Made in NY
September 23–December 31, 2006

Established in 1966 under Mayor John V. Lindsay, the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater, and Broadcasting promotes New York City as a location for filming and assists filmmakers with all aspects of production in New York City. Under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Commissioner Katherine Oliver, the City created the Made in NY program, which celebrates and provides incentives for entertainment production in New York City. Over the last forty years an astonishing number of significant and influential feature films that have become part of American popular culture have been made in New York. This four-month exhibition, drawn primarily from the Museum’s collection, celebrates New York’s and the Mayor’s Office’s contributions to modern American cinema.

Organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, and Leigh Goldstein, Executive Assistant, Department of Film. Special thanks to Columbia Pictures and Paramount Pictures.

Hannah and Her Sisters. 1986. USA. Written and directed by Woody Allen. With Allen, Michael Caine, Barbara Hershey. For most of his filmmaking career Woody Allen has been synonymous with New York, and the City has played itself in some of Allen’s most memorable fictions, including Annie Hall, Manhattan, Crimes and Misdemeanors, and Hannah and Her Sisters, perhaps the least-revived of Allen’s major films. Set over three consecutive Thanksgivings, the melancholic comedy limns the troubled relationships of three siblings and their male partners. 103 min.
Saturday, September 23, 2:00; Thursday, September 28, 6:00. T1

Tootsie. 1982. USA. Directed by Sydney Pollack. Screenplay by Larry Gelbart, Murray Schisgal, based on a story by Gelbart, Don McGuire. With Dustin Hoffman, Jessica Lange, Bill Murray. Pollack, an actor/director himself, directs a feisty comedy about a serious but underemployed actor, Michael Dorsey (Hoffman), who is as prickly as New York itself. Having adopted a female persona to work as a character “actress” on a soap opera, Dorsey falls in love, much to his consternation, with the leading lady. 110 min.
Saturday, September 23, 4:30; Monday, September 25, 6:00. T1

Requiem for a Dream. 2000. USA. Directed by Darren Aronofsky. Screenplay by Aronofsky, Hubert Selby, Jr. With Jared Leto, Ellen Burstyn, Jennifer Connelly. Living near desolate Coney Island, a widow—whose world is circumscribed by television, her junkie son, and his addicted friends—surrenders to amphetamines in her struggle to lose weight. Her dreams turn grotesque and nightmarish, as does the life of her pathetic son. With unusual intensity and strong imagery, Aronofsky illuminates Selby’s novel with a vigor and imagination that are hallmarks of New York independent filmmaking. 102 min.
Saturday, September 23, 7:00; Wednesday, September 27, 6:00. T1

Do the Right Thing. 1989. USA. Written and directed by Spike Lee. With Lee, John Turturro, Danny Aiello. An ambiguously titled, highly charged, and volatile portrait of a Brooklyn neighborhood, formerly Italian and now primarily Black, on one sweltering summer day. Seen through the windows of a local family-run pizza parlor, a holdout from another generation, racial violence simmers and explodes. Lee’s drama, inflected with bawdy humor, is a fearless look at the effects of prejudice. 120 min.
Sunday, September 24, 2:30. T1; Sunday, October 1, 3:30. T2

Taxi Driver. 1976. USA. Directed by Martin Scorsese. Screenplay by Paul Schrader. With Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Jodie Foster. Back in the 1970s—New York City’s Dark Age—Scorsese fashioned a bold and violent revenge story in which one man, a taxi driver, takes bloody vengeance not only on the pimps, pushers, and addicts found on Manhattan’s mean streets, but on the City imagined as hell. Scorsese’s masterwork is not so much a compelling vision of the lower depths, but rather a turbulent narrative of redemption and the possibility of grace. Preserved by The Museum of Modern Art and Sony Pictures Entertainment. 113 min.
Sunday, September 24, 5:00. T1; Sunday, October 1, 1:00. T2

Highlights of American Cinema: The Godfather
Coppola’s youthful early feature You’re a Big Boy Now (1966) embraced the topography of Manhattan, and years later he returned to the island to shoot Mario Puzo’s celebrated novel and screenplays. Drawing on New York’s extraordinary pool of actors and the City’s myriad locations, these films virtually revived filmmaking in New York.
The Godfather. 1972. USA. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Screenplay by Coppola, Mario Puzo, based on the novel by Puzo. With Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan. The tale of Michael Corleone (Pacino), a youngest son reluctant to become the head of his family—a position that his father Vito (Brando) asks him to assume. 175 min.
Monday, September 25, 8:30. T1 

Highlights of American Cinema: The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II
The Godfather. See film notes above.
The Godfather, Part II. 1974. USA. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Screenplay by Coppola, Mario Puzo, based on the novel by Puzo. With Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton. Both prequel and sequel, Part II is the story of a how a young Vito Corleone (De Niro) became the Godfather, and presents the tragedy that ensues for Michael when he assumes his late father’s responsibilities. 200 min.
Saturday, September 30, 2:00. T1 

