Movies Til Dawn

Better late than never. Here, in honor of our veterans, is a one-hour 1964 NBC news documentary called "The Battle Of the Bulge". It was directed by my father, Frank De Felitta, himself a veteran of the Second World War and the film remains a stirring and dynamic tribute and explanation of this significant turning point in the bloodiest war the world has ever known. As it was made for the twentieth anniversary of the battle, the film contains priceless footage of many of the significant participants in the war, including interviews with General's Omar Bradley and Anthony McAuliffe--the latter was the general who famously replied "Nuts" when told by the Germans that he had no honorable choice but to surrender to them. (Read this tale of the war here) . My father was in the Air Force and was a "troop carrier"--flying planes that dropped parachuting fighters into the battle zones. Indeed, he dropped soliders during this battle. In 1996, at the Deauville F...

Courtesy of Joe Russell, raconteur, wit, man-about-town, filmmaker and provocateur (he's been working with me on my "Booker's Place" documentary), here is Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel's 1997 review of "Cafe Society". Where the hell Joe found this I don't know. And perhaps its best that it remain a secret--I like these three minutes of video floating through the ether, penetrating the surface of the viral world just as I've been revisiting the movie for the first time in oh so many years.   Subscribe in a reader

Following the uncertain reception accorded to my first feature "Cafe Society", we returned to New York--somewhat dispirited but still essentially optimistic. After al, Roger Ebert had really liked the movie. Others had too. It was as if nobody wanted to be the first to come out and say that they loved it. I sensed (and believe I was correct in this) that the finishing of the film was partly to blame--it was still overlength and under-scored musically (by which I mean NOT scored--I tried to do with period records only which is a lovely conceit--Woody Allen does it all the time--but wasn't really right for this movie). At that time, Showtime had gotten into the "made of cable" movie business in earnest. One of the ways to do this with some efficiency was to not just make their own movies, but buy already finished movies that had trouble securing domestic distribution. The movies needed to have recognizable cast elements, elegant production values and some sort of ...

"Cafe Society" was photographed across the December/January 1994/1995 holiday season. For reasons that have nothing to do with anything but managerial incompetence, the film was shot mostly at night--perhaps our initial location (the courtroom) was a nights only proposition, thus throwing the rest of the shoot onto an ungodly Six AM to Six PM timetable. In a strange way, though, the off-the-gridness of it all was part of the shoots magic--the odd task of re-creating forgotten Manhattan nightclubs on a bare-bones budget was given an additional otherworldliness by being allowed to happen only after midnight. And how did we accomplish the recreation of a half-dozen or so nightclubs on that flea budget, you ask? By finding an incredible location which in many ways was the real reason the film could be accomplished at all. It was an old "gentleman's club" in the Wall Street area--a five story building that had once housed a series of meeting rooms, restaurants, priva...

"Welcome to 'Cafe Society'," intones Frank Whaley, star of my first feature film, "Cafe Society". "Where the elite meet to eat...(and then, sotto voce) each other. " "Cafe Society" was made in 1995 and has been largely out of circulation since its appearance. Or so it seems to me. Since nobody has a clue who owns it and no one has seen fit to put it on DVD, I've posted it below. Well actually I've posted the first four parts. If you're interested in watching the rest, youtube will perform its magic. The film was based on a true crime story--the sensational 1952 scandal involving one Mickey Jelke, heir to an oleomargerine fortune, who was accused and convicted of heading Manhattan's biggest prostitution ring. Jelke was tabloid fodder for several years, especially when it was revealed that his "main girl"--Patricia Ward--had formerly been his fiancee. Jelke convinced Ward to go to work hooking when his family (who ...

No, I'm not talking about Billy Wilder's "The Apartment". I'm talking about his apartment. The one he and Audrey lived in together from 1957 until his death in 2002. (I believe she still lives there). That's what I'm talking about here. Not interested? Then don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out of the Wilshire Terrace. For some reason, the living quarters of Billy Wilder--my personal movie God--always fascinated me. From a young age I knew that he resided in an building on the corner of Wilshire Blvd. and Beverly Glen known as the Wilshire Terrace. The question is: why? Aren't famed movie directors supposed to live in lavish spreads with guest houses, detatched projection facilities, manicured lawns and unused swimming pools (or in the case of Wilder perhaps one with a dead body floating face down in it?) Isn't the whole idea of having money in LA to spend it on a house that publicly trumpets your taste, personality and I'm...

Meet Miss Brown, a Pittsburgh public school teacher who, along with a young Italian boy named Dominick, found herself the subject of an NBC news documentary which aired in 1963. The film, "An Experiment In Excellence", was directed by my father Frank De Felitta and it's my pleasure to share it with you below (I've posted the first half--the entire thing will be up over the next few days). Like most of my fathers other NBC documentaries, the film is both a stirring emotional journey as well as a time capsule of the era in which it was made. The films were made between 1962-1968 and thus collectively serve as a record of a very specific era in American history. Whether covering the generation's artists ("The American Image"), the life of a young intern ("Emergency Ward") or the struggles of the south during the civil rights era ("Mississippi: A Self Portrait"), the sense of the times is alive and beautifully rendered in all of them. In ...