Silent Sea Productions

Silent Sea Productions
Presents BLUE COLLAR BOYS
Written & Directed by Mark Nistico WINNER Best Picture (Micro-­Budget) -­ Toronto Independent Film Festival 2011 WINNER Best Screenplay – Hoboken Film Festival 2012 NOMINATED Audience Award – Hoboken Film Festival 2012 *Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Permanent Core Collection 90 minutes | 2.35:1 | 5.1 Surround | Unrated
For more information visit the website
www.bluecollarboysthemovie.com
facebook.com/bluecollarboys
@bcbthemovie
Press Contact:
Katrina Rossos
732-533-7657
[email protected]
1 SYNOPSIS Tired of the daily grind, construction worker Charlie “Red” Redkin (Gabe Fazio, The Place
Beyond the Pines) and his lifelong friends are fed up with the fight for money. When ruthless
developer Gene (Ed Setrakian, The Sopranos) and his greedy son Ira (Lev Gorn, The Americans)
force the construction business run by Red’s father Senior (Bruce Kirkpatrick, The Wire) into
debt, desperation and rage twist into a relentless need for revenge. As the pressure of a
foreclosure threatens his family’s home, Red and his friends are propelled into a life of crime to
get cash fast. But when the deceit and corruption become too heavy a burden, “the boys” are
pushed to the edge.
An intensely compelling and gripping story inspired by true events, Blue Collar Boys captures the
working-man’s everyday struggle to survive in a world that is constantly taking from them.
Dubbed “the most politically appropriate film in theaters” by LA Weekly, the critically acclaimed
action-drama Blue Collar Boys does not shy away from the brutal truth about the fizzling
American dream being robbed from the working class. This contemporary story pops on screen as
flawed characters wrestle with misguided loyalties, greed, and personal integrity. With steadfast
authenticity and grit, Blue Collar Boys exposes the crude reality of the working class lifestyle
with brash dialogue, explosive action, electrifying performances, and poetic subtlety. Seizing you
from the first frame with its hardened realism, Blue Collar Boys drags you through the mud
begging the question: If your American dream was stolen, wouldn’t you want to steal it back?
2 D I R E C T O R’S
STATEMENT
I grew up watching tough guy movies with my brothers and my dad: Charles Bronson and Clint
Eastwood movies like Hard Times, Dirty Harry and Death Wish, and action movies starring Arnold
Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, and Sylvester Stallone. Looking back, those movies definitely had an
influence on me. Yet, when I finally began to make my own movies I found I was intrigued by much
more personal and complicated films. This is the type of film I set out to make with Blue Collar Boys.
From the moment I committed to this picture, I knew it had to be important. I wanted to make a film
that was socially relevant and needed to be seen. Blue Collar Boys had to be a film made for the
working class. It had to be a film in honor of them, one that they would watch and say, “finally
someone gets it.” I wanted the working class to really feel this movie down to the bone, because
they’d lived it. I had no interest in sheltering the audience from what you’d really hear from the
people who experience these struggles everyday. In my mind, the picture had to be authentic to that
audience, and nothing else mattered. I remembered all of those action movies my father used to watch,
and I realized that his peers would primarily be my audience. But how could I make an important art
film and an action packed revenge movie at the same time? That was tricky to reconcile and of course
the answer became the foundation for all of the artistic elements of the film.
Every element within Blue Collar Boys was designed through naturalism with the threshold of
minimalism in mind. This is apparent in the casting, the camera movements, the color palette, the
sound and the score. Every sound in the movie is real. I wanted every sound to be something heard
around the lifestyle of the everyday workingman. The score and sound environments are filled with
tools, steam shovels and the sounds of manual labor. All of the instruments used in the score are
natural; nothing is synthetic. If we needed the sound of someone being slammed through a wall, I put
myself through some sheet rock and we recorded it. The color palette was strictly earth tones, browns
and greens that progress towards blues and grays to depict nature being replaced with industry. There
is an arc to the color saturation. The colors are gradually siphoned out of the film as Red’s dreams
slip away. I wanted the colors to depict what I saw in the eyes of men who gave up their dreams to
devote themselves to their families. Senior is one of these men; he is that glue that holds his family
together and the edit mimics that stability. The pace of the film moves very slowly while Senior is a
part of it. The visuals are smooth and stable with the camera on sticks or moving in subtle dolly
movements, and there are a limited amount of cuts implemented within the early scenes. Consequently,
with the absence of Senior’s guidance, the boys’ lives become chaotic, and so does the edit. The pace
drastically quickens to move from relaxed to urgent and the cutting style becomes choppy. Music
becomes a driving force and the perspective changes from passive to active - from watching the
characters’ plight to participating in it. These are just some of the choices I made to develop the style
of the film and enhance its many themes.
