It somehow seemed good and poetically proper to head to SBIFF’s arthouse drive-in by the sea (still sounds strange to describe it thusly) to catch director Johnny Sweet’s doc Last Call: The Shutdown of NYC Bars. (Read an interview with Sweet here.)
Both the film itself and the fact of the drive-in’s temporary existence, after all, owes to the reality-altering facts of life during COVID. NYC’s early COVID embattlements are well-known, and now SBIFF is making its own kind of history with the 2021 edition’s laudable efforts at putting on a grand show — online and in the drive-in screens by Leadbetter Beach (free to all comers, by the way).
Sweet lends a powerfully sympathetic ear, interview time, and visual storytelling brio to the subject of the instantly devastating effect of New York’s harsh pandemic victimization starting last March. Generally, the film’s subject is the shuttering of NYC’s hospitality industry and specifically, showcasing the plight of a beloved bar, The Sparrow Tavern, in Queens, the hardest hit borough.