Woody Allen's "A Rainy Day in New York" Trailer

Finally!

Woody Allen's latest movie A Rainy Day in New York has not yet been released. Long story short: Woody made this movie for Amazon 2017, it was due to be released in 2018 but Amazon broke its contract with Woody because of old and discredited abuse allegations. Now it's not being released in the US at all -- but it will be released in Europe and other parts of the world later this year.

So, for now, we won't able to see a film by a great American director -- in America! -- and only have this trailer to go on. Insane! 

Memo to Amazon: please come to your senses and release this movie or put it on the streaming service soon. Heck, I don't know if the movie's good or not but that's not the point -- please don't let that professional creepy scold Ronan Farrow and his messed up family prevent the rest of us enjoying one of our greatest filmmaker's late career work.

Censorship is wrong! Let the art speak for itself! Release the movie! Now!

To Live in Disgrace in NYC

Public shaming has become, forgive the intellectual laziness, "a thing" these days. From misconduct allegations, to stupid social media posts, to getting arrested and sometimes even convicted of crimes -- whatever the offence or affront, either civil or criminal or purely social or otherwise -- more people than ever seem to have become pariahs, outcasts, socially toxic.

People who were once famous, beloved, and powerful -- Bill Cosby, Matt Lauer, Kevin Spacey, Charlie Rose, Harvey Weinstein, and others -- are now either unemployed or awaiting trial or already in jail or being sued or just ... cast out, totally banished from public life. Not only did these fallen people once have big careers that made them famous, rich, or just respected, but they were members of "polite society" and lived busy lives of glamour -- parties, premieres, award shows, galas, fundraisers, openings, talk shows, panel appearances, festivals, conferences, you name it -- the full smorgasbord of a successful life. The beautiful, the powerful, the rich, the famous, or just the merely popular and successful live non-stop on this circuit, this merry-go-round hamster wheel of events that prove and consolidate their vaunted status.

And when they fall from grace, for whatever reason, not only do they lose their jobs and sometimes face legal problems but the glamour evaporates. No more invitations. No more events. They fall off the hamster wheel, the circuit of a successful life shorts-out.

That has to be the worst thing of all. Not only losing your job, not only enduring great humiliation, not only living in legal jeopardy, but having all this excitement, all this stuff that kept your life busy and fun, just go ... poof. One can only imagine the emptiness, the loneliness, the boredom, the long days and nights at home, having nothing to do, nowhere to go, suddenly burdened with tons of unwanted time that you now have to fill yourself. The whole structure of your life is gone and there's nothing to look forward to. The volume of your life goes from loud to mute. You're in your own kind of dystopia, a unique and personal hell.

However, there's one place that pariahs can go -- or at least try to: restaurants. If you can get a reservation (presumably not under your name), or just walk in, even the most socially toxic people can eat out. After all, restaurants are businesses and need to make money and they'll serve and take the money of anyone so long as they don't think it'll cost them other customers (boycotts are, sadly, another "thing").

This article is an interesting look at how pariahs are sometimes seen in upscale NYC restaurants and how they are sometimes gawked at or ignored but are sometimes welcomed. The prime example: Michael Cohen, the disgraced former lawyer for Donald Trump. He may be a confessed liar, turncoat, and criminal but, at his preferred dining spots, he's still quite welcomed.

On a personal level, when I read about these fallen people, these once high flying people, now socially toxic pariahs, I have mixed feelings. If they did something really bad, if they damaged people's lives and careers, then social ostracism is probably the least punishment they deserve. But I also hate to see anyone lose everything, I hate to see anyone crash hard. Unlike a lot of people, I don't suffer from schadenfreude, I don't like seeing people suffer -- except for maybe Donald Trump and everyone around him.

I guess what I find interesting about people who are social pariahs is that I can, in some way, relate. Now, don't get me wrong, I've never been publically shamed or accused of anything nasty (Mr NYC is a very square dude). I've never been "disgraced" in the way so many have been lately -- but I've been never successful or popular in any way whatsoever (heck, I can't even get my friends or family to read this blog!). I've never been a high-flyer and lived on the circuit of success. In a way, I guess I've always been what one might consider a "natural disgrace" -- so how could I become a disgrace?  

