My Summer Lair Chapter #198: Is Do You Have A Neighbourhood Bar?
Yo Welcome to My Summer Lair where my name isn’t Sam Malone it’s Sammy Younan and welcome a return guest: producer and director Johnny Sweet. As you can sorta maybe tell from the Sam Malone reference we’re talking about Cheers. Not the show but rather the classic bar experience.
Pull up a bar stool; I’ll activate Cliff mode: I first met and interviewed Johnny Sweet at Hot Docs 2019 for his NBA documentary Quiet Storm: The Ron Artest Story. That documentary about basketball and mental health and Queens can be seen on Showtime on Demand.
His new documentary is Last Call: The Shutdown of NYC Bars. Frasier Crane would dig it because it documents the mental health impact of the service industry lockdowns. Of course in response to the pandemic New York City—along with everywhere else—was shut down. However there is a remarkable difference in how we handled certain occupations like white collar workers like Norm and sarcastic servers like Carla.
As an accountant Norm works in an office…he can seamlessly work online, all the tools are there and his beer is in the fridge. Whew. But what does Carla do? Her job is to serve others. The sad irony is that the people who have committed to serving others were not thoroughly taken care off. We didn’t serve the servers.
That’s a large aspect of Johnny Sweet’s documentary Last Call. We’ll get into other aspects including the upcoming sequel, as well as Johnny’s “Sweet Coaching” recommendation for the Knicks (that’s a two-fer pun…Coach was such a fantastic Cheers character!) but before all that…at the risk of forgetting like Woody so often does…we gotta start with the Marvel Cinematic Universe…a popular Universe 25 movies deep where we all hang out and where everyone knows the names of the characters and get an update from Johnny who is a major fan.
Last Call @ W • T • F
Host Sammy Younan
Recorded: Wednesday August 23, 2021 at 1pm
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