Film - My New York Year

I don’t hire writers.

My New York Year is a classic case of a wannabee writer working in publishing and denying this fact to land her first job.

The year is in the 90s, when much of the world moved over to computers and no smoking in offices. Not Margaret (Sigourney Weaver). The agency boss has just hired a new assistant, Joanna, on the premise that writers make the worst assistants.

One of Joana’s jobs is to reply to all the fan mail of the agency’s star author, JD Sallinger. She is instructed to send a standard template as a response - on a typewriter - and shred the fanmail so that it never reaches the author. Getting bored, she decides to use her skills and write proper responses, pretending they are from the author. Eventually, she does answer the phone to him and Sallinger warms to her, assuming like we all do, that everyone who works in publishing is a writer.

Don’t get stuck answering the phone; you’re a poet.

My New York Year is a gentle film, primarily based in the office and Joanna’s flat, where mostly we wonder why she is living with that chap who insisted that lease was only in her name. Surprisingly, New York doesn’t feature much, but they decided to include the city that sells films in the title rather than the book it’s based on, My Sallinger Year (by Joanna Rakoff).

The film is worth a watch if you like books and if for you, 1990’s is nostalgia, whereas for many of us it was 7 minutes ago.

7/10

**SEEN IN THE ACTUAL CINEMA**