You know how there are some people who're successful enough that you and everyone is envious or who are just so attractive and charismatic that people are naturally drawn to them? Yeah ... I'm the opposite of that!

I'm almost never invited anywhere or to any event, there's so social circuit hamster wheel in my life. On the rare occasions I do get invited somewhere, I'm overly flattered by it and it feels quite odd and unnatural, like something's wrong.

If I ever do become an official pariah (not that I want to!), I'd probably handle it quite well. Heck, I'm practically already one! So if you need any advice on how to negotiate life as a loser ... I'm your man!

From the Bronx to Jupiter: Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey"

"I'm sorry ... Dave" but I'm having a Stanley Kubrick moment.

Lately Dr. Strangelove has been on TCM. I hadn't seen it in a while but, as always, it's the funniest movie ever made about the end of the world and one of my favorites.  

Also, this past March was the 20th anniversary of the great Bronx-born director's death, just months before the release of his last movie, the bizarre (and NYC-based) Eyes Wide Shut. 

But Kubrick's masterpiece of masterpieces is 2001: A Space Odyssey which came out in 1968 and changed science-fiction and movies forever. It was, to put it mildly, daring -- little dialogue, little character development, almost pure visual storytelling, a plot that slowly, slowly reveals itself about a mission to Jupiter gone wrong, a story where the villain (HAL) is a computer and not a person, and an ending that can only be described as inscrutable. It's a movie that frustrating to watch the first time you see it but, like all great movies, it gets better and better with repeat viewings. 

So how did 2001 come to be? How did this poor kid from the Bronx wind up making an American classic that inspired the world?

You MUST listen to this episode of Studio 360 about the history of 2001 and Kubrick's back story that led him to make it. It's an amazing only-in-NYC story, of how a kid dreamed big -- universally big! -- and changed the world.

Also, please read my 2008 interview with Kurt Anderson, the host of Studio 360. He's fascinating too!

De Blasio Runs for President

Not going to blog about this here, check out the Mr NYC Twitter page for my deep, incredibly brilliant thoughts about this.

The TWA Hotel Lands at JFK

The 1950s and '60s are romanticized as the Mad Men era -- the "great America" that so many people want to somehow, spiritually and socio-economically return to; a time when people knew their place i.e. white men in power, blacks at the back of the bus, gays in the closet, and women either in the kitchen or only working as secretaries, nurses, and teachers.

'Dose were da' days!

It was a time when it was great to be a "mad man" -- oh yes, you could have three martini lunches, smoke everywhere, and bang your secretaries with abandon (no annoying sexual harassment laws or HR rules or hashtags to kill the fun).

It was white male nirvana.

Then there was the architecture. Lots of gorgeous but decaying buildings were being torn down at this time and replaced by boring Bauhaus inspired-monstrosities. Function, not beauty, dictated architectural style. And brand new diners (remember those?) and airport terminals were opening and they looked weird -- lots of curves and arched ceilings and warped roofs -- like spaceships out of Forbidden Planet.

One such prime NYC example was the TWA Terminal at JFK airport that opened in 1962.

It was a huge, hulking sweep of curves and open spaces, blindingly white, and it feels very 1960s post-modernesque. It was a functioning terminal for decades until TWA went out of business and the terminal closed in the early 2000s. It sat empty, ready to be bulldozed, until some developers bought and decided to turn it into a hotel.

And now the hottest new hotel in town is far from midtown Manhattan -- it's in southeast Queens!

Today the new TWA Hotel opens to much fanfare. It's obviously a massive, expensive undertaking ($300+ million) with a myriad of rooms starting at $250 a night. There are expensive restaurant (Jean-Georges has one there) plus luxury retail stores, and a 150 person bar inside an airplane tethered to the hotel. Everything is luxury and luxuriously kitschy -- taking something that was once plebian and turning it into something grand. Apparently the owners of this new hotel have huge ambitions for it, they think it'll have nonstop full capacity, and that travellers to and from JFK will want to pony up that much money to spend the night before either flying out or after having landed. 

Either the new TWA hotel will be a huge success or a colossal failure. I'll be watching its fate with keen interest.

Sidenote: I almost exclusively flew on TWA to and from college back in the 1990s. As I mentioned yesterday, I just passed the 20th anniversary of my college graduation so this nostalgia-themed hotel opening today is somehow -- le sigh -- appropriate.

