Pot Stickers (Jiaozi)
My Favorite Year is one of those movies I go back to again and again whenever I feel the need for the warm & fuzzy. Even though I wasn't born yet, it reminds me of the New York I grew up in.... when real New Yorkers lived there, not people who say they're from New York but are actually from Ohio (no offense to Ohioans).
In the beginning of his commentary track on the DVD, director Richard Benjamin speaks about how this kind of comedy, those writers and comedians, could only have come from Brooklyn, the Bronx, and the Lower East Side and that they "clawed their way out" of there. Both my parents grew up in Flatbush (part of Brooklyn to your out-of-towners). My grandparents never watched a baseball game after the Dodgers left to Los Angeles. Going to visit them on the weekends was a lot like the dinner Benji takes Alan Swann to in the movie (if only Rookie Carroca was there!). They had the only color television set on the block and, on Sunday evenings, all the neighbors would come over and cram into the living room to watch with us.
