The road to hell was paved with good intentions for fresh-faced John Lindsay, the incoming mayor of a troubled New York. In 1966, his first year in the job, Lindsay launched a bold new initiative to boost film production. The pioneering Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting offered producers a single one-stop shooting permit, cutting the tangle of bureaucratic red tape and transforming the city into a giant movie set. “For the first time, our parks and museums, streets and courthouses, libraries and monuments are open,” he said. “All the things that make New York unique have been made available to film people.”
Lindsay’s big gamble paid immediate dividends. New York-based productions first doubled, then trebled, funnelling much-needed funds to the stricken local economy. In practice, though, the younger filmmakers swerved the monuments and museums and instead beat a path to less salubrious sights. They shot the mean streets and ghettos, the porn theatres and flophouses. They captured the complete urban blight of a metropolis in meltdown. So the Mayor’s Office of Film became a monkey’s paw situation. Lindsay’s wish came true in the worst possible way – drenched in nightmarish neon and magnified on the screen.
