“Drop Dead City” falls into a category of documentary I think of as wonkish but gripping. Produced and directed by Peter Yost and Michael Rohatyn, the film is about the financial cataclysm that hit New York City in 1975, when the powers that be figured out that the city was $6 billion in debt. There was no money to pay anyone: firefighters, cops, teachers, sanitation workers. The city walked right up to the edge of bankruptcy. (That’s not an overstatement.) Had New York City been anything but New York City — had it been a business, a family, or even another city — it likely would have declared bankruptcy.
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