The film’s vital question is – will Auggie’s boss Vinnie go through with selling the corner cigar store? “Tobacco’s out, wheat germ’s in,” he says with a shrug, triggering a speech by Auggie as to how the shop “helps keep the neighborhood together.”

Among the visitors to the Brooklyn cigar store are Jim Jarmusch, who’s come to share a final cigarette with Auggie while extolling the pleasures of smoking (“Coffee and cigarettes. That’s like the breakfast of champions”); Roseanne, as Vinnie’s bored wife, determined to take off for Las Vegas with or without her spouse; Madonna, as a singing/dancing telegram girl; RuPaul, who leads a street dance; Lou Reed, who wrily admits a love for a town he’s been trying to get away from for 35 years; Mira Sorvino, victim of a purse-snatcher; Lily Tomlin, in a sly disguise; returnee Giancarlo Esposito, as a neighborhood guy subjected to a bizarre interview by a weird Michael J. Fox; and Malik Yoba as an especially imaginative and funny neighborhood guy. And at the end they all come together and have a street party.