Movies Til Dawn

What can I say? Giddy with acheivement I can't stop the flow of love and appreciation. So more tributes! Let's start with...myself. Click here to read a superb and insightful review of my documentary "Tis Autumn: The Search For Jackie Paris", which opened a few weeks ago in Canada and will make it's appearence on DVD late this year. This writer, Rick Groen, is now the official author of my favorite review of my own work. By the way, bad reviews are as easily dismissed by me as good ones are embraced. Call me a spineless whore. I laugh at your words. Zachary Matz, my co-producer, old friend and occasional jazz co-hort (he plays guitar and bass) deserves another major thank you for having had the worst job on the movie and pulled it off. He was locked in an office for most of production juggling the accounts--er, rather, making financial sense out of things. Kudo's to Dan Fisher, a great property master (an extremely important and often underrated job) who is a...

"City Island" wrapped at dawn, Thursday morning and immediately gave itself a wrap party that very evening. I hired two excellent jazz musicians--bass and sax--to accompany me (I play piano) and gave the movie's crew the gift of jazz as background entertainment. Then Andy Garcia brought in a Cuban band to kick things up a notch. The evening ended with me and several members of the crew going to the absolutely stupidest bar I've ever been to--a place called the "Beauty Bar" somewhere downtown, where guys sit around with the heads in old hair-dryers. Jesus. A few tributes. First to my excellent producing partner Lauren Versel, without whom we would not have actually become a movie. Lauren and I go back aways in life and could never have anticipated our relationship evolving into what it's become--partners in a joint movie venture that significantly has altered both of our lives already. From the beginning of her involvement, she has been nothing but suppor...

Andy serenades Raymond with his City Island lines late into the last night of our shoot. I thought I was being discreet, evidently not. Subscribe in a reader

Our last night has been spent at the fitting and classic Empire Diner, right in the heart of Chelsea. Fitting, I think, because the movie takes a route from the fringes of Bronx and un-germinated dreams to the hub-bub of New York and the promise of a bright future. We too began in the Bronx, nicely rooted, and now are here, in the bustling, bright city. The two paths have finally converged; art really does imitate life. Subscribe in a reader

This is a post I had been meaning to do for a very long time and then there came a point when it could only be done on the final night; only now it seems apt. Our producer Zachary Matz has been the darkest of horses when it comes to set presence. Yet, he has been the definition of "trooper", assuming the above position for 14 hours a day, his phone headset never far from his earlobes. This is a post in acknowledgment of Zachary Matz and it comes from my endless reserve of gushiness. So readers, suffer no more my ramblings, but be assured he is awesome, the movie would not have been made without him and it would not have been the same experience without his impromptu lessons in production throughout the long days in the musty City Island office. I don't really need to say much more, (I think my sentiment is clear) because I know I will get wasted tomorrow at the wrap party and tell him myself... The minutes, along with the film feet, are slowly slipping away and burning u...

A video montage from the late hours of last night. Up and down 10th avenue, and then to the bar for some drinks and cheese. Yum. Subscribe in a reader

Street chaos that manages to end up being a movie, and a rather wonderful one at that. Subscribe in a reader