Some excerpts from interviews in the film
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“We’d
pass Patchen Place and say ‘that’s where e.e. Cummins used
to live. And there were rumors that Dos Passos had passed through here
and William Faulkner. And the Village meant to us a place where writers
who were freer in spirit congregated”
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“So
many authors I loved – especially the poets – had connections
with Greenwich Village. And when I got to the Village I felt like Brer
Rabbit in the briar patch…I thought home at last, home at last.”
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“What
astonishes me about growing up in Greenwich Village is that I’d
be walking down the street with my baseball glove going to play softball,
and I’d be walking next to Allen Ginsberg or Bob Dylan. I was in
the middle of this genius and these gems of personalities and these gems
of creativity.”
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“In
1950 I was playing with Charlie Parker at Café Society on Sheridan
Square opposite Art Tatum, one of the greatest pianists of all times.
Billie Holiday even sang with us. And it was such a great feeling being
in Greenwich Village and Café Society and the whole thing.”
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“I
dare say that lots of things that occurred in my plays happened as a result
of wandering around the Village. I used to walk for hours all over the
Village.”
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“It
was a crazy scene in the Village. There was anything. There was everything”
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| “The
Stonewall was the bar that gay kids danced at in the Village. It was the
only place you could find people like yourself. It was the only place where
you could feel like a family. It was because of the Stonewall riots that
gay youth decided to organize” Danny Garvin, gay activist |
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