Movies Til Dawn

Above is a still of a scene in "City Island" in which Vince (Andy Garcia) has just come from an audition for a part in the movie and is telling Molly (Emily Mortimer) about the whole rather surprising experience. We shot this scene in the West Bank Cafe on West 42nd Street in New York City. The restaurant is a haven for actors--the employed ones sit at the bar and tables, the unemployed ones work as waiters--and was in fact the original location I'd written into the first draft script. (This tends to be unusual--whatever real places one writes into a script are somehow always either unavailable, overpriced or closed by the time you make the film). Enjoy the still and don't forget to click to enlarge. Continuing my shameless plugging habit, here's a very nice review by Ken Francklin of my imminently to-be-released on DVD documentary, "Tis Autumn: The Search For Jackie Paris. The movie is available on Amazon--the street date is 3/31. And here's another fi...

The below story--about Andy Garcia's new Ernest Hemingway project--ran today in the Hollywood Reporter. Andy co-wrote a very good script concerning Hemingway's later life in Cuba--and Ketchum Idaho, where he committed suicide-- and seems to have hooked Anthony Hopkins to play Papa (Andy will direct the film and co-star as the Cuban fishing boat captain who Hemingway employed and was friends with). We were editing "City Island" when Andy had his first get together with Hopkins at a hotel in Santa Monica. He came into the editing room late that day and when I asked him how the meeting went, he said: "I wish there'd been a couple of cameras--we could've made the movie". All that is well and good, but naturally for this particular self-centered/internet whore/blogger, it is the last paragraph--the one where Andy very nicely plugs "City Island"--that has caused me to share it with you. Viz (and don't forget to click to enlarge): And now, sin...

To celebrate the upcoming hullabaloo over the City Island premiere, enjoy the above photo of Vince Rizzo, smoking and reading while posed underneath a skylight. What's he doing? Why? Come to the festival and find out. Or simply WAIT ANOTHER YEAR until the film has run its release pattern and wound up on DVD. (Or, disastrously, wait until somebody shoots a crappy version of it from the back of the theater at Tribeca and posts it on-line...) And now back to more pressing matters...namely my latest music/tv/media infatuation, the long-vanished but not forgotten television variety show "Hullabaloo". I was pleased to notice that a number of readers responded quite positively to my previous HB clip--the absurd version of "Help", sung (?) by Jerry Lewis and his oldest son Gary Lewis. Why did this show elude my attention for all these years? Obsessively, I've collected what information I could about it and have come up with the following mini-history. But first, l...

It's official: "City Island" will have it's US Premiere this April at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival. Click here for the New York Times "Carpetbagger" mention of our film's inclusion in this increasingly prestigious film festival--a welcome addition to the New York film scene and a relief from the once omnipotent but now dreary and marginalized New York Film Festival. (Just the titles of the films the NYFF invites cause a wave of exhaustion to sweep over me). I'll be posting more information--about screening times, q&a's and panels that I (and the cast) might be doing as I get this information. And now, in a spirit of celebration, here is a ridiculous clip from a mid-60's variety show that I've recently become aware of called "Hullabaloo". Dig Jerry Lewis and his oldest son Gary Lewis singing...are you sitting down?..."Help" by the Beatles.   Subscribe in a reader

Dig the groove that follows. It's apparently the swinging year of 1964 (when I happen to have been born) or thereabouts. And look at what New York City looked like at that shaky and changing time in the following reel of home movies. Midtown Manhattan is featured--along with many lovely shots of 30 Rock, where my father was then employed. Check out the fact that some men still wore hats--and not BASEBALL CAPS but proper hats for street, office or evening wear. The fifties still loomed large in the cultural zeitgeist--truthfully all decades end about halfway into the next one (which makes it clear sailing now that 20th century truly finished its run late into the last Presidential cycle). Later in the reel we're in the Village (Greenwich that is), on MacDougal Street and Minetta, in front of Cafe Wha? This was, by the way, the sight of my first apartment in the city--for less than a year I had a walk-up (and five flights definitely defines it as a walk...UP) at 124 MacDougal, A ...

See below--"City Island" has made Entertainment Weekly's first look section. Click on the photo of Andy Garcia and Emily Mortimer to enlarge and read the text. Below is one of my earliest television memories--the bumper that preceded programs broadcast on NBC in the 1960's. At that time my father worked for NBC news, making documentary films. I remember the peacock and the lovely music (listen to the flutes) from the evenings when his shows were broadcast. I've been investigating (and finding) more home movies of New York in the sixties--the era in which I was born and grew up in the city. I'll post a very interesting and rare find in a day or so.   Subscribe in a reader

Welcome home to New York, Raymond. Why thank you. I'm here for a couple of weeks on a variety of things: the cast/crew screening of "City Island", interviews for my new documentary on the history of Cabaret, getting a workshop production together of a musical we wrote based on my film "Two Family House"... But let's forget these mundane matters and focus on the issue at hand: a fascinating and mysterious bit of film that turned up on youtube, showing various glimpses of New York street life--and views of the skyline--from the 1930's. What makes it particularly interesting is that these are clearly home movies--amateur views caught by a tourist (or perhaps a native who was simply a camera buff). Thus there is something verite--something very of the moment--in these off-the-cuff views of daily New York life, circa late 1930's. (The video is misleadingly titled "New York 1930"; from the look of the clothes and cars it is at least the late 1930...

Here is the great Alan Arkin (represented both in the flesh and in portraiture prominently displayed behind him) in the role of acting teacher Michael Malakov, whose class Vince Rizzo (Andy Garcia) attends. In talking with Alan before filming his scenes, I suggested that Malakov might not be a complete failure as an actor who sought refuge in teaching--perhaps he had a sort of/maybe/almost career that fizzled out. Alan agreed and said: "Yeah, he might have been nominated for an Obie...but he didn't win". The marvelous set of distinctions packed in that sentence (an Obie, not a Tony...nominated but not winning) perfectly describes the ruthlessly random nature of show-biz. There's an actor I've always admired (and hardly ever seen) named Robert Fields who sort of fits the Malakov bill--for awhile he appeared to be on the verge of being one of the big ones...and then not much until he resurfaced in supporting parts years later. Mention him to most actors of a certain...