The Real Goodfella TV - Adam Curtis TV - New York: World’s Richest City TV - Rob Bell TV -
Twenty years ago Martin Scorsese made a movie about my life … Drugs was my downfall … I’m Henry Hill, the real Goodfella. The Real Goodfella, National Geographic 2017
I started hanging out with mobsters when I was ten, eleven years old. ibid.
I started dealing weight in marijuana and I started dabbling in cocaine too. ibid.
If Pauli had found out, no-one could have saved us … In a matter of weeks I became addicted to it [heroin]. ibid.
Wiseguys don’t talk like that with those corny lines, only cops do. ibid.
In 1988 a judge removed Henry from prison for his own safety. He served the remainder of his sentence in rehab. ibid.
In 1975 New York City was on the verge of collapse. For 30 years the politicians who ran the city had borrowed more and more money from the banks to pay for its growing services and welfare. By in the early ’70s the middle classes fled from the city, and taxes they paid disappeared with them. So the banks lent the city even more. But then they began to get worried about the size of the growing debt. Adam Curtis, HyperNormalisation, BBC 2016
Out of eight members, nine of them were bankers … The financial institutions took power away from the politicians and started to run society themselves. The city had no other option. The bankers enforced what was called austerity on the city … To them there was no alternative to this system: it should run society. ibid.
No-one opposed the bankers. ibid.
The rise of a new powerful individualism that could not fit with the idea of collective political action … ‘the revolution was deferred indefinitely.’ ibid.
Trump started to buy up derelict buildings in New York, and he announced he was going to transform them into luxury hotels and apartments. But in return he negotiated the biggest tax break in New York’s history worth $160 million. The city had to agree because they were desperate. And the banks seeing a new opportunity also started to lend him money. And Donald Trump began to transform New York into a city for the rich, while he paid practically nothing. ibid.
New York: the city that never sleeps. It’s home to some of the biggest, the richest, the busiest places and people on the planet. New York: World’s Richest City, Channel 5 2022
One of the most expensive places to live on the planet, with the average house price in Manhattan reaching around one million dollars. ibid.
We shadow the stressed out staff in Grand Central Station as they face line delays and a major incident. New York: World’s Richest City s1e2
The New York Sanitation Department: It’s the busiest garbage collection department on Earth with over 7,000 uniformed workers and 2,000 garbage trucks. ibid.
An estimated two million rodents call the Big Apple home. ibid.
In New York City bigger is always better. And for cabbie Solomon, one of its eight million residents, it’s the towering buildings that make the city so distinctive. New York: World’s Richest City s1e3
Empire State Building: at 443 metres high with 102 floors and 73 lifts, this world-famous landmark is so big, it even has its own postcode. ibid.
The Brooklyn Bridge 1883: Rising 276 feet above the water it stretches 5,989 feet from end to end. Four massive cables hold up a suspended central span of 1,595 feet and 6 inches. When the bridge opened in 1883 it was the longest suspension bridge in the world. Rob Bell, World’s Greatest Bridges s2e4: Brooklyn Bridge, Channel 5 2017
Ohio 1866: The John A Roebling Suspension bridge. ibid.
It [Brooklyn] shattered accepted notions about how long bridges could stretch, what they should look like and even how their built. ibid.