“Song of My City” Director David C. Roberts Talks His Ode to Old New York in His Newest Film

Courtesy of HBO Max and TCM

Let’s get the strange part out of the way first. Song of My City is indeed a montage-like time capsule into the 1970s New York City that can only be captured through a cinematic lens. That much is certain. But how much can the viewer grab onto, perceive and feel when the project in question is only a seventeen minute short film? Surprisingly, a whole lot. Now diagnosed with an incurable blood cancer, filmmaker David C. Roberts has decided to craft the dream-like memories of his childhood - from a city he never once visited until well into his adulthood - into a visual diary. Instead of pages, he uses movies such as Taxi Driver, Taking of Pelham 123 and The Warriors as his moving canvas. Instead of putting words onto the page, he pulls the b-roll footage from these titles to create an increasingly expansive and disappearing city. The people come to life in new ways, the streetlights flicker for a new audience and the vibrancy of it all comes through the perspective of fantastical nostalgia. Song of My City is short but sweet and filmmaker David C. Roberts recently sat down with The Movie Nerds to tell us all about this personal project.

Salvatore Cento: Even though Song Of My City is only 17 minutes long, forty movies were creatively used during that timespan. Could you explain the process behind how you picked those films and how you went about obtaining the right to use selected clips from them as well?

David C. Roberts: I don’t know if I want to give you all of my dirty little tricks laughs.

I had this idea percolating in my head for years now. When I finally got it structured down, we were mimicking the symphony city structure from the 1920s. I think I started with about twenty films, just myself and found all the b-roll that I wanted from those twenty films. I wanted to see how I could construct a day in the life of this fictional city that I grew up with. I grew up in Alabama and I dreamed of New York through these same movies.

The very first thing I did was write a script. I had these clips, I wanted to see how they would interact with each other. Then, I went to a dear friend of mine who is an editor and who I’ve worked with on many projects together, John Sears. After that, twenty turned into forty. It then took a lot longer than we anticipated!

Cento: You mention in your director’s statement that you are now finally in New York City. When did you first arrive in NYC and being here for as long as you have - does being in the city grow your fondness for it or has the reality of it all in the least bit changed your initial, loving perspective?

Roberts: Oh, that’s a good question. So, we moved to New York in 2014. Before that, we were living abroad in Asia, Africa, Europe and various places. This was actually a move for my wife, she’s an artist and this was her pick. I’ve always had a crazy dream about living in New York.

This film was sort of a memory of a dream in some ways. Like, the dream of my childhood. When we got here, I was like a little boy. I went to where all of my favorite films were shot like Taxi Driver on 13th Street between Avenue A and First Avenue - that’s where the Harvey Keitel brothel was, the Dog Day Afternoon bank - we went through all these different things. But of course, the city is not that city, right? There’s the Hollywood city and this is a different city.

Cento: Especially since those movies were filmed in the 70s.

Roberts: Especially since those movies were filmed in the 70s. But you know, there's magic here. It’s a really hard city to live in. Things don’t work. The trash is not picked up. It’s the dirtiest place you ever lived in. But there is a magic - sixty percent of the time, I love it and forty percent of the time I hate it. I don’t think I’m ever indifferent to it. I’m not sure I would have ever made this film if I wasn’t living here. But I think a big part of the inspiration for the film was to sort of recapture the New York that I knew as a child. Again, I was never in New York as a child - just through the films. It is just a crazy city. I’ll say that.

Cento: When talking about your inspirations, one of the films you referenced was Christian Marclay’s The Clock. That 24 hour long video project explicitly uses timekeeping as the main storytelling vehicle. Could you explain how this same aspect - time, that is - came into play with Song of My City?

Roberts: Oh, I’m glad you saw that actually. So, the structure that we settled upon in Song of My City was these genre films called City Symphonies in the 1920s. They were these abstract films where filmmakers would be in the city for a year or so and film all these different scenes. Then, they would create a day in the life of this city. I think the best example of that is the Berlin one.

Cento: How many were there?

Roberts: 8 to 10? The Man With The Movie Camera is one but not really - sort of a stretch there. There was one in New York called Manhatta as well. There was one in Nice by Jean Vigo which was wonderful.

There was a structure - you see the day evolve. You see everybody wake up for work, go to work and come back from work - these sort of things. This is all something we try to create in Song of My City. We start in the middle of the night and end in the middle of the night. We try to show a day in the life of this fictional city that I grew up with.

There were clocks placed throughout - especially throughout the day - which was very much influenced by The Clock. This was done to help the momentum along. In a broader sense, Christian Marclay’s The Clock is also one of the greatest art pieces I’ve ever seen. It was something I was obsessed with for about fifteen years before I even saw it. It’s a very, very difficult film to see and I didn’t see it until relatively recently. I’ve been obsessed - I thought it was one of the greatest ideas I’ve ever heard and I saw it five times! All against my doctor’s orders too. I wasn’t allowed to be in crowds . . . but it was well, well worth it.

Cento: In your mind as a director, what does b-roll footage convey for a film like this that documentary footage cannot?

