Clint Eastwood Shoots ‘Sully’ on Upper West Side, Asks Jews to Move Cars on Sukkot

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By Talya Zax October 1, 2015

If you’re a car-owning Jew on the Upper West Side, beware!

Rosh Hashanah brought a shakeup over filming of the new “Ghostbusters” movie, which came to the neighborhood over the holiday. Residents on the closed-off streets were asked to move their cars during the holiday, when anyone observing it would be unable to drive. A quiet uproar followed.

Now, adding insult to injury, over the first days of Sukkot, Clint Eastwood’s “Sully” began filming, with , in the same famously Jewish area. And while Ghostbusters is about some goons who manage to destroy much of the Upper West Side — or at least cover it in marshmallow fluff — Sully is about Chelsey Sullenberger, the hero pilot who landed a damaged plane in the Hudson in 2009, capably avoiding all kinds of opportunities for destruction. You would think a film crew telling a story about a do-gooder would be interested in do-gooding itself, but perhaps not.

As a Jew hailing from Denver and St. Louis, where everyone covertly ignores the dictum of thou-shalt-not-drive—after all, getting to synagogue from most places in either city without a car takes the same amount of time as an entire Torah service—this is a foreign problem to me. None the less, what gives, New York?

It’s too easy to use Clint Eastwood quotes against him in this situation, so I’ll just say: we’ve tried being reasonable and we don’t like it. Now get out of here before we have a heart attack.

Talya Zax is the Forward’s opinion editor. Contact her at [email protected] or on Twitter, @TalyaZax.

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