Sep 6, 2026 · 1h 59m
Scorsese’s musical gamble reveals Hollywood’s creative fault lines
New York, New Yorkwith Lin-Manuel Miranda
The episode argues that New York, New York is less a failed romance than a revealing collision between improvisation, spectacle, and star power.
- 1Jimmy Doyle’s cruelty and lack of a convincing inner life make the film’s central romance difficult to sustain.
- 2Liza Minnelli supplies the film’s strongest emotional and musical force, even as the production struggles to use her properly.
- 3The theatrical cut buried the movie’s best ideas, leaving later musical filmmakers to recover its ambition and influence.
Don't miss
The discussion of the “Happy Endings” dream ballet reveals the stronger, more emotionally coherent musical buried inside the released film.
The brief
Lin-Manuel Miranda joins Griffin and David to examine Martin Scorsese’s 1977 musical as a career “bounce”: an ambitious Hollywood fantasy made amid personal and industrial upheaval.
The film wants authentic New York behavior and classic musical artificiality, but Jimmy Doyle’s bullying, infidelity, and thin characterization leave its central romance without a persuasive foundation.
Liza Minnelli emerges as the movie’s great counterforce, bringing theatrical precision and emotional specificity to musical sequences that the production never consistently knows how to frame.
The episode traces how improvisation, massive sets, missing preparation, and competing cuts buried the stronger movie inside the final hour, especially the “Happy Endings” dream ballet.
Its climactic “New York, New York” performance finally gives Francine agency and the film emotional payoff, helping explain why this failure influenced later musical spectacles.
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