Right, then. Salt Lake City. Sundance 2000. The story of selling "Two Family House". Anybody still care? Anybody reading this?
HELLO!!!
The guys from USA films were very enthused about the movie and naturally this alerted the other distributors, who showed en masse to our second screening the following night, this time in Park City. We'd planned a little post screening party at the dreadfully Park City-ish house we were renting, figuring on twenty or so people dropping by. The film played very well but it was hard to judge if we were going to get any more offers.
Until we got back to our house. To our astonishment the party had already started, prior to us even getting there. People were pouring into the place, I imagine having been told that the new 'hot' film at the festival was throwing the evening's 'hot' party. Sundance is one lousy party after another--crowded, loud, filled with bloodsuckers and wannabes--and there we were, purveyors of one of the festivals biggest lousy parties! Only the truth is, ours was quite pleasant. For one thing I only allow jazz to be played at any gathering--and despite what the ignorant and uninformed think of jazz ("too weird", "for smart people", "no beat" etc.) the best jazz--served at a reasonably pleasant place with plenty of booze--makes everyone feel just a little more...civil. Cool. Appropriately charming. (Re: people who don't get jazz: do you know who is scandalously uninformed about jazz and doesn't hide his outright distaste for it? Cameron Crowe. Every one of his movies has some "bad jazz" joke in it. I don't really care if you don't like jazz, but if you're a self-proclaimed music 'expert'--and have taken over the franchise on Billy Wilder as well--you ought to stop bragging about your loathing of America's greatest indiginous art form. Does he brag about not liking to read books?)
Anyway, present at the party was Mark Urman from Lions Gate films, whose very presence seemed to indicate that we had another buyer interested. The next day the producers met with each company and considered the two offers--I absented myself from this process, the better to do press and not be faced with the stress of having people who desire something from you come on strong...always an embarrassing thing to witness, in my opinion. And by the end of the next day, we'd sold the movie--to Lions Gate. The festival was only a few days old but it was, for all intents and purposes, over for me. We'd accomplished what everybody hopes to in the independent film game. Made movie, shown movie at Sundance, sold movie. I disliked the altitude in Park City, didn't want to go to any more parties or screenings, and went home shortly thereafter.
Thus missing out on being there to accept the first award I've ever actually won. Since "Two Family House" wasn't allowed in competition, we were only eligible for the Audience Award. And the movie that seemed to be attracting the heavy buzz that year was the by now all but forgotten "Girlfight" (probably best known now as the movie we have to blame for bringing us the problematic Michelle Rodriguez). It was in competition and seemed a certain bet to sell and win the Jury prize. Since the film was apparently a big crowd pleaser, I figured it would also pick up the Audience Award...and that it would be best for me to take the good news I had and beat a hasty retreat back to New York.
A week later, on the day of the closing night of the festival, my manager Gary Unger called me from Park City. "They're asking if there's any chance you can get on a plane and make it back here before the awards ceremony". The answer was no--I was in New York and the timing would have been perilous if not impossible. But at least I knew that we'd won the Audience Award. Gary and my producer Al Klingenstein accepted on my behalf. The awards show was televised, so me and my wife and two of our friends watched it on TV in the upstairs living room of our apartment on West 4th Street. I never regretted not being there--indeed there was a certain shadowy glamour to my conspicuous absence. A couple of days later, one of the New York dailies ran a piece on the Sundance winners and noted that that year's winning filmmakers all came from New York. Referring to me, the writer commented "De Felitta, who has always marched to his own drummer, skipped the ceremony..." thereby placing me in the august company of the New Yorker who actually PLANS to miss all of his own award ceremony's--Woody Allen.
The below clip--Woody at 31--is worth every one of its ten minutes. Enjoy...
Frankly later rather than earlier. I think it belongs to the spring/summer which puts us into 2010. We've talked about end of the year but that's such a train wreck of "prestige" film releases...I love my movie and hate the thought of it being outflanked by a "prestige" movie. Let them all kill each other over the dubious honor of getting a few Oscar noms. Then we'll come out a few months later and put them all to shame.
Irving Lazar: what the hell does any producer do? One of three things. 1) Provide inspiration. 2) Plan the actual making of the film. 3) Raise the money. On this film I (who takes a producer credit) and Andy Garcia did the "inspiration thing". But so did Zachary Matz, who was planning the production along with Ged Dickersen (both credited producers). And so did Lauren Versel do the "inspiration thing" too at the most crucial juncture--when all of our previous inspiration yielded nothing but compliments (and no money): She raised the money. And so all those other producer names you see--the executive producers--are lovely people who believed in the project, believed in me as a filmmaker and Lauren as a producer and wrote us a check. The real "inspiration thing". Anyway, is "Swifty" a name your proud of? Like it inspires confidence? 
I'm guessing we were shooting by early to mid May. We worked in a triangle of New Jersey and Staten Island--though the film is set on the latter, the exterior of the house was all that was shot there (for the house--we used a few other locations, namely a wonderful bar the name of which escapes me but where they served brilliant Kilbassa). The wonderful crap house we found for Buddy to buy for his wife and dream of turning into a business was perfectly lousy on the outside...but was far too dilapidated to even consider bringing in a big crew to shoot for a few weeks. Instead we found--just across the water in Jersey City-- an enormous old Victorian house in junky but stable condition. Which was good--we wanted the freedom to do what we needed to the interior of the place and its unrestored, uncared for interiors didn't exactly scare the art department away from making a few "alterations". The family that lived there promised to leave when we were ready to shoot but we'd heard from other people they'd rented the house too that they tended to hang around and begin to make problems. The answer, then, was simple. BRIBE them. We did. Four round trip bus tickets to a warmer climate were dutifully procured for them while we hunkered down for a few weeks in their house.
Michael Rispoli was Buddy. I knew it when I saw him on screen and I knew it for certain when he and I sat down and met at Rocco's, a pastry and coffee joint on Bleecker Street in the West Village. Michael exposed his feelings and desires about the part so fearlessly at our meeting that I left knowing not only that I had my Buddy, but that I had a movie. When big casting pieces fall into place, your work as a director is considerably less daunting...indeed I would argue that it practically becomes a non-issue.
Most unusual of all, casting wise, was getting Kelly Macdonald to play the young, pregnant Irish lass. I'd seen her in "Trainspotting" and a strange movie called "Cousin Bette" and what I'd noticed about her was that, whatever the size of the role and however little she might have had to do, you couldn't take your eyes off her when she was on screen. This might be the single most important thing a film actor has--that kind of mesmerizing authority while on screen. We were fortunate to have attracted the interest of her English manager (no thanks, by the way, to her then American agents at CAA) who pushed the script on her while she was in mid-shoot on something else in Europe. When she showed up in New York, a week before our shoot, she presented herself at my apartment in the Village and was unbelievably assured, friendly and down to earth. How old was Kelly at this time? Twenty-two? Twenty-three? After we'd hung out and talked for a good long while (and I think gone to lunch...) I offered to get a cab and take her to her hotel uptown, figuring that she didn't know New York too well. With admirable spunk she declined and said, "That's okay, I'm a very self-sufficient girl!", a line that endeared her to me forever...
