Walking to the Cinema (A Slideshow)

I saw several movies at the Tribeca Film Festival this week, and most every day, I walked from my apartment in the Village up Broadway and then east on E. 12th or E. 13th (by mistake, overshooting where I needed to turn) to the screenings at the Village East Cinema at E. 12th and 2nd Av. Then I would walk back west and north to a reception or an event near Union Square. I took this route, I think, ten times, and the images here don't even account for the stretch walking home.

These photos seem pedestrian to me, on many levels, but in their totality they represent the "shoe leather" transitions between the dramatic sequences in my own personal New York movie. What I think about most when I look at these walking pictures is how I use the occasion of walking to process what I've just experienced and how I need to think about it.

See my blog, Shoe Leather, at Reframe, for more on the films at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Now Showing at the Tribeca Film Festival: Guest of Cindy Sherman (clip from You Tube)

As someone who occasionally ventures forth into the strange territory known as the New York Art World, but at a very subterranean level (I am unknown to most there), I would be derelict in my duties not to point readers toward this new film. I saw this documentary today, and I believe the film brings us to a moment in social and cultural history that is so of the moment that we can barely comprehend now its full significance. I know the clip here is a big tease to see the whole movie, and I hope you will, but this moment with the radio hosts at WFMU is one I particularly enjoyed.

There's typically an impossibly long lag time between the making of a film and its final release, in this case, Guest of Cindy Sherman, but here's the archived blog post at WFMU's website from January 16, 2005 by DJ Bronwyn C. discussing the filming of their re-enactment before the cameras of the phone call (and placing the original event further back in time) in the events you see before you.

Official website

News about the film's release and Sherman's recent disclaimer from New York Magazine here.
Follow along with C's new life in the journal published here.

See my blog, Shoe Leather, at Reframe, for more on the films at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Walking Off the Tribeca Film Festival, Day 6

I'd like to make some general observations about my experience covering the Tribeca Film Festival.

• Already I am tired and behind on my schedule. Every morning I sit down with the list of movie screenings and scratch through the names of movies I didn't get around to seeing the day before.
• I have met a ton of nice people, most of them filmmakers and bloggers. Though I tried to stop meeting people a few days ago, I keep returning to the Target-Tribeca Filmmaker Lounge where I end up meeting more people and promising to see their films.
• When I make appointments with filmmakers to talk about their films, I pretty much have to go see the films before we actually talk. I don't want to have to start the conversation with "And what's it about?," followed by me saying, "And then what happens?"
• It's hard to find time to write and to go to movies on the same day. Plus there's necessary schmoozing and meet-and-greet opportunities. I hate to give these things up.
• I heard there were 2,000 accredited members of the press at the festival, but I suspect that the vast majority are interested only in covering celebrity red carpet events. That's good for me, because I mainly care about talking to emerging first-time independent filmmakers, and I can usually get some time with them.
• My normal eating schedule has gone to hell in a handbasket. I love that phrase. Since Thursday I have subsisted on coffee, canapés, rosé wine, bottled water and white chocolate macadamia nut petite cookies.
• I am accumulating lots of business cards. People take a lot of time making these cards look good. A few people have handed me tiny cards, much smaller than the standard size, and I'm scared of losing them.
• After making more friends, I'm starting to get invitations to extraneous parties. Someone asked me the other night, "Are you coming to the bowling party?"
• It took me a while to figure out where to keep people's cards. Then, I noticed that festival veterans were sticking them inside the plastic cases that protect the festival badges we wear around our necks. I do this now, too, so I look savvy.
• A lot of people that I meet express excitement about the John Cage performance I wrote about earlier and want me to talk about it some more. I guess it's a good break from all the film talk.
• A lot of festival-goers, especially from outside the city, are amazed at how much they're having to walk in New York, just to get from the movie theaters to other events. When the topic of walking in New York comes up, that's when I pull out my business card.

Please visit Reframe and my blog, Shoe Leather, for current postings.

