Every so often a movie comes along that's more than just a movie but becomes a talisman for life. It helps you navigate your own path forward, your own relationships and feelings, and it becomes a part of your heart.
For my generation, it's When Harry Met Sally ... which came out 30 years ago this month. I was a kid burgeoning on teenager-dome, and this movie -- this great, brilliantly written, magically acted, beautifully made, perfectly executed film -- made me think about what it might be like to be a grown up, to date, to have different kinds of friendships, about what kind of person I might become. I can't say, by any stretch of the imagination, that I live a life like any of the characters in the film (well, maybe a little, once upon a time) but this movie, and the issues it raises about men and women, are as timely today as they were back then -- and, believe you me, this movie was the topic of many conversations I had as a young man with both men and women.
If you've seen this movie it's impossible not to fall in love with it. There are so many great scenes, hilarious lines and moments, such fascinating characters, that to try to describe it or sum it up here would be to do the movie a disservice. And, if you haven't seen it, stop everything and SEE IT NOW! You will fall hopelessly in love with it.
Naturally, When Harry Met Sally ... is a great NYC movie. It is a shameless "love letter" to the city, showing its full beauty, you might call it pure NYC p-o-r-n. While today NYC is a dream scape for many (or nightmare, depending on who you talk to), it's hard to remember that, back in 1989, NYC was perceived by most of America and the world as being in crises -- the Central Park Jogger, the crack epidemic, high crime, urban decay, political corruption. The city was seen as a scary place and this movie said -- "No! NYC is as great as ever!" In so many ways, this movie was far ahead of its time.
I've blogged about When Harry Met Sally ... over the years and you can find the complete coverage here.
So go out, get a pastrami sandwich, and watch or re-watch this classic NYC fable.
The classic, iconic movie about love and relationships in NYC was released two decades ago this month and became an instant classic. It stirred up the ages old debate about whether or not men and women really can be friends, about how sex confuses love, about how old relationships affect new relationships, about how love in NYC is a crazy adventure.
Everyone who loves this movie has favorite scenes, favorite lines. Some agree with the movie's philosophy, some don't but still enjoy it anyway. My personal favorite parts of the movie are the short scenes of older couples sitting on the couch talking about how they met and fell in love.
Also, this movie is an unrequited love letter to New York. Remember, this flick came out in 1989 when NYC was still viewed by many as a crime-filled cesspool. But this movie had faith in the city when a lot of people didn't, and had faith in the power of love and marriage when at times it can be very, very difficult.
Of course the most famous scene in this movie is when Meg Ryan fakes an orgasm in the middle of Katz's Deli. It never fails to be funny, no matter how many times you see it.
New York is the best at many things in this world - finance, fashion, publishing, theater, fundraising, take your pick. One thing this city is undoubtedly the best at is delis, and there are many great ones here: the Carnegie, the Stage, Barney Greengrass, Zabars. But perhaps the most beloved is Katz's, the 100 year-plus establishment on East Houston, right off Ludlow street in the Lower East Side. It is the ultimate for big sandwiches and hearty Jewish fair. Frank Bruni of The New York Times recently had a great review of it and he summed it up well when he wrote that you go to Katz's:
"To revel in its pastrami sandwich, one of the best in the land, with an eye-popping stack of brined beef that’s juicy, smoky, rapturous. To glory in the intricate ritual of the place: the taking of a ticket at the door; the lining-up in front of one of the servers who carves that beef by hand; the tasting of the thick, ridged slices the server gives us as the sandwich is being built; the nodding when we’re asked if we want pickles, because of course we want pickles."