For me the film’s most potent theme is to honor the hard work of your parents by building upon the
foundations that they created for. This film is a tragedy and, in my opinion, we watch the characters
fail because they do not learn from their elders. Life is hard and getting angry and giving up is easy,
but, if you appreciate the value of hard work you will persevere through struggle. At the film’s
conclusion, Red condemns his adversaries observing, “the American dream has been stolen.” Yet he
fails to realize that the selfless act of unending devotion to family in the face of struggle is the core of
that American Dream, and it’s what parents endure for their children everyday. In watching the boys
fail I hope that the film stimulates a respect for that commitment to family and, furthermore, honors it.
-MARK NISTICO
Writer / Director
3 CAST BIOS
GABE FAZIO (“Red”) Gabe Fazio is most recognizable for his performance alongside
Bradley Cooper and Ray Liota as Scotty in Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond the Pines. He
began his career in the New School for Social Research in NYC, where he graduated with an
M.F.A. In 1996 he won the Irene Ryan Award for Best Actor at The Kennedy Center’s
American/National College Theater Festival. Gabe is a member of The Actor's Studio, a resident
actor with The Long Island Shakespeare Festival, and an ensemble member of The Barefoot
Theatre Company. Gabe has had recurring roles on such television series as Law and Order, and
ABC’s The Path to 9/11.
Selected credits:
THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES (2012), dir. Derek Cianfrance
PAPER COVERS ROCK (2008), dir. Joe Maggio
THE PATH TO 9/11 (2006), dir. David L. Cunningham
LEV GORN (“Ira”) Lev Gorn has been a working television and film actor for over a decade.
He is currently known for his role as Arkady Ivanovich in the hit FX series The Americans. Lev
has co-starred in such notable television series as HBO’s The Wire and Bored to Death, Law and
Order: SVU, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Law and Order: Trail by Jury, Third Watch, and
Brotherhood. Lev played a principle role in both the ABC mini series Trenches and Christopher
Zalla’s 2007 award winning film, Padre Nuestro.
Selected credits:
THE AMERICANS (2014), dir. Joseph Weisberg
PADRE NUESTRO (2007), dir. Christopher Zalla
THE WIRE (2003), dir. David Simon
4 BRUCE KIRKPATRICK (“Senior”) is most recognizable for his performance as Roger
Twigg in the award winning HBO series The Wire. Bruce has spent a significant part of his
career working in television with recurring roles on such series as Royal Pains, Law and Order,
Law and Order SVU, NYPD Blue, Hack, Third Watch and Life on Mars. He has appeared in
numerous feature films including The Lovely Bones, Little Children, Twelve Monkeys, Striking
Distance, and most recently the award winning Blue Caprice.
Selected feature film credits:
BLUE CAPRICE (2013), dir. Alexandre Moors
THE LOVELY BONES (2009), dir. Peter Jackson
THE WIRE (2003), dir. David Simon
ED SETRAKIAN (“Gene”) Mr. Setrakian is a veteran actor and managing member of The
Actor’s Studio who holds a Ph.D from NYU in Performance Studies. His career has spanned over
four decades, with performances in such notable films as Three Days of the Condor and The Pope
of Greenwich Village. He holds numerous awards on Broadway, television, and film. His most
recent Broadway appearance was in the Al Pacino production of Salome which he reprised in Mr.
Pacino’s film version of the play. Mr. Setrakian has guest starred in television series such as Law
and Order, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Person of Interest and The Sopranos. He played a
principle role in David Fincher’s acclaimed film, Zodiac.
Selected feature film credits:
PERSON OF INTEREST (2012), dir. J.J Abrams
WILDE SALOME (2011), dir. Al Pacino
ZODIAC (2007), dir. David Fincher
5 FILMMAKER BIOS
MARK NISTICO (Writer/ Director)
Mark Nistico holds a B.A. from The College of New Jersey with a concentration in television/
film and a minor in English. After college Mark transitioned into the television industry and
worked as a story producer and editor. Mark has been writing stories, poetry, and making films
since he was a child. As a screenwriter his credits include the feature length scripts: Blue Collar
Boys, Decade of Decadence, Sunrise on a Moonlit Life, and Lime Vegas, as well as the short
scripts Hangnail, Milking the Chicken, and Shadows Over Sugar. As a director Mark has
conceptualized both short and feature length narrative and documentary films, television pilots,
and commercial advertisements. Mark has performed and recorded music as a percussionist and
music plays a prominent part in his visual style.
