New York Stories
original movie poster
Directed by	Woody Allen Francis Ford Coppola Martin Scorsese
Written by	Woody Allen Francis Ford Coppola Sofia Coppola Richard Price
Starring	Woody Allen Mae Questel Mia Farrow Heather McComb Talia Shire Giancarlo Giannini Don Novello Julie Kavner Nick Nolte Rosanna Arquette Steve Buscemi Jesse Borrego
Music by	Kid Creole Carmine Coppola
Cinematography	Sven Nykvist Vittorio Storaro Néstor Almendros
Editing by	Susan E. Morse Barry Malkin Thelma Schoonmaker
Distributed by	Touchstone Pictures
Release date(s)	March 10, 1989
Running time	124 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$15,000,000
IMDb profile

New York Stories is an anthology film which was released in the USA in March 1989.

The film consists of three shorts with the central theme being New York City. The first short is Life Lessons, directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Richard Price. The second is Life Without Zoe, directed by Francis Ford Coppola and written by Francis Ford Coppola and Sofia Coppola. The last segment is Oedipus Wrecks, directed and written by Woody Allen.

The reviews were generally positive for Life Lessons and Oedipus Wrecks, but generally negative for Life Without Zoe [1]. Hal Hinson of The Washington Post said of Coppola's segment, "it's by far the director's worst work yet." [2]

Oedipus Wrecks includes Adrien Brody and 7-year-old Kirsten Dunst in their first film roles. The film also features Larry David as the club owner who explains to Allen that his mother is missing. And it coincidentally features both Mae Questel and Julie Kavner, who voiced perhaps the most significant female cartoon characters of the 20th century, although generations apart.

Plot

In Life Lessons, written by Richard Price, Nick Nolte plays Lionel Dobie, an acclaimed abstract painter who is unable to paint before a major gallery exhibition of his new work, and Rosanna Arquette is Paulette, his apprentice/assistant and former lover. Lionel is still infatuated with her, but Paulette wants only his tutelage, which makes things difficult since they live in the same studio-loft, where most of the action in the movie takes place. While Lionel procrastinates, unable to complete the paintings that are scheduled for an upcoming solo exhibition of his, Paulette dates other people, including a comedian played by Steve Buscemi and a painter played by Jesse Borrego.

These deliberate provocations on Paulette's part causes Lionel to get insanely jealous—and fuels his creativity. Both Lionel and Paulette, it becomes clear, have been using each other: Lionel using her sexually, Paulette using him as a means of entree to the higher spheres of the New York social and art scene. But now that their relationship is no longer sexual, Paulette wants to leave the mess that has become her life and move back in with her parents. Lionel, however, convinces her to stay because New York is where a painter needs to be, even though it is unclear whether Paulette is even a particularly good painter. She tries to get his honest opinion of her work and he says it has potential, but she is unsure if he is just leading her on so that she will stay with him. Throughout this turmoil in their relationship, Lionel paints as never before, his "painter's block" broken wide open. Eventually, she leaves when she has had enough, but not before Lionel is on his way to completing all the paintings he needs for his exhibit.

As he is completing the final piece, Lionel suddenly realizes that he needs the emotional turmoil of his destructive relationships in order to fuel his art—without the one, he can't produce the other. In the last scene, while at the art exhibit, where his new work is declared to be masterful, Lionel meets another attractive young woman who is a struggling painter—by the end of the gallery opening, he has convinced her to become his assistant, and potentially his lover, beginning the cycle anew.

Life Without Zoe is about an heiress Zoe (Heather McComb) helping to return to an Arab queen a valuable piece of jewelry that was given to her father (Giancarlo Giannini). At the same time she spends time trying to reunite her divorced mother, a photographer (Talia Shire), and father, a flutist. The lush cinematography and sumptuous sets and art direction are the main features of this film, which presents a fairy-tale New York where even the homeless people are characters.

Oedipus Wrecks is about a New York lawyer Sheldon (Woody Allen), who has problems with his overly critical Jewish mother (Mae Questel). He takes his fiancé, Lisa (Mia Farrow), to meet his mother and she disapproves. The three of them as well as Lisa's children from a previous marriage try to get to know each other better by going to a magic show. At the magic show, his mother is invited to be a part of the act. She is put in a box that has swords stuck through it and she disappears like she is supposed to, but then she never reappears. This turns out to be great for Sheldon because, with her out of his life, he can finally relax. But soon his mother reappears in the sky over New York City.

She annoys Sheldon and Lisa by constantly talking to strangers about embarrassing moments. This puts a strain on his relationship with Lisa and she separates from him. Sheldon is convinced by his psychiatrist to see a psychic, Treva (Julie Kavner), to try to get his mother back to reality. Treva's experiments don't work but Sheldon falls for her because she is very similar to his mother (see Oedipus complex). When he introduces Treva to his mother, she finally approves of his girlfriend, and decides to come back to Earth.

Short films gallery

Scorsese's Life Lessons

Coppola's Life without Zoe

Allen's Oedipus Wrecks

External links

• New York Stories at the Internet Movie Database
• New York Stories Blog - The stories of everyday New York City.

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