Walking Off the Big Apple's Squirrels in New York You Tube Film Festival

I'm getting ready for the Tribeca Film Festival today, organizing a daily schedule of film screenings, roundtables, and press events. I am one of 2,000 accredited press people, by the way. As I mentioned, I'm writing a second blog about film matters for Reframe, a website of the Tribeca Film Institute. This morning, after filing a post on the Visual Artist as Documentary Subject, I walked up Fifth Avenue to check out the Target-Tribeca Filmmakers Lounge, a meeting place for badge holders. I found a dazzling room of contemporary furniture and lighting, buzzing with pre-festival action and bathed in Target's emblematic reds and target shapes.

It takes a lot to organize such as festival. Then I thought, "How about if I started a modest online festival, one perhaps built around a NY theme that would be accessible to the whole wide world?" After almost no time at all, the idea came to me.

Walking Off the Big Apple's Squirrels in New York You Tube Film Festival



There are currently 175 videos on the subject of squirrels in New York now on You Tube. This is sort of hard to believe. Squirrels are popular in many feature-length films and TV shows (of which Rocky of Rocky & Bullwinkle holds a special place in my heart), but few know how popular they are in amateur independent video productions, such as the ones you see here. While most would fall into the category of documentary short subjects, and none at all qualify as a feature film, the squirrel in amateur film is ready for some celebration, I think, or even a panel discussion at a film theory conference.

The sequence of films and credit lines for the festival selections you see above:

1. Squirrel on Yankee Stadium Foul Pole
by MustangFan424 (added August 29, 2007)
Note: The Tribeca Film Festival features a special ESPN-sponsored list of sports films, so I thought I could begin this festival with a sports-oriented squirrel film. This one is a fan favorite.

2. Calling All Squirrels
by maddojo (added January 16, 2008)
Note: a Mr. Rogers-like voice, but not at the end; location in Washington Square Park

3. New York Squirrels
by BIllNYC
(added Jun 26, 2007)
Note: aggressive squirrel, with a Garage Band soundtrack

4. New York Squirrel Eating French Fry
by mirage1125
(added Dec. 26, 2006)
Note: avant-garde world documentary

5. Squirrels Gone Wild
by zantar100
(added July 2, 2007)
Note: high production values

6. Cute squirrel in Central Park
by obiesheila
(added May 24, 2007)
Note: Danish language film; no subtitles

Playlist also available at this link

The Upcoming Tribeca Film Festival, Reframe, and Introducing a New Blog

Holy WOTBA double blogging! Today, I am happy to announce to Walking Off the Big Apple (WOTBA) readers the launch of a new blog titled "Shoe Leather" over on the website, Reframe. A new project of the Tribeca Film Institute, Reframe will become an intelligent place for film conversation not found elsewhere. TFI, a nonprofit organization designed to broaden and increase support for media artists, engages in many activities based in communities in New York, and it makes a lovely arrangement for us to be working together.

I'm starting the Shoe Leather blog on the occasion of the imminent Tribeca Film Festival, April 23-May 4, and readers are invited to go over to Reframe to read posts about what I'm seeing and doing. The blog will extend beyond May 4.

"But, hey, what will happen to WOTBA?," you might ask. I'll still be here, like always, most every day, as I never seem to run out of things to say. The additional adventure should be a wonderful learning experience. And unlike the Orphan Film Symposium, where I had extra duties of hosting, I don't have the same responsibilities with Tribeca. For example, they'll have to find their own beers after 1 o'clock in the morning.

"Hey," you also might ask, "Who's that woman, the one in the black-and-white picture with the glasses?" That's me! Really! Did you think I look like a Frida Kahlo doll? I wish! I know I've never posted a picture like this on WOTBA, but because there's a similar headshot now of me accompanying the "Shoe Leather" blog on Reframe, I thought I'd go ahead and break the ice here, too. And in the spirit of film festival red carpet events, let me also say that I am wearing UNIQLO, and my hair is by Jason at Oscar Bond Salon in Soho.

Now, my Tribeca excursions of a few weeks ago are becoming a little more clear, eh?

Images: Teri and Frida doll, by Walking Off the Big Apple's magic MacBook IPhoto machine. Frida is looking forward to seeing Portrait of Diego: The Revolutionary Gaze at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Scenes from a Film Symposium: Orphans 6

The first several slides would suggest that the participants in the Orphan Film Symposium, March 26-29, 2008 at NYU, were more interested in food and drink than films, but most of the images that follow reveal their true passion.

