Tag Archives: New York Minute

A New York Minute (13)

30 Jan

January 30, 2012

Here’s your New York Minute. Go tell the neighbors.

New York has a lot of famous residents, from Donald Trump’s hair to the giant inflatable rat that unions put up outside of non-union construction sites, but the most famous one of all arrived in 1933 and still holds as place in our hearts. Of course I’m talking about the original Big Ape, King Kong.

We all know the story. Carl Denham, played by Robert Armstrong, traveled to Skull Island to make a movie but ended up bringing Kong back to New   York, where the giant ape tore up some train tracks and wrecked some buildings, before finally climbing the Empire State Building where he fell to his death. And in true New York fashion, in the sequel Son of Kong Denham had to dodge about at thousand lawsuits.

The film was a hit and is considered a cinematic classic.

The 1976 version? Not so much.

In 1976 Dino DeLaurentis made  a big-budget remake, which the movie poster somehow called “the most exciting original motion picture event of all time.” It kept the same basic plot but changed some key elements. Kong was found not by a movie producer but an oil company, but the biggest change was that Kong climbed the South Tower of the World Trade Center, which had beat the Empire State Building as the tallest building in Manhattan since the original movie came out.

The film got mixed reviews. Personally, I think it isn’t horrible on the one hand but not too good on the other. But it has one huge drawback. In most scenes, King Kong was played by a man in an ape suit. And it didn’t go over very well when Dino DeLaurentis put out an ad looking for, and I quote, “a well-built black man” to play the ape.

Even Rick Baker, a special effects man known for Hollywood makeup and said that the suit wasn’t at all convincing. And he should know, he wore it. However, they did make, and highly publicized, a 40 foot tall mechanical Kong. It cost 1.7 million dollars but didn’t convince anyone and it ended up appearing in just 15 seconds of footage. Yes, I said seconds. 1.7 million for 15 seconds. However, there were some other giant props, like Kong heads, hands, and arms, and that’s where I come in.

In 1976 my father had an office on the 15th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center, and his office overlooked the plaza where King Kong was being filmed. This was the World Trade Center’s first brush with heightened security. People who worked in the building had to have special passes. Certain parts were blocked off for filming. Notices warned everyone that they might be filmed as they went in or out of the building. Extra security and police had to be brought in to keep back the crowds who wanted to get a glimpse of the filming.

Although I was very young I have vague and fuzzy memories of looking down from Dad’s office and seeing some of the filming and especially some of the props. Most of the filming at the Trade Center was done at night but there were always things going happening on the set. And even though it was 35 years ago I’m pretty sure I’ll never forget looking down and seeing a giant ape being laid out in the plaza below the World Trade Center. Some things are unique, and in the age of CGI probably never to be repeated.

Kong has been remade and reimagined over the years, from Peter Jackson’s overly long period piece to the Japanese-made battles with Godzilla and robo-Kong, but I’ll always think of King Kong as the giant gorilla who crushed Charles Grodin under his hairy foot.

This has been your New York Big Ape Minute.

And that giant inflatable rat I mentioned? Here it is:

An audio version of this legend recently appeared in the amazing FlashPulp website. Check them out for awesomeness and goodies!

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A New York Minute (11)

16 Jan

January 16, 2012

This is your New York Minute.

Last week I told you about Henry Hudson sailing under the site of the Verrazano Bridge. Well, that bridge figures in today’s tale.

The Verrazano Bridge was named after Giovanni da Verrazzano, who was the first known explorer to enter New York Harbor, beating Henry Hudson by about 85 years. It spans The Narrows, a strip of water which connects Upper and Lower Gravesend Bay. It is also the closet point between Brooklyn and Staten Island, which is why the bridge was built there. Although the bridge was built in 1964, The Narrows goes back about 18,000 years to the end of the last ice age. Sorry, I don’t have an exact date for that. Before the Ice Age,Staten Island and Brooklyn were connected, but Staten Island retains a quieter identity of its own.

I could describe the bridge to you but odds are you’ve already seen it in a little movie called Saturday Night Fever. Set and filmed entirely in and around my neighborhood, that’s the film that made John Travolta a star. I stopped holding that against the movie years ago. There are many, many shots of the bridge- it’s a metaphor- and the part where Bobby C falls off the bridge was filmed on the actual roadway.

While I don’t remember much of the filming, I do remember the impact the film’s debut caused in the neighborhood. Everyone saw it, and saw it again, and saw it again. In fact, in the Marlboro Theater, it ran for years. It was constantly running.

You may remember the film’s opening scene. John Travolta is walking- no, strutting down a street, below the train tracks, eating a slice of pizza. That’s 86th Street and it was filmed one short block from my grandmother’s apartment. In fact, those are the same tracks and same streets that you see in the opening of Travolta’s TV show, Welcome Back Kotter and also in the fantastic 1971 Gene Hackman movie, The French Connection. That film has one of the best chase scenes ever filmed, as Popeye Doyle, played by Hackman, races his car through the traffic below to catch up to the speeding train on the tracks above.

But back to Saturday Night Fever. It is amazing the movie ever got made. I don’t mean because the studio had no faith in it, and that’s true, but what I’m talking about is the constant harassment by the people of Bensonhurst and Bay Ridge.

Men in the neighborhood hated John Travolta. Why? Because the women loved him. Every girl and young woman in this part of Brooklyn flocked to see him. The entire cast was mobbed wherever they went. The guys took their frustrations out on the cast and crew, especially Travolta, who had to endure threats and obscenities from the mostly rowdy teens.

If the harassment stopped there it would have been bad enough, but Bensonhurst in the 1970’s was, let’s say, a bit connected. Remember I said they were “mobbed” wherever they went? If you know the book or movie Donnie Brasco, those are the guys. No matter where they tried to film, the producers had to pay off about a dozen local hoods for the privilege of filming.

Even worse than the harassment and shakedowns was the bomb threat to the disco, where the company ended up paying a lot of protection money. 

The film was finished and the rest is movie and soundtrack history. Most of the places where they filmed are long gone- the paint store, the dance studio, the disco, even the theater I saw it in are just memories.

Of course the Verrazano Bridge is still there. And I am sure the arsenal of 1,500 rounds of ammunition discovered buried near the base of the bridge just a couple of years ago was only a coincidence.

This has been your New York Minute.

An audio version of this legend recently appeared in the amazing FlashPulp website. Check them out for awesomeness and goodies!

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