I Happen to Like New York (In Movies)

The Big Apple, Real and Imagined

I love New York more than anything. But there’s a constant battle between what’s real, what’s in the past, and what’s only in my head.

Photo by Rux Centea on Unsplash

I love Nora Ephron’s New York. The romantic, let’s-grab-a-coffee-and-walk-through-the-Upper-East-Side New York. It’s a New York I knew myself; but only because I loved ‘You’ve Got Mail’ and spent my first two visits to Manhattan with the soundtrack in my ears, pretending I was Tom Hanks.

A New York that I love even more is the ‘Frankie and Johnny’ New York. It’s gritty, it’s raw, it’s full of hard-working people trying to make the best out of their tough lives. It’s not quite ‘Taxi Driver’ NYC and it’s not ‘The Godfather’ - it’s something more vital and real and alive.

What is the real New York and what is purely imagined in my own head?

At it’s best, New York is the ‘Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist’ New York, when you’re darting across the city with a singular mission that absolutely must be achieved. I was at a birthday party in Brooklyn, some decades ago, when the birthday girl couldn’t eat her cake, because she was vegan. So myself and some guy I’d just met drove over the bridge into Manhattan to hunt down an appropriate cake. This was before veganism was everywhere, and seemingly before you could just Google ‘Good vegan cake.’ It was a heartfelt mission that plays in my memory like a favourite old movie.

Nearly all of my favourite movies take place in New York. From ‘The Apartment’ (oh how I wish that version of the City still existed), to ‘Almost Famous’ - where Penny Lane overdoses in the Plaza Hotel. Thank you, Cameron Crowe, for making Elton John’s ‘Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters’ a key part of the New York that plays in my head.

New York has been romanticised and it’s been painted as a hellhole. Sometimes even as a romantic hellhole. ‘A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints’ is in my all time top 5 films. Not sure many other film lovers rate the film highly, but for me - it captures an NYC I know and feel in my heart.

Every beat of this film feels real to me. When I can’t go to New York, which is most of this time, this film transports me. I’m not saying I recommend you watch it, because one thing I’ve learned is that my New York is different to yours.

If you mash up Nora Ephon, Cameron Crowe and Woody Allen, and mix it in with Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and Spike Lee - you find yourself in my New York. I’m not sure this place exists in real life anymore. Nor is it found in modern movies.

But it existed, for a while.

I made a short film in 2013; set on the streets of Manhattan and Queens. It brought together so much of the city that I love.

Before you watch that, here’s a random YouTube video; it’s someone with a terrible camera filming the city to the sound of The Indigo Girls covering ‘Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters’.

Somehow, this video became a big part of the New York in my head. You’ll see the influence in what I show you next:

Myy short film: Emilie and New York City.

It references ‘You’ve Got Mail’ and ‘The Apartment’. The composer, David Wittman, also composed music for ‘A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints’. Here I’m bringing lots of my favourite things together.

This is a zero-budget film. No crew, no nothing - just me and a couple of actors (Chelsea Watts and Eden Marryshow) and a battered old camera. It’s part the movies I loved, part that random Indigo Girls video, and part ‘You’ve Got Mail’, to the sounds of the composer of a film far grittier than mine.

This feels like yesterday, but I shot it nearly thirteen years ago. Weird when your own projects start to look like period pieces. The New York I captured feels different already. I miss the New York I knew in recent decades but I also miss New York of Joseph Mitchell’s New Yorker articles from the 1940s.

The city is always changing.

That’s what makes it so vital.

Such an inspiration to writers and filmmakers.

What Joseph Mitchell saw was different to what Woody Allen saw. It changed again for Nora Ephron, and then Spike Lee showed us something entirely different.

I’m not sure who will be next but someone will come along and refresh our vision of it once again.