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Man Documents Walking Every Block In NYC In Delightful New Film
By
Jen Carlson
Published Nov 21, 2018
Modified Nov 25, 2018
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The World Before Your Feet
By
Jen Carlson
Published Nov 21, 2018
Modified Nov 25, 2018
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In 2010, Matt Green decided to walk every block of every street in New York City's five boroughs, living on a $15/day budget the entire time. He originally believed the journey would take around 2.5 years, but in the end it took him closer to six years. And now, the massive project—part vision quest, part history project, part social experiment, part L-I-V-I-N'—has been distilled into a 95-minute documentary.
The finished piece—which thoughtfully covers his 8,000-mile walking tour (which he also documented online)—doesn't just highlight every corner of NYC, but the people in it, and the history hiding in plain sight. The NY Times noted, "He can locate the unmarked building in Brownsville, Brooklyn, where Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the United States; and expound on a deadly gas tank explosion in Staten Island in 1973 while passing by the present-day site."
The original plan was not to film the journey, but director Jeremy Workman reached out to Green early on, asking, "Shouldn’t I be filming your walk?" He says, "I knew it was going to be a tough sell for Matt. I immediately offered a solution that might make it easier for him to say yes: I’d do everything myself. No crew - just me and a camera. I’d be just a fly on the wall buzzing through an entire city. Somehow (I’m still shocked), Matt said okay." And then Jesse Eisenberg got on board—in the below interview he explains how Workman reached out during the editing process for some creative input, and he was immediately drawn the film and its subject.
The World Before Your Feet is now in theaters, and tonight (Wednesday, 11/21) producer Jesse Eisenberg, director Jeremy Workman, and Green himself will be on hand at screenings at Quad Cinema.
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documentary
jeremy workman
jesse eisenberg
matt green
the world before your feet
trailer
Jen Carlson
Jen Carlson is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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