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Alison Stewart
This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart and to close out our show today, we're going to talk about a film called Drop Dead City New York on the brink in 1975, which takes us behind the scenes of a historic moment about 50 years ago when the city of New York almost, almost went bankrupt. It takes U.S. back to 1975, when Mayor Abe Beam announced that the city was in massive debt, debt it seemed unable to repay. Cuts were made to the police and fire department, sanitation workers went on strike, and trash piled up on the sidewalks. Cops handed out pamphlets to tourists declaring New York Fear City. With the threat of bankruptcy looming, Mayor Beam appealed to Governor Hugh Carey and President Gerald Ford for help. As government officials and bankers gathered together to try to find a solution, ordinary New Yorkers were worried about who would bear the brunt of the consequences. The documentary tells the story of this tumultuous year in our city's history, and one of the film's directors has a personal connection to the story. Michael Rohaten's father, Felix Rohatin, was chairman of the Municipal Assistant Corporation Forum to Help Save the City. I talked with him and his co director Peter Yost, when the film was featured at last year's DOC NYC Festival.
Show Host
But since this year marks the 50th anniversary of that iconic Drop Dead headline.
Alison Stewart
We wanted to revisit it today.
Show Host
And we originally took some calls for the conversation. But since this is an encore presentation, we won't be able to take your calls today. I started by asking Peter why they felt like that historic moment in New York City still has residents today.
Peter Yost
Well, in the most obvious and perhaps least interesting sense, it's the 50th anniversary of all of this chaos. So this was 74, 75, and here we are 50 years later. So you do have that hook. And it is an anniversary and time to look back. But In a deeper sense, I think there's a lot of present day resonance with what we're seeing today. This was a time where really the core of the movie and the core of this issue to our mind has to do with the kind of deep question of what does a society owe its people? And there's kind of a moment in the middle of the film where Milton Friedman, the kind of free market economist of the time, kind of collides with a more progressive lefty economist, Walter Heller, who's not as remembered. And they're really arguing over that exact question. Should the government be there to help people and lift them up, or should they get out of the way in a Reagan nomic sense and let people pull themselves up? And that question was really playing out on the streets of New York in a very vivid and even entertaining way. It sounds kind of wonky. And I think these are deep and important issues that have resonance today, as we all know, as we're debating versions of the same hourly at the moment. But we went out of our way and spent honestly many years making this film to try to get at those questions, but to do it in an entertaining way that really brings alive the characters of the street, the character of the city, and makes it vivid and fun for people, rather than necessarily a didactic policy examination. That said, at the core, I think, are some really important and relevant issues.
Show Host
So your father was a key player, Michael, in this story. What do you remember about that time?
Michael Rohatin
I remember all of it. I mean, it actually struck me the other day that I was 12 and it was completely a vivid, important event for me as, you know, a kid. I understood that there was drama. I understood that there were these sort of big personalities, big issues, big, big stakes. And the city was a vivid playground for a 12 year old in those days. So I remember, you know, a ton of it.
Show Host
You have tons of news coverage. Peter, what was the tone of the news coverage about the 1975 fiscal crisis?
Peter Yost
It's a great question, I think. Well, first of all, apart from tone, and I will answer that in one moment, what was striking from a filmmaking perspective was the fact that all of this stuff was shot on film. So we had that to work with. It wasn't that kind of fairly ugly 80s video stuff. This was shot on 16 millimeter by people that in many cases were really good cinematographers or camera people and were out there. The tone of it, I think, surprisingly deep. One of the things that Michael's father was so expert at was, apart from being really quite intelligent and capable at what he did. He was an amazing communicator. And he was really good at pithy sounds. Dismissive and superficial.
Alison Stewart
Thoughtful, though.
Peter Yost
Yeah. But he could come up with phrases to take the most. This was an incredibly complicated thing. It involved unions, it involved, you know, taxes. It involved all kinds of even, you know, very wonky financial questions. But he could simplify it for reporters or at least convey it in an understandable way. And I think the reporters were local, of course, because New York is a news capital. And so they had a vested interest, they had a personal interest, and they had a real depth of understanding that not to slight all of the colleagues in the media today, but is relatively rare, shall we say. And so I think one looks back at these things and there were deep substantive discussions on beautiful 16 millimeter footage with people with crazy hairstyles and crazy shirts, bringing alive the stuff that we just had to kind of make the movie about.
