Each Friday we travel back in time, one year at a time, for a look at some of the cultural goodies that may appear closer than they really are in The Rear-View Mirror. Join us on our weekly journey into the past!
In Switzerland, where I live, this happens once a year, in early February: all public sirens across the country are tested, sounding the signal for ‘general alert’. When I grew up, in the last dozen years of the Cold War or so, most people would have associated the signal with their fears of nuclear war. If we heard these sirens on any day other than the first Wednesday in February, we’d most likely have to head for the nearest shelter because some hot-headed madman in Moscow had pushed the big red button.
For me, though, that’s not what the sirens meant. For me, they always meant this: the Morlocks are coming.
Maybe I am not the ideal audience for Martin Witz’ Gateways to New York. On the one hand, it’s a documentary about some of the bridges of New York. Since I have absolutely no spatial orientation, I was at a loss as to where these bridges are and which two areas they connect. Here’s an easy question: what does the George-Washington Bridge connect? I only faintly remembered that the answer is New York and New Jersey, maybe because of The Sopranos. And what does the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge connect? Aha, see? I have no clue, and if you are not from the Eastern Seaboard, or an acolyte of architecture, you might be as lost as me. There are maps in Witz’ documentary, but they are gone before you can really grasp which bridge we are talking about now. 
Road movies are, in a way, like interconnected short story collections, no? You learn of a reason to take to the road – first story. You get to another place because it’s the way to get to your destination – second story. And another place, and another, a seemingly random sequence of loci, until you reach your destination, which makes for your last short story. Yeah, I know, my analogy holds up only roughly, but my point is: there should be an arc from the first to the last story, otherwise you get accused of fillers. And no-one, no filmmaker, no author, wants to get accused of producing fillers. 
