December 2024 Bonus Review: The Taking of New York City
the true crime that's worth your time
The crime/s
Not specific crimes, but rather the reputation of New York City for unceasing mayhem in the 1970s.
The story
The Taking of New York City: Crime on the Screen and in the Streets of the Big Apple in the 1970s is basically "50 flicks that helped solidify the popular conception of Noo Yawk In The Seventies as a grimy hellscape."
It's a compelling concept, but author Andrew Rausch is, IMO, trying to do too many things around said concept. The list (which, in the ARC I read, didn't appear AS a discrete list that I saw) is presented chronologically by release date, and each chapter begins with an overview of OFF-screen life in the Big Apple, then surveys a handful of the movies shot IN the Big Apple that came out in a given year.
The historical overview is usually checklist-y, alas, and much of the behind-the-scenes info and analysis of the films is not new either, unless the film is obscure, which the majority in the list are not. It's like there was a big idea in the proposal, but Rausch couldn't quite corral it for the finished product.
I mean, I wish he did that! I agree that it's a thing that happens; it's definitely a thing I wanted to see explored, especially given the return over the last few years of the cultural idea that not just New York but EVERY American city is an experience akin to felony Frogger. I wanted a critical – or social-scientific, or academic; I'd like to read, say, Omar Wasow's take on these ideas – comparison of the vision that films of the '70s, released and consumed in a pre-video-store monoculture, created of dystopian Gotham, and how the same ideas get seeded and sown today.
This book isn't that. This book is, in the end, a straightforward list of movies that reflected the widely-held view of New York City as a pit of depravity – and there is nothing WRONG with a straightforward list tome, but if you don't have a more animating point of view or overarching idea to tie it together, it's down to the writing to let it succeed, and Rausch's isn't good enough.
I've read worse, God knows – and I won't pick too many nits about spelling errors; as noted I read an advancer, so I'll assume things like "Laurence Oliver" and "Charles Bludhorn" got fixed prior to the book's drop date earlier this month – but there's more than a few repetitive or flabby locutions. Plus, Rausch can't decide whether he's writing for New Yorkers or, like, newborns (granted, I live three blocks from it, but one parenthetical what "the BQE" means probably does it). The graf on the murder of Joey Gallo is illustrative:
…Gallo moved the party to Umberto's [sic] Clam House (at the corner of Hester and Mulberry Streets in Greenwich Village). While celebrating (and presumably eating crabs [sic]), Gallo was gunned down in cold blood.
Again, not to come off like I'm fine-toothing the text for errors here, but 1) it's "Umbertos," and if you're going to position the book as an authority on NYC film and its locations, you should know that; 2) the level of address detail is…off, both too formal (you'd just say "the Village"...) AND incorrect (...except you wouldn't, because obviously it's in Little Italy); 3) do…you mean "clams"? At a…Clam? House? Is this a joke about Gallo having pubic lice that I'm missing? Speaking of missing, where's Rausch's editor? Because that clause doesn't serve any purpose in the first place.
I don't want to pick on Taking OR Rausch, because it isn't a BAD book, and in fact it might make a solid gift pick for a seventies film buff or a former New Yorker, or your guest bathroom*. I definitely don't want to do that "review the book I got for not being the book I wanted" thing; it's unfair.
* (complimentary! I pitched my first book as a "bathroom book"; the world needs them)
He does get a handful of interesting quotes, like Gabriel Bologna talking about what films set in '70s New York get wrong ("it's too clean. There are too many colors. You could spend the entire day without ever seeing a color"). I don't think I knew that the bank scenes in Dog Day Afternoon were shot in an abandoned warehouse in Windsor Terrace, which later became a condo building that abutted my old house. Rausch did the research and worked hard on the book; there's not NOTHING here.
It's just not organized the way it wants to be organized, IMO, and inconsistent conviction means flaws in the prose are more glaring, at least to me. The "this was the city that never sleeps in 1972" intros feel like Rausch doesn't really care about them, but this is what he pitched on, so he has to, and neither Rausch nor his editor felt empowered to change the pitch to something more deeply felt.
If he'd confined the list to NYC movies ABOUT true NYC crime stories and IRL criminal figures, it might have worked better; if he'd structured the book by neighborhood, or TYPE of crime, it might have worked better. As it is, it's trying to do too much, it's trying to do things Rausch isn't consistently engaged with, and it's trying to do it with prose that doesn't quiiiiite make the effort worthwhile. – SDB
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