Cast Notes
Several cast members came to LA from other states, at their own expense, to
appear in Survival of the Fittest. Aida Turturro, who plays Janice Soprano
in The Sopranos, took her one day off from that shoot in New York to fly
to Los Angeles to play Attorney Kate Dellasandro. Rocco Sisto (Detective
Tommy Gabor), Marie De Cicco (Eve Walker), Michael Walczak (Dr. Wilder),
and Lisa Casillo (Court Stenographer) came in from New York. Maury Cooper
(Coroner) came in from Chicago.
War Story -- Two Shoots
Midway through the original shoot, the lead actor, Rocco Sisto,
was in a serious car accident on the way home from location. I spent the night
with him in the emergency room, getting ready to pull the plug—on the
film, not him—but Rocco insisted that I continue shooting around him
and that “someday” we’d finish the film. Ribs and pelvis
broken, knee shattered, Rocco was on morphine—and I wished I were. So
I didn’t pull the plug, but the rest of that shoot was hell, shooting
whatever scenes could be flatly split down the middle, in the hopes that somewhere,
someday, I’d shoot the reverses as well as the entirely missing scenes. “Someday” turned
out to be seven months later, when Rocco was finally healed and could return
to LA. By then, Rocco’s co-lead, Antoinette Peragine, announced she was
five months pregnant and showing! I squeezed her into the original wardrobe,
dressed my apartment to cheat for all reverses of the original locations, and
with a tiny crew and a new DP – who not only had to match those reverses
but amazingly did it all without a gaffer or grip – we shot the rest
of the film and even added some new bits I’d come up with during those
6 months that I was trying to edit half a film that was missing half its cast. |
