Salon.com > City Island

After “City Island,” time for Hollywood meetings

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:27:00 +0000

Yes, I'm back. Like a hammy vaudevillian who takes one too many encores thereby dissolving whatever goodwill the audience may have had for him, I'm still onstage. I have my reasons. Chief among them is that "City Island," the movie that I wrote and directed that stars Andy Garcia and Julianna Margulies, is being released on Blu-ray and DVD on Aug. 24. Having blogged the entire making of the movie and then relived the whole experience in a dozen columns that I wrote for Salon at the time of our theatrical release this past spring, one little extra column to support the DVD release seems criminally modest. Anyway, they asked me to do it so here I am. For my next encore I'll recite "Gunga Din."

Blogging “City Island”: Until we meet again!

Mon, 03 May 2010 18:04:00 +0000

This is my last Salon column. How the hell much more horn-tooting can I really do and still retain the faintest amount of self-respect? I'd like to thank Salon for generously offering me this space and the freedom to write about anything I wanted (anything "City Island"-connected, that is) at pretty much any length I chose. The audience I was able to reach and who were thus able to hear about "City Island" was, of course, tremendous. The movie has expanded weekend after weekend into more cities, and is in the process of becoming a bona fide "sleeper hit" -- a movie that the industry naysayers didn't initially see a lot of value in, but one that has outlasted many of the movies that opened alongside it and is growing stronger with every showing. (You can find updated theater listings on our Facebook page.) The audience -- as always -- wound up in charge. Our audiences are giving "City Island" a remarkable life that couldn't have been anticipated.

Blogging “City Island”: Anatomy of an indie breakout

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:30:00 +0000

Another picture of mine opened at Radio City Music Hall. It opened quietly with no great beating of drums of baiting of breath ... so quietly did the picture open, it failed to merit the usual second-week holdover at the Music Hall: a black mark against future business ... The critics, too, were caught with their adjectives down. The Nation pontificated, "entertaining, but to claim any significance for the picture would of course be a mistake."

The writer is Frank Capra, three-time Oscar-winning filmmaker and truly the first "star" director -- his name above the title guaranteed box office business. The movie he's talking about is "It Happened One Night," starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. Pray continue, Frank.

Then it happened. Happened all over the country -- not in one night, but within a month. People found the film ... funnier, much funnier than the usual. But, biggest surprise of all, they could remember in detail a good deal of what went on in the film and found that everybody else did and that it was great fun talking about this and that scene ... theaters sold out for weeks and weeks. Critics went back for a second look.

Blogging “City Island”: My movie’s a hit! Why am I up all night?

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 16:30:00 +0000

So what's left to blog about?

We sit at the beginning of our fifth weekend. "City Island" is continuing a slow and effective rollout around the country. Our per-screen averages are extremely encouraging -- the trades like using the word "sturdy" -- and our reviews are for the most part excellent. Rotten Tomatoes has us at an 85 percent rating. It seems like "City Island" is, in fact, that rare thing In today's marketplace: an indie film that is enjoying a measure of mainstream success and has done so on its own independent terms: I got to make the film I wanted to make with no interference. Once it was done we offered it up for sale and it was purchased -- as is. (Ten years ago I was editing my film "Two Family House" in a post facility in downtown Manhattan while across the hall -- in a room choked by the stench of Marlboro Lights -- Harvey Weinstein sat furiously destroying a film he had purchased the previous year. I believe the film was called "B Monkey"; hence the moniker "Harvey Scissorhands"). Once the movie was purchased, the advertising campaign was designed and the input and comments of the filmmakers were welcomed and listened to.

Blogging “City Island”: My fat-chick manifesto

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:18:00 +0000

OK, so what's up with my thing for fat chicks?

I'm sorry. Did I really say that? What I meant to say was: How did I get interested in exploring the cultural divide that exists between the unhappy anorexic woman and the happy obese woman?

Or: What's up with me and the fat chicks?

