New York in the Fifties (2001)

Synopsis: The soundtrack was jazz, the drug of choice was booze, the paper of record was The Village Voice, and the written word was sacred. When Dan Wakefield moved from Indiana to New York City, he became part of a growing thriving culture in Greenwich Village that revered men like Norman Mailer and... The soundtrack was jazz, the drug of choice was booze, the paper of record was The Village Voice, and the written word was sacred. When Dan Wakefield moved from Indiana to New York City, he became part of a growing thriving culture in Greenwich Village that revered men like Norman Mailer and James Baldwin. Wakefield fell in with this crowd, these creative hipsters, these men and women who forged the way for the social protest movement of the 1960s. Betsey Blankenbaker's NEW YORK IN THE FIFTIES, based on Wakefield's memoir, combines old footage and photos of heroes like Mailer, Baldwin, and Jack Kerouac with contemporary interviews with people like Robert Redford, Bruce Jay Friedman, Ted Steeg, Joan Didion, and John Gregory Dunne, who were part of that vibrant scene. The film captures that period's expectant, hopeful feeling. These were people who knew that their collective intellect, and their artistic passion, would change the world. But the core of the story is Wakefield's, and despite the title, this is a very personal and touching account of that one young man from suburbia finding his mentors, and his true calling, in the big city. [More]