Tomorrow, August 3rd, would have been my father Frank De Felitta’s 103rd birthday. (He passed away in 2016, age 94). To honor this milestone of not being alive for eight and a half years, I thought I’d post an exceedingly rare and culturally important documentary he made for CBS television
Yesterday’s behind the scenes post featured Sidney Lumet directing ‘Dog Day Afternoon’. Today, Sidney is back as we take a look at the making of the catastrophic 1977 musical adaptation of ‘The Wiz’. The film was co-produced by Universal Pictures and Motown Records and starred Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Lena
Today I’m posting a very entertaining ten-minute behind the scenes doc of the making of ‘Dog Day Afternoon’, easily one of my favorite–if not the favorite–New York City movies. (Yesterday I posted a behind the scenes look at ‘Tootsie’, the first of a series of NYC movie shoots of the
As a young fellow wandering the streets of New York City in the late 70/early 80s I was always thrilled to stumble upon a movie shoot in progress. Since the New York filmmaking community was quite small then, it was more than likely to be either a Woody Allen or
‘Cuckoo On A Choo Choo’ (1952) was the 143rd short comedy made by The Three Stooges for Columbia Pictures. It was photographed from Monday, April 21 through Wednesday, April 23, 1952 and was released on Thursday, December 4th of that year (the 339th day on the Gregorian Calendar). The film
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ehIgyCJy5Q ‘On With The Show’ (1929) was the first all talking movie in color. Unfortunately the only surviving prints are in black and white, though as you’ll see in the above and below clips, fragments of the color print have somehow survived and been lovingly preserved. Photographed in the two-strip
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIhj_xFKtM4https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZc1TdJFAFs Back in 1994 (thirty years ago–Jesus!) I took a few flying lessons from a fellow who taught out of Santa Monica Airport, near where I then lived. I have no idea what spurred this interest, though I later found out that Prozac, which I then took, often results in
On December 16, 1960, two airplanes had collided in midair over Staten Island. One, a United Airlines DC-8 from Chicago heading to Idlewild (now Kennedy) International Airport, smashed into buildings in Sterling Place, just west of Seventh Avenue in Park Slope, Brooklyn . Apparently many thought a bombing occurred. Above
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fURATK5Yt30 Lets kick off the week with a…I’m almost said ‘bang’ but halted myself just in time, preventing a rare lapse in taste on my part. The Hindenburg disaster of 1937 was documented by a number of newsreel companies, with the above British Pathe footage probably being the…I almost said
‘Three Dark Horses’ (1952) is the 142nd short comedy made by The Three Stooges for Columbia Pictures. No production dates are available but the film was released on Thursday, October 16th, 1952 (the 290th day on the Gregorian Calendar) just three weeks before the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower to