Two Screenwriters Cook Up One ‘Big’ Entree

Tony Bennett pours forth from the speakers, but that’s about the only concession this ski-resort-town Italian restaurant makes to ethnicity; its menu includes French dip sandwiches and burgers. And authenticity in Italian cuisine is something Stanley Tucci knows a little something about, having co-written, co-directed and starred in “Big Night” (opening Friday at selected theaters), a smartly seriocomic period tale of two Italian brothers (Tucci and Tony Shalhoub), restaurateurs struggling to win acceptance for their homeland recipes while a tacky spaghetti barn packs ‘em in just down the street.

Conned into believing that Louis Prima will be dining at their eatery, the brothers turn the evening into an all-out party and media event. Be warned--after watching the extraordinary meal that concludes this film, you will have no other choice but to head directly to the nearest Italian restaurant, so make sure you see it near a good one.

Tucci was a respected character actor of the know-the-face-but-not-the-name variety with turns in “Kiss of Death,” “The Pelican Brief,” “Prelude to a Kiss,” “Billy Bathgate” and “Beethoven” until his fierce, Emmy-nominated turn as an AIDS-ravaged villain on last season’s “Murder One.” He and his cousin, Joseph Tropiano, a public-relations writer for public television who also sat in on this lunch, took home the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at January’s Sundance Film Festival for this, their first produced screenplay. So the stay in Park City was sweet, except for maybe this lunch. Any thoughts on the food, Stanley?

“I’d like to kill the guy who made this burger.”

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Question: The brothers’ restaurant represents the struggle between art and commerce, obviously a topic you think a lot about.

Tucci: As an actor, getting work can be very hard, whether you know what you’re doing or not. You want to make a living, you don’t want to live like a graduate student all your life, and I believe you can exist as an artist and do what you want to do and still put a roof over your head and still lead a fairly comfortable lifestyle, you know? In order to get to that point, you have to make sacrifices.

I’ve made a lot of compromises in my career, but I had to do it. I knew certain jobs I was taking for political reasons. If I waited around for all the great parts in all the great movies to come my way, I would never work, ever, and I don’t want to live that way. But I did realize finally that in order to make something artistic in film, I had to do it myself, and to work with my cousin, who has a similar sensibility. From all the things I worked on that were not artistic endeavors, we learned what not to do. It’s hard, I felt like I could not continue living if I didn’t try to do what we did. That’s the way we felt.

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Q: You had previously written a screenplay about an artist, but making him a chef is a more clever way to discuss art--people can perhaps better understand the difference between OK food and great food.

Tucci: It’s more accessible. It’s not as precious. The movie I had written was about an abstract painter trying to do theories based on an abstract ballet--it was ridiculous. Not ridiculous, really, it was just not well written. It was nice to work with Joe, because we complemented each other very well, and now we’ve learned from each other. We’ve taken each other’s strengths and incorporated them into ourselves. I had written things but there was no real structure, but Joe was very good at structure.

Tropiano: And I think the whole theme of art really didn’t--we didn’t start with that idea. We started with the characters. We developed the story, and along the way, it became clear that it was about that, the struggle between money and art. How far you’re willing to go.

Writing with an actor is really fun, because you get to watch the scene happen as you’re writing it. Stan was never shy about performing all the parts whenever necessary [laughs].

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Q: The script is very lovingly written and obviously written for the actors--everyone gets a good scene or two. Scenes play out for long periods of time--they play out to their logical conclusion, rather than ending artificially to move on to the next scene.

Tucci: Having made a lot of movies and said a lot of exposition, if something did not come organically out of the mouth, it wasn’t in the movie.

Tropiano: We actually worked hard not to have any exposition.

Tucci: So hard. And sometimes it made things a little obscure.

Tropiano: Even during the editing process, the editor would say, “Oh, so that’s what that scene is about.”

Tucci: Everything’s so elliptical. But that’s the way it is in life so much of the time. But it was a challenge because we saw so many movies, and just hated all that exposition, that fake, “You know, in the town I come from. . . .”

Tropiano: Not to sound pretentious, but that’s a European feel. Because those movies don’t tell you what to think, what to feel or sometimes, even, what’s going on.

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Q: How did you and Campbell Scott (who also appears in the movie) function as co-directors?

Tucci: As Campbell said, when I was in front of the camera, he said “Action” and “Cut,” and when he was, I said “Action” and “Cut.” But it was very much a collaboration. When I see other people both direct and act, I think that there’s always an element in the film that suffers, whether it’s their performance or the shot composition or maybe the film’s too long. I knew that I needed someone with me, someone with a similar sensibility but maybe a different temperament who also was not Italian and could look at things with a different point of view. I was too close to the project to really trust myself. So it was really great to have Campbell.

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Q: So Campbell gave you blunt input on your performance.

Tucci: Absolutely. Even though I’ve made a lot of movies, you never know what you’re doing. I know basically, and I can do just fine, but I wanted it to go to levels that I knew that I couldn’t take it. You needed someone out there to modulate you. This was the most difficult role I’ve ever done, and so much of it was myself with an accent and a wig. When you’re playing yourself, you need someone there to say, “Go deeper, go deeper” or “Wait a minute--not that deep.”

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Q: After working on films with big Hollywood budgets, was this a challenge?

Tucci: They wanted to show dailies on a sheet, with a projector in a box. They were trying to save money, but in the wrong area.

Tropiano: That was the only time there was any kind of revolt.

Tucci: Campbell walked out. I waited till they tried to get the thing going, and then I exploded. I said: “This is ridiculous. I’ve never done this before. We need to see what we’re [expletive] doing, otherwise we’re going to be halfway through this movie and we’re gonna have a bunch of stuff that we can’t use. Can I please see the [expletive] dailies the way they should be seen?” The next day, it was fixed.

Part of the deal--[Rysher Entertainment] has it in their contract, to sell it as a TV series. It freaks me out, someone was saying this could be a TV series and they might want the same two guys to play the roles--no, thank you very much.

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Q: What would they call it, “Every Week Another Big Night”?

Tropiano: “Bigger Night.” “Biggest Night.” The name’ll just keep changing.