The NYC Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting is Celebrating 40 Years of Filmmaking in New York City - Here's How to Get in on the Cinematic Action
"New York City has the best film locations in the world," says Katherine Oliver, the Mayor's Commissioner for Film, Theatre and Broadcasting. Oliver should know. Her agency is one of the oldest film commissions in the world. This fall, the agency produced Scenes from the City, by James Sanders, a big, beautiful record of many of the NYC's most memorable moments on film.
"We wanted a beautiful book that put the spotlight on the work and said "thank you" to all the creative people in New York," Oliver explains. "We wanted people to lsee the city in a different way."
Oliver says New York's "diversity" is what makes it such a compelling star of film and television. "We have the iconic structures. We have the most spectacular skylines in the world. Plus the little random side streets. We've got DUMBO, Soho, Chinatown, all the neighborhoods of Brooklyn. The city can be so many different things to different filmmakers."
How should visitors and residents alike begin to get a cinematic view of the city? Oliver recommends getting the book, downloading the agency's free movie map (link below) and then hoofing it. "The best way to see New York is on foot," she says. And that holds true for movie New York, too.
Free New York City movie map:
nyc.gov/filmmap
: Ó James Sanders, Scenes from the City, produced with the New York City Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting, Rizzoli New York, 2006. Available for purchase wherever fine books are sold or by calling 1-800-52BOOKS. For more information, visit www.rizzoliusa.com
Rex Reed's Private Tour of Movie New York…
We asked famed film critic Rex Reed to give us his favorite New York City movie moments. Herewith, Rex' New York City movie best list:
Standing in a New York dawn still dressed for the black-tie night before after pub crawling all night, and then arriving by taxi in a Fifth Avenue dawn, and munching a croissant in front of the windows at Tiffany's like Audrey Hepburn in "Breakfast at Tiffany's"...well, that is everybody's dream.
The Brill Building on Broadway, which is really what used to be Tin Pan Alley, has never looked so good as it did in "Sweet Smell of Success".
Taking a subway up to the theater district at midnight and catching the early morning edition of the New York Times when it is thrown off the delivery truck on 44th Street, just to read the reviews, like Susan Strasberg and Christopher Plummer did in "Stage Struck". Also Central Park in the first snowfall of winter in that same movie...another great New York moment!
Walking into Sardi's on opening night to applause just like they did in "Stage Struck", "Please Don't Eat the Daisies" and "Career". The food is no longer acceptable at Sardi's, but the atmosphere has never changed.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard at dawn set to the music of Leonard Bernstein and the lyrics of Betty Comden and Adolph Green in the opening and closing sequences of "On The Town". Not to be missed.
Ice skating on the rink in Central Park in "Portrait of Jennie" and ice skating in Rockefeller Center in "Junior Miss"...either way, it spells winter in New York.
The scenes with Judy Garland and Robert Walker on the double decker buses and under the Astor clock in "The Clock", all gone now but still about as romantic as New York ever was on film.
The use of Grand Central Station in its heyday in Sidney Lumet's "That Kind of Woman" and Nunnally Johnson's "The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit" personifies New York hustle and bustle as soldiers get off one train and commuters carrying briefcases get onto another.
Jane Wyman and Van Johnson using St. Patrick's Cathedral as a continuing metaphor for lost love and renewed faith in "Miracle in the Rain".
And of course no holiday season anywhere on film lives up to New York, from the cold Thanksgiving morning details of the Macy's parade to the shopping madness in Herald Square, all captured vividly in the Christmas classic, "Miracle on 34th Street".
