DROP DEAD CITY: NYC in Film During the 1970s – Commentary by Yael Friedman (Guest post)
Fifty years ago, New York City famously found itself at the precipice: of bankruptcy; of crumbling infrastructure, with hollowed out buildings and empty lots that gave a visual language to the city’s many woes. This disfigured urban landscape seemed to both bear witness to and play a central role in the city’s fading fortunes, its ebbing safety nets and rise in crime, its white flight and arson epidemic, the ravages of the municipal workforce and tax base, and the anger and indignation that spilled over from every open window and overflowing trash can. The wonderful recent documentary Drop Dead City by Michael Rohatyn and Peter Yost about the 1975 fiscal crisis is a fittingly dramatic retelling of this pivotal moment in the city’s history. It is, of course, titled after the famous Daily News headline from when President Gerald R. Ford allegedly told the city to “drop dead,” after Mayor Abe Beame and Governor Hugh Carey arrived in Washington, hats in hand, asking for federal aid.
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