Would I choose the art, music, movies, and books created in NYC in the 1970s over the art created in NYC now? Absolutely. No question. There's no debate even possible. There is no whisper of an argument for now.
Except, now is all we have. Now, plus the books and literature and music of the eras past, to which this movie is a major addition. Thanks for reading.
I left out the connecting thought. If the NYC of the 70s was the birthplace of so much artistic greatness then will that ever happen again? Can we do anything to make it happen again?
I won't suggest I know, but I'll point out that on the surface there was a lot of nihilism and despair and ruin in that era to go alongside these great civic institutions and philosophy that supported people. And everywhere a feeling of ruin.
Wonderful piece, which wanders in such an intriguing way and ends as good narratives often do, back where it began. And to join the comments’ conversation I just now walked out of the documentary seeped in 70s New York and emerged on 6th avenue and 4th street at 6 pm with the diverse Steinberg New York multitudes surging in and out of the subway and skipping across the avenue where on the other side pedestrians gawked at a fierce basketball game and dudes hung out by their music box. New York has changed but luckily much of its dynamism and energy is still there.
I was born in New York in 1970 on the Upper West Side. What you and the film describe is the world my parents fled (in 1973, to the New Jersey suburbs), which has loomed in my imagination ever since as a kind of sordidly exciting paradise lost. We went into the city frequently to see plays and go to museums, and to visit my darkly-muttering maternal relatives (who had moved to Queens). The sights and sound and above all smells of 1970s New York are a part of me—there’s a kind of nostalgic thymos that’s all the more intense for my sense of having been ripped away from the city I should have grown up in. All of which is to say: I need to see this film.
By the way, there’s no chance you remember this, but I met you circa 1991 when you came to speak to my class at Vassar. It might have been Thomas Mallon’s Mary McCarthy course, which I was ill-equipped to appreciate at the time. I appreciate it now! Anyway, hello and welcome to Substack.
I don’t recall if it was a cover page headline but my personal favorite appeared in the NYP on the occasion of Mr. Turner’s passing: “Ike Beats Tina to Death.”
Fantastic piece. The whole time I was reading I was thinking of the movies I love set in NYC from this time period, a period I never experienced as I was born much later, then you mentioned those movies. A couple more that come to mind, albeit slightly earlier: Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Across 110th street (1972). One thing both films show that’s really interesting is people living in condemned buildings, just trying to get by.
The other thought I had, brought about by your mention of the faces and teeth, is how people used to have to “hold themselves” and present themselves in public in certain ways. Now no one does this because they just stare at their phone, and a whole way of being in public is lost-I think that’s part of the richness and variety you’re talking about as well. I noticed this watching the documentary “God’s Country,” set in a small town in Minnesota in 1979.
Thank you for this thoughtful response and the list of movies. Across 110th street (1972) is news to me. I will check it out and also share it with the Bard of that street, Vince Passaro (Crazy Sorrow).
I just found out about it because the Criterion Channel has a new collection on their streaming site called "Fun City: NYC Woos Hollywood, Flirts with Disaster." It's all movies set in NYC from the late 60's and early 70's. I think it might be of interest!
As a five-year-old, and again at fifteen, I passed through New York City on the drive from Lafayette, Indiana to Westerly, Rhode Island. To an outsider in the 1960s and '70s, New York seemed grim—choked with pollution, shadowed by housing projects, a place you didn’t linger.
I’ve often wondered what role widespread lead poisoning played in the decline of cities like New York. By the 1970s, many urban centers were in visible disrepair. That same year, 1971, I was living in Indianapolis. My brother and I were the only white kids in our elementary school. The other white families had already fled.
I’ve never read a post-mortem on the urban decay of the 1960s and 1970s that captured what it felt like to me as a kid. The fear. The flight. The sense that something had broken loose and wasn’t being fixed.
Would I choose the art, music, movies, and books created in NYC in the 1970s over the art created in NYC now? Absolutely. No question. There's no debate even possible. There is no whisper of an argument for now.
Except, now is all we have. Now, plus the books and literature and music of the eras past, to which this movie is a major addition. Thanks for reading.
I left out the connecting thought. If the NYC of the 70s was the birthplace of so much artistic greatness then will that ever happen again? Can we do anything to make it happen again?
I won't suggest I know, but I'll point out that on the surface there was a lot of nihilism and despair and ruin in that era to go alongside these great civic institutions and philosophy that supported people. And everywhere a feeling of ruin.
Wonderful piece, which wanders in such an intriguing way and ends as good narratives often do, back where it began. And to join the comments’ conversation I just now walked out of the documentary seeped in 70s New York and emerged on 6th avenue and 4th street at 6 pm with the diverse Steinberg New York multitudes surging in and out of the subway and skipping across the avenue where on the other side pedestrians gawked at a fierce basketball game and dudes hung out by their music box. New York has changed but luckily much of its dynamism and energy is still there.
I was born in New York in 1970 on the Upper West Side. What you and the film describe is the world my parents fled (in 1973, to the New Jersey suburbs), which has loomed in my imagination ever since as a kind of sordidly exciting paradise lost. We went into the city frequently to see plays and go to museums, and to visit my darkly-muttering maternal relatives (who had moved to Queens). The sights and sound and above all smells of 1970s New York are a part of me—there’s a kind of nostalgic thymos that’s all the more intense for my sense of having been ripped away from the city I should have grown up in. All of which is to say: I need to see this film.
By the way, there’s no chance you remember this, but I met you circa 1991 when you came to speak to my class at Vassar. It might have been Thomas Mallon’s Mary McCarthy course, which I was ill-equipped to appreciate at the time. I appreciate it now! Anyway, hello and welcome to Substack.
This is such a great comment, thank you.
I don’t recall if it was a cover page headline but my personal favorite appeared in the NYP on the occasion of Mr. Turner’s passing: “Ike Beats Tina to Death.”
Wow that is very good!
Fantastic piece. The whole time I was reading I was thinking of the movies I love set in NYC from this time period, a period I never experienced as I was born much later, then you mentioned those movies. A couple more that come to mind, albeit slightly earlier: Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Across 110th street (1972). One thing both films show that’s really interesting is people living in condemned buildings, just trying to get by.
The other thought I had, brought about by your mention of the faces and teeth, is how people used to have to “hold themselves” and present themselves in public in certain ways. Now no one does this because they just stare at their phone, and a whole way of being in public is lost-I think that’s part of the richness and variety you’re talking about as well. I noticed this watching the documentary “God’s Country,” set in a small town in Minnesota in 1979.
Thank you for this thoughtful response and the list of movies. Across 110th street (1972) is news to me. I will check it out and also share it with the Bard of that street, Vince Passaro (Crazy Sorrow).
I just found out about it because the Criterion Channel has a new collection on their streaming site called "Fun City: NYC Woos Hollywood, Flirts with Disaster." It's all movies set in NYC from the late 60's and early 70's. I think it might be of interest!
As a five-year-old, and again at fifteen, I passed through New York City on the drive from Lafayette, Indiana to Westerly, Rhode Island. To an outsider in the 1960s and '70s, New York seemed grim—choked with pollution, shadowed by housing projects, a place you didn’t linger.
I’ve often wondered what role widespread lead poisoning played in the decline of cities like New York. By the 1970s, many urban centers were in visible disrepair. That same year, 1971, I was living in Indianapolis. My brother and I were the only white kids in our elementary school. The other white families had already fled.
I’ve never read a post-mortem on the urban decay of the 1960s and 1970s that captured what it felt like to me as a kid. The fear. The flight. The sense that something had broken loose and wasn’t being fixed.