Glen Wilson

Alexandra Lange and the actor/director discuss his new film, ?Motherless Brooklyn,? through the lens of urban planning geekdom Jonathan Lethem?s 1999 novel, Motherless Brooklyn, follows the gumshoe Lionel Essrog as he attempts to find the murderers of his boss and mentor, Frank Minna. In his quest, he is both helped and hindered by his Tourette?s syndrome. The reader is taken on a ride through his ?ticcing? brain as well as the dark contemporary city, centered in Brooklyn, where the orphaned Lionel grew up in a Catholic boys? home and Minna ran his small-time detective agency.
In Edward Norton?s long-gestating film version, released earlier this month, the calendar has flipped from the 1990s back to the 1950s. The movie?s heavy is a version of a figure who should be very familiar to Curbed readers: Robert Moses, standing astride the city and destroying brownstone neighborhoods in the name of progress. Norton?s character, however, is not a Robert Moses facsimile, but a man named Moses Randolph (played by Alec Baldwin). But for the close watcher, Randolph?s office in the shadow of the Triborough Bridge, his love of swimming, and his fistful of mayoral appointments all hew close to the real Moses?s biography. If Curbed could start its own Pop-Up Video series, this film would make a terrific first episode.
In one scene, new character Laura Rose (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), an African-American housing lawyer and lady of mystery, spouts facts and figures ripped from t...