Alison Stewart
Michael, what's a piece of archival footage.
Show Host
That you were excited to have rediscovered?
Michael Rohatin
Oh, my God. That is very hard. You should have sent that one earlier. Gosh, I just don't even know. I mean, the hardest part of the film was cutting out, you know, the archive that we would not use in favor of these beautiful little bits that we wound up being able to use. We had about 150 hours of archive that we looked at. And I'm gonna have to pass on that. I want the viewer to choose, and I don't want to influence them. So, you know.
Alison Stewart
Gonna pass.
Michael Rohatin
I'm gonna pass. It's a pass.
Alison Stewart
I'm sorry, Peter.
Show Host
Let's talk about the basics. Why had the financial situation gotten so bad in New York City for people who don't remember?
Peter Yost
It's ultimately, they were spending more than they had, which sounds ridiculous, but it's true. It is true. And as those will see, and I can't use an expletive on the radio, but as they discovered rather early in this process and early in our film and our telling of it, there blanking books, literally, there were papers all over. There were unbalanced checks. There was no real sense of that what was coming in had anything to do with what was going out in terms of spending. And then we delved down because we couldn't resist ourselves a little more wonkily into the weeds of how that actually happened. But it's true. There were overflowing closets. There were unbalanced checkbooks. It was like the worst time in one's own life or the person, you know, who can't get their crap together and balance their own checkbook. But it was across the city. And then there were mechanisms for how that happened, which included bond sales where they borrowed for capital expenses to build. Usually one would do that and keep them separate. But if they were doing a big thing like a road or a bridge or that sort of thing, they actually would take that money and then just spend it for the yearly ongoing expenses of the city, basically, instead of putting that aside for what it was intended to be used for. So they just dug themselves into a massive hole and nobody. But if you don't really measure that, you're not in the hole. Right. And how that was discovered and what happened is essentially the thrust of the film.
Show Host
Yeah. One of my favorite scenes, and this is what I wanted to ask you about, there's a scene at the swearing in of Abe Beam, and it shows John Lindsay for just a minute, and he kind of looks over sheepishly like.
Michael Rohatin
So glad you caught that. I hope they don't look so glad you caught that.
Show Host
Did Lindsey and the others know what they were leaving Mayor Beam with?
Michael Rohatin
I think so. I mean, it was a collision of so many events. There was a huge population shift. There was a recession from the oil shock. There was terrible accounting. There was a lot of cynicism in Washington about how to leverage New York's problems. It was, among other things, the beginning of the culture wars, the demonizing of the coastal elites. It started here. Ford and Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney found this a very useful club to hit, you know, the liberal establishment over the head with. So. And Nelson Rockefeller, who also we kind of focused on his role over Lindsay. There are many who, you know who played a hand in this. But had Lindsey not, had Nelson Rockefeller as governor, and he would not have been able to spend as freely as he did. And Nelson Rockefeller was incredibly ambitious with his building. Incredibly. Like a conservative liberal, like something that does not exist anymore. Was Vice President Deford briefly and immediately thrown out in favor of Bob Dole. And anyway, I'm getting carried away with that part of it, but I find that also to be kind of compelling. The turn inward towards Kansas, towards the middle States. And let's clobber New York and the New York Times with this kind of thing. I want to answer one thing, though, that you just asked me before, which is what's my favorite footage? The man on the street stuff, to me is just sublime. The people that are interviewed are so candid and so honest and so un. Not. They're just uncynical. They're not used to being recorded and they're very pure and great. Just, I love that stuff.
Show Host
So the accents, what happened to New York accents?
Michael Rohatin
I know, exactly. Incredible.
Show Host
My guests are Michael Roatan and Peter Yost.
Alison Stewart
The name of the film is Drop Dead City. New York on the brink in 1975. Let's talk to Pat from Springfield, New Jersey. Hi, Pat.
Caller Pat from Springfield, NJ
Hey, folks. Just. I was a student, I was 15, 16 years old. And I just remember there are 60 kids in my homeroom in 1975 maybe that we just jammed in. But I was telling the screeners that at no point in my life had I ever been more proud of being a New Yorker that the teachers, God bless them, came in, you know, in, in like, you know, with war, with, with war paint, saying, we're New Yorkers, whatever this is right now, we're gonna get through. And we just kind of shuffled and went through it all. The thing I remember most. And no, I. I can't wait to see the film. HBO did a thing recently called the Deuce, which was, you know, the worst of the 70s and stuff. And my son in law asked me, hey, was the city really that dir. Set decorators went crazy on it. I said he couldn't even come close to what it was really like then. But yeah, it was, it was a tough time. But again, that man in the street thing, the sense of camaraderie and people, you know, city knew if it was going to happen, we weren't going to. It was going to be us and nobody else.
