Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Bronx, USA’ On HBO, A Mostly Joyous Documentary About New York’s Most Misunderstood Borough

What do you know about The Bronx? Maybe you read The Bronx Is Burning, about the ’70s Yankees that talked about the South Bronx’s crumbling, abandoned buildings. Or you saw a documentary about the origins of hip hop that grew out of that decade’s difficulties. But you’ve likely seen very few documentaries about growing up there, or what life is like there now. Thanks to Hollywood business legend George Shapiro, now there is one such film. Read on about The Bronx, USA…

THE BRONX, USA: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: George Shapiro, one of Hollywood’s leading producers and talent managers — among his many clients, perhaps his most famous is Jerry Seinfeld — grew up in the Bronx in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s. While he goes back periodically, he hadn’t really gotten a good look at his home borough for a number of years. But when his business partner and old Bronx buddy Howard West passed away, he decided to go back to the old neighborhood and really take a look to see how much has changed — and how much is the same.

The Bronx, USA is a paean to New York City’s most misunderstood borough. Shapiro produced the film, along with its director, Danny Gold. It’s a look at the Bronx of Shapiro’s youth, as he visits with a number of old friends and takes a look at the building where he grew up, the old neighborhood, some of the stores where he and his friends used to hang out, his old elementary school, and DeWitt Clinton High School.

There are other interviews with Bronx natives and their buddies. There’s comedian Robert Klein, who also helps Donald Webber, Jr. perform the movie’s joyous theme song, “Da Bronx”, written by Paul Williams and Bronx native Charles Fox. Arlene Alda, who lived in the Allterton Avenue neighborhood, is interviewed with her husband Alan; they met while Alan was attending Fordham. Chazz Palminteri is interviewed (of course), and we see him shopping on Arthur Avenue with his friend Phil Foglia. We also hear from Bronx natives Carl and Rob Reiner, Hal Linden, Melissa Manchester, Colin Powell, Steve Jordan, Grandmaster Mellie Mel, Ced Gee and more.

We also hear from a friend group who are also 2017 graduates of DeWitt Clinton, to show that, while the concept of a “neighborhood” is different nowadays — it’s no longer the village-like vibe that Rob Reiner experienced — the bonds between friends in the extremely diverse borough remain strong. All are college-bound and have ambitions. Danielle, the student body president, is trying to keep up her responsibilities to her class and graduation while she and her mom are being evicted. Her friend Estefany is from an immigrant family and is the first to go to college, and is feeling tons of pressure to achieve. Richeal has to help care for her brother and sister, twins who are under two years old. Javid loves music, and wants to see if he can make a career out of it.

The group of graduates meet Shapiro and his friends at Dewitt Clinton and find they have more in common than they thought; they all know the school fight song, and the old guys’ experiences growing up as first or second generation Americans struggling but having fun speaks to their experience.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Documentaries about New York are abundant, but the only ones we’ve seen of The Bronx tend to either be about the Yankees or how the borough, especially the South Bronx, crumbled in the ’70s and ’80s. So Shapiro’s love letter to his hometown is a rare sight.

Performance Worth Watching: It was amazing to us that Danielle was under so much pressure, balancing her responsibilities as student body president with her studies and the issues she has at home, but handling it well, at least on camera. She feels she’ll have made it when she finds a stable place to live “or at least be in a situation where I can help my mom.”

Memorable Dialogue: One of Shapiro’s “Bronx Boys,” Carl Golub, tells the current students, “Life is unfair… get over it!” Danielle loved that so much that she used it in her graduation speech. It was wonderful to see how much the kids listened to George and his buddies and didn’t just dismiss them as old farts who were trying to give them advice.

Our Take: I have a personal connection to the Bronx — as Rob Reiner points out, the only borough with “The” in front of it. My parents were born there and my father grew up there — not far from another Bronx native, Al Pacino. And after my grandfather died, my grandmother moved to the same Barnes Avenue apartment building Arlene Alda grew up in (albeit a decade or so after Arlene left). So seeing the memories that Shapiro, and especially folks like Powell, Klein and Fox, who are right around my parents’ age, gave me some insight into what their experiences were back in the ’40s and ’50s.

Because of this connection, I know that the Bronx is about more than a zoo, Yankee Stadium and abandoned buildings. In the northern part of the borough, the place is damn near suburban and woodsy. The aim of The Bronx, USA is to show people the Bronx that the borough’s natives know, the diverse, community-minded borough that has a warmth and inclusiveness about it, despite its tough reputation. There’s a reason why salsa, doo wop and hip hop all began in the borough; the music was a creative outlet for people who may not have had a lot of money but had friends, ambition and desire.

There is a brief interlude explaining the borough’s problems that started in the late ’60s and continued into the ’80s, with drugs, gangs, and burned-out buildings. But the reason why that interlude is there is to explain the origins of hip hop, which was a way for teens and young adults to direct their energies and creative energy, with rhymes that talked more about partying than the tough times.

I was also heartened by the fact that Shapiro just didn’t want to go down memory lane in this documentary. Sure, there’s plenty of that, and a scene where George and Carl go back to their elementary school (now a middle school) to teach some kids stickball smacked of “in my day” material that the movie to that point tried to avoid. It was sad to know that those kids had no idea what stickball was, but fun to see them get into it once they split into teams and actually started playing. What was most appreciated was that Shapiro was just as interested in seeing what the Bronx was like for kids today as much as he was about reminiscing with his fellow “Bronx Boys”.

Could the documentary have dived more into those tough times? Maybe, but like I mentioned earlier, we’ve seen plenty about those times. We didn’t need to see another shot of Jimmy Carter touring rubble-filled streets in the South Bronx. So hearing about the bonds that were created in the 20th century, compared to the bonds created by the teens who are firmly living in the 21st, gave me chills, as did the joyous theme song sung by Klein and Webber. But maybe we’re a bit biased.

Our Call: STREAM IT. If you want to know about a part of New York City that’s rarely talked about, there are few movies that will talk about The Bronx with more joy than The Bronx, USA.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, FastCompany.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream The Bronx, USA On HBO Go

Stream The Bronx, USA On HBO Now