By Christine Champagne
Good Films has signed director Paul Riccio for exclusive commercial representation. Previously, Riccio was represented by bicoastal/international Czar Films.
According to Good Films partner/executive producer Kitty Overton, the production company was looking to round out its roster—which comprises Nick Rafter and Andrew Walton—with a comedy director, and Riccio fit the bill. "His work is very consistent, and there is something cool about it," Overton said. "He’s got a good sense of character and casting."
A native of Bridgeport, Conn., Riccio attended Boston University and began doing standup comedy while in college. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in film, he moved to New York, where he started taking acting classes while working as a production assistant. Riccio continued to perform standup but finally called it quits after bombing onstage at Caroline’s Comedy Club, New York. "I was like a deer caught in the headlights," Riccio recalled, "and it just killed me."
Realizing he didn’t have what it took to become the next Ray Romano or Jerry Seinfeld, Riccio set his sights on becoming a director. During an eight-year tenure working in various production capacities at MacGuffin Films, New York, Riccio learned the ins and outs of the commercial production industry, and in 1999, he began compiling a reel of comedic spec work, which included some ESPN Classic spots featuring an elderly sports fan whose recollections are foggy at best.
One spot called "Ali" was highlighted in SHOOT’s "The Best Work You May Never See" gallery (7/28/00, p. 13). In the ad, the old man shares his memories of the classic heavyweight title bout between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. "Ali/Foreman. Rumble in the jungle. In the Bronx," he remembers. A super corrects him, pointing out that the fight actually took place in the Congo. Then the fan rambles on about Ali’s strategy, which involved letting Foreman tire himself out. The old man labels it Ali’s famed "soap-on-a-rope" ploy, but a super appears again to set the facts straight: "Ali called it the rope-a-dope." The spot is ultimately tagged with the slogan: "ESPN Classic. Not How You Remember It. How It Was."
Another spot finds the fan sharing erroneous recollections of Ted Williams, or as the man describes him, "the finest man who ever wore Yankee pinstripes." (Williams was a member of the Boston Red Sox his entire career.)
On the strength of that work and other specs, Riccio landed a deal with Czar Films in ’01, and remained with the company until his recent affiliation with Good Films. As for the move, Riccio said it was simply time for a change, and noted that he had a satisfying run with Czar Films, where he worked steadily last year, helming spots for the Detroit Pistons, Eight O’Clock Coffee and Hooters.
Riccio, who cites Albert Brooks as one of his comedic influences, is adept at subtle, performance-based humor. The Pistons spot, for example, finds a series of real fans—not actors—passing a basketball around as they declare all the ridiculous things they will do to help support their beloved team. "I will sit on the edge of my seat until my butt goes numb," vows a woman seated under a hair dryer in a beauty parlor. Next, an elderly woman seated in a lawn chair in her driveway next to her husband announces, "I will kick it old school and try to keep it real."
"I was really happy with the creative I saw last year," Riccio commented. "The budgets were relatively modest, but I think maybe that allowed me to have a little more creative freedom."
Riccio noted, for example, that the Pistons spot—conceptualized by Olson+Co., Minneapolis—originally called for each of the fans to be shot in front of a plain, white background. "I hit them with the idea that we should utilize the fabric of Detroit and put the people in real environments," Riccio said, "and they were completely open to that idea."
Shooting in a Detroit hair salon did prove to be potentially dangerous, though. "I don’t know what they use on women’s hair these days, but with the chemicals and the lights, I almost fainted," Riccio related.
Despite the hazards, Riccio said the Pistons job was particularly fun because he got to cast real people. "Non-professional actors have no preconceived notions about who they should be or how [a scene] should be played," Riccio said. "It can make a spot better—especially a humorous one."
While Riccio has a predilection for humorous work, he also enjoys tackling sports-themed projects as evidenced by his ESPN Classic spec spots. The director found another way to combine his passion for sports with his love of humor when he directed Pissah (SHOOT, 9/20/ 02, p. 7). The six-minute mockumentary follows a devoted Red Sox fan as he dares to attend a game at Yankee Stadium—decked out in a Red Sox cap and jersey. (Just for the record, Riccio is a Yankees fan.)
At present, Riccio is currently at work on a couple of other short films he hopes to shoot in the fall. "I’m always trying to do something," Riccio said. "I don’t think it does anyone any good to sit around looking for boards."
New York-based Robin Fried and Richard Fink rep Good Films on the East Coast; Chicago-based Marguerite Juliusson covers the Midwest; and Los Angeles-based Ellen Knable handles the West Coast.
New York Film Fest Preview: “The Brutalist,” “Nickel Boys,” “April,” “All We Imagine as Light”
When you think of blockbusters, the first thing that comes to mind might not be a 215-minute postwar epic screening for the first time at Lincoln Center. But that was the scene last week when the New York Film Festival hosted a 70mm print of Brady Corbet's "The Brutalist." The festival hadn't then officially begun — its 62nd edition opens Friday — but the advance press screening drew long lines — as some attendees noted, not unlike those at Ellis Island in the film — and a packed Walter Reade Theatre. Word had gotten around: "The Brutalist" is something to see. Corbet's epic, starring Adrian Brody as a Jewish architect remaking his life in Pennsylvania, is the kind of colossal cinematic construction that doesn't come around every day. Shot in VistaVision and structured like movements in a symphony (with a 15-minute intermission to boot), "The Brutalist" is indeed something to behold. It's arthouse and blockbuster in one, and, maybe, a reminder of the movies' capacity for uncompromising grandeur — and the awe that can inspire. It's been fashionable in recent years to wonder about the fate of the movies, but it can be hard to placate those concerns at the New York Film Festival. The festival prizes itself on gathering the best cinema from around the world. And this year, the movies are filled with bold forays of form and perspective that you can feel pushing film forward. This is also the time Oscar campaigns begin lurching into gear, with Q&As and cocktail parties. But, unlike last year when "Oppenheimer" and "Barbie" were entrenched as favorites, the best picture race is said to be wide open. In that vacuum, movies like "The Brutalist" and the NYFF opener, RaMell Ross' "Nickel Boys," not to mention Sean Baker's "Anora" and Jacques Audiard's... Read More