Thanks Joe, also mille grazie to the members of Uncle Nino's Nephews and Nieces, especially to the president, Billy Sue Berends, hardworking college instructor, who was calling, inquiring, devising, working at my side constantly, to Kirk and Denise Badjek,who gave me their car to drive, food and spending money to promote the movie, as well as days of hard work and organizational genius; to Colleen Pierson,talented teacher and writer, who got us the front page of the newspaper; to the famous Peter Secchia, who bought out the theatre so many nights,invited the late bishop, congressmen, to Frederick Meier, who offered us endless promotion in his stores, to Eric,the prince of Popcorn, to Vicki Cassis,who did so much work for us, to Joe Stelter, who made many appearances in my absence, to Carmen who helped us open collect emails, to John Loeks himself, the generous and patient owner of Celebration, and Studio 28, John Douglas, the eloquent and articulate reviewer, who gave us so much free publicitiy Shelby, Cathy Stelter and her husband, who brought us to F. Meier, and her hospitality, to Pam and Mark Harmsen for their hospitality, to Tony Noto and the whole Noto family and their wonderful Restaurant, the best in Grand Rapids for the benifits they had there for us. So many of the people, school children of Grand Rapids who were there every night at the two theatres helping--NOTHING AT ALL WOULD HAVE HAPPENED WITH THE FILM, IT WOULD NOT HAVE EVEN BEEN DISTRIBUTED BUT FOR THESE MANY PEOPLE, these members of Uncle Nino's Nephews and Nieces.
All of you are in my prayers of thanks. If Uncle Nino's Nephews and Nieces had been allowed to do nationally what we did so brilliantly and for no money in Grand Rapids it might have been slower but it would have made tons of money, not only in the US but England and Australia. And there would have been sequels.
God Bless all of you. I miss Grand Rapids.
Pierrino Mascarino, Uncle Nino
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AnotherSchmoe
14 years ago
Hello, I don't know if you're really Joe but I just saw the movie on Netflix instant-watch and enjoyed it. It's a really nice family movie. It's not deep drama or anything, but there's a time and a place for that, and there's also a separate time and place for this sort of sunny movie. Anyways, I enjoyed it.
Is there some reason this movie is so unknown? It's just as good or better than most family movies being released to huge audiences on a regular basis.
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pierrino
14 years ago
Of course there is a good reason why this movie is so unknown. Although myself and the members of a group called, Uncle Nino's Nephews and Nieces, as well as just the people of Grand Rapids Michigan, like Billy Sue Berends, Vicki Casis, Kirk Bajek, John Loeks, (theater owner) Jon Douglas (newspaper film critic) about 29,000 of them supported the film in Grand Rapids for over a year, they gave me money to live on, a place to live, airfare from Los Angeles, a car to drive; but the owners of the film decided that we had really accomplished nothing and decided to distribute the film nationally in a way that would not work.
I played Uncle Nino in the film, I spent unpaid months in Grand Rapids promoting the film, I made 650 Grand Rapids appearances, appearances all over the United States, Indiana, Florida, Los Angeles, Connecticut but was obstructed by the film's owners in every way possible. They were too lazy to do the promotion that us Grand Rapidians did--I was made an honorary citizen of Grand Rapids by the mayor--and were jealous of the success that we achieved without their help or even their permission. This is simply a story of destructive ego driving a work of some value into the ground.
We told them that we had not sold 29,000 local tickets by accident. That we knew how to promote this film and they wouldn't listen at all. After a year of our success they insisted on conventional promotion which doesn't work with Uncle Nino. They spent millions of dollars, hired a fancy New York public relations firm to do a destructive job of national promotion.
The failure of this film is directly attributable to their stubborn resistance.
Uncle Nino could still succeed in a more limited way. It has changed many peoples lives.
Pierrino Mascarino (Uncle Nino)
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AnotherSchmoe
14 years ago
Hmm, well too bad more people didn't get to see it. Now that it's on Netflix instant-play though I'm sure more people who haven't heard of it will get the chance to watch it just as I did (stumbled across it while browsing for something to watch). Thanks for the movie! =)
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