Photos by Theo Oshiro.
A movie shoot on Saturday morning turned back time on 77th street and Central Park West. The movie Wonderstruck has been shooting in various parts of the city this week, and is aiming to bring back some of the 1970’s Upper West Side vibe.
Here’s a description of Wonderstruck, starring Julianne Moore.
“Wonderstruck follows the intertwined narratives of two deaf children, Ben and Rose. Ben lives with his family in Minnesota in 1977, and runs off to New York following his mother’s death when a mysterious note shows up. Rose, who is locked in a house in 1927 New Jersey, also escapes to New York to see her idol, film actress Lillian Mayhew.”
The movie has also been filming in Crown Heights.
Listen here to Maria Gorshin talking about what it was like growing up on the UWS in the 70’s from our first West Side Rag storyteller series.
Click to enlarge and see all the groovy seventies people.
I love Julianne Moore! She is so down-to-earth. She eats at fishbar in Sag Harbor and joins in to pictures with the other guests for their delight.
The West 70s were a lot grimier in the 1970s than this film indicates.
Memo to the Hollywood set-designer types “trying to bring back some of the 1970’s Upper West Side vibe” :
Just parking 40-year-old cars at the curb won’t cut it, UNLESS you add these little mid-70’s touches:
1) Huge “No Radio” signs pasted on the pedestrian-side windows of some cars;
2) other cars with their glove boxes ripped open and contents strewn across the front seat;
3) at least one car sitting on cinder-blocks with its tires and wheels missing;
4) and maybe some crack vials or syringes on the sidewalks.
Even better: hire, as advisors, some of those “authenticity-nuts” perpetually mourning the loss of “the real New York City” or “the suburbanization of the UWS” to tell you how cwappy life was here in the 70’s.
Uh-oh, wait a mo’ …they’d be useless as advisors because their “memory-blinders” prevent them from remembering all that bad stuff.
If you’re into authenticity, there were no crack vials around in the 70s. Crack started to become a problem in the 80s and was a full blown epidemic in the 90s.
Ah, the “No Radio” signs (not to be confused with “No soap. Radio.”). I remember them from the 80’s. When did that trend actually begin? And end?
“their “memory-blinders” prevent them from remembering all that bad stuff.”
In “The Innocents Abroad”, Mark Twain wrote rather movingly about this very phenomenon: the selective memory that fuels nostalgia.
Thanks, yet again, for bringing a smile to my face. Our differences and my sometimes strong critiques notwithstanding, I enjoy most of your posts. (You might be interested to know, as well, that there were at least two occasions that I saw a comment that viciously attacked you and posted in your defense. The last time I did so, it apparently resulted in the offending comment being removed.)
We had a ” no radio” sign well into the 1980s. It never stopped a their unfortunately…
Currently the signs read: “No Money, No Keys”.
The van in the lead photo is not 1970’s era vehicle.
I went to Calhoun School on the UWS in the 70’s and from what I remember it and the city as a whole was filled with garbage, graffiti and high crime. Also the air quality was awful back then as well. Seemed like the city as a whole was stagnating except for some certain pockets of artistic innovation.
“Seemed like the city as a whole was stagnating except for some certain pockets of artistic innovation.” One could argue that the global graffiti culture that was born in New York City was/is a product of that innovation.
If defacing public and private property, costing taxpayers and private owners millions of dollars, encouraging gang warfare, and contributing to the highly foreboding atmosphere here in the ’70’s was a product of artistic innovation, then I guess you’re right.
What a bourgeois, narrow-minded, privileged, racist perspective. Wouldn’t you be more at home on the Upper East Side?
(That, for anyone who may not yet have realized what a {insert choice of nasty epithet(s) for one who defies the entrenched orthodoxy} I am, was sarcasm.)
You have informed us of your support of Nativism and your support of the mass deportation of specific religious groups and national-origin many times. We do know your positions, thank you.
What a bourgeois, narrow-minded, privileged, reactionary and racist perspective. Wouldn’t you be more at home on the Upper East Side?
(That, for anyone who may not have realized, was sarcasm.)
You guys hated the neighborhood for a whole decade?
I was approached by two members of the crew Saturday morning, as I was walking past the museum with my dog. (They were interested in petting the dog, of course!)
When I told them my dog is deaf, they told me the film includes lead characters who are deaf. I’m excited to see this film and to learn more about the original book.
A movie of the period for a couple great UWS scenes is Three Days of the Condor. Redford at his best.