BUDDY'S TAVERN: THE BLOGATHON COMMENCES!

Last night I attended the official opening night of a musical we made of my film "Two Family House", which I wrote and directed and which was released in 2000. We call our musical "Buddy's Tavern"--really I should have titled the film that but was stupidly talked out of it by...well, it doesn't really matter anymore, does it?

We've been working on this show since early 2002--seven years--and to see it finally staged (and very well staged at that) and begin to take real shape in front of our eyes is a wildly rewarding experience, not the least because putting on a musical is a feat that makes making an independent film look like playing in a sandbox. Why should this be? After all, eight actors and one set in a theater seating a couple of hundred people would appear to be a much more manageable task then spending six million dollars and traveling all over the tri-state area to tell a ninety minute story.

I should add that "we"--a term I'll be using quite a bit in the coming days--refers to my artistic collaborators on the show, the composer Kim Oler and the lyricist Alison Hubbard. These two massive talents are the real engines behind the creation of the show--it was their idea to musicalize the movie in the first place.

I won't go into why getting a show on is so hard--for the truth is, I don't really know the answer. I'm delighted, though, that a man named Brett Bernardini, who runs a wonderful theater in Norwich Connecticut called "The Spirit Of Broadway", fell in love with our show and took a chance on mounting its first production. (Norwich--I'd heard of Norwalk and Greenwich but never of Norwich. Turns out it's a fascinating little town that is in the midst of some heavy urban redevelopment--the hub of which appears to be Brett's fantastic theater--a former firehouse, if I'm not mistaken, that he lovingly converted into a beautiful black box theater).

"Buddy's Tavern" will play through June 14th of this year. I hope to hell this is only the beginning for our musical--as it truly is one of the things in life that I'm proudest of having accomplished. To celebrate the show's first production (and to ceaselessly promote it as well--natch! natch!) I hearby commence a BLOGATHON relating to the show and to the movie on which it's based. I will post every day (or as close to every day as possible) about the making of the movie and the history of getting the show up and running.

If you live anywhere near Connecticut and would like to see the show, click here to go to the Spirit Of Broadway's website.I urge you to do so. You won't be disappointed.

And if you'd like to read our very first piece of press--and a mighty nice piece of press (I almost wrote "ass" instead of press...hmm) it is, click here. And if for some reason clicking is beyond your endurance, I will egotistically reprint my favorite paragraphs. After waxing rhapsodic about the music and lyrics and the acting, the author enthuses:

To give all this talent something to work with in the first place is a first-rate libretto/book written by Raymond DeFelitta, based on his motion picture, “Two Family House.” It was shown at The Sundance Film Festival followed by release in New York City, Los Angeles and The Austin Film Festival. The same year, the film was honored with The Sundance Film Festival Audience Award and The National Board Of Review Special Recognition Award. Auspicious beginnings for an independent film.

DeFellitta is the writer/director of a merrie film comedy “City Island” starring Andy Garcia and Julianna Margulies that was the cause of much buzz at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival in New York.

His “Buddy’s Tavern” begins in present day and quickly flashes back to 1956 Staten Island, New York where Italian-American Buddy buys a rundown two family house, intending to convert it into a bar where he can sing for his customers. His wife, Estelle, is not pleased. Irish tenants who are living in the house refuse to vacate. The Irish woman, Mary, gives birth, and is abandoned by her husband. Buddy is forced to make some difficult choices. This new musical comedy about love and tolerance is “one in which two people discover that happily ever after can come from the most unlikely places.” It’s got the witty lyrics, hummable tunes and big laughs to keep ‘em rolling and humming in the aisles too.

Thanks, pal. I'll do the same for you some day. Tomorrow, I'll back up a good many years and begin the "Tremendous Tale Of Telling Two Family House"--which will morph, eventually, into the "Burgeoning Ballyhoo Behind Buddy's Tavern". Meanwhile, as we wind down the Benny Goodman b'day centennial, here's the theatrical trailer of "The Benny Goodman Story, with Steve Allen playing the King of Swing.

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CITY ISLAND: MORE POLISH...

