Day 125…
Yesterday evening, as the sun was setting, I walked Michael over to the line at Trader Joe’s so that I could mail a letter. As I left him there and headed home, I decided to get a few more steps in so I headed into the Park.
It was a perfect night. There were a few clouds in the sky, but it was clear and bright. It was warm but not sweltering and the humidity was low. I walked over to the reservoir and immediately fell in love with New York City all over again.
All of the buildings along Fifth Avenue were lit by the golden light of the dying sun and were perfectly reflected in the still water. People were out walking or riding. Ducks were lazily floating around in front of me.
The only thing that would have made it the perfect summer night in New York would have been having tickets to see a free Shakespeare in the Park at the Delacourt Theatre.
I have seen so many different productions over the years in the Park. Denzel Washington doing Richard III. Al Pacino doing Merchant of Venice. Just last year, Danielle Brooks played Beatrice in a really lovely production of Much Ado About Nothing. Pirates of Penzance with Linda Ronstadt and Rex Smith.
A million years ago, they did a spectacular version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with William Hurt and Michelle Shay. The set was all living plants and trees so that it blended in with the Park’s actual vegetation. Christine Baranski was Helena and my friend Frances Aronson did the beautiful lighting. Emmanuel Lewis, who played Webster on the TV series, played the little Indian boy who is usually just talked about but never seen. He was really young at the time and tiny. I will never forget him running across the grassy stage and being swept up into William Hurts arms.
The very first play I ever saw in the Park, though, was The Taming of the Shrew starring Meryl Streep and Raul Julia. It was in 1978 and I had just finished my junior year of high school. I came into the city with a friend early in the morning and we waited all day on the impossibly long line around the Great Lawn. We must have brought food with us to eat.
At that point in time, Streep had done Julia and won an Emmy for the TV series Holocaust. She didn’t get her first Oscar nomination until the following year for The Deer Hunter. Meryl Streep and Raul Julia were spectacular together. Deborah Rush was an amazing Bianca - truly hilarious. She actually also played Hermia opposite Christine Baranski in Midsummer, too, now that I come to think of it.
Before we went into the theatre to watch the performance that night, we had to sign something saying that we gave them permission to film us during the performance.
Woody Allen was shooting the opening montage for his film Manhattan.
Manhattan is the movie that made me fall in love with New York. I was already deeply infatuated with the city from having started to see Broadway shows, but that movie…
Manhattan is scored throughout with the most sublime recordings of George Gershwin music. Gordon Willis shot the entire thing in deeply contrasted black and white. The opening montage is an ode to New York City set to Gershwin’s masterpiece Rhapsody in Blue. There are, indeed, some shots of the production of Shrew and, if I remember correctly, some overhead shots of the audience, too. The camera never really gets close enough to the actors to identify them probably because Meryl Streep also plays Woody Allen’s ex-wife in the movie.
Woody and his son go to Elaine’s. He meets Diane Keaton’s character and they go to art galleries. There’s a wonderfully romantic scene between Woody Allen and Diane Keaton where they get caught in the rain and take refuge in the Hayden Planetarium on 81st Street and Central Park West.
Years later, I was walking down Columbus and there, at the opposite corner of the museum was Diane Keaton waiting to cross the street. I have never forgotten it.
I chose to go to Columbia, in large part, I think, because of that movie. Part of the reason I wanted to live on the Upper West Side was also probably because of that movie. I still love walking down that stretch of Columbus by the museum which I will forever associate with Diane Keaton, because it always reminds me what a magical place this city can be.
The one part of the movie that I wasn’t all that interested in at the time was the plotline of Woody Allen’s relationship with Mariel Hemingway.
Her character in the film is 17 years old.
It’s strange that I glossed over it because that’s kind of the major story line. I just never thought it was all that compelling, so I guess I just kind of ignored it and more or less deleted it from my memory.
While the character she played was 17, Mariel Hemingway was only 16 when she filmed Manhattan. She and I are more or less the same age. There is only a three-month difference between our ages. Woody Allen was in his mid-forties.
