Reel Brooklyn: The Landlord, Park Slope

Reel Brooklyn is a biweekly column chronicling the definitive history of Brooklyn on-screen, one film—and neighborhood—at a time.
After years of faking it, Hollywood came east in the 60s and 70s, and discovered New York, landing into neighborhoods like Park Slope—in Hal Ashby’s funky, saber-toothed debut comedy The Landlord (1970)—as though exploring the uncharted interior of Borneo. Raw-boned, ethnic, shot-right-there realism was suddenly movies’ lingua fran