A few more shots from our Polish adventure before moving on to less exotic pursuits. But first, a plug. Do you like swing music? Dig Benny Goodman? Never heard of him? Well, the "King Of Swing" is having his centennial celebrated by New York's great jazz station, WKCR. Literally weeks of all Benny Goodman programming are winding down as we speak, though there's still plenty of great 24 hour BG to catch through June 1. If you love swing, or haven't the slightest idea of what I'm talking about, do yourself a favor and click here to listen and groove. Happy birthday, Benny. Even though you've been dead for thirty or so years. By the way, Benny was supposed to be something of a horror to work for. So loathsome was his reputation that musicians used to tell the following joke. "I have good news and bad news. The good news is Benny Goodman died. The bad news is he died in his sleep." Ouch.

Here are our "Miss City Island" girls.



Myself and the great Jan Kazmarek, our composer.



And finally an event that I fully expect will never happen to me again: having been asked for my autograph, I dutifully cooperate. What on earth could somebody want with my illegible signature? And why is it being filmed for Polish posterity?



Here's a little taste of Benny Goodman, from the film "Hollywood Hotel" shot in 1937. You get three songs in two and half minutes here--"House Hop", "Heart Full Of Music" and a taste of the BG quartet's famous arrangement of "Avalon". Visible are trumpeter Harry James (he's the one with the solo), vibraphonist Lionel Hampton (note that Goodman's band was integrated at an unusually early stage of American's deplorable history of race relations) and nutty show drummer Gene Krupa, who really does look an awful lot like Sal Mineo who later portrayed him in 1959's lousy "The Gene Krupa Story". Benny was portrayed by Steve Allen (!) in Anthony Mann's merely silly 1955 "Benny Goodman Story"...but we'll get into that another time.

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CITY ISLAND: THE POLISH EXPLOS-ISH

And poof! The whole Poland experience is over. I spent most of yesterday on an interminable (but luxurious) Lufthansia flight back to New York. The screening of "City Island" on Saturday night was an eye-opener. Largely because none of us were sure if the movie's humor would translate to a foreign audience. But it turns that it did--they loved it, laughed, cried and applauded the same as they did in Tribeca. I'm not sure why we were skittish--families are families (i.e., screwed up central organisms that we struggle, in vain, to escape from) all over the world. Might we actually have a movie that transcends cultural barriers?

Also quite wonderful was the concert of Jan Kaczmarek's music on the previous evening. Here are Jan and Grzegorz Hajdarowicz, our Executive Producer (as well as being our marvelous host in Poland) looking rather pleased with themselves before the screening...



And here Zachary Matz, my producing partner, and I are apparently in the act of watching our own movie, filled with admiration and self-regard. Viz:



Lastly--and perhaps leastly--the aftermath: the film got a standing ovation and, for reasons that only a therapist could explain, I fled the theater instead of taking a bow. See for yourself...(I'm in the lower right hand portion of the picture, the only unsmiling, unapplauding person in view...)



Here's a little more of Marvelous Max Raabe, my Kracow "discovery"...

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CITY ISLAND: LIVE FROM KRAKOW!

Welcome to Krakow. My hotel is around the corner from the main square, pictured above--the "marketplace" as its called
locally. A delightful, colorfully historic, quite negotiable town, Krakow is one of the largest and oldest cities in Poland--it was actually Poland's capital for five-hundred years back in the Ten-hundreds through the sixteenth century. Having escaped destruction (unlike Warsaw) by everybody's favorite loathsome German A. Hitler, Krakow has re-emerged as a major treasure trove of historical...stuff. Want to know more about it? What do I look like--a Krakow expert? Click here and go to Krakow's official site.

One of its truly imposing structures is...

Wawel Castle on Wawel Hill.

Wawel Cathedral (the Cathedral Basilica of Sts. Stanisław and Vaclav) is a church located on Wawel Hill in Kraków, which is Poland's national sanctuary. It has a 1,000-year history and was the traditional coronation site of Polish monarchs. It is the cathedral of the archdiocese of Kraków. Pope John Paul II offered his first Mass as a priest in the Crypt of the Cathedral on 2 November 1946[1] and later as Pope considered being buried there. If this paragraph sounds slightly drier than many of my others, that's because I flat out plagirized it from Wikipedia. What are they gonna do, sue me? Everybody's busy suing them.

The Cathedral is supposed to be magnificent but we (my producer Z. Matz was with me) decided to skip it due to a massive overload of kids from school checking it out. Instead we toured the above-pictured castle--filled with delightful antiquities. Paintings, tapestries, marble stuff, the works. Amazingly, the Polish people evacuated these treasures just days before they were invaded by you-know-who in September of 1939. They managed to stow most of this stuff in Canada--thus preserving a major part of Krakow (and all of Poland's) cultural heritage. Sort of the opposite of what we--as occupiers--managed to do with the Museum in Iraq after our invasion. Want to know more about this castle? What do I look like--a Wawel-head? Click here to visit the Wawel official site. If that's your idea of a good time.

