How to become a Hollywood star? Which secrets do the stars’ families of origin hide?
A journey of emigration in reverse in the most original documentary movie ever produced before on Stallone, Turturro, Mantegna and others.
The documentary movie “Frankie Facciatosta and the Search for Success” is now completed. It was written and directed by the Italian director Gianni Torres, with the protagonist actor Frank Gigante (who plays the role of Frankie Facciatosta) and the guest stars John Turturro, Joe Mantegna, Franco Nero, Aida Turturro, Frank Stallone, his father Francesco, Vincent Guastaferro, Anna Maria Barbera, famous Italian actress.
It is a very strange documentary movie inquiring into the secret of success: it starts from New Jersey, the cradle of Italian immigration, crossing New York City, Miami, Los Angeles, Hollywood, arriving in Italy, in those small southern villages from which the best part of American movie stars originated and where it is hoped that the secret of success lays hidden.
The movie is a curious docufiction in which Frankie Facciatosta wants to become a famous actor, but he isn’t able to in the USA. So he meets one of his dear friends, Joe Manuella – Robert De Niro’s double, native to the same Italian place of origin as Bob – who suggests he should go to Italy, precisely to Apulia, soutern home region of Stallone, Mantegna, Turturro, Nero’s families, but also of that of Rudolph Valentino and others, in search of fresh pieces of news, curiosities, family secrets, or simply in the hope of collecting items useful for his career as an actor. Frankie Facciatosta (Facciatosta means “shameless” in the Italian language) is a peculiar and funny character: Sopranos look, gelled hair, always with a ready answer, contagious smile and especially a real dreamer.
When he arrives in Italy, he meets cousins, relatives and friends of the Hollywood stars, he talks to them about the intimate personality of the stars, about their sacrifices, about their most inner family secrets, he visits Mantegna or Turturro’s grandparents’ home, in short, everything can be useful to discover how to become famous people. Frankie Facciatosta meets many Stars only in his illusions and in his agitated dreams. They talk to him about their origins and about their little big secrets.
During his journey strange coincidences arise, like that of Silvestro Stallone, Sylvester and Frank Stallone’s grandfather, who has the same age and comes from the same town as a certain Ricciotto Canudo – who emigrated then to France –, a friend of Picasso’s and the father of all cinematographic critics, since he was the Cinematographic Aesthetics founder and creator of the phrase “Seventh Art” for movie. Or finding out that in Sly’s place of origin, one of his fans, a boxer, keeps on training following Rocky’s movie sequences. Or even Frankie Facciatosta discovering that in Joe Mantegna’s place of origin (which is 30/40 miles from F.F.Coppola, Sofia Coppola and Nicola Cage’s town of origin), just during the years in which the star’s grandparents leave for America seeking their fortune, the cinema was born with local productions that anticipated of 20/30 years the Neorealist movies of Rossellini, De Sica, etc. But in this movie there is an abundance of coincidences: it is really exciting to discover that the Italian grandfathers and grandmothers of the great American stars lived and worked in few square miles.
