Making The Day Trailer
A has-been character actor attempts to complete a movie honoring his deceased wife, when divine intervention leads him to a free-spirited actress who might just be his perfect leading lady.
Art imitates life in Making The Day as the film’s director, Michael Canzoniero (Wedding Bros, Don Peyote), employed a hybrid-narrative/documentary process called organic filmmaking in the production where elements of the actors’ real lives were incorporated into a heavily improvised shoot. In the case of Making the Day, lead actor Steven Randazzo’s own real-life struggle with underground film financiers “coming after him” for an incomplete movie, provided the inspiration behind the film’s narrative.
Making The Day is edited by Michael Berenbaum (Sex and the City, The Americans, Barton Fink, Marry Me, and the upcoming film starring Jennifer Lopez.) The script is co-written by Berenbaum and Michael Canzoniero. The film features an original score by Peter Nashel (I, Tonya, Marco Polo) and an original song by composer Gabriel Berenbaum.
Director Michael Canzoniero told us “I really believe that it is the chemistry between the lead actors that is the single most important element of a quality movie. I’m thinking of Deniro and Grodin in “Midnight Run” Benigni and Waits in “Down by Law” or Lopez and Clooney in “Out of Sight”.
If that lead actor dynamic is combustible, if that pairing can create sparks, there’s a magic on-screen that all the big-budget CGI in the world can’t compete with. So in the case of Making the Day, my co-writer Michael Berenbaum and I began not with a script but with an attempt to “organically” build a story around the hysterical energy that we had discovered between Steve Randazzo and Juliette Bennett in some of our early workshop exercises. To us, their performances were like gasoline and tinder in almost every scene: Steve’s a totally grounded, everyday guy, downbeat and desperate, while she’s a spinning top of almost manic energy, with an innocent optimism that is both contagious and comedic. The magic of the film’s ending only happens because of the journey these two have gone through in the pressure cooker of trying to make a movie together. After all the laughs the movie delivers, I still get a lump in my throat every time I watch that last sequence play out.”
The two leads are played by Steven Randazzo (Awakenings, Mighty Aphrodite,The Night of) and Juliette Bennett (The Nth Ward, Don Peyote, Las Vegas.)
The ensemble cast features some of New York’s most talented actors including Tony Winner Dan Fogler (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, The Goldbergs), Dominic Fumusa (13 Hours, Nurse Jackie, Homeland), Ali Marsh (Rabbit Hole Bull, The Affair), Natalie Knepp (A Joyous Christmas, Sam, The Good Wife), Nicole Ansari (Son of The South, Remember Me, Side Effects), Sondra James (The Joker, Late Night with Stephen Colbert) Christian Campbell, (Reefer Madness: The Musical, Trick, True Detective) America Olivio (Chicago P.H, Blue Bloods, Mission Impossible-Rogue Nation) Ilana Levine (Friends with Kids, Failure to Launch, The Nanny Diaries) Dwayne Hill ( Mean Girls, Peg + Cat, Atomic Betty), Craig Geraghty (Ray Donovan, Iron Fist, The Many Saints of Newark) Ray Iannicelli (Joker, Annie, Madam Secretary) and Timothy “Speed” Levitch (The Cruise, Up-to-Speed, High Maintenance). The film also features Supermodel Kira Dikhtyar in an acting role and several New York comedians.
Producer Tim Dorsch added “Making The Day is a true love letter to the New York filmmaking community. It is always a unique experience to film in the city, often presenting challenges that no one could have foreseen. If you can’t overcome them and laugh about it in the end, you’re sunk. It is often only the heart, creativity, generosity, and dedication of the cast and crew that make it possible, which is reflected in the telling of this “based on actual events” story.”
Making The Day, a movie about making a movie, chasing your dream, and never giving up, will have its world premiere at Cinequest 2021.