The festival is, thus far, an excellent experience. Last night we saw a performance (the opening one) of an absolutely terrific singer/bandleader/personality who, I'm embarrassed to say, I'd never heard of. Max Rabbe is a German singer and band leader of the Palast Orchester. He and his orchestra specialise in recreating the sound of German dance and film music of the 1920s and 1930s, especially by performing songs of the Comedian Harmonists. His career and that of the Palast Orchester began with a Schlager hit entitled "Kein Schwein ruft mich an" ("Why does no one call" aka "No pig calls me", 1992), a pop song in 1920s style, and the film Der bewegte Mann (English title: "Maybe, Maybe Not") in 1994. He writes original music, including film music, and also creates covers of well known modern pop songs in a 1920s-1930s band style, including such songs as Britney Spears's "Oops!... I Did It Again", and Tom Jones' "Sex Bomb". Does this paragraph sound eerily empty in its fact driven prose style? That's because I lifted it almost verbatim from Wikipedia. So nnnnnahhhh!

However if you'd like to visit Max Raabe's official (and slightly scary because it's so GERMAN) site, click here. Dumkopff.

Rabbe (this is me speaking now) is a kind of super-cabaret artist, not at all kitschy in his presentation but defiantly of the past. His style might be referred to as "Weimar Rundfunk"--he is steeped in an era of American and European dance music and plays the part of a nihilistic boulevardier to absolute perfection, posing in the bell of the piano with maximum dignity and calm when not singing. His cool is what puts the whole act over--as well as his (and his bands) superior musicianship. As you can tell I'm quite taken with this artist and here's the reason: much as I love the music from this period, I almost never enjoy hearing it elaborately re-created (as opposed to re-interpreted in, say, a jazz context). It belongs to its era and most attempts to faithfully revive it emphasize (and thus parody) its agedness, its lack of suitability to a modern ear. Somehow, Rabbe and his Orchestra don't fall into this trap--though they're perfectly willing to go to a comic place with some of the material. I think of him as a kind of method actor--so entrenched is he in that world that it is, in fact, not a performance; its a visitation from another planet...

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CITY ISLAND: LIVE FROM FRANKFURT AIRPORT?

Dig the heavyness of my composing this blog at dawn from the airport lounge in Frankfurt, Germany while waiting for my connecting flight to Krakow, Poland. The walllessness--the boundry-lessness of it all--makes me idiotically happy.

What's in Krakow, you ask? The second annual Film/Music Festival (or some such)--a very rich sounding five day event featuring lots of music that has something to do with movies, including an evening conducted by the composer of "City Island's" score, Jan A.P. Kaczmarek as well as a special screening of "City Island", attended by yours truly and my producer partners Lauren Versel and Zachary Matz.

Jan, you see, is Polish. He came to us via one of our major investors, executive producer Grzegorz Hajdarowicz (or, as I prefer to bill him, Greg A.P. Hajdarowicz--"A.P." standing for "also Polish"). Click here for a very nice article about Greg and his company Gremi Films and their involvement with "City Island". In it, Greg is pictured on our set with my producer Lauren Versel. Scroll down and find a picture of us all in Cannes, exactly a year ago, putting on the dog while trying to raise the funds to shoot our film.

The story of how Greg got involved--indeed, helped make happen--our quintessentially American movie is still something of a happy mystery to me. He came to the Berlin Film Festival Market last February, looking for projects to invest in. I've never asked him what, precisely, he saw in my movie that attracted him--previously he helped finance a Peter Greenaway movie, which is about as far away from "City Island" as Frankfurt is from the Bronx. Nonetheless, Greg got on board early and his commitment never wavered. He's a fascinating fellow--originally from Poland, he was living in New York in the late 1980's when the history of his country changed forever in 1989, causing him to go home and instantly transform himself into of Poland's most enterprising entrepreneurs. Greg has run all kinds of businesses and is now deeply involved in helping to revive the Polish film industry--this festival I'm on my way too is clearly part of the whole effort and apparently I'm going to get a tour of a newly built movie studio, built in the hopes of attracting international productions to Poland.

