{"id":230130,"date":"2026-05-13T16:51:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T16:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/230130\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T16:51:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T16:51:13","slug":"steve-earle-steve-buscemi-celebrate-nyc-in-city-of-immigrants-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/230130\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve Earle, Steve Buscemi Celebrate NYC in ‘City of Immigrants’ Video"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tVeteran singer-songwriter-actor Steve Earle<\/a> and veteran actor-director Steve Buscemi <\/a>are two people who would seem to have known each other for ages. Their work, whether it\u2019s Earle\u2019s vast catalog of songs (\u201cCopperhead Road,\u201d \u201cGuitar Town\u201d) and acting roles (\u201cThe Wire,\u201d \u201cTreme,\u201d \u201cLeaves of Grass\u201d), or Buscemi\u2019s formidable history of acting and directing (\u201cFargo,\u201d \u201cReservoir Dogs,\u201d \u201cThe Big Lebowski,\u201d \u201cThe Sopranos,\u201d \u201cBoardwalk Empire\u201d), shares a certain humanity, sensitivity and sensibilities.<\/p>\n

\n\tYet the two actually met for the first time earlier this year, after Buscemi was suggested as a director for a new video for Earle\u2019s 2007 song \u201cCity of Immigrants,\u201d from his New York-themed album \u201cWashington Square Serenade.\u201d The video is a heartfelt, lively celebration of the polyglot melting pot that New York City has always been, created by two longtime residents.<\/p>\n

\n\tEarle and Buscemi, together with a small cast of extras and technicians, were together in the East Village one sunny spring afternoon in April to shoot footage for the clip, which features people from the city\u2019s countless ethnic groups, along with shots of Earle walking the streets and singing the in several different neighborhoods \u2014 also including Jackson Heights in Queens, which the singer describes as \u201ceasily the most diverse neighborhood in the country\u201d \u2014 and performing a concert at the Gramercy Theater.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t need to go travelin\u2019\/ Open my door and the world walks in
\u201cLivin\u2019 in a city that never sleeps \/ My heart keepin\u2019 time to a thousand beats
\u201cSingin\u2019 in languages I don\u2019t speak
\u201cLivin\u2019 in a city of immigrants\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile the song was written around a year after Texas-born Earle first moved to the city, and it would have been topical at virtually any point in the past four centuries, its message is exceptionally resonant now. The inspiration for the video came last fall.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was walking through Chinatown on my way to drop my son off at school that morning last fall when ICE came into those court buildings downtown,\u201d Earle, seated at Lucinda Williams\u2019 bar in the East Village, recalls. \u201cActivists got wind of it, and all these people in the neighborhood just kept blocking ICE out, blocking them out, until they finally gave up,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe idea came about because [New York City Mayor Zohran] Mamdani basically said the words of this song in his [inauguration] speech: \u2018New York will always be a city of immigrants.\u2019 And I just thought, I need to try to get this song back out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFurther inspiration came a few weeks later. \u201cI was texting with Bruce [Springsteen], who joined Tom Morello onstage at First Avenue in Minneapolis when all that shit was going down with ICE there [in January],\u201d he recalls. \u201cSo to a certain extent, I was shamed into it by Bruce and Morello,\u201d he laughs. \u201cBruce released \u2018Streets of Minneapolis,\u2019 Tom Morello went to Minneapolis and Bruce showed up there, and I\u2019m home in New York, like, \u2018Get off your ass, Earle!\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHe originally asked his friend Ethan Hawke to direct, who was interested but deep in the Oscar campaign for the Lorenz Hart biographical film \u201cBlue Moon,\u201d and then went straight into filming a series (he and Earle are collaborating on a different project, \u201cI think out of guilt because he couldn\u2019t direct the video,\u201d Earle laughs).<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile neither Steve is totally clear on how they were first connected for \u201cCity of Immigrants\u201d video, the initial contact came about through a different friend, actor Bobby Cannavale, who starred in \u201cBlue Moon\u201d with Hawke and in \u201cBoardwalk Empire\u201d with Buscemi.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m not sure exactly how it happened,\u201d Buscemi laughs, \u201cexcept that I got a text from Bobby, who knows Steve and I think knows Steve\u2019s manager. He said, \u2018They\u2019re looking for a director for this video \u2014 I don\u2019t know why, but I think you\u2019d be good for it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Steves and manager Danny Goldberg got on a Zoom the next night, shared some ideas, and Buscemi said, \u201cOK, if it\u2019s more of a documentary-style, guerrilla-style shoot, yeah, I can do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd that is exactly the mood of the video, a collection of images of the city that will be familiar to nearly anyone who lives here: dozens of shots of people from every walk of life, all across the city, working, playing, smiling, and marching in parades and, of course, a pro-immigration demonstration earlier this year. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s his love letter to New York,\u201d Buscemi says. \u201cBut to hear it now, with mass deportations and ICE \u2014 I think the meaning is even more potent. And I think this is a time where people need to support each other and to speak out, speak up and do what we can.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think anybody can appreciate that song,\u201d he concludes. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t even need to be political. It\u2019s just human.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Veteran singer-songwriter-actor Steve Earle and veteran actor-director Steve Buscemi are two people who would seem to have known…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,24,55,54,56,31387,90349],"class_list":["post-230130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-steve-buscemi","tag-steve-earle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}