TERMINAL BAR

Director :     Stefan Nadelman           

Year      :      2003                       

Hey Mister! Want a good time? Yeah? Then get your ass down to Times Square. 8th Avenue. Opposite the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Sometime before 1982 – the year the legendary Terminal Bar closed.

You’ll find good company there. Hustlers, pimps, dealers. And possibly Travis Bickle hunched at the bar staring at you.

The watering hole featured in Taxi Driver for a very good reason – it was one of New York City’s roughest and toughest spots.

The film follows the bar’s transformation from an Irish American rough house into an African American getaway before living out its final years as a gay bar – hopefully a fabulous one that catered to males of all creeds and all colours.

The director’s father, Sheldon Nadelman, was the bartender who took hordes of black-and-white pictures, capturing mugshots of former patrons that frequented the bar between 1972 and 1982.

Utilising live action and animation, Sheldon’s son, Stefan Nadelman, transformed the photo album into this award-winning short, which was distributed by Cinema 16 – the company behind some incredible DVD compilations of classic short films. Go buy them. That is unless you’re spending all your remaining dollars on seven minutes of heaven in the mens’ room cubicle.

COME TO NEW YORK… NEW YORK SHITTY.