Also quite interesting is how Greg helped secure the services of the distinguished Mr. Kaczmarek--Jan won on Oscar for his tremendous score for "Finding Neverland" and, as a result, doesn't exactly pop his cork for every film he meets. This will be related in the days to come--along with information on the festival and perhaps even some music clips. But right now I have a flight to catch. Tune in later, why don't you? Meanwhile, in tribute to the country that I'm simultaneously sitting in and on the way out of (as well as being the locale where Greg H. and City Island--"Krakow Meets the Bronx"--hooked up last year), here's a clip from Pabst's 1931 "Threepenny Opera". In it, the great Ernst Busch sings the song that one day would be known as "Mack The Knife"...

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HOW TO DIAL A PHONE NUMBER?

Most of us can probably remember back to a time when a particular piece of technology that we now take for granted seemed stunningly new, oddly exotic and perhaps beyond our given talents for competent management. I'm old enough to have had to "learn" the computer instead of simply having grown up with it. Hell, I had to "learn" the typewriter when I was twelve. More recently there have been i-pods, Final Cut Pro and TIVO to name just a few things that I've had to figure out. Jesus, my parents still haven't "learned" e-mail...

Going back in time, we can sympathize with the people (mostly dead now) who had to struggle with some of our earlier technological miracles--hooking up the VCR, working the xerox machine, dealing with the microwave. All of these things--though commonplace now--clearly required a leap in the thought process, a change of point-of-view, a bold spirit willing to invest in the rapidly changing world.

But dialing a telephone? Seriously? Weren't telephones self-explanatory? Apparently not. Below I've posted one of the most seriously strange, absolutely fascinating pieces of film you'll ever waste seven minutes watching. It is, literally, a step-by-step instruction manual on HOW TO DIAL A PHONE NUMBER. It dates back to June 1927, when apparently the old way phones worked--I believe you simply jiggled the receiver and told the operator the number you wanted to call and she connected you--became a thing of the past. The new-fangled telephones actually had this hot little gimmick--a dial with circles which corresponded to numbers (one to nine) which--if you paid strict attention to this how-to movie--could be mastered (with practice) to allow you to dial your own phone number, sans that pesky operator.

What's weirder here? That people couldn't figure this out for themselves? Or that at least half of the people reading this right now probably are to young to EVEN REMEMBER DIAL TELEPHONES (the push button ones came in the late seventies I believe...)
That the ability to work a dial telephone wasn't simply a naturally acquired skill--like walking, swallowing or rolling over in your sleep--is truly baffling to me. But the good people at the phone company needed to make the below instructional film to explain this mind-bending new technology.

One of the things I love about this spooky old piece of film is the lack of music--it's "muteness" is part of its antiquity and charm. The fact that the newest visual technology (film) is being used to explain the newest audio technology (the dial phone) is awfully cute. But the lack of sound (no cute music) gives the whole enterprise an oddly sincere, somewhat somber tone. Although you may be tempted after the first minute to move on, stick it out for the full six more minutes. Every time I watch this clip, I find myself slipping more and more into the world which produced it; the twenties was a time of fast-paced change which--like all fast-times--now appears charmingly slow, genteel and downright puzzled by things that we not only now take for granted but which--like the dial telephone--are now outmoded to the point of non-existence.

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CITY ISLAND: GEORGE RAFT EDITION?

Below dig the superb mention of our movie on comingsoon.net. I decided to cut and paste it below since the sentiments it expresses make me absurdly proud and happy. Less you doubt the veracity of the below rave (in other words, it reads like something I--or my mother--might have concocted on my own behalf) you can click here to read the whole article.

"One of the films that we think has the best chance at breaking out from this year's festival is Raymond DeFelitta's City Island. It's the closest Tribeca Film Festival has come to a crowd-pleasing comedy on par with Little Miss Sunshine, and it's absolutely no surprise that it won the Audience Award this year. It revolves around a dysfunctional family living on City Island, the isolated community off the coast of the Bronx, the head of the household being Vincent Rizzo, a prison guard played by Andy Garcia, who learns that one of his prisoners (played by Steven Strait) is actually his illegitimate son from a previous relationship. Vincent's dreams of being an actor also brings him closer to a fellow acting student, played by Emily Mortimer, much to the frustration of Vincent's neglected wife, played by Julianna Margulies. When Vincent takes charge of the prisoner, not telling him that they're related, he brings him home to help him and keep him out of the trouble, and that's when sparks start to fly. It's a great comedy of errors about keeping secrets from your family that really covers a lot of ground. While I've never been a fan of Strait, he's great in this movie by becoming the in for the audience to try to understand this crazy family's dynamics. It also features a very funny breakout performance by Ezra Miller, as Vincent's teen son with an affinity for fat women. The movie is just a joyous celebration of life and family, one that the right distributor could certainly turn into a hit just by showing it to a lot of people."

