Movies Til Dawn

Click here to read Jan Stuart's fine review of "City Island" in Screen Daily. In it he refers to my 2000 Sundance Audience Award winner "Two Family House", likening the tone and subject matter (the lives of the bridge and tunnel crowd) to "City Island". This is the sort of thing that dissertations are someday written about. I never thought of myself as the Proust of the Outer-Boroughs but maybe I should think again; perhaps next time I need to shoot something in Queens. And I haven't done Brooklyn yet for that matter. But that's so Spike Lee/James Gray/Noah Baumbach-ish. I'll let them keep it. Our Brookfield Group panel on Monday evening went very well. Andy Garcia and Julianna Margulies joined me and we were interviewed by James Saunders, author of an excellent book called "The Celluloid Skyline", which belongs on the shelf of anyone who loves either New York, movies, New York in the movies or all of the above. James has a super...

Welcome to "Link Heaven". Click below for lots of goodies--articles, reviews etc. all positive. I'm off to more press. Our next screening is tomorrow (Wednesday) afternoon. HDFEST.COM: Gerald Wright’s positive review is posted to this site. NEWSDAY.COM: Positive write-up of the film and photo from the premiere are posted to this site. ABOUT.COM: Pamela Skillings’ four star review is posted to this site. ZIMBIO.COM: Photos from the premiere are posted to this site FILMMAGIC.COM: Photos from the premiere are posted to this site. GETTYIMAGES.COM: Photos from the premiere are posted to this site. REXFEATURES.COM: Photos from the premiere are posted to this site. Ask not why Benny Hill? Ask why not Benny Hill?   Subscribe in a reader

Above: Mickey Rourke and Andy Garcia chumming it up at our premiere night. This photo appeared in AM New York and will no doubt go down in history as one of the great "odd couple" pairings of all time. Andy told me that Mickey loved the film... NOTE TO PEOPLE WHO ATTENDED THE SCREENING: If you want to leave comments about the movie, go to our official website: www.cityislandthemovie.com Leave your comments on the part called "Share Your Secret". Or just share your secret. It's a bit confusing and I think we'll fix things so there'll be a separate "share your comments" section. But until then, leave your comments on the movie on the "share your secret" section. It's very important to us--as I explained before the screening last night--to build an on-line support community for this movie. So if, in addition to leaving your comments, you could also give us your e-mail addresses, we could begin to form a "City Island" commu...

Click here to see AMC’s video coverage from the press day. It's me and Andy Garcia squeezed uncomfortably together on a couch, looking like two guys in a crowded airport lounge. I'll be back with a full report on the premiere night tomorrow (Monday). Meanwhile, the aptly named "Hullabaloo" will provide today's video clip.   Subscribe in a reader

TUNE IN NOTICE!!! TONIGHT, SATURDAY, APRIL 25TH “ACCESS HOLLYWOOD” 7:00-7:30PM EST NBC-TV, Channel 4 in NYC WATCH Andy Garcia and Dominik Garcia-Lorido’s interview about “City Island” and the Tribeca Film Festival on “Access Hollywood” with clips from the film. Item: I will be appearing at the Barnes and Noble store in Union Square on 17th Street tomorrow, April 26, at noon. I'm on a panel with some other writer/directors discussing what it's like...to be a writer/director (I suppose). If any of you in the New York area decide to drop by, please feel free to intro yourself--I'd love to meet any and all readers... Yesterdays press day went exceedingly well, thanks to the superb organization of Janice Roland and her lieutenants at Falco (our PR company), to say nothing of the enthusiastic particpation of Andy Garcia, Julianna Margulies, Dominik Garcia-Lorido and Ezra Miller. I was paired up with Andy for several interviews, Ezra and Dominik were paired up for most of theirs, ...

Click the above to enlarge and read my fabulous interview with Lou Lumenick which appeared in today's New York Post. Click here to watch the excellent (three out of four apples) review Neil Rosen gave "City Island" on New York 1--it will run all weekend, I'm told. (The print version is abridged--click the TV box to watch the full review and see some nice clips of the film). And now for something completely different. Click here to read a very astute blogger named James van Maanen who writes a superb film blog called TrustMovies. It just so happens that he wrote a fine piece on my documentary "Tis Autumn: The Search For Jackie Paris" (now available--PLUG--on Amazon)--though this has very little to do, of course, with why I like his blog. No seriously, he's good--apparently wrote for Green Cine for years... I'm told that NBC.com will post my interview which aired this morning, but as yet I can't seem to find it. Anyone out there who can help I...

