Dead End on Sesame Street

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City is a dirty word now. To most Americans it is the hole the welfare state crawled in to die. It is the grand urban experiment -- O.K., everybody into the melting pot -- gone spectacularly awry. And what's left? The city as techno-sump, the pot of ordure at the end of the rainbow coalition, the dead end of Sesame Street.

Films used to portray New York City as a penthouse aerie, where tuxes and smart chat were mandatory. Moviegoers saw the jagged grandeur of Manhattan's skyline as a cardiogram of American sophistication. Fred Astaire used to symbolize New York; now Al Sharpton does, and the metropolis is just a detention center for too many folks you'd rather not dine with. Rank congestion is the norm; you can't buy your way out of the line of fire. Question: Does anyone still dream of coming to town and becoming a star? Funny answer: Yes, because New York's desperate energy still makes it the most exciting and relevant place to be.

Even Hollywood understands this. The movie bosses -- transplanted Easterners, many of them -- know that Los Angeles is no city, just a desert suburb with lawn sprinklers, a Disneyland where all the rides are bumper cars, where you can smell a man's exhaust fumes but not his breath on the back of your neck. They may figure, too, that old-city competition and corruption are the best metaphor for their mode of doing business. So in between crafting fantasies of L.A. dolce vita, they make occasional fantasies about the towns they left behind.

Sometimes, as with the new romantic comedy Frankie & Johnny, the fantasy is a love song for what's left of New York. Playwright Terrence McNally loves the city as only a recruit from Corpus Christi, Texas, can. Director Garry Marshall, a native New Yorker, loves it as one who has escaped its boundaries but not its nostalgic magnetic pull. So their lovable ex-con Johnny (Al Pacino) may come on to rumpled beauty Frankie (Michelle Pfeiffer) in a workplace seduction straight out of Anita Hill's nightmares, but he's really a sweet guy who can make a cactus bloom. Pacino plays Johnny as if he is New York: pushy, forlorn, indomitable. And Pfeiffer, laying claim to the title of Hollywood's most accomplished stunner, is every skeptic who tried vainly to fight off the city's spell.

Marshall has made some meretricious movies (we'll just mention his last two, Beaches and Pretty Woman), but in the '70s he produced some bright, populist TV comedy (Laverne and Shirley, Mork & Mindy). No surprise, then, that McNally's play, a bedroom debate for two characters, is now a superior sitcom pilot, with lots of brisk banter and a wacky supporting cast. Setting: West Side luncheonette. Owner: a menschy Greek (Hector Elizondo). Waitresses: & sleep-around Cora (Kate Nelligan) and drab, acid Nedda (Jane Morris). Mood: strenuously genial. Take on New York: it's a hard place, but ya gotta go for it.