Sundae in New York is a 1983 clay-animated short film (3 1/2 minutes) directed by Jimmy Picker, who at the time was well-known for creating animated segments for The Electric Company.
The short is basically a love poem to New York City. It opens with a character who is obviously inspired by then-New York City mayor Ed Koch
, sleeping on a park bench. Koch wakes up and starts talk-singing the theme from New York, New York ("If I can make it there, I can make it anywhere"). He then wanders around the city, visiting several landmarks and encountering many celebrities, some strongly associated with New York of the 1980s (David Letterman), and others long dead (Humphrey Bogart shows up as a cop).
It pulled off one of the more unlikely upsets in Oscar history, winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, over the much longer and higher-profile favorite Mickey's Christmas Carol. In 1986 Picker incorporated it, along with some other Claymation material and a live-action frame story (starring Josh Saviano before his stint on The Wonder Years), into a half-hour TV special called My Friend Liberty, which piggybacked onto the hoopla surrounding the centennial of the Statue of Liberty.
Tropes:
- Big Applesauce: Basically a tour of and celebration of New York.
- The Big Rotten Apple: Played for Black Comedy. The short opens, of course, with Koch as a homeless bum. There's also a shot of Koch on a graffiti-splattered subway car, riding between a scary tattooed thug and a lunatic with a knife in his teeth.
- The End: Ends with Koch collapsing face-first into his sundae to reveal "THE END" written on his bald head.
- No Plot? No Problem!: It's basically just a comical music video montage of New York scenes.
- Punny Title: A takeoff on the 1963 Jane Fonda Romantic Comedy Sunday in New York.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Koch's tendency to talk like this is parodied throughout.
- Shout-Out: To many past and then-present celebrities associated with New York. As well as Alfred E. Newman.
- Stop Motion: Claymation.
- Title Drop: A visual one, as Koch is actually served a sundae at the end of the short.
