Dirty Old New York aka Fun City

I continue my Dirty Old New York video essay series with Dirty Old New York aka Fun City, Part I and Part II.  Dirty Old New York Subway can be seen here.

All shots are connected by at least one of the following: location, film, character, actor, signage, recurring object, or recurring motif.  Try and see how many of these connections you can spot and how many films you can identify.  This is a fluid piece and probably will be revised and / or supplemented with additional footage.  I'm going to wrap this up with a forthcoming Part III.



I've tried to source everything from 16x9 DVDs, but have had to compromise this standard in some cases.

Jeremy (1973, Arthur Barron)

Arthur Barron's Jeremy is an uncomplicated, universal story of first love. A "little movie." But, it's one that gets me every time I watch it. I first read about it in Danny Peary's Guide for the Film Fanatic when I was in high school, but it was late to home video and I didn't see it until it debuted on VHS in the late '90s. I just caught up with it again on DVD. I was and remain struck by the film's very mature, honest portrayal of the first time two people fall in love, perfectly capturing just how life-changing and important a moment it is for those involved. At the same time, it shows how fleeting and painfully abrupt these events can be. Like some of the best films of its era, it's somewhat gritty and, within the coming-of-age genre, it's more authentic than those of the next generation--the young actors here look like real kids and not the overly pretty young things that have populated most teen films and tv shows of the last two decades.

Jeremy is a gifted young cellist and sophomore at a New York performing arts high school. He's a shy kid, a little goofy, sensitive, and socially awkward. Susan is a transplant from Detroit. A dancer, she's pretty, independent, has a wisdom beyond her years, and a palpable sadness due to the loss of her mother when she was a young child. Jeremy is smitten the moment he sets eyes on her.

The film was shot in 16mm and mostly hand-held giving it an admirable level of docu-realism. At times, though, the limitations of budget and the filmmakers' lack of experience, reveal themselves in the form of some ragged cinematography and abrupt editing. Some of the writing and supporting performances strike me as tv-movie caliber. While so many current American films overstay their welcome, Jeremy feels a little rushed at times, particularly in its conclusion.

However, I think the movie more than overcomes these shortcomings. Major credit must be given to young stars Robby Benson and Glynnis O'Connor who actually were the age of the characters they portrayed and became a real-life couple for a time. They clearly believe in the material. Fresh, uninhibited, mature, winning, charming. These are superlatives casually tossed about by fawning critics, but they really do apply to the performances here of Benson and O'Connor. Benson has never been taken very seriously as an actor, but he perfectly plays the awkwardness, uncertainty, and discomfort inherent in Jeremy when he tries to talk to Susan for the first time and even after their relationship has progressed. It's easy to root for this kid to win the affections of Susan. O'Connor's Susan is adorable, speaks her mind with assurance, and has an innate sweetness; it's no wonder that Jeremy would fall for her and that O'Connor would go on to fame as a teen star throughout the rest of the '70s.

There is a good amount of humor sprinkled throughout the film, but writer-director Barron and his young stars treat the courting and love scenes seriously and with an appropriate level of earnestness. To its credit, the film doesn't hold back in showing Jeremy and Susan consummate their love, something I don't think would fly in a PG movie these days.

Benson and O'Connor even sing the film's love themes on the soundtrack--"Blue Balloon (The Hourglass Song) and "Jeremy"--something today's young audiences would probably scoff at and one of the aspects that place this film firmly in the early '70s. Being a fan of pop songsters of the era like Paul Williams (who later provided music for Benson's One on One and O'Connor's The Boy in the Plastic Bubble), I love these heartfelt ballads and the way the film uses them to underscore the feelings of Jeremy and Susan. Lee Holdridge's catchy score perfectly accompanies the montage scenes of Jeremy and Susan together in the city.

Interestingly, but not entirely surprisingly, Jeremy became an object of study for noted behavioral scientist Brian Gilmartin who has done extensive work on a form of shyness he calls love-shyness. Gilmartin's research showed that most love-shy men become pre-occupied or obsessed with one particular film or actress--Jeremy has the distinction of being the most watched film by love-shy men.

Barron didn't direct anything else of note before his death in 2000. Benson and O'Connor would go on to star together in Ode to Billy Joe and separately in several other high-profile feature and television teen romantic dramas throughout the decade and into the early '80s. Both continue to work today, Benson mostly as a director for television and O'Connor in television guest spots. I wrote a tribute to O'Connor here. Benson was the subject of an enlightening Los Angeles Times profile in 2008. Unfortunately, much of their other work is hard to find, i.e. not on DVD. Jeremy is, however, and it's a wonderful showcase for the talents of these two performers.

Boulevard Nights (1979, Michael Pressman) & Walk Proud (1979, Robert Collins)

"Everything happens on the boulevard--and the boulevard happens at night."

Style A

Style B

British Quad

Mexican lobby card

"He was tough enough for the streets...was he tough enough to leave them?"

