Drop Dead City Film Screening and Q&A

“Wonkish but gripping!”

— Owen Gleiberman, Variety

“An extraordinary historical documentary.”

— Richard Brody, The New Yorker

Back by popular demand! On November 17, join Open House New York for a special encore screening of Drop Dead City, a documentary about a critical moment in New York’s history that prompts questions of civic governance and shared commitment to a better society that strongly resonate fifty years later. The film will be followed by a Q&A with filmmakers Michael Rohatyn and Peter Yost, hosted and moderated by Lisa Cortés and John Leguizamo.

New York City, 1975: the city is on the brink of bankruptcy. A nationwide recession, combined with white flight and a declining tax base, abruptly reveals the city’s enormous budget deficit and years of financial mismanagement. Without funds to pay city workers, Mayor Abraham Beame imposes unprecedented service cuts leading to strikes, protests, and disorder and his appeal for federal aid is notoriously rebuffed, immortalized in the Daily News headline, Ford to City: Drop Dead. 

Drop Dead City, a documentary film by Peter Yost and Michael Rohatyn, explores how this crisis came to be and the eleventh-hour deal, brokered by a coalition of business, labor, and civic leaders, that rescued the city’s finances, but with lasting costs to independent governance, public services, and civic ideals of what New York should offer its residents.

Drop Dead City (2024) documents New York’s fiscal crisis of 1975, an extraordinary, overlooked episode in urban American history that saw an already-crumbling city of 8 million people brought to the edge of bankruptcy and social chaos by a perfect storm of debt, greed, ambitious social policy, and poor governance.

Directed by Peter Yost and Michael Rohatyn, the film weaves firsthand accounts with vibrant archival footage. It features some of the city’s legendary reporters, the urban scribes who documented daily life in New York, including Linda Greenhouse, Fred Ferretti, Charlayne Hunter Gault, and Gabe Pressman. Elected officials, union leaders and others involved in the civic life of the city also make appearances, including NYC Mayor David Dinkins, Congressman Charles Rangel, NYS Senator Manfred Ohrenstein, PR guru Howard Rubenstein, former NYC Comptroller Harrison Jay Goldin, former NYS Budget Director Peter Goldmark, Municipal Assistance Corporation Treasurer Donna Shalala, Public Advocate for New York City Betsy Gotbaum, and many more. Drop Dead City won the prestigious Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for film.

SVA Theatre is committed to accessibility for all patrons. The venue is ADA compliant and provides listening devices for the hearing impaired.