Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

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

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.

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.

In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.

At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.

Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly. 

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.