Roberts: One of the inspirations for this film was Los Angeles Plays Itself by Tom Anderson. He did this wonderful film where he basically did the history and architecture of Los Angeles - only through narrative film clips - and I loved that film. It was a huge inspiration for what we were trying to do. Again, the entire north star of this film was me trying to recreate the vibe I had as a child of New York. In my head, New York was - Dog Day Afternoon, Taxi Driver and Taking of Pelham 123. I’m not just talking about the stories but the trash blowing in the street - all of that type of thing -

Cento: The visual, I suppose.

Roberts: Absolutely. I felt like I knew those streets. I felt like I knew that city. I knew where to go and where not to go. Again I’ve never been there and it was not actually real and so, I think the b-roll is where the gold is in that sense. Mining that gold . . . we were hopefully able to construct that vibe of the 70s.

Cento: I found it very interesting that your three musician selections for Song of My City not only come from different genres but their peak of popularity came from different eras as well. How did The Velvet Underground, Philip Glass and Gene Krupa become your top choices?

Roberts: We spent an enormous - and embarrassing - amount of time on the music. The original script I wrote included Drumming by Steven Reich, who is an avant-garde composer in the 1970s. We spent some time on it and experimented but it didn’t work at all.

Philip Glass - an avant-garde composer from the 70s - actually came from one of my previous films, High Noon On The Water Front. We used his opera rock Akhnaten in that film and the people that deal with his music were very kind to independent filmmakers such as myself. There’s a lot of repetition and momentum there so that was something that we had tried early on.

Velvet Underground has been one of my favorite bands since I was a kid. It was a dream! I never would have thought that I could clear one of their songs! That came with enough asking, begging and pleading laughs We used the entire Sunday Morning song. I sent the film to the people that own the music who then sent it to Lou Reed’s estate, John Kale and all those folks. They were very kind and gave it to me for my tiny budget.

The Gene Krupa idea actually came from my editor. I want to mention him again - John Sears is a brilliant editor and was a huge part of this film. Krupa and Sing, Sing, Sing come from a different era - the 30s, 40s and 50s. The recording we got though comes from 1973. I think it was one of his last recordings before he passed away. You get the jazzy era sounds of the previous era of New York - but you also feel that 70s bit in there too. I just thought it was this wonderful climax to end the song.

We also did something that you should never do. If there’s any independent filmmakers that are reading or listening to this - we made this movie with the music before we cleared it. Then we had to go beg for the songs. At that point, we had already fallen in love with it.

Cento: What do you hope comes across to audiences with such a unique cinematic project like Song of My City? What do you hope the audience walks away with?

Roberts: I would love for people to enjoy this film - but this was also a personal project to me. If you’re making a seventeen minute film, you’re not really going to have an enormous audience laughs. I mean, I had been diagnosed with incurable cancer during this process and it just became really important to me to try and recapture this magic from my childhood. That’s where I was going with this. We just managed to get lucky that Turner Classic Movies and HBO got interested in the later phases…

Cento: How did they get involved, by the way?

Roberts: So, I actually did a film of similar length before called High Noon On The Water Front with John Deturro and Edward Norton. Charlie Tabish at TCM had gotten that before. High Noon was also on HBO Max so I already had a relationship with both of them before this film. With this crazy idea, I emailed Charlie and asked “what do you think?”

He’s like “I love it!” I told him in response that I think I could have this done in a couple of months and it took me about fourteen. That’s just sometimes how these things work. Of course, Turner Classic Movies is very much into the old movies - that’s their bit - and they got interested. I think it’s premiering on TCM January 21st and on HBO Max December 1st. I just got really lucky. When you’re making a short, you don’t really expect anybody to ever see it. That’s the ordinary truth - but sometimes you get extraordinarily lucky like we did. Hopefully we get a few folks seeing it.

Cento: What was your favorite film that was used?

Roberts: Oh my goodness. This is going to be like a three hour answer laughs It’s like picking your favorite child. I don’t know, I mean -  I’ll try to limit it. My favorite one. I don’t know . . .

Cento: Mine was Mean Streets.

Roberts: Ah. Mean Streets could be mine. Maybe the first ones I saw when I was in school were Taxi Driver, Dog Day Afternoon, Taking of Pelham 123, Finch Connection - these were all great films. Mean Streets, I saw a little bit later. Mean Streets is Scorsese’s messiest movie. It’s just a mess of a movie.

But it has that energy. You could really watch Mean Streets and Goodfellas right next to each other. Mean Streets has all of that early film energy whereas by the time Scorsese did Goodfellas, he had already perfected his design. So maybe Mean Streets - I don’t know.

Let me give you my top five. So - The Warriors. I love the campiness of The Warriors. Taxi Driver. Mean Streets. In terms of pure New York 70s, Taking of Pelham 123 - I love the feel of that.

Cento: Thank you, Mr. Roberts. I got so much information. This is going to be great.

Roberts: Well, thank you Sal. I’m so heartened that you are almost what now - 20 years cancer free?

Cento: Yes, yes.

Roberts: Good for you, my friend. That is fantastic. I hope you do well with your journey as well.

Cento: Well, you have good spirits man, you got really good spirits.

Roberts: Well, thank you. I appreciate it. Hopefully we’ll see each other down the road. See you, my friend. Bye-bye.

Cento: Bye-bye.

David C. Robert’s Song of My City will stream on HBO Max starting from December 1st and will then become available to stream as well on TCM starting from January 21st.