Film Review: Drop Dead City (dir. Peter Yost and Michael Rohatyn)

One of the more disappointing elements of any movie-watching experience, but especially so in documentary, is when a fascinating story is given such a stale interpretation. Take Drop Dead City, for instance. Co-directors Peter Yost and Michael Rohatyn have at their disposal one of the most fascinating eras of 20th century American life in the form of New York City’s financial distress of the 1970s. A period that comes with it not just an endless supply of fractious political and social upheavals to the greatest city in the world, but also a visual palate that remains just about unmatched in terms of editorial impact. I mean, it’s not surprising that as the city’s fortunes went down, artists (including filmmakers, obviously) went up; easily able to capitalise on the danger and the dirt to iconic and everlasting results that are still mythologised to this day.

And yet Drop Dead City is flat and told without any zest (great title at least!). With that title taken from one of the greatest newspaper headlines ever written—“Ford to City: Drop Dread” surely ranks alongside only “Headless body in a topless bar” for such NYC honours—you might be surprised to learn it takes roughly an hour and a half to finally see it in print. That’s because this is a film that supposes a lot of stuff is very interesting when it is not and takes its time supposing it. Drop Dead City is, to be sure, a documentary about how New York City came to be, according to that New York Daily News header, “dead”. But the city was not bored to death. So why is the movie such a slog?

What we do have here is a lot (and I do mean a lot) of old white guys talking about economics and political bureaucracy. There is an infinitely more interesting movie buried in here. And it's not even one that necessarily needs to dispel with all of the old fashioned documentary techniques. I like those techniques! But there is a way to do so that has rhythm and energy and that looks at the story from a variety of angles and even dare I say through a contemporary lens. As it is, the average viewer would likely get a better grip of the situation from watching more observational documentaries of the time (even something as abstract as Chantal Akerman’s News From Home or Manfred Kirchheimer’s Stations of the Elevated) or dramatic features like Abel Ferrara’s Fear City and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (exploitation and genre trappings included).

Yost (a prolific filmmaker with many titles in the National Geographic and PBS terrain) and Rohatyn (a first-timer) just appear to have very little instinct for how any of this wonderful material and really dramatic content should fit. We're left with a lot of montages set to annoying music simply because they had somebody on the shoot list and perhaps they’d feel bad if they weren’t included. In one instance (repeat: ONE!), we hear from New York Times Harlem Bureau Chief Charlayne Hunter-Gault and then Puerto Rican musician Izzy Sanabria discussing multiculturalism in Harlem for a full minute (repeat: ONE!). They are never returned to despite the wealth of on-the-ground understanding that they could offer about what it was like to live on the very streets that so many at City Hall were spending their time talking about. Meanwhile, we get repeated moments with accountants discussing financial matters that really could have been summarised as “deep shit”.

And then there's the music choices. Don’t ask me why there is a silent movie piano motif playing atop the city officials’ trip to Washington D.C. to meet President Ford. Or why there is a (what sounds like) disco remix of Strauss (the piece from 2001: A Space Odyssey) playing over its 'fear city' sequence? "You Don't Own Me", "Why Can't We Be Friends" and Bob Dylan are just obvious. Meanwhile, all of the actual music that was being made in the city and the people making it are ignored. Is there not something interesting to be said about the creative explosion that came out of this era when compared to the current Disney-fied version of Manhattan that currently exists? There is, but this isn’t the documentary to look for it.

The idea that New York City was meant to be something more than just a city. It was an experiment of sorts (a successful one for many of its years) to be the shining example of everything the United States claimed it was and sought to portray itself as. And to let New York City die was to become a poorer country as a result. It’s sentimental, but at least it’s something.

Drop Dead City is plagued by its issues throughout its 103-minute runtime, but at least it does improve somewhat in its final stretch. Whether by accident or not, it lands upon something one might call an identity. Or perhaps more simply, a reason to be. Something bigger than just “and then this happened”. The idea that New York City was meant to be something more than just a city. It was an experiment of sorts (a successful one for many of its years) to be the shining example of everything the United States claimed it was and sought to portray itself as. And to let New York City die was to become a poorer country as a result. It’s sentimental, but at least it’s something. It would be even better if Yost and Rohatyn could have held up a mirror and actually asked questions of it, but its second hour is hardly the time to start that, I suppose.

Despite all of this, it’s often great to simply look at. Cut out the talking heads and put some better music over the top of it and you would have a far more arresting scrapbook of a city on the decline. Images of protest where New Yorkers hold signs and chant slogans that hold far more political relevance to today than the ones and zeroes it chooses to focus on. There is a reason why artists so often return to this period of time and why so much that came out from it continues to find appreciation. The city may have been poor, but even the dingiest, scuzziest of movies had a richness of lived experience and an electric tangibility that could be felt through the screen. With 50 years of perspective, it’s hard to believe a documentary like Drop Dead City just has absolutely nothing to say about anything. Well, anything except spreadsheets.