New York takes top billing: the movie set that is Manhattan

 Published in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. August 2003.

New York City is the biggest film set in the world, and everybody there - resident and visitor alike - is an extra. Even if it's your first time in Manhattan, everywhere (and even, to some degree, everyone) looks familiar: strolling along Fifth Avenue at 57th Street, you might find yourself staring longingly into the window of Tiffany's and feel a strange sense of deja vu, a keening for George Peppard.

That's because you've been there and done that before, only it was while you were watching Audrey Hepburn, as perhaps cinema's first (and most annoying) hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold, in Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Or maybe you and two of your sailor buddies are on shore leave and you just can't stop yourself from linking arms, striding through Times Square and belting out a tune in celebration of this wonderful town. (Where, by the way, the Bronx is up and the Battery's down.)

This, of course, would be because you suddenly confused reality with On the Town, the Frank Sinatra-Gene Kelly-Jules Munshin musical ode to the Big Apple, and one of the first films to be shot on location in New York.

So enmeshed are iconic cinematic images of the city - Dustin Hoffman as Ratso Rizzo yelping, "I'm walkin' here" as he crosses a busy street inMidnight Cowboy; stone gargoyles atop skyscrapers coming to life in Ghostbusters; the razzle (and dazzle), the glitz (and glamour) of backstage Broadway in 42nd Street to name just three - that it's often difficult to know whether you're looking at an elaborate movie set or an amazing-but-true scene from real life as it can only appear in NYC. (Indeed, in Hoffman's case, it is both - the scene was ad-libbed when the cab driver he remonstrates with did almost hit the actor.)

It's hard to distinguish between the places you've visited and those you've only ever seen on the silver screen. And maybe that's not so important anyway: what's wrong with a bit of cross-pollination, a little bit of movie magic working its way into our lives?

Arguably, New York's status as cinema's first and greatest star city began back in 1933, when King Kong climbed the Empire State Building and began swatting at biplanes.

In the 70 years since, more than 200 movies have been either set in or shot in this most varied and photogenic of cities. In fact, more than 60 of these include the word "Manhattan" in the title. Filmmaking in New York City is a $US5.1 billion ($7.8 billion) business that employs more than 100,000 people and drives 5000 production businesses.

But while it's undeniably spectacular, New York is not the most beautiful, and far from the most practical or cheap, city in which to shoot a movie. (Los Angeles has more space and better facilities; Toronto is fast becoming the inexpensive - and rather unconvincing - stand-in for NYC. Even Melbourne has done duty in that role.)

However, once you're there, in the middle of the distinctive pulse and energy, its cheek-by-jowl mixture of high society and low life, tenement and penthouse, its long shadows and bright neon lights, you realise that as well as seeming tailor-made for movies, it is the power of this unique city as an essential story element that makes it so enduringly popular that, in most cases, nowhere else will do.

Could a film such as Taxi Driver have been set anywhere else? Would The French Connection have the same texture if it had taken place in, for instance, Detroit? There's clearly something unique about New York, so, despite the expense and logistical problems inherent in shooting in a busy, overcrowded city, the film crews keep on coming - and you don't have to go far to find them.

Looking out the window of a subway train as it crossed the Manhattan Bridge into Brooklyn one sizzling Saturday, I saw Matthew McConaughey leaning against a taxi that was sprawled across two lanes of frozen traffic, and leaning against him was a small blonde woman who may have been Reese Witherspoon or Kirsten Dunst. Either would have been fine; both would have been a fantasy.

They were surrounded by cameras and crew and the two stars were kissing, either for real or rehearsing the real thing. My fellow passengers, most of them New Yorkers, barely noticed and, for a while, I wondered if I had imagined the whole thing. I'd only know for sure when the film came out.

Cut to an afternoon a few days later: in an effort to escape the oppressive heat and unimpressive humidity that were still damply enervating the city, I decided to see a movie. For a couple of reasons - not least among them the fact that the film was entirely set in New York - I chose Spider-Man.

It's a fine movie, and one that makes excellent use of a number of easily identifiable locations, from suburban Queens, where the friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man lives as a teenager, to Columbia University - also seen in Altered States (1980), Ghostbusters (1984), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and K-PAX (2001); the New York Public Library - see You're a Big Boy Now (1966) and Picture Perfect (1997); and Bryant Park - as seen in The World According to Garp (1982), Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) and Private Parts (1997).

The next day my wife, Sally, and I had lunch with our New York friend Kevin at an excellent restaurant called Guastavino's on the eastern edge of Manhattan. I'd never been to that part of town but I'd certainly seen it in great and vivid detail just the day before in Spider-Man, when the same part of the Queensboro Bridge - featured in Side Street (1950) and Conspiracy Theory (1997) - underneath which we were eating was the site of the final explosive showdown between Spidey and the Green Goblin.

Excitedly, I explained all this to Kevin, who won an Emmy last year. "Uh huh," Kevin responded, with typical New Yorker-esque disinterest (or maybe it was the Emmy talking). "That's interesting."

But Kevin did weaken: "What would be amazing is if they were filming that scene right now."

"I wouldn't be too sure about that," I told him confidently, recalling my early years of (unpaid) labour on student film projects. "Film sets can be pretty tedious places to hang around." And I knew just how to prove it to him.

Earlier that day I had visited the Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting and chatted with the deputy commissioner, a delightful woman named Jane Brawley, who, if she were to be portrayed in a movie, would be played by Gena Rowlands.

Brawley gave me the inside dope on what was happening in the city, film production-wise, using exciting words such as "Mike Nichols", "Woody Allen Spring Project 2002" and "Robert Altman". Among other things, I asked her whether it might have been Matthew McConaughey I saw on the Manhattan Bridge the previous weekend.

She told me that it was indeed and that he was in town shooting How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days, and that the blonde woman he was kissing was probably Kate Hudson.

After we finished lunch, Sally, Kevin and I hiked up to the set of 25th Hour, a Spike Lee film starring Edward Norton and Barry Pepper, which Brawley had told me was being shot 35 blocks north at Carl Schurz Park. As I predicted, there wasn't a great deal to see - lights and cameras, sure, but very little action. And no movie stars. "Spike Lee probably isn't even here," I said, dismissing what I took to be a mere second-unit operation.

"Isn't that him sitting under that tent reading The Post?" Sally said. It was. I became excited and, after several deep breaths, warily, nervously and hotly approached a production assistant. I don't particularly like Lee's work, but I do get a big kick out of harassing the famous.

"Can I have my photo taken with Mr Lee?" I politely asked. "Spike Lee, I mean, not Christopher. Or Jason."

"No," the assistant said. "He doesn't really do that."

"Why not?" I asked.

"It's just sort of a rule."

"Is it his rule?"

"No, it's just a rule."

Come on, Spike! Do the right thing, I wanted to shout. "Well, what about his back?" I said with heated exasperation. "Can I take a photo of me and Spike's back?"

"I guess that'd be OK." The assistant paused. "Thanks for your understanding."

Like I have a choice with all these teamsters hanging around, I thought. "Oh, that's fine," I said. "I hold the film-making process and the creative people behind such endeavour in very high regard."

So I had my photograph taken with Spike Lee (sort of) and spent the next two hours sitting in the shade watching the crew set up a shot. And even though it wasn't particularly amazing, and damn hot out there on the set, I couldn't help wishing I was an active part of it all rather than simply an observer. And I'm very keen to catch 25th Hour - just in case I'm in the background somewhere.

Sally and I left the Guggenheim and crossed Fifth Avenue into Central Park, wandered up a small rise then on to a jogging track that circumscribes the enormous (and recently renamed) Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir.

"You may recall this reservoir from such movies as Devil's Advocate, possibly Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and definitely Marathon Man, in which Dustin Hoffman ran around it many times. In fact, the climax of the movie takes place in that pump station over there on the left," I said.

I pointed to a squat, grey, boxy building to the left of another building just like it. "Dustin and Laurence Olivier fight over the briefcase full of stolen diamonds, which end up falling through the metal grate floor and into the water."

"How do you know?" Sally asked.

I thought about the question for a moment before saying that I knew - that I was certain of the facts - because these images were irrevocably burned into the hard drive of my memory. That I can't look at the great, dark Dakota Building over on Central Park West without immediately thinking ofRosemary's Baby; or the Brill Building at 1619 Broadway and not remember The Sweet Smell of Success; I can't pass Katz's Deli on Houston in the Lower East Side and not be reminded of Meg Ryan's, errr, outburst in When Harry Met Sally; rushing up the stairs of any L-train station, I half-expect to be shot in the back by "Popeye" Doyle; my idea of New York street gangs comes from West Side Story and The Wanderers; when I think of Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, I think of Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig in Pride of the Yankees; when I yearn to live in New York (which is often), I want to live in one of the apartments in Woody Allen's Manhattan or Husbands and Wives or Deconstructing Harry or, well, just about any Woody Allen movie.

But even more than just occupying an apartment, I'd like to live my entire life - from first act to third - as a character in a Woody Allen New York movie. It would be the ultimate collision of New York life and New York cinema, and I would be grateful for it. (Indeed, given certain recent events, it's hard not to think that Woody himself sometimes entertains similar wishes.)

We walked back to our hotel through Central Park and I pointed out still more cine-scenes that took place there: the end of Wall Street when Charlie Sheen is punched in the face by Michael Douglas; a great deal of Richard Gere and Winona Ryder's hand-in-hand wanderings in the thoroughly awfulAutumn in New York; the kidnapping that kicks off Ransom; innumerable muggings in innumerable 1970s and 1980s films (since Rudolph Giuliani's term as mayor, it just doesn't feel right to have a crime take place in Central Park any more); and Central Park Zoo, which featured in the 1913 classicElevating an Elephant. If, as many locals claim, New York City is a state of mind, then its films are the id.

Back in our room, I looked out a window that faced Broadway and there, as if to underscore everything I had been thinking about, I saw yet another film set. On this sweltering day a couple-of-dozen extras wearing heavy coats, hats and gloves and clutching umbrellas were gathered on a street corner awaiting instructions from an assistant director. When it came time for action, an overhead rain machine sprayed water on to the sidewalk and the clutch of faceless extras opened their black umbrellas, bent their hatted heads and scurried into frame and realistically staggered past, a strange choreography that resembled the cars on Manhattan Bridge I'd seen a few days earlier.

This scene was part of Mike Nichols' film, Angels in America, with Al Pacino and Meryl Streep, neither of whom I could see on the street below. Not seeing them didn't matter because the fact was the true, more enduring star of the picture - of any picture set in this town - was right there in front of me, all around me. That star's name? New York City, baby. New York City.

Ten Classic New York Movies

Manhattan (1979). Woody's beautiful black-and-white love letter to the city.

Shaft (1971). Harlem gets funky when detective John Shaft gets on the case.

Taxi Driver (1976). Just say no to cabbies with mohawks.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974). Makes you think twice about getting on the 1.23 subway to Pelham Bay Park.

Do the Right Thing (1989). Spike Lee's hot day on a block in Bed-Stuy gets hotter.

Midnight Cowboy (1969). Times Square has changed an awful lot since Ratso and Buck's day.

Crossing Delancey (1988). Amy Irving finds love on the Lower East Side - with a pickle man.

The French Connection (1971). Drive carefully at the intersection of Stillwell Avenue and 86th Street in Brooklyn.

The Godfather Part II (1974). Big drama in Little Italy - especially around Elizabeth Street.

Planet of the Apes (1968). I shudder just thinking about it.

Staying with the stars

The Four Seasons. Outstanding hotel, popular with Sir Anthony Hopkins and Jennifer Lopez.

The Plaza Athenee. A Manhattan classic featured in The Out of Towners (1999) and Gun Shy (2000).

60 Thompson, 60 Thompson Street. New York's hippest hotel, appealing to such stars as Denzel Washington, Kirsten Dunst (and possibly Reese Witherspoon) and Ben Kingsley.

Originally published in The Holland Herald, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, August 2003.