Review: "Motherless Brooklyn" (2019)

Private corruption leads to public corruption -- the personal venality of those in power is inflicted upon the masses in terrible ways. We are seeing this in extremis with the morally rotten and massively corrupt presidency of Donald Trump. Although this reality horror show will end a week from today, its stench will linger over us for a long time afterwards.

And that's the overarching problem -- even when bad powerful men go away, we the people remain stuck with their corrupt works for years and decades to come.

If you've ever read The Power Broker, Robert Caro's biography of NYC "master builder" Robert Moses, or seen the movie Chinatown, a fictional retelling of engineer William Mulholland bringing water to Los Angeles, the central concept within both is that the personal corruption of these powerful men fueled and warped the development of our nation's two biggest cities -- and, even now, decades after their deaths, we are literally living in the crime scenes i.e. the cities they made. 

And that's the basic idea behind Edward Norton's 2019 movie Motherless Brooklyn: the city is a crime.

A very liberal adaptation of Jonathan Lethem's 1999 novel, Motherless Brooklyn is Norton's attempt to take the basic framework of Chinatown (a private detective investigating a weird crime) and marry it with the facts in The Power Broker (an unelected master planner who builds in NYC with dictatorial power) to make a 21st-century fable about the corrupt shaping of our city. 

A thumbnail of the plot: a private detective with Tourette's syndrome named Lionel Essrog investigates the murder of one his partners. His investigation leads him to Harlem where he meets a woman named Laura Rose who works with someone named Gabby Horowitz (based on Jane Jacobs) who is fighting the redevelopment plans of city commisioner Moses Randolph (based on you-know-who). Essrog eventually meets up with a man named Paul, another brilliant but failed city planner, who turns out to be Randolph's brother and who knows a dark secret that could bring him down. Essrog discovers that Randolph's redevelopment plan is just a scam to kick poor black people out of their homes and sell their property to private developers. Paul explains to Essrog how Randolph's power is beyond anyone else's in government and how, as the head of an unelected public authority, he is totally unaccountable to anyone. Events ensue and Essrog comes to realize that Laura's life is in danger -- unless he can somehow get to Randolph and blackmail him with his secret. There's lots of double-crossing and complexity that makes this a very noirish yarn. 

It's a story about the power behind the power, the secret history of NYC, and the darkness behind it all. Also, it's a tale about the basic evils of gentrification and how the "public good" is often a cover for private greed.

The cast is excellent: Norton is compelling as Essrog, Alec Baldwin is ominous as Randolph, and Willem Dafoe is the standout as the tortured Paul. The cast includes Michael K. Wiliams, Bobby Cannavale, a cameo by Bruce Willis, Cherry Jones as Gabby, and a very good actress named Gugu Mbatha-Raw plays Laura. 

Norton is a fine director and the movie holds your attention to a point but, ultimately, the story feels slight in relation to the heights of its ambition. You can tell, in a way, that Norton is suffering from the classic "anxiety of influence" -- he is cleary in awe of, and has great reverence for, Chinatown and The Power Broker and the original novel, that his efforts with this film feel stunted, as much as influenced, by them. Also, I think there's an inherit problem when you're trying to make a movie that's partly inspired by a novel but also trying to incorporate plot lines and factoids from another movie and another book. It's just too much -- and while a noble attempt it makes the story and its themes feel more jumbled than inspired.

Still, it's an interesting concept for a movie -- and it's more of a concept than a movie in my opinion -- but that's why I recommend people see Motherless Brooklyn along with enjoying it's wonderful cast.  

"Pretend It's a City" on Netflix

If you were something less than a writer but more than a stand-up comedian you'd be Fran Lebowitz. 

Lebowitz has spent decades famously NOT writing and NOT performing stand up comedy but she's somehow managed to have a long career as a professional raconteur. She wrote two brilliant books of essays in the late 1970s and early 1980s (her book Metropolitan Life is one of the funniest things I've ever read) but since then she's made a career just talking in public as a professional crank.

Lots of people like to talk but few enjoyed being listened to more than Fran Lebowitz. 

Lebowitz is full of opinions about everything and is extremely funny. She "performs" i.e. talks at numerous staged events, on TV, and now on Netflix. She loves to talk about everything and anything but her main subject, the one she's most expert on, is New York City itself.

Her new documentary series is called Pretend It's a City, a seven part look at what's happened to NYC in the last several decades since Lebowitz moved here in the 1970s (it was shot before COVID-19 so it's what you might call a "normal times" look at the city). Her subjects are the evolution of NYC over the years, including episodes devoted to how life in the city is impacted culture, transportation, money, health, history, and libraries. 

It's a holistic look at a city that's almost impossible to ever fully understand. 

The series just dropped on Netflix and I haven't watched it yet but it appears to mainly involve Lebowitz walking around the city, speaking at recorded live events, and chatting with her sidekick, some guy named ... Martin Scorsese (and yes, he directed it). 

I can't wait to see it! Listen to her interview about on NPR here. 

The 5ninthavenueproject on YouTube

In the 1980s a South Carolina-migrant named Nelson Sullivan recorded over 1900 hours of footage of NYC streetlife. He videotaped every kind of New Yorker in every type of location. After he died of a heart attack in 1989, at the age of 41, his friends catalogued these videotapes into the 5ninthavenue project which now has its own channel on YouTube. 

The videos are very raw, slice-of-life moments in time captured for eternity. They are unvarnished, unsentimental, totally fascinating "you-are-there" recordings that trigger both nostalgia and wonder about a city both familiar and long-gone. 

These two recordings are from 1987 on the subway and the last video Nelson made in July 1989 but you should check out the rest if you want to see more of NYC as it once was. 

The United States Senate is Brooklyn Strong

And now, the gentleman from Brooklyn ...

In the midst of the fascist melee down at the US Capitol yesterday, something quietly notable happened -- New York State's senior senator, and a guy from Brooklyn, became the Majority Leader to-be (or designate or elect, I don't friggin' know) after the run-off elections in Georgia. 

He will also be the first Jewish Majority Leader, the most powerful Jew in American history. 

Schumer was elected to Congress in 1980 after serving in the New York State Legislature so this is the culmination of a more than-40 year journey to the pinnacle, the summit, the very top of American legislative power. 

So while some may try to burn American down, its democracy is hanging tight, Brooklyn-strong. 

UPDATE: Read more about what this might mean for NYC.

1947 vs. 2021

In 1947 there was a small pox epidemic in NYC and 5 million New Yorkers got vaccinated in two weeks. The COVID-19 vaccines have been available for almost two months and, so far, less than 200,000 New Yorkers have gotten the shot.

What happened?

How did we go from being able to vaccinate nearly the entire city's population in less than a month seventy-four years ago to a tiny fraction of that today in almost two months?

The answer is, quite simply, outsourcing.

Back in 1947, the vaccines were distributed at clinics set up by the Department of Health. New Yorkers went to one in their neighborhood, got the shot, and life went on. It was centralized and efficient -- and fast. But today it's been outsourced to hospitals and medical centers -- i.e. private profit-seekers -- and so it's become a giant strategic and inefficient mess.

It's really quite tragic -- and yet another example of how the so-called "free market" has failed the public. 

Mr NYC in Minnesota

As lockdown has gone on ... and on ... my mind has been wandering back to places I've traveled over the years. While I haven't gone to that many places, I've gone to enough that I don't always recall them. And, shockingly, it wasn't until last week when I read an article about the State of Minnesota that I even remember that, oh yeah, I spent two summers there in the early 1990s.

Minnesota has been in the news a lot lately. Its biggest city, Minneapolis, was the site of the terrible police murder of George Floyd last year that rocked American race relations and led to coast-to-coast protests. The writer of this article, someone who has traveled and vacationed a lot in the state, indicates that death of George Floyd emphasized that there really two Minnesotas in the same way there are two Americas -- there's the Minnesota of A Prairie Home Campanion, the land of lakes and picturesque small towns, canoe trips and hikes in the forest, highway diners and friendly Scandavian immigrants, pure Americana, pure American myth (white America). Then there's the other Minnesota, the other America, the dark side of this Americana, the one we don't eulogize, the one we try to ignore -- the land of poverty and violence and drugs, the land of racism and police brutality, the land of lives of quiet desperation. The Floyd murder forced Minnesota and white Minnesotans, those in love with the myth, to see this in the nearly 10 minutes that that police officer kept his knee on Mr. Floyd's neck, killing him. 

Americana laid bare.

My Minnesota ventures certainly fell into the myth bucket -- sorta. In the summers after my freshman and sophomore years of high school, I went to a French language camp in northern Minnesota. There are these massive language camps there, run by Concordia University, where American teenagers go, live, speak, and embrace the culture of other countries. The biggest of all the camps was the German camp but they also had French, Chinese, and others. Not only did I go and speak French at this camp for a few weeks each time but it was also my first time meeting kids from other parts of the country. They were so different from kids in NYC, in many ways nicer, in many ways weirder, and the fact that I was from NYC made me strange and exotic to them. It was the first time I realized that most of the people in the rest of the country were both mesmerized and curious about their nation's biggest city. They would ask me lots of questions about it that I, at that young tender age, was incapable of answering.

Otherwise, besides the language part, it was a standard summer camp. Lots of camp fires, lots of sing-alongs, lots of sports, some truth-or-dare games, the whole deal. Honestly, it was second and last summer camp I ever attended -- for the most part summer camp wasn't my thing. I made friends with some kids and we promised that we'd stay in touch and be friends forever -- and now I don't even remember their names. It was typical teenage stuff.

I'd like to go back to Minnesota one day, maybe even venture back to the northern part of the state, to rediscover the myth of the state while also understanding its reality.

