Drop Dead City: New York on the Brink in 1975

Drop Dead City is the first-ever feature documentary devoted to New York City’s extraordinary and harrowing fiscal crisis in 1975, which saw America’s premier city brought to the edge of bankruptcy and social chaos by a perfect storm of debt, greed, ambitious social policy and poor governance.

Drop Dead City is a total immersion film, built around gripping true events in an escalating crisis, based on interviews and archival footage. Scenes from the crisis included a teacher's union meeting so big it had to take place in Madison Square Garden; a garbage collection  “slowdown” that left 30,000 tons of garbage piling onto the streets every day in the summer heat of July; and a protest in front of City Hall that spiraled into an unprecedented takeover of the Brooklyn Bridge by laid off cops. By the night of October 17, New York seemed to have exhausted every remedy and Mayor Abraham Beame called the White House to inform the president that in the morning, he would declare New York City bankrupt. He was told the president was asleep and couldn’t be disturbed.

The city that had been seen around the world as a shining symbol of freedom and opportunity had, by 1975, come to represent the opposite: failure. What happened next is the story of Drop Dead City: a year in the real-life, near-death of one of the abiding cities of the world.

The rescue that saved New York was as remarkable as depth of the disaster it addressed. Labor unions, banks, community activists, politicians, and state and local institutions formed an unlikely alliance. They overcame punishing financial terms from Wall Street, antipathy from President Gerald Ford and official Washington, and the city’s own history of chronic economic and social disputation.

In the end, it took an improbable combination of fixers and flexers, big shots, heroes and cowards, and the citizens who lived in and worked in New York City to stave off an economic disaster that could have had worldwide implications. They fought and threatened, bluffed and battled, went on strike, hid from each other and confronted each other in front of the world’s cameras and their constituents. And while New York melted and burned, leaders right out of central casting did what would be unimaginable in today’s America - they compromised and cooperated to save the city.

See the film that was the closing night feature at DOC NYC, America’s largest documentary film festival, in 2024, had a record breaking 14-week run at New York City’s IFC Center, and won the highly prestigious Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film in 2023.

Film director Michael Rohatyn, who co-directed the film with Peter Yost, will be on hand to answer questions about the film. He is a filmmaker and musician who most recently provided the musical score for Apple Studios documentary series “Mr. Scorsese.”  In 1975, Michael had a front row seat to the events in Drop Dead City since his father, Felix Rohatyn, was one of the key architects of the city’s bailout plan.

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