Welcome to City Island. Above is a view of this magical and strange place where I am currently living, working and blogging. We wrapped our first week of shooting Friday night at eleven PM. I took off for the city in the morning and somehow a day and a half
LADIES, PLEASE! CALM DOWN!Producer Lauren Versel of Lucky Monkey Pictures maintains her cool on set with Steven Strait, whilst I, with my eagle eye, keep the punters happy. The art department has come through with beautiful, shining colors once again. How can we ever repay them? Cecelia Bee
Just a few pictures for now. Today was officially (and affectionately) known as: THE DAY OF 96 THOUSAND SET UPS. Screw “City Island”; someone get Ridley Scott’s people on the phone; we are making epic battle movie instead. Sorry Raymond, I guess the beautifully shot (Thank you Vanja) indie comedy,
DAY ONE OF THE PRODUCTION PROPER. Today it all took off. And Dan ‘modified’ a Ford (see below) which as ceremonious as it may well have been for Raymond to whack a sledge hammer into the grill of a beautiful car, we need his health to be in a good
Today I met the liquor store owners. They were relaxing, in the shady (as in dark, not dodgy) store eating mangoes. They gave me gifts and advice; below is the ‘Official’ postcard for City Island from JGL Wines & Liquors. Go there, they are lovely and sell intoxicating substances. Bonus!
And so on the brink of the first day of filming in the Rizzo house, as all crew members grasp on to the last precious moments of the weekend, we finalise our cast profiles. And boy are we going out with a bang with the smoldering yet fresh Dominik Garcia-Lorido.
This past Wednesday, I became the luckiest filmmaker in New York when the fabulous Julianna Margulies leapt aboard the runaway train known as “City Island” and agreed to play Andy Garcia’s wife, Joyce Rizzo. How the hell can a movie be one week away from shooting and still not have such an
The great actor, writer, director, comedian, folk-singer and children’s book writer Alan Arkin is–I’m proud to say–a member of the “City Island” cast, playing a slightly worn out acting teacher named Michael Malakov. Though he appears in only a handful of scenes, Malakov is an important character as he is
One of my directing mentors, Edward Dmytryk (“Caine Mutiny”, “Murder My Sweet”) once told me that he always picked simple things to do on the first day of a movie since he it always took him a day to brush the cobwebs out of his eyes, get his footing and