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Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies
A tale of two cities -- both called "New York."
The first is a real city, an urban agglomeration of millions. The second is a mythic city, so rich in memory and association and sense of place that to people everywhere it has come to seem the New York of such films such as 42nd Street , Rear Window , King Kong , Dead End , The Naked City , Ghostbusters , Annie Hall , Taxi Driver , and Do the Right Thing — a magical city of the imagination that is as complex, dynamic, and familiar as its namesake of stone and steel.
As James Sanders shows in this deeply original work, the dream city of the movies — created by more than a century of films, from the very dawn of the medium itself — may hold the secret to the allure and excitement of the actual place. Here are the cocktail parties and power lunches, the subway chases and opening nights, the playground rumbles and rooftop romances. Here is an invented Gotham, a place designed specifically for action, drama, and adventure, a city of bright avenues and mysterious side streets, of soaring towers and intimate corners, where remarkable people do exciting, amusing, romantic, scary things. Sanders takes us from the tenement to the penthouse, from New York to Hollywood and back again, from 1896 to the present, all the while showing how the real and mythic cities reflected, changed, and taught each other.
Lavishly illustrated with scores of rare and unusual production images culled from Sanders's decade-long research in studio archives and private collections around the country, Celluloid Skyline offers a new way to see not only America’s greatest metropolis, but cities the world over.
The first is a real city, an urban agglomeration of millions. The second is a mythic city, so rich in memory and association and sense of place that to people everywhere it has come to seem the New York of such films such as 42nd Street , Rear Window , King Kong , Dead End , The Naked City , Ghostbusters , Annie Hall , Taxi Driver , and Do the Right Thing — a magical city of the imagination that is as complex, dynamic, and familiar as its namesake of stone and steel.
As James Sanders shows in this deeply original work, the dream city of the movies — created by more than a century of films, from the very dawn of the medium itself — may hold the secret to the allure and excitement of the actual place. Here are the cocktail parties and power lunches, the subway chases and opening nights, the playground rumbles and rooftop romances. Here is an invented Gotham, a place designed specifically for action, drama, and adventure, a city of bright avenues and mysterious side streets, of soaring towers and intimate corners, where remarkable people do exciting, amusing, romantic, scary things. Sanders takes us from the tenement to the penthouse, from New York to Hollywood and back again, from 1896 to the present, all the while showing how the real and mythic cities reflected, changed, and taught each other.
Lavishly illustrated with scores of rare and unusual production images culled from Sanders's decade-long research in studio archives and private collections around the country, Celluloid Skyline offers a new way to see not only America’s greatest metropolis, but cities the world over.
496 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2001
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136 people want to read
About the author
James Sanders
101 books5 followersJames Sanders is an architect, author and filmmaker, based in New York City. With Ric Burns, Mr. Sanders co-wrote the 17 1/2-hour, eight-part PBS series, New York: A Documentary Film, and co-authored New York: An Illustrated History (Knopf, 1999). In 2000, the series received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Non-Fiction Series, an Emmy Award for Editing, and an Alfred I. DuPont/Columbia University Silver Baton Award. The series’ eighth episode, a history of the World Trade Center entitled, “The Center of the World,” was broadcast nationally in September 2003, and Mr. Sanders and Mr. Burns have recently completed a 75-minute film portrait of Columbia University for its 250th-year celebration in 2004.
Mr. Sanders is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, and has written for the Los Angeles Times, Vanity Fair, and Architectural Record, and co-produced major exhibitions on the history of New York housing and the urban heritage of 42nd Street, held at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Since 1995 he has been co-host of the New York Conference on ECHO, an online community. He is the head of the Center for Urban Experience, a research and design institute, based in New York, dedicated to exploring innovative new ways of understanding and experiencing the urban environment.
Mr. Sanders maintains a design practice in Manhattan. His public work includes projects for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the Pershing Square Management Association (Los Angeles), the Parks Council, and the Landmarks Preservation Commission. His private commissions include the offices of Word.com, the residences of New Yorker fiction editor Bill Buford, Professor Edward Said, and the actress Molly Ringwald, as well as urban design and development consultation for The Mercer in SoHo. His design work has been published in House Beautiful, Interiors, the New York Times “House and Home” section, and will appear this year in an upcoming issue of Architectural Digest. In 1990, Mr. Sanders designed Mac Wellman's Crowbar, which restored the historic Victory Theater on 42nd Street to legitimate theatrical use.
Mr. Sanders is a graduate of Columbia College and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, is the chair of the New Media Committee for the AIA’s Center for Architecture, and currently teaches at the New School in Manhattan.
Mr. Sanders is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, and has written for the Los Angeles Times, Vanity Fair, and Architectural Record, and co-produced major exhibitions on the history of New York housing and the urban heritage of 42nd Street, held at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Since 1995 he has been co-host of the New York Conference on ECHO, an online community. He is the head of the Center for Urban Experience, a research and design institute, based in New York, dedicated to exploring innovative new ways of understanding and experiencing the urban environment.
Mr. Sanders maintains a design practice in Manhattan. His public work includes projects for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the Pershing Square Management Association (Los Angeles), the Parks Council, and the Landmarks Preservation Commission. His private commissions include the offices of Word.com, the residences of New Yorker fiction editor Bill Buford, Professor Edward Said, and the actress Molly Ringwald, as well as urban design and development consultation for The Mercer in SoHo. His design work has been published in House Beautiful, Interiors, the New York Times “House and Home” section, and will appear this year in an upcoming issue of Architectural Digest. In 1990, Mr. Sanders designed Mac Wellman's Crowbar, which restored the historic Victory Theater on 42nd Street to legitimate theatrical use.
Mr. Sanders is a graduate of Columbia College and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, is the chair of the New Media Committee for the AIA’s Center for Architecture, and currently teaches at the New School in Manhattan.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 21, 2020
Loved it. I think it's one of my favorite, most in-depth, fascinating books I've read.
June 24, 2021
It looks like a coffee table book, and while it does contain a number of cool photographs, this is a well written and researched history of filmmaking in New York from the silent era all the way up to 2000.
July 29, 2007
Very good book that goes through the entire history of filming in New York City. It really puts into perspective what it took to build the film industry, lose it and then take it by storm all over again. New York City really is "the world's biggest back lot" and Sanders proves it.
The book is a little bit on the academic side, but I think anyone who is going to actually pick this up knows that going in. This is kind of a text book for people who are actually interested.
It made me want to see a lot more movies about The City and revisit some that I didn't even realize had so much to do with it.
But it never did mention Basket Case. How does THAT happen?!
The book is a little bit on the academic side, but I think anyone who is going to actually pick this up knows that going in. This is kind of a text book for people who are actually interested.
It made me want to see a lot more movies about The City and revisit some that I didn't even realize had so much to do with it.
But it never did mention Basket Case. How does THAT happen?!
February 13, 2015
A lovely coffee table book about New York City's role in the history of movie-making, and how the city has been represented as a real location to shoot films, as a backdrop for Hollywood productions, and as an entirely cinematic universe with a back story all its own. There's a lot about just the architecture, which is fascinating if you're patient about it.
Recommended for those who love movies and/or New York, and for those who plan to visit it one day.
Recommended for those who love movies and/or New York, and for those who plan to visit it one day.
October 13, 2007
TCM just finished (summer of 2007) a series of screening based on films in this great look at New York in film. Architecture + film = heaven.
film-netflix-reference
December 27, 2007
February 9, 2008
I used this book in college for a paper I was writing on Woody Allen and Spike Lee as NY filmmakers and it was amazing! I loved everything about it, it was so detailed and the pictures are great!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews