Ed Koch is everywhere at the moment, or at least in three documentaries: the one about the Central Park Five, the one about Aids activism in the 1980s (which was just shortlisted for an Oscar), and as the subject of Koch, a love letter to the former New York mayor, in which the filmmaker follows him around and documents his irreverence. (To wit: after Andrew Cuomo stood him up at an election rally, he calls Cuomo "a schmuck"; and Koch responds to a question about his sexuality with "It's none of your fucking business.")
A week ago, Ed Koch appeared in person at Lincoln Center, to answer questions after a screening of the documentary. He was frail and pushed to the stage in a wheelchair, but in spirited form, and welcomed by a standing ovation. Although two of the three documentaries are deeply critical of the man – for his clumsy handling of race relations during one of New York's most racially fraught eras, and for his inadequate response to the Aids crisis – 30 years on, he has, like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, ascended almost to the level of kitsch.
Like everything else from the 1980s, Koch is the beneficiary of a nostalgia we can't get enough of right now.
The most prominent example of this in recent weeks is the Carrie Diaries. A prequel to Sex and the City, the show takes place in Koch's New York – or rather, in an Oz-like parallel to that city, full of primary colours and stylised graffiti. From the standpoint of those in their 30s, it's unnerving to watch the Carrie Diaries and realise that, to those of the Girls generation, this looks as distant and alien as Mad Men. In the first episode, Carrie is admonished for turning up bare-legged to work; the scene is presented with the same sense of archeological wonder as Don Draper smoking in the office.
In both cases, this amused horror is undermined somewhat by both shows' obvious soft spots for what they see as ruder, and therefore more authentic, eras. Complaining about the Disneyfication of Times Square has run its course at this point, but the Koch documentary exudes an unmistakable wistfulness about the "honesty" of the late 70s and early 80s, compared to the dull bureaucracy of today's political culture.
In a limo travelling back from his 88th birthday party, an event hosted by Michael Bloomberg at Gracie Mansion, Koch speculates on the current mayor's generosity towards him, compared to his own attitude towards Abe Beame.
"I never did a fucking thing for AB," he says of his predecessor, looking vaguely mystified. It is hard, in that moment, not to love him.
It's sentimentality, of course, exacerbated by the pathos of cutaways from Koch as a vigorous young – or at least middle-aged – politician, to the elderly man he is now. It reminds us there is nothing so remote or glamorous as the recent past.
The real test will come 15 years hence, when I look forward to dabbing my eyes over a biopic of that lovable old rogue, Rudy Giuliani.
