New York in the Movies: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1989)

The Ninja Turtles. Those mutated pizza-loving turtles dominated my childhood. Some kids played with legos. Some kids liked to throw the ball around. I liked TMNT. My earliest memories of a birthday party was a TMNT themed party. Aunts, Uncles, and Grandparents all ate cake off TMNT plates. They all wore little TMNT birthday hats. There are three gifts I got as a kid that are forever instilled in my memory banks. There was the original Tim Burton Batman on VHS for X-mas. There was the huge Millenium Falcon w/ Han Solo and Chewbacca toys. And there was the framed TMNT movie poster for X-mas. (Actually maybe four things, there was also the huge T-Rex from Jurassic Park for X-mas) It was the first friggin movie I saw in theatres.

Anyways I digress. Me and Brittany took a stroll down memory lane last night, and with a pie from Lenny's watched the first Turtles movie. What I found so interesting about the movie was how New York it is. Since working for the Gothamist and always being surrounded by New York news, I've been really interested in New York and it's setting in movies.

The first Turtles movie was unlike all the other movies. It was dark. Sometimes it was violent. It mirrored the tone of the comics, and strayed away from the cartoon. But it also depicted a dark, dangerous 1980's New York. Crime was high during those years before the Giuliani campaign. Crack hit the streets like an atom-bomb. Kids were peddling the stuff all over the city and crime was growing at an exponentially high rate.

One of the major plot lines of the movie was the booming rate in crime, especially amongst teens. Of course crack or drugs in general are never mentioned in the movie, but there are certainly parallels. Across the country there was a war on violent video games and naughty lyrics and the teens depicted in the movie are seen gambling, smoking cigarettes, and graffiti tagging walls. While it may be more reminiscent of the juvenile delinquents in Pinocchio, people were certainly afraid that their teens were spiraling out of control. There is a tacked-on sub-plot in the movie in which April's boss deals with his delinquent son. He constantly complains about his son listening to a walkman (which also happens to be stolen) and his slacking off in school. We are to assume that he is a single dad, and is totally consumed by his job. In a way, the fears of this character echo the fear many parents felt for their  teenagers.

Meanwhile, the movie depicts the turtles as everyday teenagers; Donatello is the geeky smart-ass, Leonardo the stoic and sometimes self-righteous leader, Raphael is tempestuous and is controlled by his emotions and Michaelangelo is a slacker. What these teens have that the other teens in the movie don't have is a respect for their elders (Splinter). There is one really melodramatic scene in which one of the teen gang leaders (played by Sam Rockwell!) tells Casey Jones that his fellow gang of miscreants are a family, that the Shredder is like a father to them. But, and in a way only Casey Jones could put it, their family is a fractured one based on carelessness and skewed morals.

In the end, April's Boss reunites with his son who realizes how much his father truly cares for him. And this is what the movie is really about...that teens will always be teens and that fathers will always care for their sons. The Turtles are the ideal role-models, they have fun and aren't necessarily straight-edge, but they are still good children.

Back to New York, there are plenty of familiar spots to see. There is Bleecker St, familiar looking Lower Manhattan-ish row homes, and Central Park. The movie was also shot extensively at Silvercup Studios in Long Island City.

Also, got to love Raphael's heavy New York accent.