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I have an ongoing love affair with New York, the city that formed me. I was born here, and though I’ve left occasionally, it was never for very long. The pace, color, and excitement of this amazing town always drew me back like a magnet, and holds me still. No surprise then that I love experiencing the potent nostalgia of great films that recall the New York City of my early years.

I will always remember the pure exhilaration I felt watching Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” for the first time in a theater thirty years ago. The memory is so clear of first realizing that I was experiencing an extraordinary piece of filmmaking, deliriously entertaining but also completely fresh and unique. What made “Pulp” so exciting and distinctive?

Cheap knockoffs are usually pretty easy to spot in real life. Buying a purse for my wife once in Chinatown, I asked, “is this a REAL Coach bag?” The vendor produced a hot glue gun and a Coach emblem and said, “It will be when you buy it.”  This kind of thing shouldn’t surprise us — in movies, it happens all the time. For those who don’t already know, Hollywood’s unspoken mantra is: “If it works, buy it or steal it!” This means that studios pilfer from successful foreign films all the time, and have for years. After all, as more than one sage has noted, there are no new stories, only new ways to tell them... Sometimes it’s just plotlines that get recycled. Example: observe how certain scenes in Akira Kurosawa’s “The Hidden Fortress” (1958) resemble a little movie called “Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope” (1977).

Over the years, some film directors have had their own so-called stock companies. We’re not talking Wall Street stocks, folks, but rather groups of actors they felt so comfortable working with that they cast them in their projects time and again. The great John Ford’s stable of thespians was perhaps the biggest and most prolific in Hollywood history. In fact, some of its members appeared in the iconic director’s films over twenty times; bit player Jack Pennick worked with the filmmaker a whopping 41 times, although several of his roles were uncredited. Of course, starting in the forties, John Wayne was Ford’s favorite star. “The Duke,” who also had an abiding off-screen friendship with “Pappy” Ford, could be seen in 24 Ford enterprises, all starring roles in some of Ford’s most iconic work (you can see some of these movie titles at the end of this article).

With the gradual passing of opening movie credits, we also lost a vital element that distinguishes many so-called “classic” movies: the original music score, including a heroic, memorable opening theme. What’s the last film you remember that had a score you could hum while walking home from the theater — a piece of music you knew you'd always remember and associate with the film?

If you’re a fellow jazz lover, you probably look on Duke Ellington, born 115 years ago today, with awe. With a career spanning over half a century, Duke’s impact on jazz was incalculable. He not only played the piano with the deceptive ease and fluency Astaire brought to dancing, he led the best band in the business. He was a genius, and impossibly cool to boot. How so? Beyond the music, Duke was elegance personified in a still highly segregated world. He was his generation’s Marvin Gaye, exuding a powerful sexual charisma that made him irresistible to women, regardless of race. His personal life was predictably chaotic as a result, but it seems as though everyone in Duke’s life understood: it was all about the music. By the 1950s, his popularity was flagging a bit stateside. Most big band acts were folding, making way for “hipper” musicians like Miles Davis and Chet Baker. That all changed with his performance at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival, when the Duke Ellington Orchestra caught fire and created something as close to perfection as you’re likely to hear. The lucky crowd was so enthralled that thousands of people “spontaneously started jitterbugging… hundreds of fans climbed on their seats [to cheer].” When their set ended, the crowd refused to disperse, screaming until Duke returned to the stage to placate the mob with more music. It’s a night that no one wanted to end.