In my last blog, I wrote about the new documentary on baseball icon Yogi Berra (It Ain’t Over), which I highly recommended. 

(Incidentally, it’s playing exclusively in theaters right now. As a film purist, I urge people to make the effort to see it there. Netflix is slowly killing the film-going ritual. In a theater, you hear the crack of the bat and hear fellow viewers laughing, cheering, and crying — all part of the communal experience).

I also saw Ray Romano’s new dramedy, Somewhere in Queens, about an Italian American couple and their basketball phenom teen son. It was adequate. There is also the film Air which documents the 1984 shoe deal which sports rep Sonny Vaccaro (still alive) negotiated with a then-unknown, non-fictional basketball phenom named Michael Jordan. I still haven’t caught up with it yet; however, friends and film critics whose judgments I trust all rave about the movie — in particular, Matt Damon’s performance as Sonny, whom he plays as a non-Italian American stereotype: i.e., just a normal American guy. 

I did see the new Sebastian Maniscalco film About My Father, based on the popular stand-up comic’s stage routines about his Sicilian-born father, Salvo. Anyone who has seen Maniscalco’s act, whether in person or on cable TV, is already familiar with much of the humor. He and his co-writer, Austen Earl, decided to couch the father-son relationship in an equally familiar “culture clash” movie plot: Maniscalco brings his lively, working-class, beauty-salon owner father to meet his fiancée’s wealthy family, pretentious WASPs whose behaviors the elder Sicilian dad views as if they were aliens from outer space.

(Interestingly, they are based on the family of Maniscalco’s real-life wife, Sephardic Jews from the American South. Was this done out of a fear of promoting anti-Semitism? Hollywood is certainly never queasy about denigrating Italian Americans. They are also not shy about promoting positivity regarding other Americans: About My Father features a gay marriage proposal, and the young WASP son has an African exchange-student girlfriend.) 

The culture clash is introduced right away via a montage which contrasts the history of Sicilians (oppressed, swarthy peasants) with the English who arrived on the Mayflower (enlightened, healthy visionaries). It never seemed to occur to Maniscalco and Earl that sea-going was a risk-taking skill perfected by the Italians — not only Columbus, but also, to name just a few, John Cabot (born Giovanni Caboto, who sailed for the English at his own expense!) and Amerigo Vespucci (for whom our nation is named). They also fail to note that those same English settlers borrowed the structure of classical Rome and the ideas of the Italian Renaissance to form a new nation, America, whose ideals (free speech and opportunity) are still in place nearly 250 years later. 

Prego! (You’re welcome!).

As for the film itself: Bizarrely, this is perhaps the only film comedy I can recall where the editing of the trailer is more razor-sharp than in the film itself. That’s always usually the case. Such hyper-cutting is used to pump up audiences. But in a comedy, timing is crucial: A mere two or three seconds can kill a joke. I happened to watch the 1982 gender-bender comedy Tootsie the other day and noticed this right away: the editing clicked the movie forward. Of course, Tootsie also had seasoned actors (Dustin Hoffman, Jessica Lange, Bill Murray, etc.) and a witty, well-developed script. But, to use the famous advertising phrase, “Timing is everything.” In Tootsie, the editing serves the performers. In About My Father, the poky editing leaves them exposed. 

Then there’s De Niro, whose seasoning can best be described as “sour.” Yes, he plays a “positive” Italian American character here — and, near the end, actually attempts some real acting, a far cry from the lazy performances he’s given over the past 40 years. Yet no other actor has done more over the past four decades to perpetuate Italian mobster and buffoon stereotypes than De Niro. Even when he played non-Italian mobsters (Once Upon a Time in America, Goodfellas, Casino and The Irishman), he still came across as “Italian.” Fairly funny, considering that De Niro also has French, German, Dutch, and English heritage. So much for being his authentic self!

I’d be remiss not to mention what he did after receiving (in 2002) an award from the National Italian American Foundation in Washington D.C. His very next project was Shark Tale, an animated film aimed at impressionable children. He did the voice-over for “Don Lino,” a villainous killer shark. Talk about biting the (shark-) hand that feeds you! Those familiar with the Italic Institute know that we were the ones who initially exposed this project and tried our best to halt it. And, indeed, we convinced the late Peter Falk to change his own evil Italian shark character’s name (Falk was a previous recipient of the Institute’s Silver Medallion Award for his positive portrayal of TV’s Lt. Columbo). But Hollywood’s entrenched power was just too much to overcome. 

There was, however, a telling wee victory, courtesy of another IIA member, Walter Santi from Bloomingdale, IL. (Nota bene: Walter just celebrated his 100th birthday and is still sharp as a tack.) Walter knew that De Niro would be attending a press conference in Venice for its premiere of Shark Tale. So he literally picked up the phone and contacted an Italian reporter whom he knew would be there. Walter explained the inappropriateness of promoting negative stereotypes to children, which is the exact question which this reporter asked De Niro. Clearly taken aback, De Niro lashed out at Italian American activists, calling them “stronzi” (turds, assholes). Very fatherly, no? 

Think about that when you watch De Niro promoting both ethnic pride and family love in About My Father. -BDC