Bringing Face Painters to Life Through Longing and Cinematic Expression
I can remember as far back as 2003, while on the festival circuit for a featurette I produced, the premise around which Face Painters would eventually orbit: immigrants seeking a more promising life in America. While hardly the most original concept, I did know early on that my characters—warts and all—would be driving the story, and therein would lie its originality. After all, when it came to storytelling, I was always a character-driven junkie!
As the son of Italian immigrants, I had an enormous head start in understanding the emotional nuances of that journey—the wrench of leaving behind a motherland and everything that had shaped you, only to arrive on shores where, no matter how idealized the New World had been from afar, the welcome would be anything but welcoming—indignant, curt, racist, and relentlessly fast-paced compared with the Old World calm you left.
And yet, while I still had no idea of the uncharted circumstances, ensuing predicaments, or ultimate fate awaiting my beloved characters, I truly understood that, given the epic weight of Face Painters, the antecedents and consequences of my emerging family could only rest in the hands of damn good actors.
And so, over the years, the “usual suspects” of thespians kept revisiting me. Their numbers slowly narrowed until, somewhere along the way, they began putting faces not merely to a collection of characters but to what increasingly felt like an actual family—people who somehow seemed to belong to the same world as those my “Babbo” and “Mamma” would tell me about.
Until the day these wonderful actors might attach themselves to Face Painters, my “Endeavors” experience is the closest I can come to lifting this family from the pages—allowing them, at last, to take on form, autonomy, and soul. —Gio.
The Autonomy of a Character
When Face Painters finally began getting out into the world—for coverage, reviews, critiques, and hundreds upon hundreds of screenplay festivals and competitions—something uncanny began happening. Without any prompting from me, those same familiar names kept finding their way back: Stanley Tucci, Mark Ruffalo, and Bobby Cannavale. Others, like Danny Aiello, Robert Loggia, and Bruce Kirby, would ring out, but never with the regularity of the former three. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one seeing them.
And now, through animation, I could finally begin to see them come alive.
