New York City has always had a bit of a rough reputation. Britannica refers to it as "foreign and fearsome, a place where turmoil, arrogance, incivility, and cruelty tested the stamina of everyone who entered it;" in her column "Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young" (a.k.a. "Wear Sunscreen"), Mary Schmich gives the advice to "Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard." Movies have generally followed suit, using the city itself as shorthand for the antagonists - whether it's the negative energy manifesting in a river of liquified evil in
Ghostbusters 2 or the more mundane but just as frightening power wielded in
Wall Street.
But New York is also home to over eight million people, living lives on a much smaller scale than the city itself.
Moonstruck was such a story, focusing on two families and their intertwined lives. Not as gang members or part of some syndicate, just as people. It was still a uniquely New York tale - the city was arguably as much a cast member as Cher or Nicolas Cage - but it was not the malevolent force so often seen in films. Among the scenes showing this softer side of New York were several shots of the full moon over Manhattan, with the Trade Center standing tall among the other buildings.