Show Host
Thanks so much for calling.
Michael Rohatin
Totally agree.
Show Host
Yeah, let's talk to Alicia from Queens. Hi, Alicia, thanks for calling all of it.
Caller Alicia from Queens
Hi, how are you doing?
Show Host
Doing okay.
Caller Alicia from Queens
Well, I was a police officer at the time and I was working as a white shield detective in the detective bureau going towards my, you know, detective shield. When I got laid off first. It was the first time they'd ever done anything like that in the history of the police department. And the, the city tried to get some jobs in the transit and other places where they had some openings. And I did work for transit on the midnights for, for a couple of months. And I decided I didn't want to do that. So I just stayed home and you know, about a year later they called me back and you know, they hired some people back slowly. And the thing was, I could not go back into detective bureau. I had to start all over from the beginning again, going back on patrol and, you know, working my way back into the detective bureau. So I wrote all kinds of letters to see if I could get my job back, but it didn't work.
Alison Stewart
Wow. Thank you so much for sharing your story, Alicia. Yeah. Let's talk about the strikes. What roles did the major unions play.
Show Host
In the city's crisis?
Michael Rohatin
Well, I mean, absolutely central. The city had this enormous municipal workforce. The municipal unions were their own category of unions. There's the steelworker's union, there's the teamsters union, but there were also the transit worker union. There was the sanitation workers union, the fire, the police. And the consequences of a failure for the city, of a bankruptcy for. For the city was immediate for them. They would all. I mean, arguably if the city went into receivership, which was discussed, was a theoretical possibility, all of those union contracts would be nullified and would have to be renegotiated. That would be the end of collective bargaining and essentially the end of unionism for that category of unions. I hope I'm getting this right. Maybe a caller will call me out on it. But I think that that's it in broad strokes. The unions then. So they were on the. The very first to suffer layoffs. They fought with each other about the layoffs. They tried to negotiate separate deals with city hall. We had a mayor, Mayor Beam, who was not, did not want to do any of this. He was an old fashioned liberal. His idea was to employ people, not to fire them. He hated it. He tried to sort of, you know, even the accounting for the layoffs was kind of sketchy. They sort of would lay people off and then they would hire them back. You know, and the banks who are the. After all, you know, you better convince them. They were very unconvinced. Eventually though, the unions to just bring it back around. The unions really saved the city. They invested in the bonds. These were risky bonds. These were, this was the pension money of the unions. And it was in a very existential way. It was for their own sakes, but they completely stepped in and saved the city.
Show Host
I wanted to concentrate on the sanitation union and the police union. I'm with Peter. I remember it just being gross for a little while. It was really bad when they went on strike. Tell us a little bit more about the sanitation union.
Peter Yost
Sure. Well, I mean, as Michael said, these unions, well, at the time, they were essentially all population, all powerful, and as the caller mentioned, they couldn't believe as a police person that they would be laid off. And that was true pretty much across the board. The sanitation union didn't take this lying down, needless to say, and were fairly aggressive. And as the footage suggests, literally, in your face about it, they had wildcat strikes, which essentially, in the summer, meant leaving the stuff on the street indefinitely.
Michael Rohatin
30,000 tons a day.
Peter Yost
Yeah, 30,000 tons in July. Right.
Show Host
I remember.
