New York City quite possibly the greatest city in the world. Anything can happen to anyone and that reality is pure magic. In the new short film Song of My City, filmmaker David C. Roberts captures that magic through a collection of video clips from classic movies set in the great burg made during the 1970s and 1980s. Gritty, raw, and absolutely beautiful, Roberts takes us on a trip through NYC like no other. I recently had the opportunity to ask Roberts about his wonderful short, how it came to be, and what he hopes the stunning film achieves.

WHAT WAS THE INITIAL SPARK THAT MADE YOU WANT TO MAKE THIS FILM?

This film is an attempt to capture the NY I grew up imagining. As a kid in Alabama, I had never set foot in the City or was even alive in the ’70s, but I knew its gritty streets through the lens of Scorsese, Lumet and others. Now, living with incurable cancer and finally in the city of my dreams, I wanted to create a city symphony to remind me why I fell in love with NY in the first place.

HOW DID YOU GO ABOUT SELECTING THE BITS OF B-ROLL?

I started with about 20 films that I grew up with and that best represented the gritty 70s NY I was trying to capture – Taxi Driver, Dog Day Afternoon, Mean Streets, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three etc. I focused only on the scene-setting shots. As the project evolved, my genius editor John Sears and I kept accreting more films and more shots as we searched for what we needed to tell a day-in-the-life story of this mythical city.

WHAT WAS THE EDITING PROCESS LIKE?

John is a dear friend and a longtime collaborator, and we have developed a working rhythm that moves between intense work and long pauses.  Once the idea was set, I brought John a day-in-the-life structure, a rough list of clips organized loosely into chapters, and  an early musical idea based on Steve Reich’s Drumming. John was living in southern France for most of the edit, while I was in NY. Neither of us was working on it full-time initially, which oddly helped. We were able to step away, come back, and rethink the structure repeatedly without forcing it.   

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE MOMENT IN THE FILM?

One moment that stands out is when the camera floats under the bridge at sunrise to the opening notes of “Sunday Morning” by the Velvet Underground.  To me, that transition felt like an exhale following the intense night chapter.

HOW DID YOU GO ABOUT PICKING THE MUSIC IN THE FILM?

The music evolved over several months, and we struggled mightily with it. Though we crashed and burned with the initial Steven Reich idea, we continued to explore percussion-driven NY pieces, which is how we found the Philip Glass steel-drum song and that ‘70s Gene Krupa performance.  John then had the inspired idea to introduce a pop song (I believe he first tried a Paul Simon one), which ultimately opened up the film in an important way.  The Velvet Underground immediately came to mind since that was the band I most associated with my NY ever since I was a kid, and “Sunday Morning” was perfect for that chapter. 

WHAT WERE SOME CHALLENGES YOU FACED DURING PRODUCTION?

With this project, it was not at all clear that we could arrive at something coherent, and we went down many dead ends. We were also each going through difficult periods at the time (including my recent diagnosis and treatment) and the film became a place where we could focus our creative energies.

WHAT DO YOU HOPE AUDIENCES TAKE AWAY FROM THIS FILM?

This was primarily a personal project. My main motivation was to try to create a memory of a dream. Of course I do hope people enjoy watching it, and that they experience some of the same magic as I did.

HAVE YOU THOUGHT ABOUT DOING FILMS LIKE THIS ABOUT OTHER CITIES?

Briefly, I see this film as coming from two different lineages. First, Song of My City was inspired by the found footage works of Thom Andersen’s Los Angeles Plays Itself, Guy Maddin’s The Green Fog and Christian Marclay’s The Clock. It was films like these that made me want to become a filmmaker in the first place.  

Second, the City Symphonies of the 1920s, specifically the Berlin one, inspired the day-in-the-life structure of the film, but instead of using documentary footage, we’ve used B-roll from Hollywood movies.

I am considering doing another film in the same vein (esp after a recent conversation with Guy Maddin that will hopefully be published soon), though as I mentioned earlier, NY has special significance for me. 

HOW CAN PEOPLE SEE SONG OF MY CITY?

The film is currently streaming on HBO Max and will premiere on Turner Classic Movies on January 21 alongside several of the films from which we sourced clips.

ARE YOU CURRENTLY WORKING ON ANY OTHER PROJECTS THAT YOU CAN TALK ABOUT?

John and I are playing with another experimental film now. Like this one, it is unclear whether a finished film will ultimately emerge, which is part of the excitement. Beyond that, I have a children’s book coming out in the fall of 2026 about a father talking with his young son about cancer, recently wrote a play based on the sinking of a cargo ship, am working on another article, etc.  It seems my creative work often needs a few lightning strikes to come into being, so I tend to keep a lot of things in motion at once.