Tag Archives: Manhattan

Gritty, Grimy, and Graffitied: The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)

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The Taking of Pelham One Two Three movie poster

 

Plenty of genre movies have been set in New York City, such as Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (dev­ilry on the Upper West Side), Wal­ter Salles’ Dark Water (ghosts on Roo­sevelt Island), Guillermo Del Toro’s Mimic (ver­min in the sub­way), and Spike Lee’s Inside Man (thiev­ery on Wall Street). The Tak­ing of Pel­ham One Two Three, directed by Joseph Sar­gent from the novel by John Godey, is one of the few New York movies seem­ingly made for New York­ers. Plenty of the world’s cities have under­ground tran­sit sys­tems, but this par­tic­u­lar story could be set nowhere else. It’s a potent premise that has been remade twice, first as a TV movie in 1998 and again in 2009 as a big-budget star vehi­cle for John Tra­volta and Den­zel Wash­ing­ton, directed by Tony Scott. It was even an indi­rect inspi­ra­tion for the famous color-coded crim­i­nal aliases used in Quentin Tarantino’s Reser­voir Dogs.

The Tak­ing of Pel­ham One Two Three is a time cap­sule, full of curiosi­ties about how the New York City sub­way looked and func­tioned in the 1970s. It also reveals a great deal about how the city itself was per­ceived and por­trayed in pop­u­lar cin­ema at the time. The cityscape is gritty, grimy, and graf­fi­tied. Women are just now begrudg­ingly being let into the M.T.A. work­force. A cyn­i­cal City Hall is will­ing to nego­ti­ate with ter­ror­ists if it means more votes in the next elec­tion. Hook­ers and pimps share the sub­way with drunks and robust eth­nic stereo­types. The unhealthy filth of mil­lions of peo­ple liv­ing in close quar­ters is evi­denced by a cold going around (which becomes a key plot point).

Walter Matthau in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three“Some­body down there knows how to drive a train. You don’t pick that up watch­ing Sesame Street.”

The movie’s racial pol­i­tics are dated, but per­haps more hon­est towards flawed human nature. Lt. Gar­ber (Wal­ter Matthau) is openly con­de­scend­ing towards vis­it­ing Japan­ese offi­cials study­ing the M.T.A. He’s flatly racist in a way no hero in a mod­ern film would ever allowed to be (he calls them “mon­keys”). But in fact, he actu­ally does get his come­up­pance. Matthau is, to say the least, an odd cast­ing choice for the hero of a thriller. But he was prob­a­bly about the cor­rect age for a Tran­sit Author­ity detec­tive, and had the right air of sar­donic dis­il­lu­sion­ment for a believ­able lower-level civic employee of the bleak New York City of the 1970s.

Speak­ing of roles that would never be con­ceived the same way in today’s Hol­ly­wood, the bad guys remain very effec­tively dis­guised through­out. Char­ac­ter actors Robert Shaw and Mar­tin Bal­sam were never exactly super­stars, but how many actors today would will­ingly dis­guise them­selves for most of a movie? I can really only think of Clive Owen in Inside Man and almost any­thing Gary Old­man does. Unsur­pris­ingly, no attempt is made to obscure the very expen­sive face of John Tra­volta for one frame of the 2009 remake. Note that Shaw unmask­ing is spoiled by his promi­nent appear­ance on the DVD sleeve.

Robert Shaw in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three“Excuse me, do you peo­ple still exe­cute in this state?”

Made decades before 9/11, The Tak­ing of Pel­ham One Two Three is nev­er­the­less a minia­ture night­mare sce­nario of one of the Manhattan’s myr­iad vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties to ter­ror­ism. In the 1970s, the famil­iar form of ter­ror­ism was to hold hostages for remu­ner­a­tion or to espouse a cause. Scott’s 2009 remake had to face 21st cen­tury audi­ences (many sit­ting in New York City movie the­aters) for whom ter­ror­ism means mass mur­der. But Scott takes the con­ven­tional route and boils down the plot into a con­flict between two men, on a per­sonal level. Scott’s choices high­light how much the orig­i­nal actu­ally bucks cliché.

In the orig­i­nal, we know prac­ti­cally noth­ing about the per­sonal lives of Gar­ber or the vil­lain­ous Mr. Blue (we may guess he’s some sort of ex-mercenary or sol­dier of for­tune, but he gives no hint of his ide­ol­ogy or moti­va­tions). In con­trast to the ice-cool Mr. Blue, Travolta’s char­ac­ter is manic and unhinged, and rants in a bar­rage of f-bombs. Just as Sargent’s old school run­away train sequence is more thrilling than Scott’s rapid-fire edit­ing and CGI flair, the orig­i­nal also outscores on pure cynicism.

Buy the DVD from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.