Peter Yost
Yeah. And that's called leverage. But. And there were things like this that were all over. We do, you know, largely forgotten little moments like, oh, yeah, New York City actually does have drawbridges to get in and out of parts of the city. So all it took was literally a handful of drawbridge operators to go on strike with the bridges up, with the bridges up and walk away and take, quote, unquote, a long lunch break. And the city is essentially paralyzed. So the leverage points, if one thinks about it, you know, there are all kinds of ways that we, of course, cooperate as a collective. New York is beautiful in many, many ways, and it's a metaphor and it's a reality of kind of collective craziness. But if somebody wants to mess with it, they really can. And the unions at that point had a lot of leverage. But ultimately, the story, and Michael's father was key part of this. It's really also a story of coming together. And I think that's a resonance for today, too, at a time where, needless to say, two people of opposing ideology seemingly can't be within 100 miles of each other. This was a time, for better or worse. And, yeah, people came to negotiation sessions, as we see in the film, with guns. You know, it wasn't soft and it wasn't cuddly, but it was effective. It was in your face, in the New York way. But people of differing perspectives and different politics and different economic interests, bankers, unions, you know, teachers, garbage, everybody, government people across the board had to get in the room and come up with a solution. And that's ultimately the story of the film. And I think that is kind of the takeaway from this. It was going over a cliff, and we all pulled together. And just to go back to the first caller's sense of that, he has a memory of the time that's still kind of warm and affirming. I think it probably comes from that. It's a little bit like war, in a sense, not to make light of it, but you're in a foxhole together and you get it done.
Michael Rohatin
I just want to add to that that there was also an enormous amount of population flight in those days. One of the key factors that precipitated this, the loss of tax revenue. And it's really fair to say that the city was left to fend for itself with the people who remained. And those people are not polite to each other and they are disputatious and there are many interests. And it was extremely far fetched to imagine that group of people in the pressure of a decline, of a spiral could sort it out. And they did. So. Yeah.
Show Host
And our last moment, Michael, if you could ask your father Felix a question. What's a question you would have liked to ask him in a moment? Take your time.
Michael Rohatin
You ask me, you're asking me tough questions today. I would ask him if he liked the film.
Show Host
What would you want to know from Felix?
Peter Yost
From Felix, well, I'd be curious for his take, which I think would be sobering on where we are today compared to then the lack of statesmen like himself. It's not a hagiography, I should say. I mean this is not like a celebration of Michael's father, even though I'm an admirer of him and was before and even more knowing after him. But I think he and countless people in this film embodied, I think, the best side of civics. In a sense. These were people who kind of again got together and used their skills to cross their ideological lines and we should name them.
Michael Rohatin
Hugh Carey, who was the governor, a huge figure. Victor Gottbaum, Al Shanker. Victor Gottbaum, head of DC 37. Al Shanker, head of the United Teachers Federation. These were giants. And I'm not saying that in a. I mean everybody uses those kinds of words. But it's at times like this where there's everything on the line and everything is at risk that you see who really stepped forward. And those are the guys.
Alison Stewart
That was my conversation with Michael Rohatin and Peter Yost, co directors of the documentary Drop Dead New York on the Brink in 1975. It was featured at last year's DOC NYC Festival. This year's DOC NYC Festival starts tomorrow. And that is all of it for today. All of it is produced by Andrea Duncan Mao, Kate Hines, Jordan Loft, Simon Close, El Malik Anderson and Luke Green. Our intern is India Rice. Megan Ryan is the head of Live Radio. Our engineers are Juliana Fonda and Amber Bruce. Luscious Jackson does our music. If you missed any of the segments this week, catch up by listening to our podcast, available on your podcast platform of choice. If you like what you hear, please leave us a great rating. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening and I appreciate you and I will meet you back here next time.
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Host: Alison Stewart (WNYC)
Guests: Michael Rohatin & Peter Yost (Co-directors of Drop Dead City)
Date: November 11, 2025
This episode of All Of It revisits the 1975 New York City fiscal crisis—a moment when the city teetered on the brink of bankruptcy—through the lens of the new documentary, Drop Dead City: New York on the Brink in 1975. Host Alison Stewart is joined by the film’s directors, Michael Rohatin (whose father, Felix Rohatin, played a pivotal role in saving the city) and Peter Yost. The discussion explores how the crisis unfolded, its deep societal and political implications, and its enduring resonance in contemporary policy debates about what society owes its citizens.
The conversation is warm, candid, and deeply informed, blending personal anecdotes, expert insight, original audio moments, and lively listener memories. There’s a strong undercurrent of pride in New York’s resilience—and a wistfulness for an era when adversaries could still join hands for the common good.
Drop Dead City isn’t just a history lesson: it’s a meditation on civic duty, leadership, solidarity, and the ever-relevant question of public responsibility. The episode’s walk through crisis, negotiation, and survival offers inspiration and a challenge to modern audiences, urging reflection on how we meet moments of collective peril—and who steps forward when everything’s on the line.