Koch, the new documentary about the life of the eponymous former New York City mayor, opened at the Angelika and Lincoln Plaza cinemas on Friday. Up until then, the movie's prospects for a box office bonanza might have been slim. How many people would want to drop $13 on watching 90 minutes about a curmudgeonly old man who has not held public office in 23 years?

But then, in a grim stroke of luck, Ed Koch passed away on Friday morning. I went to see the film at the Angelika with two friends on Friday night. I was expecting a massive turnout, in light of Koch obituaries dominating New York media that day. But the three of us constituted at least 10 percent of the small crowd. Even the Angelika's notoriously narrow theater felt more than half-empty.

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Patrick J. Cashin

Former mayor Ed Koch died of congestive heart failure this morning. He was 88 years old.

After a stay in the hospital last week, he returned to intensive care yesterday for treatment of his lungs, which were filling with fluid, as well as an iron deficiency. Unfortunately, it did not save his life.

Koch, an upbeat mayor who presided over the city during its 80s boom, first ran for the office in 1977; during the campaign he touted himself as a "liberal with sanity" and promised a crackdown on crime, welfare, and the Board of Education. Upon his election, he steered the city out of near-bankruptcy and eased the housing crisis, but was criticized for his responses to the crack and AIDS epidemics that seized New York City in the 1980s.

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