Selected credits:
SHARK HUNTER (2007), Story Producer- Outdoor Life Network
SHADOWS OVER SUGAR (2004), Dramatic Short- Writer/ Director
MILKING THE CHICKEN (2003), Dramatic Short- Writer/ Director
BRIAN DEAN (Visual Effects Artist)
Brian Dean began his visual effects career working as a digital compositor in television on films
such as Britannic and Megiddo: The Omega Code 2. He made the bridge to independent film as
the Effects Supervisor and Digital Artist on 2002’s Megalodon where he first collaborated with
Blue Collar Boys director Mark Nistico. In 2004, Brian began working in animated films as a
Lighting Technician for Blue Sky Studios. He has worked on such films as Robots and Ice Age:
The Meltdown. Brian is currently working at Blue Sky Studios as their Senior Technical Director
designing the lighting for their latest animated feature films.
Selected credits:
RIO 2 (2014), Senior Technical Director
EPIC (2013), Senior Technical Director
ICE AGE: CONTINENTAL DRIFT (2012), Senior Technical Director
RIO (2011), Senior Technical Director
ICE AGE: DAWN OF THE DINOSAURS (2009), Lighting Technician
6 SELECTED PRESS
It would be difficult to find a more politically appropriate film in theaters than Mark Nistico’s
Blue Collar Boys. Shot in a hard New Jersey winter, the drama, as the title suggests, is a riveting
study of the blue-collar class that is too often misrepresented in higher-budget productions.
Tough realism propels the story forward as the audience roots for Charlie Redkin, a 27-year-old
construction worker who helps out his father, a contractor.
At first, stereotypical New Jersey clichés may be off-putting, distancing the audience from the
characters. Slowly, however, Nistico draws the viewer in by revealing troubling underlying
family dynamics and Charlie’s intense personal struggles, which he shares with his friends.
These deep-set human problems go some way to explaining the crime and violence that pervade
the film. Here, politicians are imbeciles and bosses are cruel and heartless; the only logical action
is to pummel them in the face.
New Jersey-born Nistico, who directed, produced, and wrote Blue Collar Boys, has created a
story with convincing naturalism, giving it universal appeal. The film, with its shoestring budget,
isn’t technically perfect – no million dollar camera used here. But in the end, Nistico seems to
have achieved what he wanted: He validates the question, If the American dream was stolen,
wouldn’t you want to steal it back?
– LA Weekly, Kristina Bravo
BLUE COLLAR BOYS – It’s class warfare from the losers’ point of view in this grim and surly
first time feature by Mark Nistico whose film is a relentless, thought-provoking drama about the
Redkins, a working class family in New Jersey struggling to survive in the house building
industry during this recession.
The language is unapologetically not PC with homophobic and racist language spilling with every
family argument at the dinner table, and every taunt at the local bar. Everyone snipes at everyone
with hate and resentment. It’s a gritty drama about the suffering of America’s working stiffs.
Imagine an episode of Jersey Shore without any eye candy, humor or sex appeal as they hit every
obstacle imaginable: No job, tough building codes, bar fights, no medical insurance, plummeting
property values.
One brother hopes for a way out of the family business – he despairs that his father, at the age of
53, is still digging ditches as a contractor. Another brother is fine with the status quo. A cousin
wants to get high. Middle class customers with BMWs in the driveway treat the Redkin family
like crap.
For its reported $75,000 budget, Blue Collar Boys is an accomplishment – grim poetry about the
current recession with a bleak message that the working class can only be pushed so far. The
movie eerily predicts the occupy movement! There are some flaws with the script that
overindulges in its misery without providing any relief, but Blue Collar Boys is a searing
reflection of our times.