Item: See above for Cindy Adams modest but still important mention of our film in her New York Post column today.Click to enlarge and go to the far right column for the mention. Item: an interview I did for WNBC in New York will air sometime between 5AM and 7AM tomorrow (Thursday) morning. I can't believe anyone will bother to wait around for it, but if for some reason you do tell me how it turned out. I'll be asleep. Item: the filmmaker party was quite nice. I even ran into a couple of people I went to college with--TWENTY YEARS AGO. Mark Street, a filmmaker with a short in the festival, and Jim Brown, a programmer. Amazing how the circle closes on its own... Item: Watch for Lou Lumenick's interview with me in tomorrow's New York Post. Of course I'll post it... So there I am, sitting across from Julianna Margulies at DeMarchlier on 86th and Madison. We're less than two weeks away from principle photography and as soon as I sit across from this foxy, magnetic an...

Item: Today I've posted below a new clip from the movie--a warm, friendly and gentle family dinner table moment, a la the Rizzo's. Item: Thanks in large part to you, dear readers, the "City Island" screenings sold out. Thankfully, the good people at Tribeca have added a screening--on Sunday, May 3rd. Click here to buy tickets to the new screening. And by the way, don't be put off by the "sold out" thing with the other screenings. It turns out you can get tickets on the day of the screening. These are called "rush tickets" for reasons I don't understand. Item: Last night I was the second guest speaker at Peter Newman's NYU class which examines the business behind independent filmmaking. The first guest speaker was Geoff Gilmore, one of the greats of the Film Festival world. (For many years Geoff was the head programmer of Sundance. This year he's moved back to New York and is heading up Tribeca). I recounted much of what you've ...

Yeah, yeah, I took the weekend off again. You wouldn't think blogging required quite the amount of dedication and energy that it does--prior to this blogathon I normally posted only a few times a week but this daily grind is quite seriously enervating. (My friend Marc Myers--whose writes a superb blog called jazzwax--literally posts every day. And no exceptions. And none of these little tiny lazy posts that I sometimes take refuge behind--his posts are never less than elaborate and scholarly). Anyway, we're seven days out from Tribeca and I'm trying to draw out the saga of how we got the film made. I believe I left off with the casting of the role of Joyce--Marcia Gay Harden had dropped out and we were going out to other actresses, our confidence high. The role is one that most actresses of a certain age--past, say, 35--loudly complain about rarely getting offered them: a smart, motherly, sexy, honest woman--not just another Cameron Diaz bauble... So we went out first, I th...

The saga continues. But first, here's a lovely review of "Tis Autumn: The Search For Jackie Paris" --now available on DVD from Amazon. So: we were in Cannes with Clint Eastwood and Andy Garcia, where I stared glassily out at the Mediterranean wondering if--having lost our two actresses--a night of gambling and a dawn suicide might, in fact, be the best route to take at this juncture. But back in New York it was clear that the only course was action. We had enough money to get prep started and seemed to have more on the way. So we started offering the parts to other actors and never stopped heading for our start date--which was shaping up as June/July. The first person we offered the part that Chloe Sevigny bagged on to was Emily Mortimer. Andy had worked with her in The Pink Panther movies and I'd loved her in a couple of indies--with names that, frankly, elude me. To our surprise and delight, she responded to the script and asked to meet me. This meeting took place...

Here's the newest clip from the completed film--a simple, cozy family exchange filled with warmth, good will and gooey sentiment. Enjoy! Back with more of the Sinister Saga of City Island tomorrow. Today, however, madness reigns...   Subscribe in a reader

Thanks in large part to you lovely participants in this blogathon, the "City Island" screenings at Tribeca SOLD OUT within about five minutes of having gone on sale. The massive 900 seat theater will, it appears, be at full capacity for our premiere on Sunday the 26th. A few frustrated readers were unable to get tickets. I've been assured that a good number will be held by the festival for the Wednesday and Friday screenings--"rush tickets" they're called. So please don't give up--try to make it. I'm on my way to do an interview with the great Lily Tomlin for my new documentary on the history of cabaret. So today's installment of the sinister saga of etc. etc. will be brief. However, to make up for this shoddy entry, look tomorrow for another clip from the finished film. As I was saying, just before embarking upon our journey to Cannes (pictured above-duh) last year, we were rudely awakened from our hyper-active, let's-make-a-movie state with...

Dig today's clip, posted below--it's a surprise even to me. Apparently they did a local news story on our shoot last summer and some wonderful youtuber actually taped it off their tv set and posted it. I get more screen time in this little piece than usual--even though I look fearfully tired. (I must have been--I don't recall actually taping this segment...) Anyway, back to the making of saga... So it's the spring of 2007 and Andy Garcia and I are sitting around LA with a lovely cast, a script we want to make and--as yet--no real money behind us. You get used to hearing a lot of stupid things when people turn down your projects, but there's no term I find more irritating then "tweener"--as in, "we like the project a lot but we're afraid it's something of a 'tweener." Meaning: between two genres. Not artsy enough for art house, not commercial enough for mainstream fare. In other words, just the kind of film that made me want to make fi...

What kind of a supposedly blogathoning blogger takes the weekend off? A psuedo one. So sue me. What can you do me? I spent Saturday traveling to LA and Sunday with the Easter Bunny. I thought of blaming my non-existent Catholicism but that particular religion takes it on the kneecaps so often these days that why add to the bad publicity? Instead I'm offering up an apology by posting the FIRST EVER CLIP FROM A CUT SCENE FROM CITY ISLAND. This is a one-minute teaser for what I consider to be the best scene in the movie--Vince Rizzo going on his first acting audition. Enjoy, I hope, and look for a few more clips in the coming days. Please send this blog entry to friends and encourage them to pass it on as well. As previously mentioned (or nagged about), our goal is to sell out the screenings and show the distributors that we've made an enormous crowd-pleaser of a movie--one that deserves a wide general release. You can help me by getting people into the screenings--and then, hopef...

So I'm sitting there with Andy Garcia--finally having found my Vince and certain that between us we can figure out how to get this film made. One thing that was clear to me early on: I didn't just want Andy to be "attached" as an actor. I wanted us to be producing partners. Now some filmmakers are scared of partnering with a movie star--fearing, I suppose, that the more powerful person in the equation (and no matter who the filmmaker is the more powerful person is ALWAYS the movie star) will trump the other in any important creative decision. And there are those who might wield their power that way. But that wasn't my sense about Andy. His respect for my material and our general simpatico with each other gave me confidence that we could, in effect, help each other by being mutually invested in the cause of getting the film made. Though the first few months were spent shopping the project--my script, me directing, Andy starring, us producing--to various companies, ...

Item: I just shot an interview about "City Island" for NBC. It was taped--not live--and I wasn't really paying attention as to when and where they said it would air until... They mentioned the word "taxi". In New York City, all taxi cabs now have little tv screens in the back with white noise kind of programming, usually of a New York promotional variety. As often as not I simply turn the damn things off--I pretend to find them an annoyance, another example of technology run amok. But now I must confess: the fact that I might appear in the back of taxi cabs plugging my New York movie has made me idiotically happy, thrilled beyond my normal complacency. Indeed, I feel suddenly like a spokesman for the whole damn city, one of the stalwart, upstanding, "I love New York" heads, the kind of man who is proud of his city--and wants to make his city proud of him. I may cry. Item: The hits on this little blog have close to doubled since we began this countdown-...

By the way, thanks to the Tribeca Film Festival for linking to this blog. Tomorrow morning I'm supposed to be heading to the Bronx to do a little WNBC interview on City Island itself. Anyway, back to the Sinister Saga of Staging City Island. For close to three years, I tried--with my producers at Echo Lake--to gain enough traction to get "City Island" off the ground. Budgets were made and discarded. The part was offered here and there to actors but never with an official offer--i.e. money--and this often means that the script goes straight to the bottom of the pile. In the meantime, I made two films: "The Thing About My Folks" with Paul Reiser and Peter Falk (shot in 2003, released in 2005) and my documentary "Tis Autumn: The Search For Jackie Paris" (shot and edited over 2004 and 2005). In late 2005, Echo Lake's option was up on "City Island" and they elected not to renew. I wasn't surprised and was frankly relieved; even though I l...

