Manhattan is probably my favourite film of all time.
Years ago, when I lived in LA and was visiting New York with my pal Rono, we spent an afternoon trying (unsuccesfully) to locate exactly where the iconic film poster (and scene from the film, featuring Woody and Diane Keaton) was shot. It's a fond memory, even tough we got it completely wrong.
Then, fast forward a few years, when my late, great ex- would often compare the two of us to Woody Allen and Diane Keaton. Naturally, I balked at the idea of comparison with a small, red-headed and bespectaled Jewish bloke (being none of those things), though in fairness, she was trying to do me a favour. She was boldly offering herself up as impossibly neurotic and eccentric, while suggesting I was somehow brilliant, if not a little neurotic myself. Unfortunately, we never got around to hunting the locale out ourselves.
But today I did so.
And, the scene was not set in a park, as it seems, but at the dead end of a residential street. I couldn't replicate the shot as I'd have liked since a) it was a bright afternoon and not 4 am, b) I didn't have my wide angle lens, c) unlike when Woody was filming, a car was blocking the road, and d) in a particularly unsporting gesture, one doubtless meant to frustrate the likes of me, a potted fern has been planted close to where the famed bench ought to have been.
But anyway, this is it at last: My 'Manhattan.'
