Veteran singer-songwriter-actor Steve Earle and veteran actor-director Steve Buscemi are two individuals who would appear to have recognized one another for ages. Their work, whether or not it’s Earle’s huge catalog of songs (“Copperhead Road,” “Guitar Town”) and performing roles (“The Wire,” “Treme,” “Leaves of Grass”), or Buscemi’s formidable historical past of performing and directing (“Fargo,” “Reservoir Dogs,” “The Big Lebowski,” “The Sopranos,” “Boardwalk Empire”), shares a sure humanity, sensitivity and sensibilities.
But the 2 truly met for the primary time earlier this yr, after Buscemi was steered as a director for a brand new video for Earle’s 2007 tune “City of Immigrants,” from his New York-themed album “Washington Square Serenade.” The video is a heartfelt, full of life celebration of the polyglot melting pot that New York Metropolis has at all times been, created by two longtime residents.
Earle and Buscemi, along with a small solid of extras and technicians, had been collectively within the East Village one sunny spring afternoon in April to shoot footage for the clip, which options folks from town’s numerous ethnic teams, together with photographs of Earle strolling the streets and singing the in a number of completely different neighborhoods — additionally together with Jackson Heights in Queens, which the singer describes as “easily the most diverse neighborhood in the country” — and performing a live performance on the Gramercy Theater.
“I don’t need to go travelin’/ Open my door and the world walks in
“Livin’ in a city that never sleeps / My heart keepin’ time to a thousand beats
“Singin’ in languages I don’t speak
“Livin’ in a city of immigrants”
Whereas the tune was written round a yr after Texas-born Earle first moved to town, and it might have been topical at just about any level up to now 4 centuries, its message is exceptionally resonant now. The inspiration for the video got here final fall.
“I was walking through Chinatown on my way to drop my son off at school that morning last fall when ICE came into those court buildings downtown,” Earle, seated at Lucinda Williams’ bar within the East Village, recollects. “Activists got wind of it, and all these people in the neighborhood just kept blocking ICE out, blocking them out, until they finally gave up,” he says.
“The idea came about because [New York City Mayor Zohran] Mamdani basically said the words of this song in his [inauguration] speech: ‘New York will always be a city of immigrants.’ And I just thought, I need to try to get this song back out there.”
Additional inspiration got here just a few weeks later. “I was texting with Bruce [Springsteen], who joined Tom Morello onstage at First Avenue in Minneapolis when all that shit was going down with ICE there [in January],” he recollects. “So to a certain extent, I was shamed into it by Bruce and Morello,” he laughs. “Bruce released ‘Streets of Minneapolis,’ Tom Morello went to Minneapolis and Bruce showed up there, and I’m home in New York, like, ‘Get off your ass, Earle!’”
He initially requested his pal Ethan Hawke to direct, who was however deep within the Oscar marketing campaign for the Lorenz Hart biographical movie “Blue Moon,” after which went straight into filming a collection (he and Earle are collaborating on a unique undertaking, “I think out of guilt because he couldn’t direct the video,” Earle laughs).
Whereas neither Steve is completely clear on how they had been first related for “City of Immigrants” video, the preliminary contact took place by way of a unique pal, actor Bobby Cannavale, who starred in “Blue Moon” with Hawke and in “Boardwalk Empire” with Buscemi.
“I’m not sure exactly how it happened,” Buscemi laughs, “except that I got a text from Bobby, who knows Steve and I think knows Steve’s manager. He said, ‘They’re looking for a director for this video — I don’t know why, but I think you’d be good for it.’”
The Steves and supervisor Danny Goldberg received on a Zoom the subsequent night time, shared some concepts, and Buscemi mentioned, “OK, if it’s more of a documentary-style, guerrilla-style shoot, yeah, I can do that.”
And that’s precisely the temper of the video, a set of photos of town that can be acquainted to almost anybody who lives right here: dozens of photographs of individuals from each stroll of life, all throughout town, working, taking part in, smiling, and marching in parades and, after all, a pro-immigration demonstration earlier this yr.
“It’s his love letter to New York,” Buscemi says. “However to listen to it now, with mass deportations and ICE — I believe the which means is much more potent. And I believe it is a time the place folks must help one another and to talk out, converse up and do what we will.
“I think anybody can appreciate that song,” he concludes. “It doesn’t even need to be political. It’s just human.”