Where not to go for coffee in Manhattan: M. Rohrs’ House of Fine Teas & Coffees

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M. Rohrs' House of Fine Teas & Coffees

 

M. Rohrs’ House of Fine Teas & Cof­fees has a com­plete and utter con­tempt of their pay­ing cus­tomers, and has lost my busi­ness, for­ever. Yes­ter­day after­noon, they kicked out myself and every other sin­gle cus­tomer, cit­ing a new pol­icy that accused us all of “loi­ter­ing.” I am not mak­ing this up.

M. Rohrs is one of the last remain­ing cof­fee houses on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. As oth­ers have noted on Yelp, they rou­tinely invent new poli­cies, such as chang­ing the terms of cus­tomer loy­alty cards (in fact, I think they sim­ply rescinded them alto­gether at one point). Until the very recent past, any cus­tomers that wished to sit down after 7PM must have ordered at least $10 from the menu. That pol­icy was not entirely unrea­son­able, but it was unfea­si­ble. M. Rohrs is not a restau­rant, and it is actu­ally dif­fi­cult to spend more than $10 at a cof­fee house. But as of yes­ter­day at least, that require­ment has now expanded to all hours, every day. It’s also worth not­ing that the new pol­icy did not seem to spec­ify a dol­lar amount, so I sup­pose they can arbi­trar­ily eject any­body they deem to have spent too little.

Here’s what hap­pened yes­ter­day after­noon at about 4-5PM: I bought a cof­fee and muf­fin, tipped, and sat down. About 10 min­utes later, the vol­ume of the music sud­denly got VERY LOUD (painfully, dis­tract­ingly so) for no appar­ent rea­son. Then one of their employ­ees vis­ited every cus­tomer in turn and pre­sented us with a long-worded sign explain­ing their new seat­ing pol­icy, which used the word “loi­ter” sev­eral times. I don’t think this employee speaks Eng­lish as a first lan­guage, so there was no oppor­tu­nity to dis­cuss it with him, even if the music had not been deaf­en­ing. He was not apolo­getic. Every sin­gle cus­tomer in the store at that time had only pur­chased cof­fee and pas­tries, so we all had to leave. There were only about a half-dozen cus­tomers at the time, so the man­age­ment can’t claim that we were hog­ging seats from hypo­thet­i­cal meal-eating cus­tomers (of which there were none). If the new pol­icy had been posted up front when I placed my order, I did not see it.

I used to like to go to M. Rohrs occa­sion­ally, some­times for a sand­wich or some­times just cof­fee. I would usu­ally sit and work or just read for about an hour or two, which I don’t think is unrea­son­able at any cof­fee shop, Star­bucks not excluded. All the other neg­a­tive com­ments on Yelp are true; the ser­vice is often rude and neglect­ful (I once had them com­pletely for­get to make my sand­wich — but at least they apol­o­gized), and they charge for wire­less access and for elec­tric­ity. Worse is their atti­tude; it would be one thing to sim­ply charge peo­ple to plug in their lap­tops, but the signs plas­tered about the place couch it in terms of “theft of util­i­ties,” essen­tially accus­ing cus­tomers of crim­i­nal behav­ior. After the clos­ing of the vastly supe­rior cof­fee shop DTUT a few years ago, M. Rohrs is pretty much the only place of its type in the neigh­bor­hood, so I used to patron­ize it any­way. No more.

The word “loi­ter­ing,” as any lit­er­ate per­son should know, has crim­i­nal con­no­ta­tions, and I sus­pect the man­age­ment of M. Rohrs knows this. I deeply, deeply resent being called a “loi­terer” despite hav­ing paid (and tipped!) for cof­fee and a pas­try. Upon leav­ing for the last time, I only regret­ted not demand­ing my tip back.

Per­haps they intend to tran­si­tion away from being a cof­fee house into a restau­rant with a take-out cof­fee bar. If so, they will have to hire more staff, improve the speed and accu­racy of their ser­vice, toss out the couches, and stop accus­ing their pay­ing cus­tomers of crim­i­nal behav­ior. Good luck with that. If any­one asso­ci­ated with the estab­lish­ment hap­pens to read this, I invite you to please com­ment below. I would love to hear your jus­ti­fi­ca­tions. I signed up for Yelp for the sole pur­pose of post­ing a copy of this review, and I sin­cerely hope lots of poten­tial cus­tomers read it.

So that you know where not to go get your cof­fee, M. Rohrs’ House of Fine Teas & Cof­fees is located in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, at 310 East 86th Street, between 1st and 2nd Avenues.

Synecdoche, New York

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Synecdoche, New York movie poster

 

Whether it actu­ally is or not, Synec­doche, New York has the feel of a very, very per­sonal work of art. I know next to noth­ing about writer/director Char­lie Kauf­man, and don’t even nec­es­sar­ily feel like I do now. Then again, few peo­ple do know Kauf­man, as he has famously man­aged to side­step much pub­lic­ity despite per­pe­trat­ing a suc­cess­ful screen­writ­ing career in an indus­try in which the cult of per­son­al­ity applies to everyone.

Synec­doche, New York is Kaufman’s first film as direc­tor, after a string of play­ful yet brainy screen­plays. The best antecedents I can name would be the sur­real satires of Lind­say Ander­son (like O Lucky Man! — read The Dork Report Review) and the Post­mod­ern decon­struc­tion of Tom Stop­pard (espe­cially Rosen­crantz and Guilden­stern are Dead, which wreaks hilar­i­ous havok with no less a holy relic than Ham­let). Kaufman’s hit parade so far includes Being John Malkovich, Human Nature (under­rated! see it!), Con­fes­sions of a Dan­ger­ous Mind, Adap­ta­tion, and Dork Report favorite The Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind. Being John Malkovich and Eter­nal Sun­shine are both pure plea­sures to watch, but Adap­ta­tion showed the darker side of Kaufman’s bril­liance. As I under­stood the film, the very life itself of screen­writer “Char­lie Kauf­man” (Nico­las Cage) slowly becomes the vio­lent, sexed-up Hol­ly­wood melo­drama he loathes to write. To describe Synec­doche, New York in short­hand, it’s as if the cyn­i­cal, chal­leng­ing nar­ra­tive nature of Adap­ta­tion were crossed with the deep emo­tional impact of Eter­nal Sunshine.

Samantha Morton and Philip Seymour Hoffman in Synecdoche, New YorkHere’s The Dork Report’s the­ory to explain Hazel’s enig­matic burn­ing house: could it be an allu­sion to the Talk­ing Heads song “Love -> Build­ing on Fire”? I’m being seri­ous here…

But what it’s actu­ally “about” would take a lot of analy­sis to fig­ure out, and my sin­gle view­ing is not enough to unpack it (assum­ing my IQ would be up to the task any­way). Like Adap­ta­tion, it’s actu­ally a lit­tle frus­trat­ing to watch, but in a good sense, in that the audi­ence is con­stantly being chal­lenged. I have to admit that I don’t fully “get” it, but I also think it’s clear there’s no sin­gle key to unlock­ing any one mean­ing of the film. I’m giv­ing it the full five-star Dork Report rat­ing because I have enor­mous respect for any such uncom­pro­mis­ing, chal­leng­ing, affect­ing, and frus­trat­ing work of art in cin­ema. That it was pro­duced as a major motion pic­ture star­ring numer­ous famous faces and released in mul­ti­plexes nation­ally along­side the more typ­i­cal fare Saw V and High School Musi­cal 3 is noth­ing less than a mir­a­cle, and gives one hope for the future of the film indus­try. At least four peo­ple walked out of the screen­ing I attended, some dur­ing an uncom­fort­able nude scene fea­tur­ing Emily Wat­son (not uncom­fort­able in that she isn’t beau­ti­ful, because she is, but because the sex scene is so utterly frank). It’s a pity they did, for they missed one of the most weirdly mov­ing last moments of a film I’ve ever seen (although it did have prece­dent in Peter Weir’s The Tru­man Show, which also sug­gested the voice of God towards his sup­pli­cant is akin to that of a film/theater/television director’s towards his actor).

The clos­est thing I’ve seen to Synec­doche, New York is Spike Jonze’s Michel Gondry’s bril­liant music video for Björk’s Bach­e­lorette (Jonze Gondry is a long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor of Kaufman’s, and co-produced Synec­doche, New York). (UPDATE: cor­rec­tions thanks to com­menter Greg. I can’t believe I mixed up two of my favorite direc­tors!) Less a pop music promo than a short film that stands on its own mer­its, Bach­e­lorette recounts the tale of a young coun­try girl who writes her auto­bi­og­ra­phy and moves to the big city, where she falls in love with her pub­lisher. A hit, her book spawns a the­atri­cal adap­ta­tion, in which a young coun­try girl writes her auto­bi­og­ra­phy, moves to the big city, and falls in love with her pub­lisher. A hit, it too spawns a the­atri­cal play. You get the idea: the tale is infi­nitely recur­sive. But each copy is a copy within a copy, each more dis­torted, flimsy, and sad than its source mate­r­ial. Entropy and decay set in, and the world(s) col­lapse in upon them­selves. Her life basi­cally ends at the point she fin­ishes her auto­bi­og­ra­phy and looks only back­wards instead of liv­ing for the future. Watch the video here:

Synec­doche, New York is a pun on the New York city Sch­enec­tady (the loca­tion of Caden’s orig­i­nal the­ater com­pany) and the lit­er­ary term for a fig­ure of speech in which a part stands in for the whole (for exam­ple, “The White House said today…” as used by news­cast­ers rather than spec­i­fy­ing the admin­is­tra­tion, or even more specif­i­cally, the Press Sec­re­tary). The­ater direc­tor Caden Cotard’s (Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man) artist wife Adele (Cather­ine Keener) divorces him and moves to Ger­many with their daugh­ter and Maria (Jen­nifer Jason Leigh), who may be her lover (guest Dork Reporter Snark­bait points out that this is Keener’s sec­ond sex­u­ally ambigu­ous role in a Kauf­man film, here and in Being John Malkovich). Caden wor­ries for the rest of his life that Maria is a bet­ter replace­ment for him­self as hus­band and father.

Caden wins a MacArthur Foun­da­tion Genius Grant, and uses the funds to move to Man­hat­tan and craft an epic play housed in a dis­used the­ater illog­i­cally large enough to hold a scale model of New York City as his set. Out­side, the real Man­hat­tan descends into chaos and war­fare. At one point, the char­ac­ters leave the the­ater and walk past mys­te­ri­ous civil rights atroc­i­ties such as clown-costume-clad sol­diers herd­ing cit­i­zens onto armored busses at gunpoint.

Philip Seymour Hoffman and Hope Davis in Synecdoche, New YorkHope Davis, as the shrink­est with the mostest, offers to shrink Philip Sey­mour Hoffman’s head

Caden’s can­vas is infi­nite, there is no script, and he hopes to find his story as he goes along. The play is in per­pet­ual rehearsal for decades, and remains for­ever unti­tled. I hate to use this kind of cop-out phrase pop­u­lar in col­lege lit­er­a­ture classes, but it truly is “a metaphor for life.” As Caden tries to find mean­ing for the trau­matic events in his life, and to ratio­nal­ize his deci­sions, he casts actors to play him­self and the sig­nif­i­cant peo­ple in his life. Like mem­o­ries being processed by the human brain, he is now able to replay recent painful events in his life over and over, giv­ing direc­tion to his actors on how to express their (his) pain, all with the emo­tional safety of know­ing that it’s all just playacting.

Soon, he takes even another step back, and casts another set of actors to play the first. Real­ity itself begins to break down as in Björk’s Bach­e­lorette, also fea­tur­ing a play within a play within a play, cast with sev­eral pairs of other actors play­ing her­self and her lover as their affair, and entire world, dis­in­te­grates. A sim­i­lar theme of copies and dou­bles also fig­ures into Adap­ta­tion: writer “Char­lie” may or may not have an iden­ti­cal twin brother, shame­lessly able to make the kinds of com­pro­mises nec­es­sary for suc­cess in the movie biz and life itself that he is too weak or too ashamed to do him­self. Is it sig­nif­i­cant, as Kauf­man moves from writer to writer/director, that the cen­tral char­ac­ter of Adap­ta­tion is a writer, and that of Synec­doche, New York is a director?

Samantha Morton, Emily Watson, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Tom Noonan in Synecdoche, New YorkA scene from Synec­doche, New York, star­ring Saman­tha Mor­ton as Hazel, Emily Wat­son as Tammy as Hazel, Philip Sey­mour Hoff­man as Caden, and Tom Noo­nan as Sammy as Caden. Got that?

Caden is beset through­out with a host of mys­tery ill­nesses that for­ever threaten to kill him but never carry through their promise. I caught at least two hints that he may in fact already be dead: his shrink Madeleine Gravis (Hope Davis) makes a seem­ing slip of the tongue and asks why he killed him­self, and later, one of his dop­pel­gängers (Tom Noo­nan) com­mits suicide.

The walls between Caden’s life and his play blur; which is real and which is the play? The dis­pas­sion­ate direc­tor watches from a dis­tance as oth­ers do the dirty work of liv­ing his life for him, such as con­duct his love affairs and breakups with Claire (Michele Williams), Hazel (Saman­tha Mor­ton), and Tammy (Emily Wat­son), that he may not have the emo­tional strength or sex­ual potency to do him­self. Caden even­tu­ally replaces him­self and takes the sim­pler, less demand­ing role of one of the most fleet­ingly minor back­ground fig­ures in his life. Is he an actor in his own play, fol­low­ing the script and direc­tion from some­one else, an invis­i­ble exter­nal force… God? He essen­tially abdi­cates respon­si­bil­ity for his own life, and dies on cue.

Must read: exhaus­tive fan site BeingCharlieKaufman.com

Offi­cial movie site: www.sonyclassics.com/synecdocheny

Buy the DVD and Schoot­ing Script from Ama­zon and kick back a few pen­nies to The Dork Report.