Today is my day for naps, pizza, and college basketball. As a sophisticated flâneuse, I sometimes need a time-out.

T.O., baby! Texas is out.

Walking Off the Big Apple will return to the streets tomorrow.

(see previous posts for more on the Orphan Film Symposium.) Photos in slideshow by Walking Off the Big Apple. March 2008.

Orphan Film Symposium: Moving Orphans, Itinerant Filmmakers, and Pancho Villa

Last night at the Orphan Film Symposium, we gathered for dinner inside the historic Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square South. Making the most of the "on location" feel for the symposium, most of the events take place in and around Washington Square Park.

Ever since it was announced that the symposium was moving to New York, some people worried that the southern grit flair established in South Carolina for so long would be lost in translation. I worried about this myself, but on balance, just after the opening couple of days, I don't think there's anything to worry about now. Wednesday night's tribute to the late Helen Hill, a native of Columbia, South Carolina, and with it, the presence of family and friends from South Carolina, made an effective and moving transition for the symposium's segue to New York. In addition, the friendly humor that developed among earlier participants is still alive and well here, and maybe even funnier. The food is still good, and all the films are remarkable.

Last night I attended Mexican filmmaker Gregorio Rocha's presentation and screening of the restored La Venganza de Pancho Villa (ca. 1930-34) by itinerant filmmakers, Felix and Edmundo Padilla. Rocha's discovery of the famous lost reels of Pancho Villa in the archives at the University of Texas at El Paso was a breaking news story announced at the second symposium in 2001. The Padillas, operating as itinerant filmmakers along the US-Mexican border, put together this thrilling tale, combining fictional recreations with actual footage of the real Villa and his army.

Growing up in Texas and living in Austin, I met several Texans from the border area who had their own stories of Villa's raids on their ancestors' haciendas. They couldn't decide if they loved Pancho Villa or loathed him (their grandparents hated him), and the film that Gregorio showed the audience was equally ambiguous.

I've spent most of the day running errands - buying flowers, beverages, cheese and crackers, all with the aim of hostessing the orphanistas, as we are known, with le know-how, the French translation for je-ne-sais-quoi.

Images: above, gathering for dinner at the Judson Memorial Church, and below, flowers at W. 3rd and Thompson St. I brought home the red carnations.

For more on Gregorio Rocha's Pancho Villa, please see the related post at the Orphan Film Symposium blog.

Orphan Film Symposium: The 1961 Folk Singer Protest in Washington Square Park, and Emile de Antonio's America

At the beginning of each Orphan Film Symposium, I like to scan the schedule and make note of the films I can't miss. The registered participants see all the films together as well as talk over organized lunches and dinners. The screenings start in the morning and continue through the evening, so the collective experience is intense. Though I take care of minor behind-the-scenes tasks, I like to attend most of the screenings.

I put today's early afternoon session at the top of my list – films that documented protests held in Washington Square Park in the 1960s, and a couple of presentations on maverick documentary filmmaker Emile de Antonio.

Dan Drasin was a burgeoning 18-year-old filmmaker when he took his cameras and some black and white film to document a protest by folk singers in Washington Square Park in 1961. Reacting to the passage of an ordinance that prohibited singing in the park (folk singers attract unsavory elements, don't you now?), the active folk music community brought guitars to the park and sang songs of freedom. After the singers dispersed, policemen beat up some of the spectators. Drasin's 17-minute film captures that gritty determination of New Yorkers at the beginning of the 1960s, and many consider Sunday to be the first protest film of the 1960s.

Other films from the session included selections of footage shot in Washington Square Park from 1966 by Bob Parent, an artist known mostly as a still photographer, and an NYU surveillance film from 1968 of students protesting Dow Chemical's role in the Vietnam War. Ross Lipman (UCLA) presented a PowerPoint show on the restoration of Emile de Antonio's Point of Order (1963), focusing much on the usage of the word "spectacle."

Andrew Lampert of the Anthology Film Archives recently found a 1967 interview with de Antonio filmed in Leipzig, Germany. With Point of Order, his edited film of the 1954 Army-McCarthy televised hearings, De Antonio explains that he didn't set out to make a movie about his opposition to Sen. Joe McCarthy but to make a movie about the aspects of America that created the conditions for McCarthyism. De Antonio, by the way, promoted and distributed Drasin's Sunday protest film.