U.S. One-Sheet

Movie tie-in version of the original novel by Evan Hunter (aka Ed McBain)

Robby Benson in full Chicano mode 

Ill-fated co-star Sarah Holcomb

After the Clairidge Theater in Montclair, NJ cut up the original theater into several smaller ones in the early 80s, they crafted a pretty cool (at least to my young eyes) wallpaper out of old one-sheets to adorn the theater walls.  For some reason, the only such one-sheet I remember now is the one for Walk Proud.  This wallpaper lasted into the mid-90s and I was sad when the inevitable redesign came.

It's not too surprising that of the five pictures in the "gang cycle" of 1979, Boulevard Nights and Walk Proud, would be least remembered.  The other three pictures were, of course, The Warriors, The Wanderers, and Over the Edge.  The latter three films are now regarded as cult classics--each has the official seal from cult movie guru Danny Peary--and are all available on DVD with special features of varying quality and extent.  Boulevard Nights and Walk Proud have yet to appear on DVD and Walk Proud has never appeared on any home video format in the U.S.  

Why the disparity?  Following violence in movie theaters showing The Warriors in February 1979, exhibitors were wary of screening other gang pictures.  Politicians and media wags, not to mention Curtis Sliwa's fledgling Guardian Angels, were up in arms about the so-called exploitative violence in these films.  Three young people (two in Southern California and one in Boston) were killed in incidents tied to screenings of The Warriors.  Boulevard Nights was met with violence and protests due to its depiction of Latino culture in San Francisco upon its March 1979 release.  Paramount responded by altering its ads for The Warriors, which were seen as irresponsible ("These are the armies of the night.  They could run New York City.") and placing full page ads with excerpts from Pauline Kael's sparkling New Yorker review.  The Warriors, on its way to becoming a big box office success, was stunted as the studio limited further expansion.  Universal pushed back and scaled down the release of Walk Proud and newly christened Orion shelved Over the Edge and The Wanderers received substantially less theatrical exposure due to the earlier violence and negative publicity associated with "gang pictures."

As for Walk Proud and Boulevard Nights, they remain most obscure due to the fact that both are conventional melodramas with minimal stylistic flourishes whereas the other three films are without question more cinematic in every sense of the word.  Walter Hill and Andrew Laszlo's day-glo New York visuals in The Warriors still dazzle; Philip Kaufman's Wanderers moves with ceaseless energy and skill between comedy, drama, and horror; Jonathan Kaplan's Over the Edge remains the best update of Rebel Without a Cause just in time for punk to hit the suburbs.  

Walk Proud and Boulevard Nights transfer familiar stories and themes to a heretofore underrepresented milieu--Chicano gang culture in Los Angeles.  That they do not entirely succeed is due, in large part, to the fact that both films were conceived and produced by white filmmakers and executives, and in the case of Walk Proud, a non-Latino actor (Robby Benson) plays the starring role of a young Chicano gang member.  Had the actor been a less familiar face than Benson, or someone with more street credibility, the results may have been more successful.  As it stands, the picture seems in a lot of ways like one in a line of Benson pictures from the time (One on One being the most prominent) in which a sensitive and delicate Robby, in this case under a layer of makeup, rises above obstacles and bullies and ends up in the arms of an adorable and wholesome young woman.  

In Walk Proud, Benson is Emiliano, a young member of the Aztecas, an East L.A. gang, who becomes torn between his gang loyalties and the growing love between he and wealthy, WASPy Sarah Lassiter (Sarah Holcomb).  Even though director Robert Collins presents the proceedings in a distinctly television style, the drama of Emiliano's struggle is well established and we get a strong sense of the politics of the gang and community and the gravity of his decision to cross over to the other side of the tracks. It helps that Benson and Holcomb acquit themselves nicely in their roles.  The other key roles are filled by Latino actors including Pepe Serna, Henry Darrow, and Trinidad Silva.  The movie is based on a novel by Evan Hunter who wrote the seminal juvenile delinquent novel, The Blackboard Jungle.

In his Times review, Vincent Canby contrasted Walk Proud and The Warriors and went as far as to say, "The movie's sentimental, realistic style has nothing whatsoever to do with the dreamlike, glossy cool affected by Walter Hill's notorious The Warriors. Yet Walk Proud may well be a far more revolutionary picture than the randomly pretty Hill film. In the way it documents the power plays of the Aztecas, the Chicano gang, as its members negotiate and then break treaties covering such things as safe passage through Santa Monica, it manages to suggest the self-generating absurdities built into all international relations conducted through power blocs."

