Carlo Fiorletta - DETOURS clips

Carlo Fiorletta & Deirdre O'Connell in DETOURS

I recently needed to put together a short video of Carlo Fiorletta's best scenes from DETOURS, and decided to share it here as well.  The first scene features the wonderful Deirdre O'Connell ; she is best known as a theater actress in NYC, and can be seen in Showtime's series "The Affair."  The second scene - truly one of my favorites -  is with the terrific Tara Westwood, who plays Carlo's daughter in the movie. 

You can see DETOURS on Saturday night July 16 at the Long Island Film Expo in Bellmore, Long Island and on Sunday September 18 at The Strand theater in Lakewood NJ. More screening dates coming (very!) soon.

Deirdre O'Connell - in DETOURS and The New York Times

One of the great things about casting a movie in New York City is that you have the opportunity to work with amazing actors who are more frequently seen on stage than on screen.  For Detours, one of the great actors who our casting director, Caroline Sinclair, reached out to was the wonderful Deirdre O'Connell. She plays Beth, the delightful woman who Dan Giraldi, played by Carlo Fiorletta, meets in a bar in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Deirdre currently stars in the Labyrinth Theater Company production of Mona Mansour's play The Way West. The New York Times ran a wonderful feature story about her this past week, which discussed her tremendous body of work in the theater, especially as what they call a "melancholy mom." The full article is available here.

As wonderful as that play is - I saw it and she's amazing in it - it's terrific to have cast her in a role where she is beautiful and charming and happy.  Click the link below to see some of it. Detours has its world premiere in April at the 11th annual Sunscreen Film Festival in Saint Petersburg, Florida.

When Casting a Movie, Look to the Theater

Carlo Fiorletta and Debargo Sanyal

One of the joys of casting an indie film in NYC is the opportunity to work with amazing actors who do much of their work on stage rather than on screen.

I was reminded of that this week when Carlo Fiorletta and I saw the terrific new play Love Sex and Death in the Amazon.  Debargo Sanyal, who is awesome as the rapping motel clerk Rajiv in my just-completed feature film Detours, is one of the stars so we wanted to see it.  He was terrific - no surprise - but it was a great reminder to me that the NYC stage is an amazing source of talent when you're looking to cast an indie movie.  Even though there are hundreds of movies every that shoot at least some scenes in NY, that's dwarfed by the number of plays that are produced every year, ranging from Broadway to off-off-Broadway, plus an uncountable number of readings of new works.

While most directors and producers watch a lot of movies, it can be (very) helpful to see as much theater as possible.  And while that's wonderful and easy in NY, there's a tremendous amount of very good regional theater all across the country.  You'll see some amazing actors who might not otherwise be on your radar, and you may even be inspired to change what you're looking for.

I'll wrap this up with a shout out to a few of the amazing actors from my 2 features Surviving Family and Detours, and some of the great theater work that they've done.

Billy Magnussen was Tony nominated for originating the role of Spike in Christopher Durang's Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike and then starred in the off-Broadway play Sex With Strangers.  Sarah Wilson starred in the well-reviewed The Best of Everything. Tara Westwood was weird and wonderful as a woman who gives birth to a tree branch in Branched; and P.J. Sosko is a staple of the off-Broadway scene.

Richard Kind & Tara Westwood

Michael Cerveris received the Tony Award for Fun Home and Assassins; he was nominated for Sweeney Todd, The Who's Tommy, and LoveMusik and has appeared in many (many) other plays both on and off Broadway. Richard Kind was Tony nominated for his role in The Big Knife, and has starred in (among others) The Producers, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, and Sly Fox.  Phyllis Somerville most recently appeared in the experimental all-female production of I Remember Mama.  Deirdre O'Connell is a staple of NY's Broadway and off-Broadway theater scene, and received a Drama Desk Award for both Circle Mirror Transformation and In The Wake.  Betsy Aidem played Lady Bird Johnson and other roles in the Tony Award Winning All The Way.  Marguerite Stimpson was in The Elephant Man.  And Carlo Fiorletta recently originated the role of Assbiter (truly one of the best character names ever) in "Is That Danny DeVito?"

So to paraphrase the most famous playwright of all:  "Get thee to the theater."