After sitting in the dark film theater and seeing the sights and hearing the sounds of Washington Square Park in the 1960s, walking back through the same park in the rain on my way home was a bittersweet experience. The fountain area is torn up now as part of an extensive multi-year renovation. The sincere voices and strumming that accompanied the well-preserved black-and-white moving images of protest seemed fresh, but the sounds of "This land is your land, This land is my land" grew faint as I looked around the park in it's current state of disruption. I am full of hope, however, that variations on these melodies will return one day back in full force.

Images: above, NYU surveillance film of Dow Chemical protesters; below: de Antonio.

Orphan Film Symposium, Explanation of "Orphan Widow," and Keynote Address

Orphans 6 (Orphan Film Symposium, 6th iteration) kicked off officially this morning in the Cantor Film Center. Richard Allen, the Chair of NYU Cinema Studies, introduced organizer and faculty member Dan Streible by saying all kinds of nice things about him, including holding up Streible's new book, Fight Pictures, and reading passages from Charles Musser's introduction. If you've been following along in previous posts, I am Streible's spouse, and I am sometimes known as the "orphan widow."

Because Streible spends an unreal amount of time preparing for Orphan events, I came up with this witticism to describe my status. I'm actually listed in the official program that way. I really haven't felt much like the widow at all for Orphans 6, however, probably because he's often at home and on the computer, and I'm also at the keyboards, blogging half the day. We spend quality time at home sitting on the couch with our laptops and watching TV at the same time.

Back to the symposium. The first bit of orphan film was from the University of South Carolina's Fox Movietone Newsreel collection and was footage from 1929 showing sights and sounds of New York's Radio Row (Wikipedia entry). The camera caught the action of the neighborhood from the top of a truck, showing the streetscapes and people in this once vibrant section of the Lower West Side.

Paolo Cherchi Usai's keynote address focused on the dilemmas facing state-run media archives, and as he spoke, he showed us a silent film from the National Film and Sound Archive in Australia. I'm not sure what year the film was made, but it was some sort of older instructional film to show the evolution of animals as upright walking creatures. The film opened with crawling, low-riding animals such as alligators and moved up to primates. The shocker came at the end, with a humiliating racist depiction of indigenous Australians. After the film concluded, Usai pointed out that the film was at at one point "de-acquisitioned," or "orphaned, but it's now back in the archive's collection. The larger issue, he explained, was the potential for all of cinema history, as film, to become orphaned in the digital age.

Image: early arrivals, Orphan Film Symposium, Thursday morning, March 27, 2008.

Openings and Overtures: The Orphan Film Symposium

Yesterday's weather of warming temperatures, clear skies, and abundant sunshine in New York provided clear sailing for the arrival of guests at the Orphan Symposium. The twilight that followed provided a stunning glow for the opening reception. Here you see the celebrated film accompanist, Dennis James, providing the sounds. The skyline, even more glamorous than usual, made a too perfect backdrop for a conference devoted to film.

I had a great time at the reception. I saw many friends I haven't seen since Orphans 5, and I introduce several people to one another. In point of fact, I think this is my most important role in the symposium. Making new friends, discovering new potential colleagues, and establishing the groundwork for future relationships is what it's all about. After the reception, the participants strolled across Washington Square Park toward NYU's Cantor Film Center to take their places for opening remarks and the special tribute night for the films of Helen Hill.

The evening screenings at the film center kicked off with imaginative Bill Morrison's special trailer for Orphans 6. Created in his signature style, one that calls attention to the frailties and beauties of the material of film, the trailer incorporated clips from upcoming screenings that showed people arriving at a new place - debarking from airplanes and so forth. While watching the extraordinary short animated films of Helen Hill that followed, I continued to be moved by how her vision was so innovative, loving, avant-garde and full of childlike wonder. No one else I know can be described as a cutting-edge and experiment saint, and so, she is sorely missed.

Image: March 26, 2008. Dennis James at the piano. New York, New York. by Walking Off the Big Apple.