P.S. On a short flight from Minneapolis to northern Minnesota I looked back and saw Chelsea Clinton sitting in a seat. She attended one of the other language camps and, needless to say, a lot of people made a fuss over her. Her dad had been president for about six months at that time and the Secret Service agents were around but inconspicous. I didn't talk to her but I did overhear her tell someone about how much effort her mom made in making sure she had packed everything she needed. I remember seeing her drive off from the airport with a scary-looking official car behind the bus.  

P.P.S. Minnesota has produced some brilliant artists, many of whome came to NYC. Bob Dylan. F. Scott Fitzegerald. The Coen Brothers. Something must be in the water there!

Fight COVID-19 24/7

Now that COVID-19 vaccinations are available, the effort has moved on to making sure everyone gets it. In New York City, this means that 8.6 million people will need to get the shot in the arm in order for life to return, somewhat, to normal ASAP.

But, right now, it's taking far too long.

Most of the people getting vaccinated are getting their shots on Mondays to Fridays during business hours. This simply isn't going to work. New Yorkers need to be getting vaccinated 24/7 -- yes, at night, on weekends, during holidays, whenever or wherever they can. That means that if some of us, including yours truly, need to get vaccinated at 3 AM on a Saturday morning, so be it! 

The city really needs to expands its imagination and ramp up its efforts and, as some in the city council have said, take on a war-like mentality and effort in beating this thing with overwhelming force. 

The virus does not go away at night, take weekends or holidays off, and doesn't operate only during business hours. It's here, invading and fighting the city, 24/7 so now that we have the artillery to defeat it we must be fighting it 24/7.

Let's Talk About Failure, Baby

Happy New Year! This is when we make resolutions and forge plans to achieve great success in the coming twelve months. That's why, contrarian that I am, this first post of 2021 will be about failure.

After the 2020 we all had, can you blame me?

I love stories about failure. They prove that the universe is a random, weird, mostly cruel, sometimes kind, totally unpredictable place. I'm a connoiseur of the genre. 

Let's paraphrase Leo Tolstoy who wrote that all happy families are basically the same while all unhappy families are unhappy in unique and different ways. So it is with success and failure: all roads to success are basically the same and straightforward (the idea, the struggle, the setback, the breakthrough, the triumph) but the roads to failure are much more bizarre and interesting.

I've chronicles my share of failure stories on here over the years -- this blog being perhaps a prime example of failure.

So here's another one: the story of a musical version of Frankenstein that premiered exactly 40 years ago today -- and closed after one night. Hopes were high that this show, the most expensive musical of all time at the time, would start 1981 on Broadway with a creative and financial bang. Instead, it failed -- the reviews were terrible, there was no advance box office sales, it was a disaster by every metric. The producers saw that this show had no future except red ink and empty seats so they killed it that night. Interestingly, this show had a notable cast (some of whom were fired before the show actually played its one offiicial show) including future Oscar-winner Dianne Wiest, the late great David Dukes (not to be confused with the white supremicist), and a guy named William Converse-Roberts who would go on to be the ex-husband on The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd. The creators would go on to have decent careers but no big Broadways triumphs. But on the night of January 4, 1981, a month after John Lennon's murder and Ronald Reagan's inaugeration, the future for everyone on the show looked dark.

But even though this showed was a bad flop, it makes for a great -- and successful -- story.

P.S. The whole horror genre has had a lousy history on Broadway. Whereasa it's a staple of the movies, theater audiences aren't interested. Fascinating how a whole genre can work in one medium but not in another. 

NY1 News

There's another big change coming to NYC on this New Year's Day -- this time on our TV screens. Five female reporters at NY1 are leaving the station after settling a gender discrimination lawsuit. It's too bad -- they are all very talented and, after having seen them day-and-day, year-after-year, on NY1, it feels like losing some friends. But here we are. Everything changes -- especially these days.

Moynihan Station and the Future of NYC Transportation

Happy New Year!

New York City has a major new transportation hub -- out with the old Penn Station, in with the new Moynihan Station!

As Governor Cuomo dubbed it, the new station is "a work of art" -- a vast skylight ceiling, a huge Art deco clock, modern art, waiting areas that resemble hotel lobbies, it's a big new addition to the NYC firmament. It's named after the late great Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who dreamed of this project long ago. 

This station is also, in many ways, the correction of a massive error in the city's history -- the tearing down of the original gorgeous Penn Station in the early 1960s. It's a remakable achievement, particularly in this day and a age of dysfunction, to complete something like this -- especially in the middle of a pandemic.

Of course, a shiny new thing is not a substitute for a much more fundamental need -- the need for more public transit overall. We still need the Gateway Project -- more tunnels, more trains, much more capacity to handle the strain of ridership. This station, while making the experience of boarding and exiting the train more enjoyable, does not fix this massive problem. After all, it took almost 50 years to build three new subway stops on the Upper East Side -- how soon can we expect to give in and out and around NYC a whole lot faster?

So when it comes to meeting the needs for transportation in NYC, new station or no, we have a longgggggggggggg way to go. We have this great new station -- now lets have a transportation system for the whole city that's worthy of it.