In her autobiography she tells a story about how, soon after the film, Woody Allen flew out to Idaho to try and convince her parents to let her come with him on a trip to Paris. She didn’t want to go but her parents were encouraging her to. That night she said, "I'm not going to get my own room, am I? I can't go to Paris with you."
About ten years later Woody Allen started a relationship with his then girlfriend Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn who was 19.
There have been unproven allegations by his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow that he molested her, but there is an extremely good chance that her mother, furious about Allen and her daughter Soon-Yi, made them up. It’s a nasty story any way you look at it and we’ve all watched it unfold over the years and watched almost everyone involved turn against each other.
So, the question becomes, can I still watch the movie Manhattan?
We are being tasked, these days, with examining all the aspects of our life where we have allowed social injustice to occur.
The #metoo movement has pulled our collective blinders off in terms of how women have been treated in the workplace and in society.
I’m not sure how I managed to sublimate a major portion of the plot of Manhattan, but I did. I may have given it a glancing thought and thought “gross”, but I just watched and waited through those scenes until we got to the ones I loved. I can’t do that now.
The #blacklivesmatter movement is asking us to do the same thing in terms of how people of color have been treated in the workplace and in society.
I don’t know that it is possible to watch Gone with the Wind without cringing anymore. That seems obvious, but we all apparently watched it time and time again without cringing for years. Hattie McDaniel still lived the life she led and suffered the indignities and slights that she did. We just all turned a blind eye to it and grabbed a bucket of popcorn.
New York City is not an idyll. It never has been. The vision of the city that Woody Allen painted is one without homeless people. It is one without poverty and disease. It is one without violence and despair.
Manhattan is a glorious film in some ways and a really not so glorious one in others. Marshall Brickman co-wrote it with Woody Allen and they were both nominated for an Oscar for it. Marshall is also one of the co-writers of Jersey Boys, so I have spent the last 16 years working with him. I ADORE him. He is funny, warm and generous to a fault.
When Manhattan came out, the world was ruled by white guys.
Manhattan is a white guy movie through and through. The rule of the white guy is being challenged. The abuses of power are being spoken of. Truths are being told.
I do not believe in censorship. I want to be able to see the astonishing photographs taken by Leni Riefenstahl at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin even though she was a Nazi. That is a part of her art. People should be able to see Manhattan and Gone with the Wind.
The difficulty we are all having with these movements is that they are asking us to give up things that we love. We are having to look at the things we love and REALLY see them. We can’t just bleep over the parts we don’t like anymore. If we are going to watch them, we really need to WATCH them.
When I am looking at the skyline of Fifth Avenue across the reservoir, I may never not hear and thrill to the opening strains of Rhapsody in Blue. When I am walking past the American Museum of Natural History, I will probably never not fall a little bit in love with Diane Keaton all over again.
I don’t think that I want to watch Manhattan again though.
I don’t want to have to watch 16-year old Mariel Hemingway being uncomfortable around 40-something year old Woody Allen.
I truly do hope that nothing beyond what she talks about in her book did happen. If it did, I feel so terribly sorry and even somewhat guilty. My loving of that film made whatever pain she went through in the making of it that much worse.
There is beauty everywhere just as there is great ugliness. We cannot ignore the ugliness but nor can we let it keep us from fully appreciating and reveling in the beauty. Cleaning up even a bit of the mess makes the beauty that much more, easy to see.
What we are being asked to do is clear up and fix the things that we are ignoring or haven't really seen so that all of us can enjoy the beauty together.
So come on, lets grab a broom at get to it.
There really is kind of a lot to do.
....and is it a magical coincidence that Michael treated me to my first Shakespeare in the Park on my birthday? ...and no coincidence I forgot what we saw ....but do remember Michael knew someone or everyone in it...❤️
and me too... in love with New York still
today
may have been one of the first loves of my life in addition to one of the first drugs of my life
my broom is ready
xx
Loved this!