Slapdash

I’d say I’ve worked on more films that want to find the imaginary version of New York than the real. The big thing I always get asked to find are dank dilapidated alleys, and New York City has, like, 5 alleys that look like that. Maybe four. You can’t film in three of them. So what it comes down to is there’s one alley left in New York, Cortlandt Alley, that everybody films in because it’s the last place. I try to stress to these directors in a polite way that New York is not a city of alleys. Boston is a city of alleys. Philadelphia has alleys. I don’t know anyone who uses the ‘old alleyway shortcut’ to go home. It doesn’t exist here. But that’s the movie you see. Your impression of New York is that it is the city of alleys, and then directors will come here, they’ve seen movies set in New York and they want their movies to have alleys. And it’s this self-perpetuating fictional version of New York that just kills me because movies are so much more interesting when you show a side of New York that actually exists but isn’t regularly highlighted.