I just caught the ending of Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) on TCM. Here it is:
Note that between 0:20-0:36, Audrey Hepburn’s character, Holly Golightly, runs through the rain on the sidewalks of NYC. And that made me wonder how many movies have that same type of scene. There’s When Harry Met Sally (1989) between 2:35-3:48 of this clip:
There’s Manhattan (1979) between 7:18-8:46 of this clip:
Of course, those are scenes where the running is inspired by a character’s sudden realization that they are in love with another character and they have to race from Point A to Point B in order to beat the clock, or potentially lose their lover. But there are other types of running through the streets of NYC scenes that don’t involve romance like Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) between 7:05-7:42 of this clip:
And there are more. Doesn’t Marathon Man have a scene with Hoffman (again) running in NYC?
So what gives? Why all these scenes running in NYC?
Perhaps more than any other American city, the normal pace of life in NY is past. Most days in Manhattan there isn't a whole lot of strolling going on. People tend to move pretty quickly. If you're making a movie and need to step things up a bit, then you've got to have some running, but that's just my take on things.
Oh and you left out Miss Piggy running through Central Park in Muppets Take Manhattan.
Hi Scott
quick tip. You can "deep link" into a specific point in youtube videos by appending "#t=2m30s" to the URL. So to start the Manhattan video at 7m 18s the link becomes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXgnXrQtm5I#t=7m18s
@terraling: Does that work for embeds as well?
Not sure but whatever code you use to embed a video, manually tack the #t tag onto the end and it should work.