– Brave New Hollywood, Harrison Cheung
7 8 9 10 CAST LIST
GABE FAZIO Red
BRUCE KIRKPATRICK Senior
ED SETRAKIAN Gene
LEV GORN Ira
KEVIN INTERDONATO Nazo
RUSS RUSSO Slim
JOSHUA PALED Mason
SHANE KEARNS Irish
SONJA STUART Patty
JULIE BERSANI Samantha
TIFFANY ELLEN SOLANO Marisol
MARK KONRAD George Lockwood
KIRK PONTON Thaddeus
RICHARD BUONAGURIO Robert
JOE PACILLO Jim Daultry
CREW LIST
MARK NISTICO Writer/ Producer/Director
MICHAEL NISTICO Co-Producer/Unit Production Manager
ADAM BULLER Co-Producer/ Music Supervisor
TOMMY KEELEN MONAHAN Line Producer
ALEX HANEY Line Producer
AUSTIN MURRAY First Assistant Director
ERIC GOODWIN Second Assistant Director
IAN DUDLEY Director of Photography
FRANZISKA LEWIS First Assistant Camera
DANTE WINKLER Sound Design/ Re-recording Mixer
JOE LAPINSKI Composer
MARK NISTICO Editor
KEVIN DAVIDSON Colorist
BRIAN DEAN Visual Effects Artist
ALEXA HARRIS Gaffer
DAVID ANTHONY Key Grip
TIMOTHY SOMERS Sound/ Boom Operator
ANDREW CHUNG Foley Artist
BRIAN RANDAZZO ADR Engineer
DARRAGH CIMIS Key Makeup/Hair
KATRINA ROSSOS Script Consultant
DAVID NISTICO Catering
BRAINKITE.CO ONTARIO Production Design
VIDEOHELPER NYC ADR Recording Studio
OPTIX PICTURES TORONTO Post Production Sound Facility
11 INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR MARK NISTICO
What was your filmmaking background before making Blue Collar Boys?
Before Blue Collar Boys I had been working in various positions on films for over ten
years, just gaining experience. In terms of directing, I had made two documentaries and three
short films, with limited budgets, some of which had brief festival runs. I had also worked in
casting and produced a feature to build contacts and witness the trials and tribulations of making a
feature length film before taking that leap with my own self-financed film.
Where did the idea come from?
The concept for some of the elements in the film came from one of my actors, Kevin
Interdonato. He came to me with an idea about making a film about a modern-day gang. I
wasn’t interested in most of it, but the spark that I did see within that concept was the idea of
touching upon the desperation behind the origin of many gangs formed during times like the
Great Depression. Taking that with me, it wasn’t until I met an elderly couple while working as a
waiter that I found my inspiration for Blue Collar Boys. The man was paralyzed and his wife,
who was spoon-feeding him his dinner, told me their story. He had single-handedly built his
business from the ground up. The stress had caused a stroke that led to his paralysis and, because
of this incident, the business was going under. His family was going to lose everything that he
had spent his life building for them. Their two sons, who had never taken the torch before, finally
stepped up and, with their father’s guidance, saved the business. The wife took a spoonful of
some soft food she was feeding him and stated the following; “All of my life he treated me like a
queen… and now he is my king.” She then fed him his food and kissed him on the forehead.
That was when it clicked for me.
What was the writing process like?
I’ve written a number of screenplays and each time the writing process is a little different.
With Blue Collar Boys I committed to the decision to draw from true stories and, consequently, it
made the writing process extremely difficult. I spent about a year, give or take, researching real
life stories and developing the script from them. What made it really hard was that the material
was very personal to everyone involved and I didn’t want to compromise it. Some of the stories
are from my family, some of the stories are from the families of the other producers on the film,
and some of the stories are from people I met along the way while working blue-collar jobs. I
accumulated so much material that it became a collage of stories on my wall. I really got to know
each person and learned how important the stories they shared were to them, and so it was
difficult to decide what to use and what to abandon. What I did a lot of the time was find ways to
marry bits of one story to bits of another and create new stories that would fit the elements needed
to comprise a narrative. That’s why it’s inspired by true events, and not based on true events.
Branching out was easy, but coming back to structure was not. This is a first for me, but I got so
lost in the idea of realism and lack of plot structure that I actually brought in a script consultant to
ground me. Katrina Rossos was an English major and recent college graduate with the principles
of structure fresh in her mind, and she brought that knowledge to help me finalize the script. I
instructed her to battle with me and drill the “rules” of writing a screenplay into my head no
matter what I said. Consequently, we fought a lot. In the end it was about finding the edge of
that line where everything seems real and spontaneous, but in fact a narrative structure does exist.
12 Can you talk about how you raised your budget and your plan for recouping your
costs?
The budget for this film was not raised in any traditional sense. There are no investors,
production companies, or producers that led us to money on Blue Collar Boys. I had been
working for years fishing for money on other films. After I calculated the amount of money and
time that was spent trying to get investors, or having found financial backing and then having it
fall through, I realized that I didn’t want to play that game on this film. I decided to save up my
own money for Blue Collar Boys over a period of a year or so while I finished the script, and then
put all of that money into the film. I did, and when the production needed more, I financed the
rest on credit cards over the next two years. In the end everyone got paid and there were no debts
owed. That makes for a great deal. Having no debts or deferments was most important to me,
more important than making that money back. I always treated the money like I had a very bad
weekend in Vegas, forget about it and look forward. Now that the movie is finished and making
its festival run, I hope I make some money back. That would be nice.
What kind of camera did you use to shoot the movie, and what did you love about it
and hate about it?
