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Taxi Driver and Midnight Cowboy make the City look more bleak than any other films I know, that is, dismal, lonely, and uninviting. The Warriors and Escape from New York are like live action comic books and the background isn't taken serious. After Hours and Gremlins II are comedies that poke fun at NYC's expense.
They showed us The Cross and the Switchblade (with Eric Estrada and Pat Boone) when I was a little kid at church, in a rural area several states away from NY. Not sure what the point of that was (deter us from forming gangs?), but after watching it, all I knew was NYC scared the bejesus out of me! lol In my little kid mind NYC = hell. It took years of watching other movies to dispel those early preconceptions. (Half joking! The adult me was delighted to find a markedly different and wonderful city when I was able to visit for the first time in the late 90s.)
Half baked didn't make NY look crazy, but it did give the misconception that we were up to Cali's standards with the izm.....with which I beg to differ.
Yea I definitely give you respect for bringing up the hbo movie Strapped. Not too many people know about this gritty 90's Bk flick.
Don't forget New Jack City..... rock a bye baby..lol
The exterminator, night of the juggler and maniac are old school flicks that show a real seedy side of new York and times square. Oh and don't sleep on jungle fever.... even though the main story is about interracial romance, it has a nice backstory about Harlem during the crack epidemic.
Last but not least coming to America starring Eddie Murphy made Queens look like a crime filled cesspool....lol
Alot of these movies that people are mentioning on here really didn't portray NYC at its worst or dramatize but rather just described what life was like in the hood for most people back in the 80s and 90s... classic case, Juice.
[quote=CitizenJoe;20005996]The cultural impact of "Sex and the City" makes me pine for the New York that inspired "Taxi Driver". Seriously, as dark as it is, "Taxi Driver" remains one of the great masterpieces of 20th century cinema. Historians of seventies era America centuries hence will do well to study this film, which provides examples of life imitating art imitating life on multiple levels. (John Hinckley to Travis Bickel to Arthur Bremmer with some Dostoevsky thrown in for good measure.) And let's not forget the final masterful score of Bernard Herman.
But if you mean "movies that caused New York the most harm", then Sex in the City wins hands down.[/quot
Sex and the City was the finishing blow for ny. It's responsible for people coming to ny for all the wrong reasons. People watch this unrealistic crap and think they need to be in ny.
I have fond memories of the movie "After Hours." I saw it when I was, like, 20 years old, before I first saw NY for the first time. If you watch the movie now, it is hard to imagine that Tribeca was a funky and somewhat dangerous area back then.
If you watch the movie now, it is hard to imagine that Tribeca was a funky and somewhat dangerous area back then.
That's why it's hard to be completely critical of films like "Taxi Driver" or "Midnight Cowboy", because *that's* what large chunks of the city were like back then, especially Times Square.
Walking down 42nd Street, between 7th and 8th Avenues, passing Disney, McD's, Madame Tussaud's and Dave and Buster's, it's really hard to imagine what that block was like in the late 60's, 70's and 80's, before Giuliani, Eisner and Co decided to wash it clean.
"Taxi Driver" and "Midnight Cowboy" are not representative of NYC today, but they are representative of a part of our history, and in that way, they are very import records of our past.
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The adult me was delighted to find a markedly different and wonderful city when I was able to visit for the first time in the late 90s.)