It's just reminder that the present becomes the past quickly, today's ordinary stuff becomes tomorrow's cherished relics, today's noise becomes tomorrow's history, today's frustrations becomes tomorrow's nostalgia.

It was ever thus and forever shall be. 

Hinge Day

Today is a weird kind of day, a "hinge" day, a day where the past and present touch for a moment before going their separate ways.

Today Anthony Weiner is a free man, a dark chapter in his life over. Hopefully he will have a better future ahead of him.

It's also the day where the police -- FINALLY! -- determined that the cop who killed Eric Garner back in 2014 actually -- maybe, kinda, sorta, really -- killed him. Took long enough! Hopefully this police officer and Eric Garner's family will get the justice they deserve. 

And today is the day where Howard Stern's new book finally publishes, his first in almost 25 years! In the book, and this interview, he talks about his relationship with Trump (who used to appear on his show a lot) and how Howard, regrettably and certainly inadvertently, might have helped him become president. The book is called Howard Stern Comes Again -- so, today, officially, he will be coming all over the book stores and e-readers and best seller lists, we'll be drowning in Howard Stern's ... book.  

For me, personally, this is another kind of hinge day -- it's exactly 20 years to the day since I graduated from college. On Thursday it'll be officially 20 years since I moved back to NYC. It's hard to believe that it's been that long -- time gallops ahead, leaving many such hinge days behind us.

Howard Stern For Governor -- No, Forever!

Howard Stern is promoting his new book and, for the first time in years, he is out and about doing lots of interviews. (My wife has promised me a new Kindle with this book loaded on it for Father's Day.)

The recurring theme of these interviews, and apparent raison d'etre for his new book, is how the once raunchy and outrageous 1980s & 1990s radio DJ became a major 21st century media icon. It's about how Howard as "evolved" from "bad boy shock jock" to "thought-provoking" interviewer and cultural pulse-taker. 

As someone who has listened to Howard for almost 30 years, I can attest first-hand that this change in the man and his show are very real. In some ways they're both better than ever -- Howard seems like a much kinder, much more empathetic guy; the interviews are simply better than anything you'll hear anywhere else. But I also miss the old Howard -- the take-no-prisoners style and the (admittedly dated and "un-woke") craziness of having women come into the studio to have bologna and bread tossed at their smeared-with-mayonnaise posteriors, plus strippers and porn stars coming in to undress, get spanked, and operate various mechanical devices on their Devil bits. 

Oh, those were the days!

Back when I started listening to him, Howard loved to do stunts like the Open Sores tennis match in Flushing, his various "funerals" for DJs in other markets that he overtook in the ratings, the massive book signings he had for his first two books, and lots more. 

But nothing topped what he did in 1994 when he actually ran for New York State governor against then-Governor Mario Cuomo (the current gub's dad). Howard even secured the nomination of the Libertarian Party and had an agenda -- get highway work to be performed in night so he didn't have to sit in traffic, restore the death penalty (and fill pot holls on the highways with the chary remains of the executed), and then resign so his Lieutenant Governor, a real politician, could take over. Howard rose rapidly in the polls but then bailed on the campaign when the very real possibility that he might win materialized (he claimed that he didn't want to reveal his finances, a rather thin but good excuse to get out).

The "Howard Stern for Governor" stunt was short-lived and ridiculous but, at the time, it accomplished the task of getting him tons of attention. It even got his parodied brilliantly on Saturday Night Live -- 25 years ago this week! -- at a time when the show was otherwise awful. And it spawned a song called "Howard Stern for Governor" that was dopey and heartfelt. 

It's hard to believe that this happened more than a quarter of a century ago -- and, as we see, something much more awful and outrageous than Governor Howard Stern is happening now.

The big difference between Howard and other outrageous media personalities is that he understood that his shtick was always an act and not something to be truly acted upon -- unlike other DJs who performed truly dangerous and illegal stunts that got them fired or charged with crimes, or others who actually got elected to office on even more ridiculous and hateful agendas. That's why, after so many decades, Howard is still around and more respected than ever while other media figures of his ilk have either flamed out or became truly hated. 

Twenty-five years ago we said Howard Stern for Governor. Today we say Howard Stern Forever!

When Will a Woman Run NYC?