We shot on the Panasonic HPX170 with a 35mm adapter. It is a professional HD
camcorder and was a popular pro-sumer model used with lens adapters before the emergence of
the DSLR technology that has become so popular today for that “film” look. What I loved about
the camera was that we could get it for a rate that we could handle. What I hated about it was that
it wasn’t film. If I had the money I would have loved to shoot on film, or even with the Red
camera so we could eventually blow up to film, but we’re homegrown and we did the best that we
could with what we had. In the end, through precise planning, knowing our limitations, and
pushing everything to the edge, we achieved a production value with the film that is surprising
everyone who sees it, especially when they find out how much we had to make it. We recently
won Best Micro-budget Feature at the Toronto Independent Film Festival after going up against
films that were made for almost ten times our budget.
How did you and your DP go about creating the look for the movie?
The look was achieved through enormous planning during pre-production. I meticulously
designed detailed storyboards with my co-producer/ storyboard artist Adam Buller, and Ian
Dudley, my DP, did a marvelous job of framing them on the set. I planned every color that would
be used in the film and put an arc to that palette to serve the purpose of the story. In the simplest
terms, we move from nature to industry; browns and greens turn to grays and blues, and the
saturation is subtly sucked out of the film from start to finish as if the characters’ dreams are
slipping away from them as they sink into a lifestyle of hate.
Even down to the actor’s wardrobe and the locations that we secured for each scene, the
palette was controlled across the board. This way when we treated the film for color correction
and grading in post, the aesthetic was already there and very little manipulation was needed to get
the color grade to flow. In terms of luminescence, I wanted harsh lighting throughout the film to
depict the harsh conditions of the blue-collar lifestyle. I knew I wanted to shoot in winter for
those dreary and harsh skies, and Ian brought years of experience to design what I wanted. We
worked very well together.
13 You wore a lot of hats on the movie -- director, writer, producer, editor. What's the
upside and the downside to taking on all those tasks yourself?
The upside of doing everything yourself is that you don’t have to answer to anybody
creatively. The downside is that you’re doing everything yourself. It’s a tremendous amount of
work that is enormously taxing on your life and it gets insanely lonely. I’ve done this a few times
already, but never at a feature level, and the one thing I can say is that you can drive yourself
crazy and get lost sometimes. It becomes very important to have close friends to encourage you
along the way. It’s also very hard to wear all of those hats as a filmmaker, and I don’t
recommend it if you can help it. Producing brings problems that draw you away from the
creative zones you need to immerse yourself in as an artist/ director. At the same time, it is hard
to come out of the directing process and bring an objective point of view as an editor. The same
goes for the transition from writing to directing. It sounds crazy, but you really have to convince
yourself that you are a different person, because if you can’t be objective at each stage, the film
will suffer.
What was the smartest thing you did during production? The dumbest?
The smartest thing I did was to plan everything involved with the production from the
start, and firmly stick to those plans. Even during the process of writing the screenplay, I wrote
big, but only as big as I knew we could handle during production. When you get to production
everything always goes wrong. You will never be able to prevent that no matter how much
money you have to make a movie. I go into it knowing that, and I plan as much as I can. This
way when stuff does go wrong, you may not have all the answers, but answers come to you
quicker, almost as if you’ve developed an instinct. This saves time, money, and prevents you
from making poor creative decisions that will affect you later.
The dumbest thing I did was to agree to move forward with production when our
infrastructure clearly wasn’t ready. I was adamant about having a producer on this film in order
for me to focus completely on directing. Unfortunately, we had three separate producers that
successively did not work out, for one reason or another, and the last one that bailed on us left
during casting. So with winter approaching, money already spent, and our SAG contract already
approved, it became apparent that we couldn’t put a halt to things and go find another producer. I
didn’t really have much of a choice in the matter, but I had to agree to produce it myself with
only the aid of my brother and a few friends who had never produced before. That was dumb,
and I’ve paid a brutal price over the last four years because of it.
What did you learn from making the film that you have taken to other projects?
I’ve learned what a long road making a feature film is from start to distribution. I’ve
learned something that I’d only previously read about and that is the massive level of endurance
required. I’ve learned how hard it is to keep yourself on the path, and seeing the path. I’ll never
make a feature film again without a producer. What I’ll take into my next film is an
understanding of the journey.
ABOUT LEOMARK STUDIOS
Leomark Studios LLC is a sales company based in Los Angeles. Our growing catalogue includes
feature films ranging from family comedies to action dramas to thrillers, and motor sports
programming for TV and Web. We represent projects by filmmakers at major markets and are
representing the film Blue Collar Boys for international sales.
14