New Film, Penn F***ing Station Captures Rail Hub at Its Most Decrepit Glory

Claire Read lived in Penn Station for four years. Well, not literally. She is neither homeless nor a character in an updated version of that Tom Hanks movie, The Terminal.

In fact, she is a filmmaker, who since 2020 has regularly trekked in from her home in Brooklyn to capture what she calls the “underground opera” of North America’s busiest and most miserable rail hub.

Her film is titled, appropriately, as most New Yorkers know the place, “Penn F---ing Station.” It will debut in New York next Friday (July 26) at Rooftop Films’ Short Film program in Brooklyn (rooftopfilms.com).

“It’s this real, living and breathing place,” Read says of Penn Station. “It’s true of any transit hub. Its transient, right? It’s not a place your necessarily meant to spend so much time in, although I certainly have.”

Read grew up in the West Village and, like most New Yorkers, regularly shared the communal experience of traversing the warrens and labyrinths of Penn Station. “There is this almost strange love for how much people hate it,” she said.

Like many memoirists of Penn Station, there was a New York nostalgia at work in her decision to make the film. But unlike others, hers was not a longing for the late, lamented terminal that was demolished in the 1960s to make way for Madison Square Garden.

No, Read started filming after realizing in 2020 that after years of deterioration the station was starting to get better.

“I was committed to keeping the portrait of the station alive in the film,” she explains. “You actually see the station evolve quite a bit. It begins at its really worst state ever. Which I love in some weird way. Things hanging from the ceiling. A complete mess.

“That was where the original inspiration for the film came from. It wasn’t even anything to do with the city planning debate. It was just being in the station, seeing that they were beginning to renovate it and thinking, oh jeez, this is what it looked like my whole life, basically. I actually want to, from a nostalgic place, capture it in this decrepit state before it looks like Hudson Yard. Sort of this ode to the hideous state that it was in.”

What it will end up looking like is something Read acknowledges the film does not answer. That is the film’s other plot line, she says, the burgeoning fight over the future of Penn Station itself and its neighborhood.

“This is a building everyone hates, but they don’t like the new building or the new plan being proposed either,” Read says.

Ah, New York.

Over the course of her four years of filming, a plan to fund the renovation of Penn Station by building ten new office towers rose and then, as the real estate market sagged, was “decoupled” by Governor Kathy Hochul.

“I’m interested in who determines the future of a city,” Read says. “How does the next generation of Penn Station come to be--or even that midtown neighborhood. What will it look like and what are the factors that go into shaping that? The film shows you a window into this process for the past four years that you otherwise might not see. The press conferences. The protests. Just how these events all unfolded.”

She describes the film as “a labor of love,” which she fit in among other projects, including a series called Telemarketers, which she produced for HBO/Max. It was nominated for an Emmy last week.

One of the challenges to any conversation about Penn Station is the enormous complexity created by half a century of decisions that don’t really deserve the name of urban planning.

With the old Pennsylvania Railroad in financial collapse, the majestic Beaux Art station was decapitated and a sports arena, Madison Square Garden, was piled on top.

Then, with the movement to get people out of their cars, rail service began to grow again, to the point where the railroads that use Penn Station now say they not only need a better station but a bigger one, raising a threat to adjacent blocks.

Read acknowledges that this complexity was more than a thirty-minute film could fully contain.

“I filmed four years of press conferences, senate hearings, city planning commission meetings with Madison Square Garden,” She reminisces.

But what was exciting to here didn’t always grab less devoted followers.

“I screened it for friends and test audiences, and I think people started to glaze over, understandably, at a certain point, when you’re talking about the many complexities.”

In that sense, Read’s experience mirrors the challenge faced by neighborhood advocates, transit officials and elected leaders as they try to find a consensus that addresses the many competing goals and desires for the station and the neighborhood.

“I thought, ‘oh should I wait?’ Because there is no resolution. Is the film not finished? Then I thought this will take the rest of my lifetime probably to get sorted out. That will be the next four years. Maybe, the sequel?”