New York City has, in its almost 400 year history, never been run by a woman. No woman has ever ascended to the office of the mayor.

In a way, for a city as progressive and bursting with opportunity as NYC, this is a bit of an embarrassment. Many states, including some very conservative ones, have had female governors. Other big cities like Dallas and, as of this year, Chicago, have had female mayors. But not NYC.  

Women have done well in other high NYC offices. We've had a female comptroller (Elizabeth Holtzman), two female public advocates (Betsy Gotbaum and Tish James), two female speakers (Chris Quinn and Melissa Mark-Viverito), and, when the office still existed, a female City Council President (Carol Bellamy). There have also been several female borough presidents. 

And yet the top prize has proved elusive to many of them (and other women) when they ran for it.

Only two women, in fact, have ever made it to the general election ballot: Democrat Ruth Messinger in 1997 and Republican Nicole Malliotakis in 2017 (I'm not counting any candidates who ran third-party and never had a serious chance of getting elected). They both lost, badly, because they were running against popular incumbents up for re-election so their defeats had more to do with the political environments than anything else. Others, like Chris Quinn, simply were at odds with the primary electorate. No candidate has ever lost, from what I can tell, due to outright sexism -- like most candidates who lose (and most people who run for office, certainly mayor, lose) the odds were just against them.

This article attempts to do a deep dive into understanding why no woman has been elected mayor. Most of it is nonsense but it does make the case, as I've made before, that the city's insular political culture also plays a part. But in 2021, we may have a woman mayor, although, as of now, no one knows who that might be.

Stay tuned.  

Richard Brown and Weed

This past Saturday two things happened in NYC that are both completely unrelated and totally inextricable -- the death of longtime Queens DA Richard Brown and a big parade in support of marijuana legalization. 

Richard Brown was the last of the old-school NYC District Attorneys -- a "tough-on-crime", "law-and-order", "lock 'em-up-and-throw-away-the-keys" type. He became Queens DA in a time of high crime and the drug war, when a DA couldn't be tough enough on crime. Brown loved locking people up, he wanted to put as many people in jail as possible. He carried this kind of prosecutorial policy well into the 21st century, into the era of low crime and a re-thinking of the drug war and how the criminal justice system should operate. His successor will be elected this year (the primary is in June) and whoever succeeds him will probably have more evolved, more rehabilitation type policies.

Needless to say, DAs like Brown hated, hated, hated any kind of drug, even da' reefer. And the drive to legalize marijuana in New York is exactly the kind of thing that stands in diametric opposition to what he believed and how he worked. Hopefully, at some point, the legislature will get it together and actually pass a legal weed bill (considering that so many other states have already done this). But legal weed is coming whether we (or folks like Brown) like it or not.

It's just another reminder that NYC is forever at a crossroads.

The Met Gets Campy

Tonight is the big annual Met Gala, where celebrities and all the glamorous beautiful people converge to celebrate how famous and glamorous and beautiful they all are. In actuality it's a big fundraiser as well as a celebration of the museum's next big fashion show.

This year, the theme for the gala and the new exhibition is "camp" (the famous phrase coined by Susan Sontag in her legendary 1964 essay Notes on Camp), culture that revels in the love of the artificial, the tacky, the sleazy, the intentionally bad and offensive, the kitchy, the dumb. Sontag writes about how, in camp, "everything is in quotation marks."

For example: John Waters movies are homosexual camp. Russ Meyers movies are straight camp.  Michael Moore is liberal camp. Sarah Palin is conservative camp.

You get the idea. 

This Met Gala has to be the first big fashion event based on an intellectual essay. In many ways, it's appropriate that stuff that is or was once upon a time considered low art and sleazy is now being celebrated in the most prestigious and glittering museum in the world. 

I feel bad that Susan Sontag won't be able to attend the gala -- she's been dead since 2004 -- although some are saying she'd hate it. This "campy" gala and exhibit are, in many ways, a prime example of cultural appropriation, where the rich and famous and powerful adapt and glamorize and, in some ways, condescend to and patronize, the auspices of the poor (like old school European peasant food being fancied up and served in expensive restaurants) But what a tribute and honor this is to her legacy! 

By the way, if the Met ever wants to appropriate anything from this blog and make a gala out of it, please, be my guest! Just do it in my lifetime so I can attend!