Born to Win (and you can see the young Roger Ebert's take here) was filmed before the Twin Towers were even completed, so it's no surprise they don't figure in it. George Segal was always a very funny and charming actor, and his character in this repeatedly calls himself a charmer. His faded tattoo (from which the movie gets its name) suggests he might have been in the military. He was definitely married to Paula Prentiss before that somehow went bad, and he sometimes still sees her in scenes where it's ambiguous whether she's actually there. For now he's with Karen Black, who seems to have no idea what she's letting herself in for.
It's a diverting movie. Things are funny and exciting, and obviously in a few minutes they won't be. J's dealer finds him amusing and sometimes useful but knows he'll eventually put him down like a dog. One of the cops is played by a then unknown Robert DeNiro, and they're their own kind of trouble.
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I don't think any of us will forget what happened on 9/11. Goodness knows a lot of people have devoted the intervening years making sure we never know the truth of what happened that day but the fact that nearly 3000 people died when the towers collapsed remains true.*
The 70's definitely had some pretty depressing movies made in NYC and Born to Win sounds like a good candidate to compete with The Panic in Needle Park and Taxi Driver,for instance. The actors who starred in them always brought something new to the story (could I include Paul Newman, one of our favorites in - Fort Apache, the Bronx in the list?). Hackman in The French Connection is right up there among the best movies of the 70s but although it's about junk it's not about junkies so doesn't really count.
I don't suppose you remember when the three of us went to NYC to see Jer's old friends Chris and Susan and their boy Teddy. That was in '78 and things were quite wild in Soho at the time. I haven't seen Born to Win but since I know you're a film aficionado I can see how you found the movie a smooth trail of NYC hopeful desperation at the bottom of that particular barrel.
*I read a good article by Paul Craig Roberts today:
https://paulcraigroberts.org/9-11-after-a-quarter-of-a-century/
On the global scale, it's probable that nothing that's happened in the 21st century would have happened the same way if it weren't for 9/11. And it's true we're probably never going to find out exactly what happened. The powerful interests are aligned against it. The families of the victims have had to move on. I'm not going to go into detail responding to the Paul Craig Roberts article, but I will say that the phrase "conspiracy theory" is often used to provide the appearance of disproof when mothing has been disproven.
New York City in the 70s is a fascinating subject. There was a lot of grandeur and a lot of things going on, good and bad. For example, Talking Heads established themselves there, after their prehistory at RISD. Anyway, filmmakers understandably focused on the darker aspects of the city, and the results can be both repelling and entrancing. Taxi Driver can be an uncomfortable watch, but well worth it. And it's clear why The French Connection made Gene Hackman a big star.
I know we went to NYC in 1978 but it's mostly just a memory of being overwhelmed. In a new setting I'll tend to cling to the familiar, and I have the sense I did that then. Do you know how Chris, Susan, and Teddy have been in recent years? As for New York, I've been there a couple of times since then and had fun.
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