Scenes from the City

"To live in New York City is to star in the movie of your own life. To live in New York City for a long time is to begin to doubt who's the lead player in that drama, you or the city itself. Thanks to actual movies, New York City - perhaps the most frequently cast but uncredited extra in cinema history - is a global commodity. You don't really have to live there to feel like you did. In 1966, Mayor John Lindsay launched a radical municipal government initiative with the creation of what is now known as The Mayor's Office of Entertainment and Media. Designed to streamline the process of obtaining permits and working out the logistics of filming on location in NYC, this office opened the flood gates of film and television production and the deluge has been running through the streets ever since. History bears it out - Mayor Linsay's mayoralty ended somewhat ignominiously, but cinephiles owe him a debt of gratitude. This is all made exquisitely clear in the revised and expanded Scenes From the City: Filmmaking in New York, edited by James Sanders. This book is beautiful, a veritiable love letter to New York City as cinema's greatest character. Filled with glorious still photos from the films shot over time in New York, it equally 1.) remind you of just how many great films are set in NYC; 2.) provoke fond memories of the ones you have seen; and 3.) send you running to your preferred movie source to see the ones you haven't."