First of all, if you haven't yet seen my film "City Island" (and you may, at any of these theater locations as the movie expands out this weekend) you may not know why this question is even being asked. The reason is that a subplot involves the Rizzo family's youngest son (the brilliant Ezra Miller) who is secretly ashamed of his adolescent yearning for the woman next door, an Internet "goddess" named Denise who is 400 pounds and a proud advocate of BBWs ("big, beautiful women for those of you new to this" as she explains on her website, Feeding Denise). Now, I wouldn't say that the movie is about obese people any more than I would say that it's about Italian people. But both groups are represented in the -- ahem -- body of the movie, and one of the most frequently asked question I get at Q&As is: "What's with you and the fat chick stuff?" Only people don't come out and say it quite that way. Instead they say:

Blogging “City Island”: Why I did it

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 14:16:00 +0000

From the beginning of its production, "City Island" was positioned by me as a movie based in the era of information democracy. It's a movie about ordinary (sort of) everyday people and their trials and travails. I wanted the act of making it to feel open and ordinary as well. Hence my decision to appeal to an Internet audience by demystifying the process of filmmaking. I decided to blog the behind-the-scenes making of the film, posting outtakes as well as on-set clips every day and discussing the progress of the film as it was being made.

Blogging “City Island”: We survived opening weekend!

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 15:02:00 +0000

When last we met, my movie "City Island" had just opened the previous weekend and, presumably, you followed its fate (which has so far been as good as it can get). But I have to hand these columns in before the weekend -- so I didn't know what hell awaited us last Thursday night. I sat, bemused, writing my column and wondering if eight and half years of waiting was going to end in the biggest anticlimax of my life ... or if we were going to have our lifespan extended.

It appears that the latter has happened. We got some great reviews (and a few snarky ones -- no harm, dears, even faint praise counts in my book) and are now expanding outwards to eight other cities, as well as multiple theaters in Los Angeles and New York. (For a complete listing of where you can currently and in the near future see "City Island," go to our Facebook page.)

Blogging “City Island”: After Sundance said no

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 15:23:00 +0000

Those of you who have been following the saga of "City Island" for the past few weeks may have noticed that I've been taking you -- painstakingly -- through the improbable set of events that led to the making of our movie. When last we met, I had the great good fortune of hiring Julianna Margulies just days before shooting started. Logic (and continuity) would dictate that this next post, then, would be about the shooting of the film.

But no. Not so. For two reasons. One is that I've been covering the daily production saga on my blog, Movies 'Til Dawn.

But there's another reason for leaping over the shoot. I thought I'd write about how the hell we got to where we are. And where are we, you ask? We are fortunate to be one of the very small number of independent films to have been bought for theatrical release last year. "City Island" opened in theaters on March 19, in Los Angeles and New York. It will soon expand to eight more cities. Although you're reading this after our opening weekend. I'm writing it before our opening weekend. Hence you know the reviews and I don't. To take my mind off whatever fate awaits us, I thought I'd jump over the shoot and recount the journey from orphaned film (i.e., a film born without shelter into a cruel and unforgiving world -- one with no distributor) to a film with an ending as warm and cuddly as Oliver Twist's. Home was always there for us. It just took awhile to find our way to it.

“City Island”: Family secrets, boiled and steamed

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 18:01:00 +0000

Since the writer and director of "City Island," Raymond De Felitta, has been blogging on Salon over the past few weeks about how he cast, financed and made the film, it might have been pretty awkward if I'd seen it and really hated it. In the spirit of De Felitta's frank and entertaining posts, I'll add that I simply wouldn't have written anything about it. If he or his publicist had asked, I'd have blamed it on some ass-covering "editorial decision" made from above. Nothing to do with me, Raymond!

Fortunately, "City Island" is pretty damned irresistible. What begins as a winning workout in a highly familiar genre — the white-ethnic, big-city family comedy — gradually gains both screwball momentum and emotional power, and delivers an unexpected punch by the time it reaches its climactic pileup of characters and revelations. As a filmmaker, De Felitta isn't Antonioni, but he doesn't aspire to be. Instead, he's a witty and economical craftsman of comic narrative. Even if I didn't know he was an aficionado of classic Hollywood movies, I'd see the influence of, say, George Cukor and James L. Brooks.

