At dusk on Monday night, June 18th, the chilling stabs of Bernard Herrmann’s score for Psycho will open the 20th season of summer films at New York’s Bryant Park.
Adjacent to the New York City Public Library, the site was at various times a walled reservoir, a “crystal palace, an encampment for Union troops, and a potter’s field. In 1884 it was designated as a park and, in 1911, the Beaux-Arts library building was completed. The park underwent restoration in the late 1980s and, in 1992, the program of outdoor movie screenings began. This summer, the schedule in part features films that were shown over the course of the past 20 years.
No chairs, tables, dogs, plastic sheets, tarps, bags, or pads are permitted on the lawn–in contrast to Chicago’s now-canceled Grant Park screenings, where patrons sitting on blankets were often frustrated when late arrivals would set up tall chairs directly in their lines of sight. –Dave
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