And now for something completely different. In my earliest youtube wanderings, I found a marvelous clip of famed gangster actor George Raft doing a marvelous dance--a kind of shimmy I suppose--from an old RKO movie called "Side Street" shot in 1929, a good five or so years before he hit the big-time. Shortly after I discovered the clip, it disappeared. And now it reappeared. Or perhaps it was simply sidelined in Youtube limbo--a place that must be vast, chaotic and lonely as hell to be resigned to. Anyway, I've found it again so happy days. One of the things I dig most about this clip--aside from Raft's mean hoofing--is the notional setting; an art deco penthouse where a few bored, wealthy men sit about while a gaggle of chorines wander about in their underwear, awaiting instructions to dance on command. I suppose one needs to see the full film (which I haven't) to make better sense of this. On the other hand, perhaps it's not truly necessary or even desirable too.

Raft, as you may or may not know, began his career as a hoofer--back when men dancing was a true sign of their virility. Indeed the Raft legend, as promoted in various B-level biographies and a C (or D?) level biopic inventively titled "The George Raft Story", is one of womanizing, fisticuffs and gangster befriending (Raft was close with Bugsy Siegal and Meyer Lansky among others). Personally I think the whole thing was trumped up a bit by the studios to bolster his tough guy image--he was, after all, a nance dancer to start with. Raft was never much of an actor--and was, apparently, illiterate enough to not bother reading scripts that didn't sound worthy of him, hence his having turned down the two roles that elevated Humphrey Bogart from second-tier status to top-flight stardom; Sam Spade in "The Maltese Falcon" and Mad Dog Earle in "High Sierra". Raft also passed (fortunately for us) on the role Fred MacMurray played in Billy Wilder's "Double Indemnity". So in a sense, what is left to us of Raft's time on earth that is actually of any real worth is the below dance number--he really does do a hell of a shimmy. As a bonus I've posted the trailer for the aforementioned "George Raft Story" starring the ludicrous Ray Danton and featuring Jayne Mansfield--she's the one who Raft/Danton threatens to beat up, causing her to melt dreamily into his arms--in a role apparently based on one of Raft's real life girl toys Betty Grable. Enjoy...

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CITY ISLAND: JAPANESE EDITION?

Click here to read a moderately interesting interview with me and Andy Garcia, conducted for a publication called Hosokinema, which sounds awfully Japanese to my ears. Well why not? Thank you to the reader known as JC for finding this one.

I'm off to Connecticut for a few days where a musical play that I wrote is having its very first production. "Buddy's Tavern" is a musical version of my movie "Two Family House"--that movie was released in 2000 and the next year we began work on musicalizing it. My composer Kim Oler and lyricist Alison Hubbard have a good deal more experience in the theater than I and thus were mildly taken aback when I suggested that we could write and produce the show in about a years time. Gently they explained to me that the pace of the theater world makes the pace of the movie world seem positively frenetic. Indeed the word that pops to my mind that best describes the process of writing and mounting a show would be: GLACIAL. Nonetheless, seven plus years later our musical is having its first signs of life at a theater in Connecticut called "The Spirit Of Broadway." Click here to see some info on the show and its upcoming run.

Now dig this...

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CITY ISLAND: THE "ACCESS HOLLYWOOD' MOMENT

Finally it's turned up: the Andy/Dominik "Access Hollywood" moment, broadcast on opening weekend of the Tribeca Film Festival. Click here to watch it. They do a fine job plugging the movie and Dominik--bless her--says that she considers this movie her father's best work...

For those of you who have been following this little excercise in self-promotion over the past few months, you might be interested to know that this blog didn't begin as a purely selfish forum designed to trumpet whatever minimal acheivements I may have...er, acheived. Rather, the initial purpose of this blog was to justify the ENORMOUS amount of time I was losing on a daily basis watching youtube. My passions are old music (jazz--20's-60s) and old movies. Music on film is also good. And youtube, as you may or may not be aware, has become a respository for all kinds of material--live concert footage, old musical numbers extracted from the long (and no longer necessarily interesting) plot-driven (?) movies in which they once resided...tv commercials of the past, rare stock and home movie footage of New York City (another obsession). If you bother looking in the archives of "Movies 'Til Dawn", you'll find that the first year of this blogs life (summer '07--summer '08) was consumed by the compulsive pursuit of these multiplying obsessions and includes quite thoroughly researched little esssays about whatever the hell I was watching that day on YT.

