Spike Lee has shared a “love letter” to New York in the face of the coronavirus pandemic with New York New York, a three-minute short film soundtracked by Frank Sinatra’s classic Big Apple ode.
Filmed on grainy Super 8, the first two minutes of the short travels from Brooklyn to the Bronx and all Manhattan landmarks in between, spotlighting a New Yorker-less and tourist-less metropolitan area under “Stay Home” measures.
In addition to stops at Wall Street, Grand Central Station and the U.S. Naval Hospital Ship Comfort, New York, New York also travels to an empty Yankee Stadium, where typically Sinatra’s song would serve as celebration for a Yankees win.
The short’s final third is dedicated to the medical workers at New York hospitals and the makeshift COVID-19 tents in Central Park.
“My short film New York New York is a love letter to its people. Plain and simple,” Lee said on Instagram, with the filmmaker also thanking Sinatra’s daughter Tina for permission to use the song.
On Thursday, Lee revealed that his next film Da 5 Bloods would debut on Netflix on June 12th.
