{"id":13063,"date":"2014-03-25T15:57:41","date_gmt":"2014-03-25T22:57:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qgp.ykq.mybluehost.me\/cinephiled\/?p=13063"},"modified":"2014-03-30T09:04:44","modified_gmt":"2014-03-30T16:04:44","slug":"interview-raymond-de-felitta-director-rob-mob-starring-michael-pitt-nina-arianda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/interview-raymond-de-felitta-director-rob-mob-starring-michael-pitt-nina-arianda\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Raymond De Felitta, Director of \u2018Rob the Mob\u2019 Starring Michael Pitt and Nina Arianda"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"robthemob-poster\"<\/a>New York City, 1991. Small-time crooks Tommy (Michael Pitt) and Rosie have two things in common: a crazy-passionate love for each other and \u2014 after they\u2019re caught robbing a florist on Valentine\u2019s Day \u2014 prison records. Trying to go straight, Rosie lands a job at a debt-collection agency run by Dave Lovell (Griffin Dunne) and persuades Tommy to join her. But he he soon starts skipping shifts to do something much more interesting \u2014 attend the trial of Gambino-family boss John Gotti. Tommy\u2019s fascination with the mob is personal: when he was a boy he saw his father suffer a brutal beating at the hands of local gangsters. When he hears about a Mafia-owned social club where no guns are permitted, he has an idea: Why not job the joint? And so begins a series of Bonnie-and-Clyde-style stickups of mob hangouts around the city, with Tommy wielding an Uzi and Rosie driving the beat-up getaway car. The brazen daylight raids infuriate crime-family boss Big Al Fiorello (Andy Garcia) and draw the attention of verteran mob reporter Jerry Cardozo (Ray Romano). The only question is who will get to the young couple first.<\/p>\n

Rob the Mob<\/em>, based on a true story, also features Michael Rispoli, Frank Whaley, Cathy Moriarty and Burt Young. I recently sat down with Oscar-nominated director Raymond De Felitta.<\/p>\n

\"raymonddefelitto\"<\/a>Danny Miller: What a fun movie! I was surprised by how much it made me miss the sleaziness of New York in the early 90s!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Raymond De Felitta:<\/strong> It\u2019s amazing what you can get nostalgic for, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n

Yeah. And I also find it hard to believe that the 1990s already constitute \u201cperiod!\u201d \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I know! I feel like I\u2019m the same age as I was then! Turns out I\u2019m much older. I\u2019ve definitely noticed that you have to explain what the early 90s was like to so many younger people these days.<\/p>\n

What a great cast. I\u2019ve always liked Michael Pitt but I was completely won over by Nina Arianda as Rosie.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Michael was the very first person we sent the script to. I always loved him \u2014 he\u2019s sort of reminiscent of the old Actors Studio types\u00a0 \u2014 there\u2019s an intensity in Michael that I find very charismatic. But for a long time we were stalled trying to find a girl. Our original financiers said that they loved Michael but that we needed a big name for the other lead. So you get the list and go through it \u2014 Scarlett Johansson, Mila Kunis, all these people who are just not looking to do a movie like this! At some point, Bill Teitler, the producer, and I just decided we\u2019d cut the budget and re-conceive the movie as one that would cost about half of what we had planned. That loosened up the casting restrictions. I knew Nina from Venus in Fur<\/em>\u00a0on Broadway (she won a Tony Award for that performance) and she\u2019d been in a few movies like Midnight in Paris<\/em>. I thought she was fantastic on stage and was very happy when she agreed to do it. She loved the script.<\/p>\n

I have no idea what Arianda sounds like in real life but she seemed so natural in this role \u2014 not like she was \u201cdoing\u201d an accent!\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The thing she did that I think was so interesting is that she didn\u2019t just do a generic \u201couter-borough girl.\u201d She\u2019s a very detailed actress and did a ton of research. She came in and did this whole monologue on how a girl from Queens talks and uses her hands \u2014 compared to a way a woman from the Bronx talks! I went, \u201cMy God, you\u2019re right!\u201d She could go from borough to borough. So she\u2019s definitely not just doing an accent here, she really helped to build that character!<\/p>\n