Preparing for the Orphan Film Symposium

As I've hinted in previous posts, I've set aside the regular agenda for Walking Off the Big Apple this week in order to make myself useful as the spouse of the organizer of a film symposium. This usefulness should last only through Sunday morning. Then I can return to my normal life as the peripatetic and useless bride, back out on the streets of Gotham in search of art and culture and in denial about any pressing needs at the grocery store.

The Orphan Film Symposium (official site), a biannual gathering of film scholars, film archivists, filmmakers, film restorers, and other filmic professionals, began in 1999 at the University of South Carolina. Designed to heighten awareness and improve preservation of previously neglected moving images such as home movies, industrial films, and educational films, the symposium grew in size and stature over the years. Dan Streible, the founder and animating impressario, now teaches at NYU, and the symposium will be held in NYC for the first time. Streible, a native of Louisville, Kentucky, was given the honorary distinction of "colonel" by the Commonwealth of Kentucky when he was 14 years old. The plaque hangs on our dining room wall. I took the framed decree down off the wall the other day to show someone, because the person seemed surprised by the whole thing.

I plan to write as many posts as possible about what transpires over the course of the next few days. The event begins tonight with a tribute to Helen Hill, a gifted filmmaker who was tragically killed in post-Katrina New Orleans. I will see several of the films tonight and during the next few days, but my main duty is to smile, run interference, and procure enough food and beverages for any sort of party. Over 300 people are registered for the symposium, with 18 countries represented. Fortunately, they're not all staying with us. My postings should provide an unusual perspective, given that I'm on the edges as a participant. I will have to break away from the proceedings at times so I can walk the dogs.

This morning I picked up the fine art prints of the posters for the symposium. I designed them. My artist friend in Tribeca did a great job printing them, and I think they look really good.

Establishing Shots: The Tribeca Film Festival & 2008 Festival Highlights

"Loneliness has followed me my whole life, everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There's no escape. I'm God's lonely man."- Travis Bickle, Taxi Driver (1976)

After the attacks of September 11, life in lower Manhattan took a long time to recover. The neighborhood of Tribeca, just north of the WTC site, had already become an attractive destination for artists and families, but after the shocking events of that day potential new residents grew cautious. Area businesses suffered as streets were blocked to traffic, and only residents or those on official business could pass through checkpoints.

Actor Robert De Niro joined with producer Jane Rosenthal and her spouse, the philanthropist and writer Craig Hatkoff, to found the Tribeca Film Festival as a way to help filmmakers in New York and, specifically, to spur the economic recovery of lower Manhattan. Even before the September 11 attacks the three had invested money in the Tribeca neighborhood.

The Tribeca Film Festival, which will take place April 23 -May 4, 2008, continues to grow each year and generate millions of dollars in economic activity for the city.

The festival has just released the lineup for this year's festival, and I've started making a list of features that I would enjoy seeing.

Spotlight Section:

• Lou Reed’s Berlin, directed by Julian Schnabel. (USA) - New York Premiere, Documentary. I failed to get tickets for Reed's 2006 Berlin performance at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, so I'm glad Julian was there.

• My Winnipeg, directed by Guy Maddin, written by George Toles and Maddin. (Canada) - Premiere, Narrative. The imaginative Canadian filmmaker turns his attention to his hometown.

• Man On Wire, directed by James Marsh. (UK) - New York Premiere, Documentary. French daredevil Philippe Petit's tightrope walk between the Twin Towers on August 7, 1974.

• The Universe of Keith Haring, directed by Christina Clausen. (Italy, France) - Premiere, Documentary.

Special Screenings:

• Empire II, directed by Amos Poe. (USA) - North American Premiere, Documentary. 3-hour film about the magic of NYC.

• Once Upon a Time in the West (C'era una volta il West), directed by Sergio Leone, written by Sergio Donati and Leone, English dialogue by Mickey Knox. (Italy, USA, 1968) - New York Premiere Restoration. My spouse saw this a few weeks ago at the Miami Film Festival and thought it truly beautiful.

Discovery (emerging filmmakers):

• Paraiso Travel, directed and written by Simon Brand. International Premiere, Narrative. Colombians illegally travel from Medellín to New York and find romantic drama.

• Waiting For Hockney, directed by Julie Checkoway. World Premiere, Documentary. Aspiring artist Billy Pappas spent 10 years painting his masterpiece in his parents' attic and needs to show it to David Hockney.

• The Wild Man of the Navidad (link to Shoe Leather, my blog for Reframe), directed and written by Duane Graves and Justin Meeks. World Premiere, Narrative. An urban legend in Texas about a community frightened by a creature in the woods.

Tribeca Film Festival website

Image above by Walking Off the Big Apple

See related Tribeca posts:
The Woolworth Building
The Tribeca of Duane: Duane Street and Duane Park
Tribeca's Most Tripped-Out Vista
Tribeca Living: A Building for Chocolate, and One for the Wool Trade
In Search of the Lower West Side: Before Tribeca
Walking Off Tribeca and Remembering Mostly Lunch
Walking Off Tribeca: The Lay of the Land
Walking Off Tribeca: Starting at Square One

Walking Art Video: Mesmerizing Animated Wall Painting by the Artist Blu

I enjoy this animated wall painting from the artist Blu. I also like Blu's website, not only for its clever design but for the sketchbooks.
I haven't sketched in a long time. I usually sketch outside, but it's too cold, and I'm getting cabin fever. I get vicarious pleasure from watching Blu's walking/sketching on the walls, something I know I can't get away with at home.

The City That Sometimes Sleeps, and I Am Legend, the Movie

Look at this photo I took of the Washington Square Arch at 7 a.m. this morning. Do you see anyone? I don't see anyone.

I'm looking forward to the upcoming Will Smith vehicle, I Am Legend, scheduled for release on December 14. During the shooting of the production in Washington Square Park, I encountered all kinds of stretched cables, fake trees that blew around in bad weather, burned-out cars, and weird greenish lights. Fortunately, I knew it was just a movie.

The premise of I Am Legend is that the lead character, Robert Neville, a scientist played by Smith, finds himself the only person (maybe!) living in New York, immune somehow to a deadly virus in the wake of an epidemic. In the trailer of the film, we see the character trudging through the grassy High Line, driving a sports car past empty skyscrapers, and walking his likewise immune dog through the streets. As someone who lives the lonely life of a morning person in New York, with two dogs, I know exactly how he feels.

It has also dawned on me that the sparse morning population in pockets of Manhattan may also be due to the purchase of many expensive properties by people who can afford to live, and do live, elsewhere. I see a lot of windows at night in nice buildings that stay dark for months. These are investments, not homes.

Now I've started to imagine the futuristic movie, I Am WOTBA, about an aging Texas-born writer with two dogs who finds herself lonesome in an increasingly glitzy Metropolis. In the trailer of the film, my character, played by either Susan Sarandon or Geena Davis, will be shown walking around town and looking for art and pulled pork sandwiches.

Thank goodness we have so many tourists, if only for the welcome company.

The official website for I Am Legend is way cool.

Movie Feature Dedicated to All Righteous Girlfriends of WOTBA

The following New York-themed film of the WOTBA Cinema Magique goes out to all the girlfriend readers of Walking Off the Big Apple, especially those with their own websites. You know, some readers come and go, self-interested parties will google themselves and find you and then leave you, but all the girlfriends, and this includes me, and some men, enjoy following your story all the time, with heart-felt admiration and deep appreciation, until the very end. And may that not be anytime soon.

The New BAD (Bowery art district) Springs Up Along Bummer Street

WOTBA (Walking Off the Big Apple) wishes you a Happy Halloween, and I would like to send a special All Hallow's Eve greeting to all the gallerists of the new BAD (Bowery art district).

As all-in-the-know are aware, the Bowery has recently awakened from its famed languid derelictions to embrace the life-affirming values of art. On the side streets of NoLita and the Lower East Side, galleries big and small jockey for positions around the New Museum's big ghost mothership on the Bowery. Essex, Eldridge, Rivington, Spring, Greene, Chrystie - yes, all these streets come together to form the BAD.

Artists and writers have lived along the Bowery for a long time, and I'll cite just one example here. 222 Bowery, a loft coop between Spring and Prince, is home to all sorts of fascinating living people, but among its deceased denizens we can count the likes of Fernand Leger, Mark Rothko, and William Burroughs.

Everyone, including WOTBA, is sad about last year's closing of The Bowery's famed punk palace, CBGB's. But life is looking up along Bummer St, the heart of the melancholy district, with BAD.

WOTBA has an idea. If the Bowery is the new Chelsea, then it needs its own High Line. Let's rebuild the old Third Avenue El along the street, convert it immediately to a rails-to-trails project and then plant some native grasses along the new BAD high line. Here's our marketing slogan: "Down on the Bowery, we know how to get high."

Image: See the famed film of the Third Avenue El from the 1950s (before the line was demolished) HERE. Internet Archive.

See the complete walk here.

Weekend Frivolities: Movie Trailer

While I put on my dark glasses and floppy hat to venture up Madison Avenue, you may be interested in a visit to the picture show. The colonel and I strolled up Broadway to the Regal Union Square Stadium 14 last night to see Across the Universe, the new Julie Taymor movie, and we enjoyed it for all kinds of reasons. I thought that the movie was the perfect end to the British Invasion Walk, as it involves a romance between an American blonde and a cute John/Paul Liverpudlian boy. The action goes back and forth from Greenwich Village to Liverpool. The movie is set in the turbulent sixties, and we enjoyed seeing our neighborhood in its psychedelic glory. Taymor is part of a creative group that attended Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio in the 1970s, and fellow alum Bill Irwin makes a cameo appearance in the movie. Her use of gigantic puppets also references those creative days. You might wonder why WOTBA knows all this, but I don't need to go into all that right now. Enjoy the show.

See the trailer and more at the official website for Across the Universe.

Barack Obama Advisory for Thursday, September 27

Walking Off the Big Apple was walking her dogs as usual this morning when she came across pedestrian barriers at Washington Square Park indicating the presence of an imminent major event. As regulars we all ignore these barricades and walk around them. It turns out that Barack Obama will be speaking in the park late this afternoon.

WOTBA originally thought the preparations were for filming on location. She is so grateful to have found On Location Vacations, a website for aficionados of watching a movie as it is being made. WOTBA finds that the site provides an invaluable public service. I can now be forewarned of the frequent invasions, so I can make plans to walk in a different direction. Also, when I come across SWAT teams and FBI agents swarming a park or a street, only to find out later that it was just a movie, I'll be more informed.

Maybe Sex and The City could film at the park while the presidential candidate is speaking. According to the alerts posted in Washington Square Park, the fountain area will be closed from 12 noon until 4 p.m. Gates open to hear Barack Obama at 5 p.m. I have my ticket!

Walking Video

On YouTube I've found some lovely vintage footage made by the Dutch beat band, The Motions, as the group toured the US in 1969. Several clips fall under the title Walking in New York. I'm charmed by their NY street interview with Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones of The Monkees.

Here they come, walkin' down the street:

Observations About Filming on Location in New York City

When I was testing your Back-to-School Art Supplies Walk the other day, I had plans to sit on a park bench outside St. Marks Church in-the-Bowery and sketch. But as I walked up to the church I encountered the tell-tail signs of a film and television production company - miles of cables, catering trucks, roadies unloading equipment from trucks, and several zealous perky starstruck interns. Walking around the the front of the church I was about to sit down on a bench occupied by a few other people when one of the perky ones told me to cease and desist. Turns out that all the people sitting on the bench were extras made up to look like normal people.

This particular shoot was for a new Fox TV series titled New Amsterdam that is scheduled to air January 2008. Looking at the flyer posted near the church, I read that the series is about a NYPD detective who is unhappy and immortal, having saved a Native American girl in the 17th century, but he's a really good cop. I'm sure this series will be a big hit, because I don't know of any other shows featuring a detective from the NYPD, do you?

Last year, while walking my dogs, a silly Will Smith movie invaded Washington Square Park. A location manager approached me and other locals and told us to move back. Then we saw extras impersonating locals who stroll through the park and walk their dogs. I'm sure the Will Smith movie will be a big hit, because I don't know of other movies where New York is destroyed, do you?

Oh, and last Christmas I was working on the Upper East Side when a film crew asked residents of E. 80th Street to take down their decorations because "this isn't a holiday movie."