Two Wrenching Departures. 2006. USA. Directed by Ken Jacobs. In October 1989, estranged friends Bob Fleischner and Jack Smith died within a week of each other. Ken Jacobs met Smith through Fleischner in 1955 at CUNY night school, where the three were studying camera techniques. This feature-length work, first performed in 1990 as a live Nervous System piece, is a “luminous threnody” (Mark McElhatten) made in response to the loss of Jacobs’s friends. Approx. 90 min. World premiere.
Thursday, September 28, 8:30 (introduced by Jacobs). T1

Highlights of American Cinema: The Godfather, Part II

The Godfather, Part II. See film notes above.

Commercials Made in NY. 1991–2005. New York’s architectural and natural landscape, social topography, and diverse and kinetic population continue to be iconic features of many of America’s most celebrated commercials. The Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) has drawn from fifteen years of its awards show, AICP at MoMA, to choose a feature-length program surveying the best commercials shot in New York City. Approx. 55 min.

Wednesday, October 4, 6:15; Saturday, October 7, 4:30. T2

Desperately Seeking Susan. 1985. USA. Directed by Susan Seidelman. Screenplay by Leora Barish. With Madonna, Rosanna Arquette, Aidan Quinn. Yearning for the music and late nights of a more adventurous life, a Fort Lee housewife (Arquette) follows and is subsequently mistaken for a free-spirited club kid (Madonna). A “glammed up” version of the grimy, somewhat sinister 1980s Downtown New York scene serves as the backdrop for this screwball story. 104 min.
Wednesday, October 4, 7:00; Saturday, October 7, 2:00; Friday, October 13 8:15. T1

American Psycho. 2000. USA. Directed by Mary Harron. Screen-play by Guinevere Turner, Harron, based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis. With Christian Bale, Chloe Sevigny, Reese Witherspoon. Set in an investment banker’s New York circa 1987, Harron’s gleaming adaptation of Ellis’s best-seller presents all the emblems of that era’s excess: convoluted cuisine, teased-out hair, and ubiquitous cocaine. As a master of his universe who may or may not fill his nights with killing sprees, Bale is perfectly sculpted and convincingly soulless. Director’s cut. 97 min.

Thursday, October 5, 6:00. T2; Saturday, October 14, 7:00. T1

The French Connection. 1971. USA. Directed by William Friedkin. Screenplay by Ernest Tidyman, from the book by Robin Moore. With Gene Hackman, Roy Scheider, Fernando Rey. A paradigmatic, rip-roaring chase film about New York City street and subway pursuits, drug smuggling, corrupt cops, and one good guy—true-life detective Eddie Egan—who made his own rules. 104 min.

Thursday, October 5, 8:00; Sunday, October 15, 4:30. T1

On the Ropes. 1999. USA. Directed by Nanette Burstein, Brett Morgen. Three boxers and their concerned trainer working out in the Bed-Stuy Boxing Center are at the center of this documentary about the power of dreams and the social desperation that fuels those aspirations. 94 min.
Friday, October 6, 6:00; Sunday, October 8, 2:00. T2

Rosemary’s Baby. 1968. USA. Directed by Roman Polanski. Screenplay by Polanski, based on the novel by Ira Levin. With John Cassavetes, Mia Farrow, Ruth Gordon. Filmed in the Dakota, a fortress of neo-gothic elegance near the park on Seventy-second Street, Rosemary’s Baby applies a macabre twist to a quintessentially New York irritation: the proximity of one’s neighbors. An expectant young mother (Farrow) becomes convinced that the elderly couple next door has ties to Satan. 137 min.

Friday, October 6, 8:00; Sunday, October 8, 2:00. T1

Mean Streets. 1973. USA. Directed by Martin Scorsese. Screen-play by Scorsese, Mardik Martin. With Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro. Mostly set in Little Italy, where Scorsese grew up, Mean Streets presents the neighborhood as a contained world, offering its denizens no escape. Charlie (Keitel), a young second-generation Italian American, is torn between making good in his family’s crime realm and escaping to a better life with his epileptic girlfriend. 110 min.

Monday, October 9, 5:00; Thursday, October 12, 8:30; Wednesday, October 25, 6:00. T1

Dog Day Afternoon. 1975. USA. Directed by Sidney Lumet. Screenplay by Frank Pierson, from a book by Patrick Mann. With Al Pacino, John Cazale, Charles Durning. Based on true events, New York filmmaker Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon captures the intense absurdity of New York, at once humane and exaggerated. One hot summer day a rather incompetent young man robs a bank to fund his male lover’s sex-change operation, and the bungled incident escalates into a major news event. 130 min.

