Movies Til Dawn

Dear readers and friends: thank you for your encouraging comments and for the encouraging bump in readership I'm seeing happen on this blog. That's because of you--clearly somebody out there is telling somebody else about our mission. If I can prevail upon you all to send a link about the movie to one person on e-mail, that would be huge. You can send them a link to this blog. Or to the movies very nice website. Or to our Facebook page--all those links are visible in the right hand column of this page. By the way, the trailer can also be seen on Hulu as well as Yahoo Movies. The point is: "City Island" is the people's movie. It's a movie that belongs to the audience. It won the audience award at a major festival (Tribeca). It seems to speak to audiences. And it needs audiences to support it to have the life we think it deserves. Thus, I've been calling on you guys who read this blog to feel empowered to help "City Island' along--because the movie ...

Now, if you were looking to finance a movie what would you think of the following package: Star actor (Andy). Highly well-known and super respected actress: (Marcia). Super hip indie-queen (Chloe). Very hot up and coming guy with big movie coming out (Steven). Script that people love because it's both accessible and smart, warm and clever. (You know...) Director with some awards behind him. (Me). My thought would be that based on the projected budget--somewhere under ten million dollar--this is a pretty good risk. The name value of the actors alone should protect your investment even if the film doesn't turn out too well. Add to this that the directors films have won festival plaudits and that he always delivers on time and budget (and I do, I really do--I'm simply not built to be an Antoine Fuqua...having grown up in the indie film world, I always make my days and respect my budget). The whole thing sounds like as good an investment as can be made into the notoriously diff...

I met Marcia Gay Harden at the Four Seasons Hotel in LA, where she was getting ready to do a slew of promotions for a very good movie she did with Richard Gere called "Hoax" (concerning the author Clifford Irving, who wrote a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes). It must have been mid-morning on a weekend, because the dining room/salon was eerily empty--she walked in looking around a little perplexed, as if everyone had been evacuated for some reason. We introduced ourselves, I told her how much I liked her work, she said nice things about the script. And then an interesting thing happened: she began to interview me. Or so it seemed. Rather than let the meeting be about me checking her out for the role (which it never really was to begin with), she made sure--with grace and skill--that the shoe was on the other foot; was I a clear-headed, together enough filmmaker for her to be willing to work with--that seemed to be the guiding vibe of the first part of our conversation. I l...

So there we sat, Andy Garcia and I, miles away from the actual City Island (dig above ariel view) yet determined to find a way to make "City Island" the movie happen. I can honestly say that I never doubted we would--but I also knew the journey would be filled with the usual dead-ends, heartbreaks and non-starter attempts. Andy suggested sending it to a few companies that might seem likely homes for the material--after all, we were bringing a script, a star and a director and thus were entering with more than the usual artillery, which is generally a good thing. I believe we went out to Sony, Fox Searchlight and Paramount Vantage. All three passed. Now, while this isn't unusual at all--what's truly unusual is when they want to do something--it still always chips away at a little bit of your heart. It's like somebody turning down your kid for something your kid wants to do. (Like maybe he wants in on the wrestling team but is too wimpy? I don't know--you know ...

Okay, so trailer-wise we were off a couple of days. Don't sue me, sue Yahoo whose page didn't refresh. Never mind, don't sue anyone. All is forgiven. Click here to see our awesome trailer in HD. The making of City Island continues Monday. I'll tell the story of how we finally got our cast and financing together and began shooting. On February 1, I'll begin a 27 day blogathon which will cover the 27 days of the films shoot--using old blogposts with production stills, reports, call sheets (assuming I can find them) and clips of outtakes. By the end of February we'll be done with the shoot and onto post-production and through March I'll cover the circuitous route the film took on its way to winning the Tribeca Film Festival Audience Award and finally wending its way into theaters on March 19th of this year. As of March 19th, we'll be in "reel time"--(pun, not misspelling). That is, you'll be experiencing the reception and fate of the movie l...

One afternoon in winter of 2007 (between Thanksgiving and Christmas is my memory is accurate) I drove out to the San Fernando Valley, to a modest house where I was scheduled to meet Andy Garcia. The house, which had been an early home of his and his families but was now used as an office, was filled with memorabilia--pictures, letters, awards etc.--attesting to the incredibly rich and varied career Andy has had over twenty plus years in the business. In time I would come to think of the house as the Museum Di Andy-Garcia--but on that first day I paid only cursory attention to the stuff surrounding me. Instead I was face to face with an actor I'd long admired and a man who, clearly, was the Vince Rizzo I'd been looking for for five plus years. We sat in the garden and talked of many things--life, music, movies, family. Personally, I think this first conversation between an actor and filmmaker is the most important one. Nothing creative need come out of this first meeting--for n...

Item: Click here tomorrow (THURSDAY) to see the on-line debut of our trailer on yahoo movies. This is a terrific platform for our launch (or is it a launch for our platform?) and I'd love to hear what you think of the trailer--I myself like it a lot. Item: The movie opened (or is about to open momentarily) in France and got an excellent review in Le Figaro. Click here to read it. If you don't speak or read French (like me) then all I can tell you is that they give the movie three out of four stars and say Andy Garcia is excellent. Item: The on-line writing of "Making City Island" will continue with gusto tomorrow, Thursday. I thought I'd give us all a mid-week break so you can catch up with previous chapters (I assume you have no other life than following my book...) and so I could...regroup. A chapter a day? Madness. Not even Louis L'Amour could keep up that pace. Enjoy the trailer tomorrow. Meanwhile, for comparisons sake, below is the official Spanish tr...