Praise for Fun City Cinema

“By collapsing the distance between the dream New York and the one we can see, this marvelous book illuminates a third New York: the one that lives forever in the movies. From the rise of the skyscraper to post-9/11 anxiety, from the age of grime and crime to the era of excessive gentrification, Fun City Cinema shows how movies have kept pace with the city’s myriad transformations, whether we’re talking ten decades ago, ten years ago, or ten minutes ago.”
film critic for TIME

“Film critic and historian Bailey (It’s Okay with Me) takes an exhilarating look at the history of New York City through films spanning the past 100 years that have become ‘valuable reminder[s] of what once was.’ Combining his impressive knowledge of cinema with fascinating historical context of the cultural moments that gave rise to each film, Bailey illuminates how movies functioned as an ‘act of preservation’ and ‘a conversation of connections and reflections between the fictional lives in their foregrounds and the real lives happening behind them’... Cinephiles will relish every stop of this entertaining tour of the big city.”
Publishers Weekly

“Bailey knows that to love New York is, on some level, to love the movies that have seared it into our memories. To read this extraordinary book is to love them a little more.”
film critic for the LA Times

“Catnip for those that want to dive deeply into its highly specific subject... that fascinating and all-too-rare project that leaves you more interested in its subjects than when you started.”
Paste Magazine

About the Author

Jason Bailey is a film critic and historian. A graduate of the Cultural Reporting and Criticism program at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, and the former film editor of Flavorwire, his work has appeared in the New York Times, Vulture, Slate, VICE, the Atlantic, Salon, the Guardian, Rolling Stone, The Playlist, The Dissolve, and Crooked Marquee. He lives in the Bronx with his wife and two daughters. Fun City Cinema is his fifth book.

Matt Zoller Seitz is an editor at large for RogerEbert.com; the TV critic for New York magazine; the author of The Wes Anderson Collection, The Wes Anderson Collection: The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Oliver Stone Experience, and Mad Men Carousel; and the coauthor of The Sopranos Sessions. He is based in Cleveland, Ohio, and New York City.

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