Continuing the sinister saga of making "City Island" (with apologies to Richard Rush for stealing the title of his "Stunt Man" making-of doc--really quite good and ultimately more interesting these days than "Stunt Man" itself--Christ, stop me!), I finished the "City Island" script in early October of 2001. My agent Lucy Stille and manager Gary Ungar both were enthused but--as with most of my work--cautious of what, exactly, its chances in the marketplace were. It was not an obvious spec script sale--nor was that what I was looking for. Clearly it needed cast and a produer, though not necessarily in that order. First up for my choice for a producer was Richard Gladstein ("Cider House Rules", "Finding Neverland"). I'd known Richard on and off for a few years and at one point we almost had launched another movie together. He liked the script but felt it was "small"--and coming off of the above mentioned Oscar winne...

"City Island" began life as a spec screenplay called "Make Someone Happy". I began writing it on Labor Day Weekend, 2001 and was on page fifty on September 11th, when the World Trade Center was attacked. I will always be able to root the creation of this script in precisely that astonishing moment in history as it was one of those days in which you never forget where you were and what you were doing. I was writing about a middle-class New York family, filled with their own problems, frustrations and neuroses. And just as I was picking up steam with these people--and the script really did "write itself", the voices of the characters were coming at me fast and furious--the very world that they embodied was shaken to the core. For those reading this who are not New Yorkers, the local reaction to the tragedy was really quite astonishing. Many people hanging "missing" signs for their certainly dead relatives and friends; a denial and anger so fierce a...

Here's a clip of Steven Strait and Julianna Margulies riding the process-trailer (i.e. the rig that carries the car that she's pretending to drive) and self-slating themselves--a necessity when doing driving stuff as there's usually no room in the car for a camera assistant to crouch in and perform this antiquated but still highly necessary task. Despite the mega advances in technology, movies still rely on several very old-fashioned customs to achieve the simplest ends and the slate--which provides the editor not only with necessary shot/scene/take information but a definite sync mark for sound and picture--remains the quaintest of the "analogue" steps that still exist. Tomorrow I'll begin a multi-part saga on how the movie actually got financed and made--something I haven't gone into any detail about previously. And don't worry--more and newer clips (cut scenes) really are on the way.   Subscribe in a reader

Okay. I lied. I can't spread the TV clips wealth at this very moment--it turns out our publicity team (the awesome Falco Ink.) is hoping to get us an exclusive on one of those show-biz shows (ET? Extra? Who Knows?) One must use whatever is in the arsenal and, alas, I have to preserve the clips until said show airs. Please don't hate me. Oh, hell. Hate me. Let me tell you about Falco. They're New York's first stop, top movie/indie/pr/press firm--but trying to characterize them in terms of their job is less than accurate. They are, in fact, master hand-holders at the most vital and sensitive moment of the whole filmmaking process--the moment of the unvailing of the work. For about ten years, I've been privileged to work with them--only it's not really work. They're family--"meshpuca" as the yiddish would say (although they'd probably spell it differently). Led by the galvanizing Janice Roland, these are folks whose hands you willingly and fearles...

From the sublime to the sleazy: above is the luminous Emily Mortimer in a scene from "City Island" and, in the below clip, I've offered an outtake (complete with slate) of the opening scene of the movie, set in the prison where Vince Rizzo (Andy Garcia) works. How does a guy who hangs out in prison wind up involved with Emily Mortimer? This and many other questions will be answered if and when you show up at the "City Island" screenings at the upcoming Tribeca Film Festival. Click here for festival information--specifically "City Island" related festival information. And click on the above photo to enlarge. Emily makes a fabulous screen saver. As I announced yesterday my intent in this blogathon is to spread the word about the movie and the screenings by asking you to send the link to this blog to ten friends (five will do if you're like me and don't have many friends). Then--hopefully--we will accumulate enough grass roots support to help c...

Welcome to a brand new day on this weblog--the countdown to the official US premiere of "City Island" at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 26th. I will be posting every day between now and then--not this shilly-shallying couple of times a' week stuff that I've fallen into of late. Furthermore, I'll be posting stuff YOU WANT TO SEE! (Sorry but couldn't resist the hyperbole). I'll have stills, clips from the movie, insider stories and, when I don't, the usual crap I like to post (clips of forgotten old tv shows, movies etc). Why this sudden awakening? What possesses me? Simple. I NEED TO SELL THIS MOVIE. And this is no small task in the current Post-Bush, Post-Hollywood, Post-Wall Street, Post-Money, Post-Business, Post-Entertainment, Post-Cultural landscape we are all quietly drowning in. Making a movie like "City Island"--an independent project nurtured by its writer/director for years and made because of the belief and support of people lik...