make me want to leave NYC but it sure was tempting.

Where the Urban Dream Life Is Going Cheap

Hillary Clinton Speech - 2008 Democratic National Convention

Our girl gave a hell of a good speech last night. She rallied the Democrats and clearly explained why a John McCain presidency -- shudder, cough, spit, vomit, ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!! -- would be a disaster for this country (of course there should be no need to explain that but it is what it is).

Obviously all those nasty Hillary haters, Republicans, sexists, and other assorted neanderthals out there will trash it and her but, most reasonable people will agree, it was a class act. Bravo!

Classic Mr NYC

Forgive me if you find this incredibly arrogant and lazy, but I have some favorite old blog posts that I would like to share with some of my newer readers. From time to time, I'll put up what I think are some of my better posts which I'm now calling "Classic Mr NYC." Of course just how classic they are is for you to decide :)

From July 27, 2007

"It's a City of Strangers": How to Check Out People on Public Transportation

Okay, admit it: every so often you find yourself on the bus or the subway and suddenly ... a vision walks on. A person of extra-ordinary beauty, someone "really hot" or "totally gorgeous", someone who clashes mercilessly with the kennel of people who usually rides the MTA. This person acts like a magnet for your eyes. Suddenly the ads for Dr Zizmor and the other passengers melt away ... and you lock your eyes on this person and stare ... stare ... stare. But ... oh no! Now you've crossed the line! You've gone over to the other side. You have become ... a creepy person! You're a creepy staring person! And now your l'object d'amour might whip out the pepper spray at any moment. You want to stop staring but you can't ... for the life of you, you just can't! So what do you do? Never fear, for Mr NYC is here to guide you through the art of checking out people on public transportation. Just follow these five simple rules:

1. When you first spot "the person", don't stare too long. Like Jerry Seinfeld once said, act like this person is the sun: you get a sense of the thing, then look away.

2. When you next look at the person, DO NOT STARE DIRECTLY. Use subterfuge. Pretend to read one of the ads above your head or, better yet, act like you're looking for one of the bus or subway maps on the wall. You can then check out the person who ... oh, you know, just happens to be in your line of vision. Make sure people think you are trying to look at something and not someone. Then you can more easily get away with looking at the person.

3. It helps if you have reading material. Then you can look up from it every so often to, you know, see what's going on and to, oh yeah, check out the hottie.

4. When the bus or train pulls into a stop, pretend to stare out the window. You know, you want to see what's going on outside, and who is getting on or off. This is a custom-built moment to check out "the vision."

5. If all else fails, and you just can't keep your eyes off this person, and you've done steps 1 to 4, maybe multiple times, then do this: pretend that, oh darn it, you have a crook in your neck, and you need to rub it and you gotta bend your head, oh, this way ... and then that way ... and you're just looking out ahead of yourself and ... oh wow, there he or she is! What a coincidence!

I hope you will find these steps useful. But please understand: Mr NYC does not, in any way, endorse any kind of harassment or talking to or touching of any stranger on public transportation. There is a galaxy of difference between "checking someone out" and actually trying to interact with another person. I hope this disclaimer is well understood.

And so I conclude with something by Stephen Soundheim, who in his great NYC musical "Company" observed:

It's a city of strangers,
Some come to work, some to play.
A city of strangers,
Some come to stare, some to stay.
And every day
The ones who stay
Can find each other in the crowded streets and the guarded parks,
By the rusty fountains and the dusty trees with the battered barks,
And they walk together past upholstered walls with the crude remarks.
And they meet at parties through the friends of friends who they never know ...

... And another hundred people just got off of the train.

New Yorkers Don't Dream Big Anymore?

Not according to Jennifer 8 Lee of The New York Times.

Does New York Need to Dream Big Again?

According to her, the slow glacial of development in this city is a bad thing. While none would agree that it's a good thing, consider that she actually poses the question at the end of her article, "Is it time for another Robert Moses?" To that, the answer is quite clear: NO!

While I certainly don't like red tape and petty politics and all the nonsense that prevents the city from augmenting itself (like the whole Ground Zero debacle), the idea of once again concentrating that kind of power in another supposed "master builder" is the wrong way to go. If Ms. Lee has read The Power Broker (or my review it, although I doubt it), she might see why that's a very, very bad idea.

New York grew and developed for more than three hundred years before Robert Moses got his hands on it. During that time, we built great things like the Brooklyn Bridge and Central Park and the Empire State building and the entire subway system -- the thing we most love about NYC today. Democracy built those things and, while democracy can be a frustrating thing, in the end it's always the best way to go.