80 Blocks From Tiffany's - 70s NYC gang doc

[Sweet FA]

Read this article in the Guardian Guide on Saturday and watched the film here last night.

A real snapshot of how utterly fucked large swathes of NY were in the 70s; block after block of vacant, burned out buildings. Also weird watching a doc where there's no narrative added on by the film makers (bar a couple of odd staged re-enactments). Nobody 'goes on a journey' and nobody is any less fucked at the end than at the beginning. Quite a lot of it is uncomfortable viewing; offhand references to rape are fairly common, a girl at the end gets punched in the face for talking to a boy other than her boyfriend (she says it was an 'accident'). There's a lot of swastikas and SS lightning bolts around too - worn mainly by black/puerto rican gang members.

The real version of the Warriors basically (which horrendously is up for a remake apparently - transferred to LA...)

 

[killer b]

cheers for the link - i'll watch it later...

 

[Reno]

Thanks for the heads up. Never heard of this one, but sounds really interesting.

 

[killer b]

i've seen clips from it in various other documentaries over the years, and always wanted to see more...

 

[Sweet FA]

There are a couple of other docs on the subject too; Flyin' Cut Sleeves which from the look of it, updates the 80 Blocks story (the clip I've seen shows a couple of the characters from 80 Blocks about 10 years later). Also which I can't find out much about but has got a brilliantly portentous voiceover.

 

[butchersapron]

Bloke who made it was normally a comedy director - rutles, load of SNL related stuff.

 

[Sweet FA]

Yeah, randomly he connected with the guy who wrote the original gang article for Esquire via Raquel Welch! She was doing a guest host spot on SNL and living with the writer at the time.

 

[gsv]

Interesting - looks like the culture The Ramones got their look from.

GS(v)

 

[sim667]

Anyone knwo where i can download this??

 

[waylon]

Looks top, and these books of photos by a guy called Jamel Shabazz "A Time Before Crack" and "Back In The Day" might be worth a look for people who have an interest in that particular time and place.

http://www.jamelshabazz.com/monographs.html

 

[sim667]

Anyone knwo where i can download this??

Dont worry, im ripping it off the website now.

 

[Sweet FA]

Flyin' Cut Sleeves to watch here.

 

[marshall]

it's worth buying, tbh, comes with the original Esquire article all nicely bound in hardback. Yeh, rape didn't seem like a biggie back then, disturbingly enough.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

I watched this last night (the whole thing is on YouTube if anyone is interested). It's a really interesting picture of the era - the title makes an obvious point about the relative wealth to be found in New York but it's quite eye-opening how different it is to the poorer areas of downtown Manhattan that are in a lot of films as well as to the rich areas.

 

[Sweet FA]

There's also The Police Tapes; a 1977 doc shadowing South Bronx police. Big influence on Fort Apache:The Bronx apparently.