Dramedy’s Religious Issues Proved to Be a Selling Point for Executives

With a veteran cast that includes Mercedes Ruehl, Paul Sorvino, Sean Young, Mark Harmon and Cloris Leachman, “The Amati Girls” is Anne DeSalvo’s bittersweet dramedy about an Italian American Catholic family--not unlike the tight-knit family that included three sisters and a brother she grew up in back in the Overbrook neighborhood of Philadelphia.

The film, which opens today, is unusual in two respects: Not only does it treat Roman Catholicism with a certain respect--which some Catholics complain Hollywood films rarely do--but it also is aimed at that often-neglected demographic, the “fly-over” areas of the continent, where many still believe in family and religious values.

The film is being released through Providence Entertainment, a Sherman Oaks-based production and distribution company co-founded by Norm Miller, chairman of Interstate Batteries.

“The thing that differentiates us from everyone else is that we have specific goals,” said Providence co-founder Cindy Bond. “A film we release has to have a positive impact. We are not going to distribute something that contributes to the degradation of the human condition.”

Providence made headlines in 1999 when it released “The Omega Code,” an apocalyptic film financed by televangelist Paul Crouch of the Trinity Broadcasting Network. The movie earned $13 million domestically and stunned mainstream Hollywood by debuting among the top 10 movies. But Bond noted that although Providence targets Christian audiences with some of its films, it by no means only releases Christian-themed movies.

“There certainly wasn’t an agenda at all [on ‘The Amati Girls,’]” she said.

DeSalvo, who also wrote the screenplay, stressed that the religious beliefs espoused by her characters simply come out of the story and are not part of any religious agenda on her part.

“I have so many issues with the Catholic church, it’s unbelievable,” DeSalvo said. “I’m very spiritual, but I’m not religious. I don’t practice the Catholic faith. But in order to have integrity to the story, this family honors the Catholic religion.”

A Tight-Knit, but Quarrelsome Family

“The Amati Girls” revolves around four adult sisters and their widowed mother, each at different stages in their lives, whose bonds are tested when tragedy strikes.

With a large cast that also includes Dinah Manoff, Jamey Sheridan, Lily Knight, Lee Grant and Edith Fields, the characters are depicted as members of a tight-knit, loving but quarrelsome middle-class family. There are no mobster stereotypes of Italian Americans. And there is no gratuitous violence or sex.

“I am not going to pooh-pooh other kinds of movies,” DeSalvo said. “There is space for everybody. It wasn’t that I set out to make a movie about family values. I just wanted to write a good story. It just happens to be about an Italian American family from Philly.”

Even Young, whose sexy on-screen image has been honed in movies like “No Way Out” and the steamy 1992 B-movie thriller “Love Crimes,” says it is nice to be able to bring her 6-year-old son (she also has a 3-year-old) to a picture featuring her and not be embarrassed.

“He’s seen some of my old movies,” Young said. “There are some he can’t see.” Asked what those were, she groaned, “ ‘Love Crimes.’ I stand up naked in it--and it’s not that good of a film. Maybe he’ll watch it when he’s a teenager.”

As for the religious theme of this movie, Young said: “I came from a Catholic background. I don’t consider myself a Catholic. I am more of a child of the universe. I think all religions are wonderful and acceptable.”

Two Approaches to Their Faith

What is unique about the film is that its characters not only turn to their faith in times of trouble, but also rebel against their faith when they think God has dealt them a bad hand.

In one scene, Knight, as Dolores, a woman mentally challenged because of an accident, goes into a church with her eldest sister, Grace, played by Ruehl. Standing before statues of saints, Dolores asks her sister, “Why do we pray?”

“We pray to find the good,” Grace tells her. “In your darkest times, it’s there like a little candle. Like a flame, we pray to find it.”

But later, when Dolores can’t understand why someone close to her has died, she runs into the church and begins smashing the statues to smithereens.

“During production,” Bond said, “I actually had concerns about that scene. I wasn’t so sure that Catholics would be so behind it because the character goes in and breaks all the statues. Only the Virgin Mary is left.”

Throughout the film, DeSalvo’s characters engage in mini-dramas with no easy solutions. Manoff’s character, Denise, wants to be an artist, although her boyfriend, played by Harmon, would like nothing more than to settle down.

In another scene, a workaholic father played by Sheridan realizes he is missing out on his daughter’s life and goes to her ballet recital. While talking to her backstage, he is suddenly thrust onstage, helping her perform before a packed audience that includes his estranged wife, played by Young.

Grace, meanwhile, is criticized by her sisters because her husband, Joe (Sorvino), treats her poorly. They believe Grace is becoming a carbon copy of their mother.

The girls’ mother, Dolly (Leachman), is a woman who sacrificed everything for her late husband and now is planning her own funeral.

“There are seeds of my own family in the movie,” DeSalvo said, “but I had to exaggerate and fabricate to make it more dramatic and give them complexities and problems.”

DeSalvo Entered a Writing Contest

The movie had an odd genesis. DeSalvo, a stage and film actress who appeared in such movies as “Stardust Memories,” “Arthur” and “My Favorite Year,” had written a comic short film, “Women Without Implants.” Then, about 2 1/2 years ago, she heard about a screenwriting contest being held by the Sundance Film Festival.

“I sent in the first 10 pages, and out of 5,000 entries, I made it to the final 100,” she recalled. “They asked me to send in the rest of the script, but I told them, ‘I don’t have it.’ They said, ‘You’ve got three weeks to write it.’

“I must tell you, the film came up from my toenails,” DeSalvo said. “It just was inspired. I won’t say it was easy to write, but it just came to me because I guess I have a very warm, beautiful family that has shown me such great loyalty. I know all the complexities of family. No one can love you like a family. No one can hurt you like a family. The comfortability that my sisters and I have for each other I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world.”

The script eventually made it to the final 15.

“Then I started sending it out,” she said. “I really wanted to do it as a feature because I knew that was the best chance I had to make it as a signature film.”

DeSalvo said the script was spotted by Howard Kazanjian of Tricor Entertainment. Kazanjian, who, with his longtime business partner, Craig C. Darian, serves as executive producer on the film, is a onetime vice president of production for Lucasfilm and produced George Lucas’ “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Return of the Jedi.” “The Amati Girls” eventually was produced by James Alex and Steven C. Johnson.

Bond said the movie is already set to receive more exposure than many small independent films. Providence has struck a deal with the Fox Family Channel that allows Providence to release “The Amati Girls” theatrically for “five or six weeks,” then the film will be shown for a specified time on the cable outlet. After that, she said, Providence will get a window to sell the video before it goes back to the Fox channel.