As Bruni indicates, when you enter Katz's, you are immediately given a red ticket that you must hold on to. Once you order at he counter (or, if you get table service, once you pay your bill on the way out of the door), it is punched. If you should lose your ticket, then you must pay $50. The deli has a huge and always busy counter. There are also a lot of tables where you can sit and a number of them include waiter service. The walls are lined with literally hundreds if not thousands of photos of the myriad famous people that have visited over the years. These faces include the famous and the infamous, the A-list to the Z-list, from Ed Koch to Joan Hamburg, from James Gandolfini to Jerry Seinfeld, from Ron Jeremy to (I kid you not) Mikhail Gorbachev! In the middle of the sea of tables is thetable, the one where Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal sat in "When Harry Met Sally ...", site of the most famous fake orgasm in history. The table is indicated by an overhanging sign and, needless to say, it is always taken.
I recently visited Katz's for the first time. I went around 5 PM on a Saturday afternoon and had no problem getting a table (although not the "When Harry Met Sally..." one). Since Mr. Bruni suggested it, I had a pastrami sandwhich while my beloved had a Rueben. The sandwhiches were large and hearty but not unreasonably big. In addition, I had a bowl of matzah ball soup and it was delicious! (Just a friendly note: should you ever consume matzah ball soup, DO NOT mash the matzah ball into the broth. Instead, slice it down with your spoon.) Overall, we had a lovely time and hope to go back soon.
Oh, and when you're there, you'll see a sign that advises you to "Sena Salami to Your Boy in the Army!" It's a bit of Old New York sadly relevant today.
The world of Letters and Cinema became poorer yesterday with the death of Nora Ephron.
A writer/director, Ephron was a blazing talent. She began her career in the 1960s as a reporter and essayist and then, in the 1980s, she became an acclaimed screenwriter for films like Silkwood, Heartburn, and her most beloved work, the classic When Harry Met Sally ... Later on she became a director of such big hits like Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, and Julie and Julia.
And as woman, forging a career in a more sexist time and in male-dominated industries, Ephron was not only a talent but a trailblazer.
Nora Ephron was also a real New Yorker. Although she grew up in California, she made her career here. Many of her films are set here and even the ones that aren't have a real cosmopolitan edge. She epitomized the city and it epitomized her.
You should read this tribute from When Harry Met Sally ... director Rob Reiner. Together, they made movie gold.
So farewell, Nora. I know that I'll be showing my little daughter your films one day. Thank you for your unique, funny voice.
Flying home from Paris one of the in-flight movie options was, naturally, Julie & Julia from 2009.
This comedy is a dual bio-pic about the famed cookbook author and OG TV cooking show host Julia Child, and a woman named Julie Powell who cooked all 524 recipes from Child's 1961 tome Mastering the Art of French. The movie flashes back and forth between the late 1940s/early 1950s (when Julia Child and her diplomat husband, Paul, were living in France and she was discovering her love of French food and the genesis of her book), and 2002 when a young, newly married woman named Julie Powell, living in NYC, decides to cook all of the book's recipes.
It's a movie about love and inspiration -- the love of food, of culture, of significant others, of the better and more refined things in life, and how these things are always challenged by the harsh realities of the world. In the Julia Child/French/mid-20th century part, Julia and her husband's life and careers are challenged by the Cold War and encroaching McCarthyism, and the Julie/NYC/early 21-st century part is challenged by the shortness of money and the dark shadow of 9/11. The movie's point is doing what you love, being with who you love, enjoying what you love is possible -- but it's a lot of hard work and sometimes we face big forces beyond our control.
Julia Child is played by Meryl Streep in one of her typical dazzling performances. Her husband is the always great, always lovable Stanley Tucci. Julie Powell is played by the perky Amy Adams and Chris Messina is her clueless but loving husband. The movie does a good job of interweaving the two stories and showing us the luscious world of post-war France and the gritty reality of early aughts NYC. And if you love food, especially French food, you'll get really hungry after watching this.
Julie & Julia was the last movie written and directed by Nora Ephron, three years before her death in 2012. She was the brilliant writer of When Harry Met Sally ..., Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, and other movies. This movie was her swan song -- and a really good one at that -- if not necessarily up there with her classics. It's worth seeing, especially if you love Paris, NYC, food, and everything that makes life worth living.
I'm in shock and tears at the awful deaths of Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle. Rob made so many classic movies of my youth -- Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, Misery, A Few Good Men -- that his legacy will be burnished into my soul forever.