Boulevard Nights was directed by Michael Pressman (The Great Texas Dynamite Chase, Those Lips Those Eyes, Some Kind of Hero) who now directs primarily for television, executive produced by actor turned filmmaker Tony Bill (My Bodyguard), and written by Japanese American writer-director Desmond Nakano (American Me, Last Exit to Brooklyn, White Man's Burden).  Its mostly Latino cast is headed by Richard Yniguez and Danny De La Paz as the brothers Avila, Raymond and Chuco.  Elder brother Raymond wants to get out of the barrio and open an auto repair shop.  Chuco, unfortunately, cannot rise above the gang lifestyle and heads down a potentially tragic path.  Canby was quite unforgiving in his review accusing the filmmakers of being slaves to its very "conventional narrative."  "When we watch [the characters] suffer and die in foolish pursuits, the movie is merely sightseeing."  He later states that director Pressman's decision to begin a scene with a shot of the sky is a sign of a director who's "not got very much on his mind."  Roger Ebert is more positive toward the film, first criticizing the radical action group who accosted him outside the theater with a flyer urging viewers to boycott The Warriors and Boulevard Nights on the charge that the films were part of a fascist conspiracy to "poison the minds of thousands."  As for the film, Ebert calls it an admirable anti-gang drama which nearly overcomes a "story structure borrowed from umpteen other Hollywood movies about coming of age in a ghetto."

While the two forgotten gang pictures of 1979 (how did so many studio bigwigs think this was a good idea?) are by no means stellar films, it would be nice to have them readily available for viewing on reputable, high quality DVDs.  Walk Proud has appeared on the Encore networks in recent years.  Boulevard Nights can be seen for free online.  Bootleg DVDs of varying quality can be found on eBay, ioffer, and other similar sites. 

As Boulevard Nights is a Warner Home Video title, I would expect any DVD to be a more than respectable OAR affair (to do justice to the photography by esteemed d.p. John Bailey), possibly including a theatrical trailer. Since Walk Proud is a Universal title, I am considerably less confident in the quality of the DVD because of the studio's spotty record with catalog releases, especially with regards to aspect ratio and soundtrack licensing (Walk Proud prominently features Elton John's "We All Fall in Love Sometimes").  However, Universal has lately been going to this well (read: marginal catalog titles of the 70s-80s) more often than Warner.

As for the poster designs of the two featured films, neither is very eye-popping, particularly when compared to the striking designs used for the other three gang pictures.  I can still remember seeing The Warriors poster in an old Rick's Movie Graphics catalog and deciding I had to see the movie and have the poster.  The poster sits framed above my desk and my wife can attest to my attachment to the film, which remains strong almost twenty years on.

Since I do have an affinity for young, mostly forgotten, actors of the 70s-80s, I must mention Walk Proud co-star Sarah Holcomb, most memorable to audiences from her humorous turns in Animal House (her debut as Clorette DePasto) and Caddyshack (Maggie O'Hooligan). She also appeared prominently in Richard Benner's Happy Birthday, Gemini.  But, that was all she wrote for her career in film.  Apparently, Sarah has struggled with drug problems and mental illness since that time and it's said that the 2004 film Stateside starring Rachel Leigh Cook is inspired by her ordeal.  Bobby at DERAILED describes a moving encounter he had with Ms. Holcomb nearly twenty years ago.

Tribute: Glynnis O'Connor

Long past her halcyon days in the 1970s as a frequent co-star, and sometime girlfriend, of Robby Benson, Glynnis O'Connor rarely receives her due as one of the most talented and lovely young actresses of the 1970s and early 1980s.  With a variety of leading men, most notably Benson, O'Connor seemed to corner the market on tragic or melancholy teenage romances,which were invariably improved upon just by her presence. 

With Benson, she appeared in the bittersweet Jeremy and Ode to Billy Joe, a massively successful tearjerker in its day.  She went on to star as the object of John Travolta's affections in the widely-seen 1976 telefilm The Boy in the Plastic Bubble and headlined Baby Blue Marine with Jan-Michael Vincent. She then appeared in two underrated coming-of age dramas: California Dreaming with Dennis Christopher and Seymour Cassel and Those Lips, Those Eyes opposite Frank Langella and Tom Hulce.

  

Along the way, she starred in Amy Heckerling's celebrated short film Getting It Over With, about an 18 year-old determined to lose her virginity.  It was this film that led to Heckerling's opportunity to direct Fast Times at Ridgemont High several years later.  One of O'Connor's last feature film appearances would be in Heckerling's ill-fated Fast Times follow-up, Johnny Dangerously.  

In 1982, O'Connor made perhaps her most lasting impression on the big screen in the Canadian independent production, Melanie.  O'Connor played the title role, that of a young illiterate mother fighting to retain custody of her young son, and was awarded with a Genie for "Best Performance by a Foreign Actress." 

However, after gaining critical acclaim for her leading role in the 1984 telefilm Why Me?, O'Connor's starring roles dwindled and she appeared, increasingly, in supporting parts on episodic television, telefilms, and direct-to-video productions.  She has appeared in several incarnations of the Law & Order franchise in recent years, yet I still hold out hope that she will re-emerge with a prominent role in a feature film.

California Dreaming trailer, 1979: