aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Sunday, June 19, 2005

Help him land Chazz Palminteri

My friend Marco Ricci is a brilliant young filmmaker. I got an email update from him the other day. He’s working on a new film, and raising money:

I’m shooting a feature film with John Turturro this September. It’s a project I’ve been working on called The Marconi Bros - it’s loosely based upon my experiences working with the king of Long Island wedding videos.  After five years of working on the script my cousin (and co-director) Michael and I decided that we weren’t going to go through five years of development hell in Hollywood, so we gave ourselves the green light and decided to raise the money privately.

Luckily John Turturro liked the idea and agreed to play the king of Long Island wedding videos. My friend Dan Fogler (who just won a Tony award for his role in the Broadway musical the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee) came on board as one of the other leads. Using their participation we were able to privately raise our $200,000 budget. Since then things have snowballed and we now have an opportunity to get Chazz Palminteri involved in the project - the only problem is we can’t afford to pay him at such a low budget.

We’re trying to raise an additional chunk of cash. I know you all can’t afford to buy in to this, but I’m asking you to forward our plea on to that rich Uncle who is just dying to get in the film business, or that crazy boss who wants to meet a couple of stars, or anyone else who might find this attractive. With our cast and low budget I feel confident that everyone will make their investment back. You can check out more info on our web site www.marconibros.com/invest.