Is there a reason so many movies made in, say, the last five years have been set in New York? Definitely, Maybe; Cloverfield, Enchanted; P.S., I Love You; American Gangster; The Nanny Diaries; The Devil Wears Prada; The Day After Tomorrow; and all three Spider-Man movies.
Well,
American Ganster, The Nanny Diaries, The Devil Wears Prada and Spiderman are all based on books that were set in NYC.
What are you going to do? Set Spiderman in Columbus OH?
I wonder if part of it is how safe NYC is nowadays? I went last year with a 2-year-old in a stroller and never felt threatened, even in a subway and Central Park in the evening. When I was younger, that would be considered suicide.
Maybe the NYC Chamber of Commerce is able to get movie/tv studios some decent breaks on hotel or air fares.
NYC is huge on film and television production. There are studios here, and great locations. So you can shoot location one day and then shoot your interiors on a set the next. There are plenty of production people who live here. You don’t have to put the best boy in a hotel. He lives in Queens. The actors go home to their NYC apartments. Plus, New Yorkers couldn’t care less about this sort of thing so we, generally, don’t stop and gwak at them.
Yes we have a film and tv office that does a lot of work to keep productions here in the city.
For some reason, this didn’t even occur to me. heh.
:rolleyes:
Maybe if you were pushing your stroller through the ugly part of Bed-Stuy at three in the morning it would be. Amazingly, several million people have managed to use the subway in the evening for the past 100 years without being brutally murdered.
In any case, movies set in New York are hardly a recent phenomenon. Pick any year and you’re likely to find a bunch.
Let’s try 1987. Among the list of top-earners for that year we have Three Men and a Baby, Fatal Attraction, Moonstruck and The Secret of my Success.
It’s not just in recent times that NYC is featured in the movies prominently. It always has been a pre-eminent settling. Among other reasons why -
NYC is also filled with more recognizable iconic landmarks than most other American cities that, at least as far as disaster movies go, are more fun to see get trashed. An image of a monster leveling a mid-level nondescript office building in some mid-American town isn’t going to have the same visceral impact as the image of a monster tearing the head off the Statue of Liberty.
NYC tends to be a somewhat egalitarian city - you see a much wider array of people interacting with each other than you do elsewhere. Millionaires rub elbows with street-people, pakistani-born muslims drive cabs and pick up orthodox jews as fares, grundgy hipsters sit in booths at diners next to stodgy corporate bankers, etc. This lends itself to a lot of conflict & clashes that movie plots need.
It’s a fast-paced town - people walk fast, talk fast, are high-strung & emotional - and people are out on the streets all the time, at any time of day. This is just visually more interesting to look at than a town where people drive to their destination, shut themselves up in offices/homes, and the streets just seem empty & deserted most of the time.
The recognizable skyline is a big part of it, especially for disaster movies. The New York Times ran an article on January 27 discussing this.
The article goes on to say that nowadays overseas box office is actually more important than the domestic box office.
Such things go in cycles. 99% of the movies made in the late sixties through the seventies were made in California, usually LA, it seems. Seattle had its day, Chicago, etc. I suspect it has something, though only a little, to do with the fact that NYC is still kinda stuck in people’s subconscious after what happened there on 9/11. Those images were pretty indelible and were seen around the world, and may be, subconsciously, what many people around the world first think of nowadays, when they think of the US.
Bear in mind that, while many movies are SUPPOSEDLY set in New York, not many are really filmed there.
A huge number of “New York” movies are filmed in Canada, with just a few shots of famous New York landmarks included to create the illusion that we’re not really in Vancouver or Toronto.
My personal favorite was Jackie Chan’s “Rumble in the Bronx”. There’s a setting shot of him driving across the Brooklyn Bridge (? since it doesn’t go to the Bronx) and then in the next scene you can see the mountains outside Vancouver (where it was shot) in the background.
Dewey Finn’s post about skylines reminded me of an American TV series that was filmed here. (Set in San Francisco.) For most of the series, the protagonist was shown staying at the City Center Motor Hotel - and establishing shots frequently showed the sign with enough detail to make it clear that it featured a stylized representation of Vancouver’s skyline, with the distinctive Harbour Center. :smack:
I question the implied premise of the OP, which is that there has been an increase in NYC-based movies. My impression is that there have ALWAYS been a huge number of movies based in NYC.
This is rather easily explained:
- It’s a famous city with recognizable landmarks.
- It’s a center of the entertainment industry.
Don’t forget also that many parts of Los Angeles double as New York. This especially holds true in TV. “CSI: NY” is shot almost entirely in Los Angeles.
There aren’t as many films shot in L.A. that pass for New York though, although it is not unusual.
And in addition to movies, there always seem to be a number of TV series that are set and/or filmed in NYC in any given year.
Enough, in fact, to have an entire Wikipedia page on the topic. You’ll notice a fair number of popular shows in there, including a big chunk of late 90’s Must See TV.
It is one of the largest metropolises in North America, after all, and it has an iconic status as The City That Never Sleeps. There’s just about any setting you need for the story you need to tell: high society glam, inner city poverty, thriving nightlife, reknowned music/theatre/arts scene, instantly recognizable landmarks, and hundreds of years of colourful history.
Here’s the deal
In the 1990s, Guliani became mayor of NYC. He cleaned up Times Square, reduced crime, and basically made it a place where people like HubZilla and her 2 year old in a stroller would want to visit.
Around that same time, perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, several shows became hits on TV - Seinfeld, Friends and Sex and the City. What all three of these shows had in common was that the city of New York was featured prominantly, almost as another character of the show.
I also agree with what The New and Improved Superman said. People want to see movies about NYC for the same reason people like me want to live here. There is just a certain vibe about New York that you don’t get elsewhere. The best part of any film about New York IMHO is just seeing what random shit in the background you recognize.