\"Ripping<\/a>I had never heard of that real-life couple that the movie is based on \u2014 Thomas and Rosemarie Uva. How much did you have to stick to the facts of their story?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pretty much everything you see them going through actually happened. They were both drug addicts, they both got out of jail, they had a fresh start, they worked for that collection agency, all that stuff happened. But the stuff with the mob and the FBI was considerably more complicated and lengthy and in some ways not as interesting. I thought it was very important that all the main important facts of their lives be integrated into the story but we took some liberties. I always wanted the center of the story to be Tommy and Rosie.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s just crazy all the amazing people you got to play the supporting parts \u2014 Ray Romano, Andy Garcia, Burt Young, Frank Whaley, and so on. I was especially delighted to see Cathy Moriarty as Tommy\u2019s mom.<\/strong><\/p>\n

She is amazing! She did all of her scenes in just a day and she just completely blew us out of the water. Here\u2019s the thing: These people are all there in New York, that\u2019s where they live, that\u2019s where they want to work, and they want to do good things. It\u2019s just a different attitude out there \u2014 they don\u2019t get bogged down in big negotiations through their agents, they\u2019re very open to a few good days of work in the city. That’s how you can get these amazing casts together in New York.<\/p>\n

And the \u201cbaggage\u201d they bring to their roles is really fun.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I really wanted iconic New York faces in this movie. I love that you see Michael interacting with his mother and flash to Raging Bull<\/em> for a second. It\u2019s okay to look at Burt Young and think \u201cThere\u2019s Paulie!\u201d These are actors who can\u2019t deliver a false note!<\/p>\n

Did you have any reticence in making a movie about the mob?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Any reticence I had was more about the fact that they\u2019re hard to do well \u2014 I didn\u2019t want to make another crap mob movie! Look, I\u2019m Italian-American. I\u2019ve made movies about people like my family members who were certainly not gangsters! I wasn\u2019t necessarily motivated to contribute to the pile of literature out there on the mob \u2014 it was \u00a0more the Tommy-Rosie story that I was interested in and the fact that the mob guys you see in this movie are different than what we\u2019re used to seeing. They\u2019re these exhausted broken-down guys. I thought that was intriguing.<\/p>\n

Given some of the violence that surrounds the film, did you have discussions on how much actual gore to show?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We never planned to show any murders in the movie except for what happens to Tommy and Rosie at the end. I don\u2019t think I\u2019m giving any big secret away there! But the closer we got to shooting that scene, the stronger I felt that the actual shoot-out on the street was not what I was going to focus on.<\/p>\n

\"robthemob2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Right, even the fact that they were called Bonnie and Clyde, I wondered if you were going to evoke the ending of that movie at all.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Arthur Penn already did that scene beautifully, I sure wasn\u2019t going to try to repeat it. I decided to go for something that was more emotional than violent. We never see them covered in blood.<\/p>\n

Does it ever make you nervous to touch on that world in a movie? Do you find yourself checking under your car at some point?<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Laughs.) No, not at all! The the vibe I\u2019ve always gotten is that they don\u2019t seem to mind being dramatized. I mean, look how often it\u2019s been done! And some of the guys from that world have actually become actors and have appeared in those movies! I think they find it flattering.<\/p>\n

I really loved the music throughout the film, from the opening credits on. I know you\u2019re a musician \u2014 did you have a hand in choosing all of the songs?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes, I did that myself, but I have to tell you, the person who picked the opening song was Steven Soderbergh! I showed him a cut of the movie and he liked it but he said he thought the opening could be better. He said, \u201cIf you just send me the footage, I\u2019ll give you an idea of what I have in mind!\u201d Because Soderbergh doesn\u2019t have enough to do in his life, right \u2014 he also needs to edit my film on his day off! So he sent back the opening with the song \u201cGroove Is in the Heart\u201d and he had cut in some stock footage. I was like, \u201cOh, this is the movie! He nailed it!\u201d<\/p>\n

Do you think it\u2019s harder these days to get smaller movies like this off the ground?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was always hard. Every year you hear people talking about how impossible it’s getting but the truth is it\u2019s always been an uphill battle. And yet many films like this still get made. It\u2019s all about trusting that you can do it and getting people who are willing to work for not a lot of money. Unfortunately that usually means there\u2019s just not a lot of money to be had in doing this kind of work anymore, but that’s what tends to happen in the arts. Hell \u2014 people used to make a living playing jazz!<\/p>\n

Or writing \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n

Or writing, for sure! Now you\u2019re supposed to write for free. And be glad someone is giving you the space!<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next on your docket?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m doing a comedy I wrote called Married and Cheating<\/em>. And I\u2019m shooting a documentary about Burt Young! He\u2019s such an interesting cat \u2014 an actor, a painter, an ex-boxer. He\u2019s got a lot going on and we\u2019ve just been shooting him as much as we can.<\/p>\n