Posts Tagged ‘Garry Pastore’

To Garry Pastore, film and New Jersey fit well together, and have done so for a long time – long before Pastore’s young film production company got extraordinary attention earlier this summer for its staged reading in Hoboken of “On The Waterfront,” the 1954 Marlon Brando movie famously filmed on the docks of Hoboken.

As an actor, Pastore played one of the gangsters in Martin Scorsese’s 1990 “Goodfellas,” and he knows that one of the most memorable scenes, in which a character is brutally murdered, was filmed in the Palisades. As a set dresser for the 2004 remake of “The Manchurian Candidate,” Pastore knows that the early scenes of brainwashing in the Iraqi desert were actually filmed on a sand mine in Eagleswood, north of Atlantic City.

Indeed, many of the dozens of other movies and television series with which he has been involved as an actor or a set decorator or a prop master were filmed at least partly in New Jersey (such as “You Don’t Mess With The Zohan” and “August Rush”) or depict New Jersey without being filmed here, or both depict New Jersey and were at least partly filmed here (such as “Copland,” “World Trade Center,” and of course “The Sopranos”).

But to Pastore and Deborah Mello, now film producers and partners in Hudson Film Group, there could be a lot more.

“Look at that view,” Pastore said, pointing to the Statue of Liberty from the balcony of his company’s 18th floor office in a tower next to Liberty State Park. “There’s no backdrop like that anywhere else.

Then look over there,” he said, moving his finger south. “You get the urban over there.” Then lifting his finger, he added, “and you get the mountains past that. Just in this area alone,” he summed up, “you could get a better Manhattan, and avoid the traffic and the noise. The people here are probably a little more film-friendly too.”

Formed last year, Hudson Film Group is planning 10 different film projects and television series, all expected to be filmed in New Jersey.

They are also “in talks” to create a $25 million entertainment complex that will start in Hoboken and expand into Jersey City, with a legitimate theater, a film screening room, a film studio; maybe a restaurant. “It could create hundreds of jobs,” Pastore said.

The money, in Pastore’s vision, would come from the federal government and from private real estate developers.

Their great confidence in their future plans surely got a boost from their first completed project, the staged reading of “On The Waterfront,” featuring many former cast members of “The Sopranos,” including Vincent Pastore (who played “Big Pussy”), Garry Pastore’s cousin. The timing was nearly surreal. A week before the reading of this movie about corruption, the mayor of Hoboken was arrested.

Exactly a week after Budd Schulberg, the 95-year-old author of “On The Waterfront”, traveled from the Hamptons to attend the reading, he died.

Inspired by these events, Garry Pastore has taken on a new project for Hudson Film Group – a documentary film about its production of “On The Waterfront.”

Here’s a reminder that there will be a reading of Hoboken playwright Louis LaRusso’s 1980 off-Broadway play, “Marlon Brando Sat Right Here” this weekend, Friday, June 5, and Saturday, June 6.

“The Sopranos” actor Vincent Pastore is one of the many stars who will perform in the New Artists Theater Company’s production. Tickets are $25 and reservations are strongly recommended; please call (201) 656-2240 to pay by credit card, or stop by the museum at 1301 Hudson St. to reserve your seat.

In addition to Pastore, who played Salvatore “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero, the cast will include several more actors from “The Sopranos:” Maureen Van Zandt, Nicholas Giangiulio, Joe Lisi, Garry Pastore, Tony Rossi, Anthony Ribustello and Janet Sarno. Other actors are Gerard Canonico from the Broadway hit, “Spring Awakening,” as well as Sedley Bloomfield, Ernie Mingione and George Palermo (a Hoboken native who starred in the ABC soap opera “Loving” and also owns Sullivan’s bar on Washington Street).

According to director Frank Licato, the play is set in gritty Hoboken circa 1955, a year after the town hosted silver screen icon Marlon Brando and the multiple Oscar-winning cast of “On the Waterfront.” The regulars who frequent Gracie’s restaurant, the very longshoremen depicted in the movie, try to recall the glory days when their hometown was a movie set.

“Marlon Brando Sat Right Here” is a prequel to LaRusso’s “Lamppost Reunion” (also starring Pastore), which was performed to a sold-out crowd at the Hoboken Museum two years ago and then moved off-Broadway.

The reading will take place two nights only, Friday, June 5, and Saturday, June 6, at 7:30 p.m., near the museum in the vacant retail space behind Starbucks, at 12th St. and Shipyard Lane (the old video store).

“Marlon Brando Sat Right Here” is a benefit for both the New Artists Theater Company and the Hoboken Historical Museum.

Source: http://www.nj.com/hobokennow/index.ssf/2009/06/sopranos_stars_to_perform_in_m.html