In Film and Television
The building has frequently appeared or been referenced in artistic, literary, and cultural works.
It was featured in the 1978 film The Wiz when Dorothy and Toto stumble across it, one of its lions comes to life, and joins them on their journey out of Oz. It was a major location in the 2004 apocalyptic science fiction film The Day After Tomorrow, and also appears in the Futurama parody of the film, in the episode "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid." It is also featured prominently in the 1984 film Ghostbusters, when a librarian in the basement reports seeing a ghost which becomes violent when approached. It serves as the backdrop for a central plot development in the 2002 film Spider-Man Additionally, the building is featured as a wedding venue in the 2008 film Sex and the City. It was also prominently featured in the 2011 film The Adjustment Bureau.
Other films in which the library appears include 42nd Street (1933), Portrait of Jennie (1948), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), You're a Big Boy Now (1966), A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969), Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Chapter Two (1979), Escape from New York (1981), Regarding Henry (1991), The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), and The Time Machine (2002).
In television, the library was featured in the "The Library" episode of Seinfeld, in which Cosmo Kramer dates a librarian there, Jerry Seinfeld is accosted by a library cop named Mr. Bookman for late fees, and George Costanza encounters his high school gym teacher living homeless on its stairs. It is the setting for much of "The Persistence of Memory," the eleventh part of Carl Sagan's Cosmos TV series. It also appears in the pilot episode of the ABC series Traveler (as the fictional Drexler Museum of Art) as a backdrop and brief meeting place for characters and in the third season of the CW series Gossip Girl, and the interior was used as the interior of Unity Hall, the capital of the fictional Kingdom of Gilboa, in the NBC series Kings.
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Famous quotes containing the words film and/or television:
“You should look straight at a film; that’s the only way to see one. Film is not the art of scholars but of illiterates.”
—Werner Herzog (b. 1942)
“There is no question but that if Jesus Christ, or a great prophet from another religion, were to come back today, he would find it virtually impossible to convince anyone of his credentials ... despite the fact that the vast evangelical machine on American television is predicated on His imminent return among us sinners.”
—Peter Ustinov (b. 1921)