Then "City Island" came along. And with the pressures of an actual movie production upon me, I realized that I would have to abandon my little blog. My readership was minimal but still existed; I hated to think that the loyal band of readers who I somehow attracted would wake up one day to find my blog no longer functional--another digital age experiment in time-wasting and procrastination put to pasture. (I've seen lots of those abandoned blogs-they just sit there on the web, staring blandly and guiltlessly back at those looking-- like the faces of lost children in wartime...)

And then lo! The idea of the century dawned upon me in a fit of inspiration (aided by a fistful of Absolute Martini's). Blog the movie, the Gods intoned. Do the daily reports on the making of "City Island". When its done, go back to your little cinemisfit existence.

Weirdly the readership went up--like times three or four. I've had dips since then--after all, production is a more exciting time to follow then, say, editing--which for an on-looker is simply a watching-paint-dry kind of experience. But the effort of selling the movie has once again brought readers back. I won't lie: there's something truly delightful to know that people bother showing up here. The stat-counter is my friend and co-hort;. I check it as obsessively as we all now check our e-mail.

Why this little mini-history of my blog-life? Well for one thing, I'd love it if people kept coming back when I segue back into history and music land. After all, there'll be more movies coming up (I'm reasonably sure) and I intend to blog all of their makings. As a foretaste of the kind of stuff that I find irresistible on youtube, here's an ancient piece of jazz on film arcana: the great Eubie Blake and his orchestra accompanying the very young (but already stylistically assured) Nicholas Brothers, doing "I"ll Be Glad When You're Dead You Rascal You" (with a little "China Boy" thrown in). Where the hell else would you find this except on youtube? And what better way to kill three minutes of your day then watching this peek into the elysian fields of another era's popular entertainment?

Don't worry: more "City Island" shtick is on its way. Meanwhile...

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CITY ISLAND: LA&NY IN 24!

Yesterday morning my producer Lauren Versel and I flew from New York to LA on the 9AM flight. We arrived around noon, had lunch in Beverly Hills, then joined our other producing partners--Andy Garcia and Zachary Matz--for a meeting with a company interested--very interested--in distributing "City Island". The meeting went terrifically well and then, wiith maximum glamour and flash, Lauren and I boarded the evening flight back to New York (after a quick and expensive Sushi dinner). The aplomb with which all this was accomplished hit a snag early this morning: the fog at JFK in New York prevented us from landing. We were re-routed to Dulles in Washington DC to refuel. Eventually we shlepped back to New York. Add to this the fact that we were sitting in coach and had to pay top dollar for tickets on such a short notice and essentially what we had was: the longest, least comfortable and most expensive 24 hour trip to LA and back ever recorded.

But all that pales next to the news that we have a possible buyer for our movie. The company shall remain nameless until a deal is struck. And if no deal is struck, I'll never bring this event up again and hope that you, too, will forget my having mentioned it. But...very exciting, this. Again, I can't help but feel that the enthusiasm that you, my dear readers, keep showing for the whole process helped translate into a positive buzz at Tribeca which helped win the Audience Award, which helped yesterday's meeting happen...you get the idea.

Below is the second part of that panel that I did. Glad that somebody said that I came off "okay". Only "okay"? Probably. I seem to remember being surprised at the cobwebs in my brain as I began speaking that morning, the result perhaps of one (or maybe two?) cocktails having been consumed the night before...

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CITY ISLAND: SECOND LANGUAGE EDITON?

The other day I posted an interview with me in Italian from an Italian blog, which I suggested as a possible new wave method for learning a foreign language. Continuing that theme, dig the above--an article from a Spanish Language newspaper. Can any of you translate this article? I don't mean any of you who actually speak or read Spanish--that would be too easy. I'm interested in a kind of off the cuff, strictly instinctive free translation by somebody who hasn't the foggiest idea of what they're reading. (Don't forget to click to enlarge).

Thanks for all the comments from the other day concerning how and when the film will finally be available to be seen. Soon I'll have some news--all good--about the fate of our movie.

