New York Stories

New York Stories is an anthology film made up of three separate short works, each set in New York City and each directed by a different filmmaker. The first, Martin Scorsese's Life Lessons, follows a successful painter who becomes romantically involved with his young assistant while he prepares for an exhibition, and who struggles with how honest to be about her own amateur painting. Francis Ford Coppola's Life Without Zoë centres on a twelve-year-old girl living in a Manhattan hotel whose parents are largely absent. Woody Allen's Oedipus Wrecks concerns a man whose overbearing mother dominates his life and, after a stage magic act, continues to intrude on him very publicly across the city.

The three segments were written by Coppola, Allen and Sofia Coppola, and the film was produced through Touchstone Pictures with Jack Rollins and Charles H. Joffe Productions. The cast includes Nick Nolte, Rosanna Arquette, Patrick O'Neal, Mae Questel, Steve Buscemi and Talia Shire, among a credited cast of 77.

The film arrived at a busy point for its directors: it sits between Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ and GoodFellas, between Coppola's Tucker: The Man and His Dream and The Godfather Part III, and between Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors and Alice. Made for about 15 million dollars, it returned roughly 11 million worldwide. On IMDb it holds 6.4/10 from around 21,000 votes, on TMDB 6.2/10 from about 421 votes, and a critics' rating of 6.6/10 from 26 reviews, showing closer agreement between critics and audiences than is often the case.