Monday, October 9, 7:15; Wednesday, October 11, 6:00. T1

Manhattan. 1979. USA. Directed by Woody Allen. Screenplay by Allen, Marshall Brickman. With Allen, Diane Keaton, Mariel Hemingway. The newly divorced, perpetually neurotic Isaac (Allen) romances his best friend’s girl (Keaton) at a MoMA opening; they are seen in the Sculpture Garden alongside Pablo Picasso’s She-Goat (1950). 96 min. Saturday, October 14, 2:00; Wednesday, October 25, 8:15. T1

My Dinner with Andre. 1981. USA. Directed by Louis Malle. Screenplay by Wallace Shawn, Andre Gregory. With Shawn, Gregory. One of the great French filmmakers, Malle brought his native country’s enthusiasm for philosophic conversations with him when he immigrated to America. Instead of a man and woman in bed discussing a book, Malle imagines two New York intellectuals—one a playwright, the other a stage director—sharing a restaurant meal together and talking about finding oneself and the meaning of life. The conversation meanders from genuine insight to dessert. 111 min.

Saturday, October 14, 4:30. T1

Shaft. 1971. USA. Directed by Gordon Parks. Screenplay by Ernest Tidyman, John D. F. Black. With Richard Roundtree, Moses Gunn. Fueled by Isaac Hayes’s propulsive score, Shaft took the conventions of the tough detective genre and fitted them onto urban Black America using violent and sexy Harlem as the theater of operations. The second film by ace journalist and photographer Parks, Shaft was a lightning change of pace from his debut feature, The Learning Tree (1969). 100 min.
Sunday, October 15, 2:00. T1

Wall Street. 1987. USA. Directed by Oliver Stone. Screenplay by Stone, Stanley Wesier. With Michael Douglas, Charlie Sheen. A young broker learns from a master corporate raider, Gordon Gekko, whose name has already entered the American vocabulary as a metaphor for greed. To wit: “Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.” A black comedy about the color of money. 125 min.

Sunday, November 5, 2:00; Monday, November 6, 8:15. T1

Midnight Cowboy. 1969. USA. Directed by John Schlesinger. Screenplay by Waldo Salt, based on the novel by James Leo Herlihy. With Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight. The classic story of someone, here a handsome but not-too-bright Texan, coming to New York with stars in his eyes only to find an uncaring and indifferent metropolis. In his first American film, British director Schlesinger treats Midtown Manhattan as a weedy garden where relationships blossom into the most unlikely of friendships. 113 min.

Sunday, November 5, 4:30; Monday, November 6, 6:00. T1

Broadway Danny Rose. 1984. USA. Written and directed by Woody Allen. With Allen, Mia Farrow. Carousing over corned beef at the Carnegie Deli, graying comedians swap stories about Danny Rose (Allen), a failing agent of legendary proportions. Allen’s bittersweet black-and-white comedy of theatrical freaks, palookas, and oversized egos blends sweeping shots of Midtown Manhattan with intimate negotiations between Danny and Tina (Farrow), the type-A girlfriend of his biggest client. 86 min.

Wednesday, November 29, 8:00. T2

Moonstruck. 1987. USA. Directed by Norman Jewison. Screen-play by John Patrick Shanley. With Cher, Nicolas Cage. Head over heels in love with his brother’s fiancée (Cher), Ronny (Cage) convinces her to spend one night at the opera. The Metropolitan Opera House and its gushing fountain provide an appropriately operatic backdrop. 102 min.

Monday, December 11, 6:00; Wednesday, December 13, 8:00. T2

Elf. 2003. USA. Directed by Jon Favreau. Screenplay by David Berenbaum. With Will Ferrell, James Caan. Raised by adoptive elf parents in the North Pole, Buddy comes to New York to find his real father and spread some holiday cheer among the hard-as-nails locals. 90 min.

Tuesday, December 19, 12:00 & 3:00. T1

The Projectionist. 1970. USA. Written and directed by Harry Hurwitz. With Chuck McCann, Ina Balin. An early New York independent feature comedy much beloved by the young at heart about a lonely projectionist who works in a theater that shows “classic” films and whose imaginative daydreams transforms him into a hero, Captain Flash. 85 min.

Thursday, December 21, 6:00; Tuesday, December 26, 3:30. T1

Big. 1988. USA. Directed by Penny Marshall. Screenplay by Gary Ross, Anne Spielberg. With Tom Hanks, Elizabeth Perkins. A thirteen-year-old kid from New Jersey makes a wish and wakes up the next morning to find he’s become a full-grown man. Big celebrates Manhattan as the natural playground for overgrown and overpaid “children.” 104 min.

Saturday, December 23, 12:00; Sunday, December 24, 12:00. T1