Writer/Director Roger Paradiso has been interested in Tony ‘n Tina’s Wedding since 1986.  He was dating an actress who was in this weird showcase about an Italian wedding.  “It was only going to run for one weekend because that’s all the money they had.  I thought it worked great as an improv for theatre.  I really liked the skeleton of the story.  I thought it would work as a Film if you could capture the helter skelter nature of the improv and were able to develope a more structured story.”

Paradiso became friendly with the creators of the show, in particular a talented young lady named Nancy Cassaro.  “Nancy’s father, a doctor, had financed the weekend workshop.  There was some doubt as to whether she would be able to finance another weekend, so she begged me to borrow a 16mm camera and shoot the next workshop performance.  I told her this would be impossible to do and wouldn’t do the story I had in mind justice.  In hindsight, if I had known it would take 17 years to get it made, I would have grabbed that camera and shot the workshop.”

Paradiso had been a writer-director in the New York Off-Off-Broadway Theatre scene and to make ends meet had been leading a double life as a Location Manager, Assistant Director and Line Producer in feature films and commercials.  “All my friends from high school, college and my early years in New York knew me as a creative person.  I had been writing and directing in theatre and I had also been a set and lighting designer at some regional and Off-Broadway theatres.  But to pay the rent, since everybody knows there is no money in theatre, I started working in Film.  And I enjoyed Film tremendously, not only as a young kid seeing all those Roger Corman and Samuel Z.  Arkoff matinees, but I had experimented with film since high school.  What a  learning experience it was for me to work with Writers and Directors like John Huston, Woody Allen, Marshall Brickman, Norman Jewison, John McTiernan, Michael Caton-Jones and Adrian Lyne.  It was like taking a Master Class in Filmmaking.”

But back to Tony N’ Tina’s Wedding: Paradiso had taken an option on the property, really an improv, and proceeded to develop a screenplay with some of the creators.  “We’ve had  offers over the years but none of us wanted to compromise the story.  I know it may sound stupid to some people, but we turned down several offers to make the movie.  It was either  because we had to develop the story as a big budget movie with two stars and cut out all the other characters, or can you make this movie in Toronto, Rome, South Africa or Mexico?  It all came down to the integrity of the story.  Tony and Tina are important, of course, but unbalancing the story by cutting other characters was unacceptable.  Also, over the years I have become a regional filmmaker for many personal and ethical reasons, so the idea of shooting the movie anywhere but New York was also unacceptable.  I felt that not only would I be selling out Tony ‘n Tina’s Wedding, but I would be selling out all the other regional filmmakers in the US by supporting runaway film production.”

Being a 50 year old first-time feature director is also so politically incorrect that it appealed to Paradiso.  “I’ve directed award-winning shorts and industrials as well as commercials and theatre, but there were many conversations about replacing myself as a director and just writing and Producing.  But I figured that was just buying into more politically correct crap so I decided to go with my heart and direct the film no matter what anyone thought.  I know a lot of people may wonder why an older person is directing what is essentially a young person’s movie, but I don’t buy into limiting yourself.”

Tony ‘n Tina’s Wedding finally found a dream investor who not only believed in Paradiso and the script, but supported production in New York.  “We had a very modest $1.5 million budget and I had 15 days to shoot.  I told all the actors that this may be the closest thing to theatre that they would ever experience in film.  We did improvs, rehearsed and rewrote scenes and roughed in the entire film in a very condensed two week rehearsal.  I actually started working with many of the actors weeks before that two week rehearsal period.  We did bios of their characters and had everyone email and call each other so they could develop their group mythology.  They had to behave as if they knew each other for many years.  I like to rehearse in film but it’s different than a theatre rehearsal.  In film I like to rough things in but not over-rehearse scenes, because I think scenes have to be fresh to make the audience think that this is really happening moment to moment.  In film, you want accidents to happen and you want the actors to perform as if they are hearing and seeing the scene for the first time.  Hopefully , we did that.  I know we did very long takes and I kept the camera moving so that the actors always had to be ‘On’.”