Blogging “City Island”: The (leading) lady vanishes

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:14:00 +0000

Now, if you were looking to finance a movie what would you think of the following package?

Star actor (Andy Garcia).

Well known and super-respected actress (Marcia Gay Harden).

Super hip indie queen (Chloe Sevigny).

Very hot up-and-coming guy with big movie coming out (Steven Strait).

Script that people like because it's both accessible and smart, warm and clever.

Director with some awards behind him (me).

My thought would be that based on the projected budget -- somewhere around $5 million -- 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.

But still, no money was forthcoming for “City Island.” So more reality needed to be added to our still notional movie equation. Having cast the main roles, what more reality was there to add? The answer was: a budget.

Blogging “City Island”: Andy Garcia, the man, the legend, the casting lure

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 01:20:00 +0000

One afternoon in the winter of 2007 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 family's but was now used as an office, was filled with memorabilia -- pictures, letters, awards -- attesting to the incredibly rich and varied career Andy has had over 20-plus years in the business. In time I would come to think of the house as the Museo de 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 seeking for more than five 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 nothing is more important than both actor and director getting a mutual sense of comfort and understanding about some basic philosophical things. If the air is muddy early -- if a basic air of unease permeates things from the beginning -- it will never get better.

Blogging “City Island”: Exit Chiklis, producers. Am I doomed?

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 02:01:00 +0000

By far the worst state your as-yet-unmade/unfinanced movie project can fall into is one of inertia. This is generally the death knell for most would-be projects, the state of mind that causes everyone to lose interest, hope and faith. It generally comes either at the outset of things (as in: nobody's interested in your script to begin with) or, more disastrously, after a good start yields no real "traction."

And that is precisely the state "City Island" found itself in, following the departure of Michael Chiklis. We had announced ourselves in the trades, we had gotten the agencies all souped up on our upcoming movie, we had an actor committed ... and then, slowly but with the inevitability of chocolate melting in the sun, we turned to goo. Instead of seizing the moment and pushing ahead, inertia gripped us. My producers weren't as concerned with this as I was — they reasoned that, having quickly attracted the interest of one actor, we would soon have the attention of another.

Blogging “City Island”: De Niro? Willis? Or Michael Chiklis?

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 02:01:00 +0000

"City Island" was written in a kind of fevered rush in the infamous month of September 2001. I was seized with the idea and, unlike any of my other scripts, proceeded without an outline, watching the pieces of the story fall into place with an odd inevitability. Indeed, the writing somehow felt more like a process of taking dictation from some unknown source as I rushed to keep up with what the characters were saying and doing and where they were going. When I was finished, I showed the script to a couple of trusted friends and advisers and waited nervously; my fear was that it was an overcaffeinated writing binge that made sense at the time but would provoke more head scratching than hand clapping.

But to my relief, people seemed to like it. Very few notes or complaints. Lots of enthusiasm. Since this was the first time in my many years of screenplay creating that I’d had an experience quite like this, I decided that this meant this would be the first time that making a movie out of a script wouldn’t be a teeth-pulling, gut-wrenching, blood-letting experience.

Blogging “City Island”: Filmmaker, hype thyself

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 02:01:00 +0000

In the summer of 2008 I finally got to shoot my screenplay "City Island," a movie that I'd been trying to make literally since the turn of the century. I was fortunate to have finally assembled an amazing cast -- Andy Garcia, Julianna Margulies, Alan Arkin, Emily Mortimer -- and after private equity had been assembled and trips to the markets in Berlin and Cannes had been made, most of the financing was in place. (Payroll was something of a cliffhanger week to week, but sometimes you just have to practice a little faith.)

A year or so earlier, I had begun writing a blog called Movies 'Til Dawn, which was essentially a way to justify the enormous amount of time I was losing every day watching YouTube clips of old jazz performances and old movie musicals (two of my passions in life). Once "City Island" started moving ahead, however, I realized I would have to abandon the blog due to the obvious time constraints. The small but faithful readership I'd attracted would be a thing of the past.