From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to The Treatment.

The show can also be here to KCRW.com.

Martin Scorsese is said about New York in the book,

scenes from the city filmmaking in New York, that the city has become the great studio. It's a

contribution to a great Q&A that begins the book, an amazing compilations of portraits and still

photographs from movies shot New York, basically from the 50s until the present day, the editor

and the conceiver of the book, James Sanders, architect, who you may also know from the book, Celluloid Skyline, is also here. James, thanks for being here. Well, thank you for having me here. Tell me how this book came to you.

This was something that I was asked by the New York City Mayor's office of film theater and broadcasting to work on.

And you talk about basically the creation of the mayor's office, which started in 1965, year in which you mentioned in the book, 11 films were shot here, only two which were substantially shot in New York.

And by the end of John Lindsay's term as mayor, that it grown by over several hundred.

That's right.

It's really because of Mayor John Lindsay, who's remembered in kind of mixed ways nowadays,

but one of his signal accomplishments of his administration was the creation of this mayor's office for film production,

which was, most people don't realize, the first film commission in the world.

Now, everywhere it's got a film commission. Tasmania has a film commission, and Singapore has a film commission,

and certainly every state in the union has one in many, many, many cities.

But it was a radical new idea that there would be a government agency who would make it its business to help filmmakers

shoot on the streets of their cities and territories.

And until then, they'd really made it as hard as possible.

But there's a, the story that Delbert Mann tells about shooting Mr. Budwing here, where

he basically ran there's so much red tape.

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