Below I've posted part one of a panel that I did at Barnes and Noble a week ago. It was called "Pen to Paper" or something of that ilk. The panelists were all writer/directors--one of them was the very charming Conor McPhearson whose film, "The Eclipse", made quite a spalsh at the festival. I haven't had the guts to actually watch myself in this clip so perhaps somebody will do me the favor of telling me how I came off...

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CITY ISLAND: THE MORNING AFTER

Above, click to enlarge and then scroll down past the mention of Jerry Herman's honorary Tony Award and see the New York Times mention of our winning the Audience Award, published in the "Grey Lady" this morning. If something happens and it isn't mentioned in the New York Times, then it probably isn't real. Hence our delight at this mention...

Click here to read the beknighted Peter Knegt of Indiewire (the ultimate source for Indie film information) and his attempt to explain his failure to have predicted our win--he blames Tribeca's tracking system and indicates that we "benefitted" from our three late screenings, though we had already had three screenings by the time Thursday night rolled around.

Thanks to you, my friends and readership, we packed the screenings and created a buzz that was clearly helpful in our attracting enough attention and interest to help take our movie to the top of the festival. And don't think that I'll stop asking for your help! Putting this movie out--and it looks fairly promising at this point that we will attract a distributor--will take a major grass-roots effort via the web. And since you guys were here first, starting back last summer when we followed the making of the film together, logic (or illogic) concludes that you'll be the first...for me to ask for more help from. Oh, well. Or as Jan McLaughlin has taken to saying: "Jeepers Creepers". Below is the Variety mention of the win.

Thanks for the many comments on yesterday's post, including links to more reviews and articles. For today's video post, click here and you'll see the NewYork1 segment from the premiere, featuring interviews with all of us on the red carpet, yammering away about "City Island". Enjoy...

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CITY ISLAND WINS THE F&!#&%G AUDIENCE AWARD!!!

We did it! We won the best award any festival has to offer--the Audience Award. At 8:30 PM last night, me and my producer Lauren Versel and my editor David Leonard mounted a small stage at a Union Square boite upon hearing that "City Island"--the movie that many of you dear readers have investested much of the last year in reading about and following the progress of--was the winner of the coveted Heineken Audience Award. Out of the eighty-five movies that Tribeca selected to show this year, we were chosen by the public as the favorite.
Click here to read the official announcement. Damn I'm happy.

I'm going to bed. It's the middle of the night and I'm still fielding congratulatory e-mails. But before I disappear, may I share with you an article from Indiewire, published just two days ago? It discusses the probable Audience Award winner and manages to name a remarkable number of potential winners...none of which are "City Island". Does the phrase "Dewey Defeats Truman" come to mind? Am I allowed this moment of bitchiness? Of course I am. We won!

Thank you, Heineken, for sponsoring this prize. And congratulations to the runner-up films. Oh, and thank you Indiewire for your valient reporting efforts...

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CITY ISLAND: ITALIANO EDIZIONIE?

Click on the above to read an article about...just click it.

ALERT: AMC Tribeca Special – Interviews with Andy Garcia, Julianna Margulies, and Dominik Garcia- Lorida
WHERE: AMC
WHEN: Fri., May 1 @ 11PM | 10C
Sun., May 3 @ 6:30AM | 5:30C
Fri., May 15 @ 5:45AM | 4:45C

Do you speak or read Italian? Do you want to learn? Perhaps our movie can help. Click here to read an interview with me in an Italian blog (proof that I really will do ANYTHING to help promote this movie). Then watch the video of me saying the same stuff. What a crazy concept for language learning! Is there money in this? More than in making independent films?

Yesterday I did a panel at the DGA on the "future of independent cinema" with Austin Chick, Mary Harron and my old friend Gary Winick. I think I can say, with confidence, that collectively we thorougly failed to answer the burning question of what the future of independent cinema will be. But at least we all told a few good war stories. Gary was amusing and candid as always in recounting, among other things, what a big fat diva Frank Langella was while making "Starting Out In the Evening" (which Gary produced). And last nights screening of "City Island" played to a capacity audience who all seemed to dig the movie.

Tonight is the Heineken sponsored "wrap party" at which the Audience Award is announced. I will attend. And in deference to nobody and nothing whatsoever, here is a little more Groucho from "Animal Crackers"--the justly famous "seven-cent nickel" routine...

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CITY ISLAND: VARIETY THUMBS US UP!

