And the Emmy-winning film is … ours!

Miracle on 42nd Street, the feature documentary I wrote with Steve Ryfle (Bringing Godzilla Down to Size: The Art of Japanese Special Effects), was named Best Documentary at the 2020 New York Emmy Awards.

Owing to the pandemic, there was no gala ceremony. But it was a thrill for real to see the film nominated, and, indeed, it was an even bigger thrill to hear it named winner via livestream.

The Miracle team includes Oscar-nominated director Alice Elliott (The Collector of Bedford Street) and executive producer Ken Aguado (An Interview with God), and it was the biggest thrill of all to be part of that group.

Miracle on 42nd Street, which premiered on the New York PBS station, WNET, and screened at the United Nations earlier this year, is about Manhattan Plaza, the New York City affordable-housing community for artists that rose from the bleak Hell’s Kitchen of the 1970s. Its story about economic hard times seems especially timely. Hopefully, some of its proposed solutions will seem of the moment, too.

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On Becoming a Tabloid Figure and a Sellout

 

So, yes, it’s true: I’m a tabloid figure and a sellout.

And it’s all pretty cool, actually.

Miracle on 42nd Street, the documentary feature I co-wrote with Steve Ryfle, got New York Post coverage, and sold out its Saturday premiere at Doc NYC in Manhattan.

 

How the Documentary I Worked on Spent Its Summer Vacation

What a busy summer it was for Miracle on 42nd Street.

The documentary was completed. The official Website was relaunched. The teaser poster was rolled out.

Miracle, which I co-wrote, is about Manhattan Plaza, the affordable-housing community for artists in New York City. The complex was born of the Big Apple’s mid-1970s financial crisis, and opened during the Bronx Is Burning summer of 1977. So, yes, there’s a lot of cool footage in Miracle — and a lot of cool stories from the likes of Larry David (an early Manhattan Plaza resident) and Samuel L. Jackson (a Manhattan Plaza security guard during the ’77 blackout).

New Podcast Episode: “Grey Gardens,” Leonard Nimoy, Corey Haim, Jackie Coogan, Brian Bosworth

Oh, what won’t I discuss on Former Child Star Central: The Podcast?

The central discussion in this week’s new episode is Albert and David Maysles‘ 1975 documentary, Grey Gardens, perhaps the child-star-iest movie of all-time (and, no, it doesn’t even feature a single child star). Janus Films is releasing a restored, 40th-anniversary print that begins its tour of art houses today in New York City. Slant Magazine’s Eric Henderson joins us (well, me) to discuss.

So, you know, give it a listen.