New York's Canon.

To celebrate the magazine's 40th anniversary, New York editors decided: "Our New York canon would not be a best-of, or a greatest-hits list of works made about New York, or in New York, or by New Yorkers.... The key was that the choices be unmistakably New Yorky, even if a few weren't all that good."

David Edelstein knows his list of movies is heavy on the 70s, "But if you're looking for films that capture something emblematic about New York, it's hard to leave out The French Connection, Taxi Driver, or Annie Hall. It's hard to leave out Death Wish, too, even if it's hateful."

Do the Right Thing makes the list, and Logan Hill asks Spike Lee, among other things, "What do you think of Obama?" Lee: "I'm riding my man Obama. I think he's a visionary. Actually, Barack told me the first date he took Michelle to was Do the Right Thing. I said, 'Thank God I made it. Otherwise you would have taken her to Soul Man. Michelle would have been like, "What's wrong with this brother?"'"

"What mistakes do people make about the [Untitled Film Stills]?" Mark Stevens asks Cindy Sherman, who replies, "Referring to them as self-portraits."

Boris Kachka talks with Tony Kushner about Angels in America. Q: "You made Heaven look like San Francisco. So why was the play set in New York?" A: "Who is it, Baudrillard? One of those French guys said New York is the city of the Apocalypse. It has a kind of real and unreal feeling. It's also a city of towers, it points upward, so obviously it has this feeling of vision, of a hallucination almost."

Kachka also talks with EL Doctorow about Ragtime; unfortunately, the film doesn't come up.

More lists: Sam Anderson (books), Jeremy McCarter (theater), Hugo Lindgren and Ben Williams (pop and jazz), Jerry Saltz (art), a crowd (TV), Justin Davidson (architecture and classical music).

Posted by dwhudson at April 7, 2008 2:01 AM