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Below I've cut and pasted Variety's rave review of our movie. Normally I would simply provide the link for you to read this but what the hell. This isn't your everyday, garden-variety good review. By the way, you guys are champs--you're finding stuff on line (like this review which was brought to my attention by an anonymous poster) before my producers or PR people are finding them! Keep it up. This review should, I hope, seriously aid our search for a distributor. And when you're done reading the below, click on a clip that will make you smile all day--Groucho singing "Hello I Must Be Going" from "Animal Crackers".

City Island
By RONNIE SCHEIB

A CineSon/Medici production, in association with Lucky Monkey Pictures/Gremi Film Production/ Filmsmith Prods. (International sales: West End Films, London.) Produced by Raymond de Felitta, Andy Garcia, Lauren Versel, Zachary Matz, Executive producers, Maria Teresa Arida, Grzegorz Hajdarowicz, Michael Roban. Directed, written by Raymond de Felitta.

With: Andy Garcia, Julianna Margulies, Alan Arkin, Emily Mortimer, Steven Strait, Ezra Miller, Dominik Garcio-Lorido.

Raymond de Felitta's films have concerned themselves with families that form small enclaves of eccentricity in a sea of homey conservatism. Desperately trying to conform to neighborhood norms, his characters hide their true selves until, through determination or happenstance, their otherness breaks through. In "City Island," set in the titular New York harbor community, that breakthrough explodes in fireworks of farce, spearheaded by Andy Garcia's virtuoso perf as a prison guard with a loud, abrasive, secret-ridden brood. Another expertly written joyride through the confines of narrowminded provincialism to cleansing self-awareness from indie director de Felitta, "City Island" could go mainstream.

The first signs of danger to the family's precarious equilibrium arrive when jail guard Vince (Garcia) recognizes just-transferred inmate Tony Nardella (a hunky Steven Strait) as the son he sired and abandoned long before his marriage. Vince decides to parole Tony into his custody, and brings him home without telling his family of the connection.

Vince is already hiding another secret: He's enrolled in a Manhattan acting workshop, his transparent alibi of going to a poker game leading wife Joyce (a magnificently temperamental Julianna Margulies) to suspect infidelity. Meanwhile, Vince's daughter Vivian (Dominik Garcio-Lorido) is dancing in a strip joint to pay her college tuition, while his younger son Vinnie (Ezra Miller, in a pitch-perfect turn) harbors a sexual kink -- surfing the Internet in search of overweight women.

To outsider Tony, the only real secret is why the family members even bother concealing their problems and passions.

For Vince, unhappy in his prison job but convinced of his intellectual limitations, acting represents a dream, fueled by his affection for Marlon Brando films. Almost touchingly clueless, he doesn't even realize the long, hilarious tirade against Method acting, delivered in high style by his embittered drama teacher (Alan Arkin), is leveled against idol Brando. Paired for a thesping exercise with sophisticated Brit Molly (Emily Mortimer), he confides his ambitions while she urges the reluctant Vince to try out for a Martin Scorsese film.

Vince's audition, complete with an incredibly bad, mouth-stretching Brando imitation, is a comic mini-masterpiece, revealing hitherto unplumbed dese-dem-and-dose depths in the usually urbane Garcia. His domestic scenes with a volatile, earthy Margulies (earlier paired with Garcia in "The Man From Elysian Fields") fairly sizzle with sexual frustration and blindsided affection.

For de Felitta, comedy is never cruel, and following one's personal bents, however unorthodox, is always empowering. And if the staging of the pic's hysterical, campily melodramatic dockside finale registers as overly schematic, with every skeleton in the closet systematically divulged, it may be because his characters cling so tenaciously to their humanity.

Through the lens of cinematographer Vanja Cernjul, "City Island" does for the small off-urban district what de Felitta's "Two Family House" did for Staten Island, mapping it indelibly on the cinematic atlas. The locale often figured in earlier movies, but always subbing for someplace else.

Camera (color), Vanja Cernjul, editor, David Leonard; music, Jan A.P. Kacmarek; production designer, Franckie Diago; costume designer, Tere Duncan; sound (Dolby Digital), Jan McLaughlin, supervising sound editor, Thomas O. Younkman; casting, Sheila Jafe, Meredith Tucker. Reviewed at Magno Review 1, New York, April 21, 2009. (In Tribeca Film Festival -- Encounters.) Running time: 103 MIN.

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