My favorite, of course, is his 1989 classic When Harry Met Sally ... Rob and Nora Ephron collaborated to make one of the greatest romantic comedies ever.
I've blogged about it numberous times of over the years (read it here) but I'll simply add this: at a time when NYC was going through a rough patch (rising crime, the Crack epidemic, government corruption, severe racial tensions) Rob and Nora gave the world this beautiful, hopeful, and very funny movie that celebrated love and NYC. It was a shot of joy in a difficult time and for that New Yorkers will always be grateful.
Rob and Nora are now gone but we will enjoy their work forever. RIP.
It's only April, but it feels like some important things have already changed in NYC in 2013.
And I'm not including my own circumstances, where yours truly and family moved into a new home.
Specifically, it feels like the cultural and political axis of this town has moved a few degrees Two
months ago former Mayor Ed Koch died, and I indicated then that the city
would be a different place without him. It seems like his passing was a
forerunner: a number of things -- some notable, some subtle -- have
happened in the last few weeks that shows how our city is constantly
evolving.
Let's
start with politics. This past week, our city's political scene was
rocked when a Democratic State Senator and a Republican City Councilman
were arrested for -- ready for this? -- trying to rig the NYC mayoral
race.
Truly. Weird.
Apparently the State Senator,
Democrat Malcolm Smith, was trying to bribe GOP party bosses in the city
to let him on the Republican party ballot for the 2013 Mayor's race.
The go-between Smith and these GOP guys was City Councilman Dan
Halloran, a Republican. Mr Halloran was willing to help Smith get on the
line in exchange for several thousand dollars in bribes. This plan was
so ridiculous that it defies description -- first, that Smith would
ever get on the GOP line ahead of Joe Lohata, second, that anyone in NYC
would vote for Smith for mayor.
A couple of years ago I blogged about Mr. Halloran and what an odd duck he is. Apparently I understated the case -- he's an odd criminal duck.
Too bad Ed Koch is dead. I would like to know his opinion about this "conspiracy" to win his old job.
It's still very early but it looks like the 2013 mayor's race is gonna be one for the history books.
Moving on, our city's cultural life is particularly fascinating right now. First, this past week, the late great Nora Ephron's last play premiered on Broadway. Called Lucky Man, it marks the debut of legendary actor Tom Hanks playing the legendary New York reporter Mike McClary. McClary was a police reporter who uncovered corruption in the NYPD in 1990s and won himself a Pulitzer Prize in the process (he died on Christmas Day, 1998). Needless to say, he had powerful enemies but in the years since he passed, our city has come to realize that we owe him a debt of gratitude. And, of course, he owe Nora Ephron a debt of gratitude for giving us movies like When Harry Met Sally ... and for being an original New York voice.
This play is a tribute to a great reporter by a great writer both of whom did so much to make our city a better place. Their pens our now silent forever. They left us too soon. And, sadly, someone else is leaving us -- the amazing Elaine Stritch. The singer/actress has decided that, at the age of 88, she wants to go live with her family so she's leaving town and going back to Michigan. As she said in a TV interview recently, she gave his city a good 71 years. Mr. Strich originated one of the roles in the musical company and she's appeared in countless movies, musicals, and TV shows -- most recently on 30 Rock and in "A Little Night Music" which I saw her in 2010 and blogged about here.
Goodbye Elaine. This city won't be the same without you.
But not everything is sadness. Not everyone is leaving NYC. In fact, something very big is coming into town.
"From 30 Rock in midtown Manhattan, it's 'The Tonight Show' with Jimmy Fallon!"
Yes, that's right -- after over 40 years, NBC's "Tonight Show" is coming back to NYC with a new host -- the current host of "Late Night" Jimmy Fallon. The show is expected to move here with Mr. Fallon as host in 2014. This is, as Ed Sullivan might have said, really big. After more than 20 years, Jay Leno is out as host and a new generation is taking over TV most legendary talk show. Most important of all, by bringing it to NYC, the "Tonight Show" is rediscovered its roots -- and once again showing that NYC is the cultural capital of America. So the city is changing -- our politics are getting screwy, some legends are leaving us, and an old legend is coming back.
Dating in NYC is like trying to write War and Peace in a bumper car in an amusement park -- your strives towards perfection is continually interrupted by the realities around you (Stanley Kubrick said this about making movies but I think it's an apt comparison). And talking about movies, movies like When Harry Met Sally ... and TV shows like Friends and Sex and the City make dating in NYC look really glamorous -- everybody's rich and beautiful, with great jobs and apartments and oceans of free time, and the weather is always perfect.
These movies and TV shows might be fun to watch but they sure ain't reality. The realities of dating in New York is both funnier, scarier, and a lot more complicated than any fictional rendering could ever be. And no one talks about the realities of dating in NYC better than the Dateable Dork. Her blog has to be the most honest and most hilarious forum about love and lovin' in NYC that I've ever read. With great wittiness and energy, she takes you into her life and makes you laugh and think about the craziness of love in NYC. The Dateable Dork reminds you that not all New Yorkers are characters straight out of a Candace Bushnell novel but are people who can be more interesting, more intriguing and, yes, more dorky, than anyone could imagine.
She agreed to answer my questions about what makes her a dork and why dating in NYC is a such a crazy adventure.
I have a hard time believing that any woman can really be a dork. Convince us that you're one of my breed.
You've never met a female dork? Wow, you don't know what you're missing! I really am a total dork, in all the typical ways you would imagine for a male. I'm uncoordinated, too tall, I snort when I laugh, my fashion sense is always two (or ten) seasons behind, I talk about science at cocktail parties (which never fails to get groans from the crowd), etc. The only thing I'm missing is the pair of glasses with the Band-Aid in the middle. Believe it: I'm a dork.
According to Jerry Seinfeld, 95% of all people are "un-dateable." What makes you part of the other 5%?
First of all, I love Seinfeld. Just had to get that out of the way. Despite my dorky persona, I really do think I'm totally dateable. The caveat is that I'm dateable to other dorks. I'll never get the super slick guy who dates supermodels, but for the average, normal, somewhat nerdy guy, I think I'm a great catch! I'm smart, interesting, educated, fun to be around, and I look great in heels and a miniskirt. I'm the girl you can bring home to your parents and then have all sorts of kinky sex with afterwards. I've got my shit together, I have a dorky but respectable job, and I'm not afraid to laugh at how ridiculous I am. What's not to love, really?
So tell us how your blog the Dateable Dork came to be – and why it went away and then came back (that is, if you want to tell us about that).
I started the Dateable Dork because I realized that I need an outlet for all the crazy dating drama that had completely taken over my life. I had been emailing my dating stories to my friends on a daily basis, and I think they were getting really, really sick of it. At first they were interested, but eventually I could tell that they were about to disown me or something. So I started putting all my drama out into cyberspace, and it made me and my friends much happier people.
Now... do we really want to get into "the incident?" I'll make this short and sweet: when a guy I had been dating found my blog, read all the dirty details about my dating/sex life, and dumped my ass in a raging ball of flames, I kind of went into a state of shock. It was as if my whole world had imploded. I lost a guy that had real potential, my secret identity had been discovered, and I was pretty much a total mess. I didn't know what to do... so I just deleted the whole thing. It was the only thing I could think of that made any sense.
I always knew that I'd be back ... eventually. I just needed some time to get over the shock, which (to be perfectly honest) took a lot longer than I thought it would. I spent a lot of time being sad and depressed until I finally decided that I was overreacting and needed to get over it already. And I did. I started writing again, and it made me feel so much better.
Books, TV shows, movies, and now blogs like yours have made dating in NYC a cottage industry, and it seems like finding love in this town is a frustrating, time consuming, expensive, hopelessly complex adventure in Social Darwinism. Do you agree? What are your thoughts?
Yes, I completely agree - dating in New York is very much akin to survival of the fittest. It's so hard just to come out of it in one piece! Despite all my adventures in dating, I never seem to come out of it with anything to show for myself (clearly I am not at the top of the evolutionary scale) except for credit card bills filled with cute outfits and my half of expensive dinners. But here's the thing: I have a theory about dating in New York. It's so simple, but so true. There are millions of people in this city, which you would think would make it easy to find someone. However, in reality, the abundance of available dates makes every one's standards impossibly high. I'm guilty of this myself. If you don't like someone, throw him back! There are millions of others. Too short, too tall, too much of a mama's boy? Next! Realistic standards go out the window when there are just so many people to choose from. The perfect one has got to be out there, somewhere... right?
The (sad but true) joke is that "nice guys" finish last, and it does seem like a lot of women prefer to date "bad boys" who end up making them miserable. As a woman, why do you think that is? Are most nice guys just too boring?
I don't know how much stock I take in the whole "nice guys finish last" adage. A nice guy is exactly what I'm looking for, and I think most of my single female friends would say the same. Yes, most women have that irresistible desire to hook up with a "bad boy" -- we love the taboo and the drama of it all. But we don't want to date bad boys, we just want to use them and then throw them away (sorry, boys). If I'm looking for an actual relationship, I want a nice, normal, stable, professional guy who will actually enjoy my dorky science jokes and who my mom will be crazy about. Nice guys may be more "boring" than bad boys, but "boring" is not necessarily a bad thing.
What do you, the Dateable Dork, look for in a guy – or are your standards too high?
Oh my god, my standards are way too high. I'm just as guilty of this as everyone else! Earlier this year, I wrote a post about exactly what I look for in a guy, and everyone seemed to think that it read more like a job interview than anything else. My standards are focused on narrowing down the pool of available men to those that meet my basic dating requirements. From there, I just cross my fingers and hope that the chemistry is right! "Requirements" include things like never being married before, no kids, a college degree, non-virgin, non-smoker, lives close to my apartment, and the ultimate deal breaker: does not live with parents. What's hilarious is that I actually manage to find these date-worthy men, and I still always wind up striking out! Clearly I have no idea what I'm doing and am just as hopeless as everyone else.
Your blog is very funny and has generated quite the fan base. Is being funny a help or a hindrance for you and other funny women when it comes to dating?
Hahaha, it's so strange to hear people say that I'm funny because I am so NOT funny in person! I guess it comes out in my writing but not so much in my real life. I have a weird sense of humor in person, and no one really seems to get it. Oh well. In fact, I think that if I were funnier in person, it would probably help me out in the dating world. Guys like funny chicks, right?
As for my blog generating quite the fan base ... I'm flattered, really. : ) It's amazing to me that anyone is actually interested in reading about my dating drama, but whatever, I can roll with it. I love my readers -- everyone I have encountered in the blogosphere has been totally awesome. Thanks, guys!
Tell us something about the Dateable Dork we don't know.
Hmm ... this is a tough one because I usually spill everything on my blog! Here's something that I know I've never written about - I didn't lose my virginity until age 20. I just had absolutely no interest in sex! I was so busy studying (I'm a big dork, remember?) and concentrating and being productive that sex was just not even on the radar. Sure, I dated, but I probably frustrated the hell out of all my boyfriends because I would never sleep with them. Aww, poor guys. If I only knew what I was missing.
Finally, what do you love about NYC.
Although there are endless things to love about New York, the thing I love most is that it's home. Cheesy, I know, but it's true. I love that every time I cross Houston street I think of my grandmother who grew up downtown. I love that office buildings in midtown remind me of my mom working as a secretary in the 80s -- it's all very "Working Girl." I love that some people think of Bryant Park as the home of fashion week, but I think of it as "that park where I had a great second date." It's not surprising that, after all these years, I'm still here in New York - it's home, I love it, and I'm here to stay. (Oh, and I love that New Yorkers are angry. There's nothing like some good old-fashioned angst to wake you up in the morning. Hahaha. Move aside, bitches! I'm late for work!).
Originally built by Calvert Vaux in the 19th century, the boathouse has been rebuilt a few times, most recently in the 1950s. The restaurant has been a favorite of New Yorkers and tourists, and there's nothing more enjoyable than having an admittedly high-priced meal on a beautiful day in front of the lake, the park and skyline of the city surrounding you.
The restaurant, like all of them in NYC, got hit hard by COVID in 2020 but it recovered. However, rising costs have apparently hollowed out its finances, even with record patronage. The Parks Department, which leases out the restaurant space, is looking for another vendor but I don't know how any other vendor could make it profitable. It'll be interesting to see what replaces it -- if anything. It's an invaluable location and a great space. I could see it becoming some kind sandwich or grill stand with lots of tables, or maybe a bar. But a full service sit-down restaurant with a kitchen staff and waiters and bus boys everything might not be economically viable anymore.
I have a special memory of the Loeb Boathouse Restaurant -- it's where my wife and I treated ourselves to lunch after learning that our first child would be a girl. It was a gorgeous summer day and we couldn't think of a more enjoyable place to celebrate this life-changing news.
The Loeb Boathouse Restaurant was also immortalized in popular culture in a scene from the 1989 classic movie When Harry Met Sally ... While not as notorious as the Katz's Deli scene, I can't think of a more beautiful restaurant scene set in NYC in any movie ever.
I hope the restaurant comes back one day but, for now, enjoy this clip from its glory years. Farewell for now:
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 and Pete Seegar taught us well: "To everything there is a season ... a time to live, and a time to die ... a time to break down, and a time to build up ... a time to mourn, and a time to dance ... a time to keep, and a time to cast away ... and a time to every purpose ... turn, turn, turn ..."
The yin and yang, the ups and downs, the hopes and dreams realized and dashed, the constant churn -- or turn -- of existence is something that you only begin to fully appreciate as you age. Life is never a permanent up or down escalator. In fact, as we get older, accepting this constant "to everything there is a season" fact of life -- and not just accepting but cherishing it -- is what makes the craziness and vicissitudes of aging bearable.
It's a basic tenet of survival -- things happen, things change, sometimes for better, often for worst, but they are inevitable. Accepting them with grace is a greater part of wisdom.
Of course, in this day and age, there are lots of people who either can't or won't accept what the Bible and our greatest folk singer taught us. They go in the opposite direction -- trying hopelessly, miserably, quixotically to reclaim their youths, reclaim their pasts, reclaim times gone by. They express this in both harmless and harmful ways, like reveling in cultural nostalgia (harmless) or voting for Trump (harmful). F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about this yearn for regression in his last, brilliant line of The Great Gatsby: "So beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
In NYC, we see this "turn" all the time, in ways both big and small. Concurrently, we also see the desire, in varying ways, to recapture the city's past.
For example, the neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn: this area has a rather bi-polar identity, as both the ultimate liberal hipster mecca and the home to the very conservative Orthodox Jewish community. But did you know there is highly Italian part of it? It's fading away, and the people there seem to accept that their neighborhood and the times have changed, as this article and its amazing photographs demonstrate.
Two recent deaths also show how people in our past made the city's present and future turn for the better. I love reading about New Yorkers like this because, without them, our city and its culture would be poorer. Genevieve Oswald created and curated the dance archive at the public library for more than 40 years. And Henry Stern was the Parks Commissions off and on for almost 20 years (from 1983-2001), the longest serving and probably most imaginative commissioner since Robert Moses.
*Side note: I tried interviewing Henry Stern for this blog several years ago. I emailed him at an organization he ran, and got a rather weird message in reply that I didn't understand -- it wasn't an outright rejection but it certainly didn't read like an acceptance. It was more like, "If you call this number, something might happen but don't expect it." I never did call. His was one of a few interviews that just never quite happened.
Anyway, they were both great New Yorkers, they made it "turn" for the better. May they RIP.
Moving on ...
I was a teenager in NYC in the 1990s. As much as I'd like to say it was a special time and place to be young, it sure didn't feel that way at the time. Honestly, I was a complete loser (unlike now, where I'm only a partial loser), and back then I had no money, no girlfriends, few real friends, and lots of school work. Le ugh.
However, as the 21st century so far has given us 9/11, two endless wars, more and more mass shootings, more and more man-made natural disasters, the financial crises, and Trump, it's easy to look at the last decade of the 20th century as some of kind of "end of innocence" even though it really wasn't. In recent years, there have been movies about being a teenager in the 1990s, both in NYC and elsewhere, including The Wackness from 2008 and more recently one called Landline (I actually went to high school with the person who made it but didn't know her). This article is about these movies and their 1990s nostalgia is both misplaced and yet totally understandable (also, this year is the 30th anniversary of the classic NYC romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally which, in many ways, was a '90s movie even though it came out in the last year of the 1980s).
Things in NYC and the world have "turned" since the 1990s -- in some ways for better (the smartphone, the smoking ban, lower crime, Barack Obama) and, obviously, for worse. I know for me things have actually "turned" for the better, but even I sometimes looked back misty-eyed at the Clinton era.
And in understanding how the times "turn", no New Yorker explains not only history but power -- and how people in power made history -- than Robert Caro. Author of the Robert Moses tome The Power Broker and the Lyndon Johnson series, Caro has just published a book about his working life (literally titled Working). His advice to aspiring historians? "Turn every page." Turn over the pages, the materials, the people, the metaphorical rocks of the past to understand how our present was formed and how we are forming our future.
NYC, like the world it exists in, turns forever -- and it is we who do the turning.
Woody Allen's 1979 classic Manhattan is 30 years old this year and it certainly hasten lost any of its luster over time. It's as funny and poignant as ever. Before Seinfeld, before When Harry met Sally, before Friends, before Sex and the City, before all those TV shows and movies about yuppie life in NYC, Manhattan defined and influenced the sophisticated urban comedy.
If you've never seen it, Manhattan revolves around TV writer Ike Davis (Woody) who quits his job to write a book. Meanwhile he's dating a 17 year old high school student (Mariel Hemingway, foreshadowing Soon-Yi) and getting involved with Mary (Diane Keaton) the mistress of his married best friend Yale (Michael Murphy). To make matters worse, his now lesbian ex-wife (Meryl Streep) is writing a tell-all book about their failed marriage. People lie, cheat, and steal each others hearts. While a very funny movie, Manhattan is, above all, a morality tale about how the way you treat people will eventually come back to haunt you (so people should treat each other well).
Manhattan was Woody's first comedy after the Oscar-winning Annie Hall, and a lot of people consider it to be the superior film. In many ways, this was a daring film for its day. In 1979, New York City was in terrible economic shape and crime was exploding (as referenced in this opening from the movie). To make a movie celebrating NYC at the time wasn't a particularly cool thing to do. unlike n ow. Also, gay characters didn't appear in a whole lot of movies then, particularly gay people who were unapologetically "out" and happy about it. Not to the mention that Manhattan was shot in black and white which wasn't exactly something that set the box office on fire, then or now. Still, it's one of the most beautiful movies Woody has ever made and was actually one of his biggest hits ever.
Woody Allen co-wrote Manhattan with Marshall Brickman (both had won Oscars for co-writing Annie Hall). Marshall Brickman would go on to write other movies and he's one of the writers of the big Broadway musical hit Jersey Boys. It was the last movie they would write together until 1993 when they co-wrote Manhattan Murder Mystery. Coincidentally enough, Manhattan is also the last movie that Woody and Diane Keaton made until Manhattan Murder Mystery. (After Manhattan, Diane Keaton moved to California and her next big movie was Reds in 1981). Sadly, this great triumvirate hasn't made a movie since 1993 and probably never will again but that's okay ... we'll always have Manhattan.
