Word arrived last week that a newly restored version of Glenn O'Brien's "Downtown 81" was about to see the light of day. I think I first saw the film in question at the since-recently-razed Screening Room theatre in TriBeCa in about 2000, or so -- and it immediately made a huge impression on me.
As a time-capsule-worthy document of early 80's New York City, it is, of course, invaluable. Secondly, its soundtrack is entirely awesome -- particularly the live stuff from Kid Creole/Coati Mundi, to say nothing of the vintage footage of bands like Tuxedomoon and DNA. But, speaking in strictly cinematic terms, the film itself is frequently laborious and plodding. While definitely worth checking out for the points expressed above, one should be prepared to be bored to absolute tears during certain passages.
A new restoration of the film also seems a bit odd, as it strikes me that a deluxe, 30th anniversary digitally remastered edition of the DVD only just arrived in 2017. It feels a bit like Francis Ford Coppola's fixation with trying to wring further life from "Apocalypse Now" for the umpteenth time.
As much as I do genuinely love "Downtown 81," there is also sort of an uncomfortably fetishistic quality about regularly revisiting the film in that it plays right into accusations of a variety of brazenly idealized nostalgia for the Lower East Side's "bad old days." Personally speaking, in 1981, I was an Upper East Side teenager who was indeed suitably captivated by all things downtown, but I sure as shit wasn't venturing further east of Avenue A (where much of the film takes place). I do not have that much first-hand experience of the downtown Manhattan suggested in "Downtown 81" beyond what I saw from behind the relative safety of bus windows.
It's certainly easy to fancifully think back to that largely lawless era as some sort of halcyon period, but those who lived through them in real time don't always agree. Michael Gira of SWANS appeared in a podcast this week, and briefly mentioned his time living on East 6th & Avenue B in the early 80s, and doesn't recall it with any degree of fondness.
While times have certainly changed, and many of us do indeed miss the Lower East Side's former identity as a neighborhood more clearly defined by free expression and less staid sensibilities than were found throughout the rest of the city, it's prudent to remember that the L.E.S. already had a character and richly robust history that dates back much, much further than the punks, the poets, the pushers and the provocateurs.
Here's a tantalizing little glimpse of same....
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