It has been said that New York City is made up of a series of small, unique communities tied together by geography, but not culture. Even by that measure, City Island stands out. At the northern tip of the Bronx, on the shores of Long Island Sound, City Island is just under a mile square and home to fewer than 5,000 residents, most of whom come from families who have lived there for generations. Savvy New Yorkers know it as a nearby seaside getaway, convenient for an evening or a weekend excursion. Filmmaker Raymond De Felitta happened on the village by chance and discovered the perfect setting for a story about one family's everyday secrets and unspoken dreams.

"I wanted to explore how our painful pasts intrude on our present and future lives," says De Felitta. "I believe if you're open enough to life, it is never too late to change and discover who you really are. People are often trapped by fear and made immobile by choices that may not have been good, but have grown comfortable. Being able to admit one's mistakes and choose a different path can be the turning point in a person's life, but it can also break a family apart. In the case of the Rizzo family of City Island, it becomes the last chance to hold together."

De Felitta is a long time New Yorker, but he had never even heard of City Island until he read an article in the New York Times touting it as an escape from Manhattan. "New York is the setting for so many movies that have influenced me," he says. "But we've seen the borough of Manhattan and its residents depicted many times. My interest is in the lives lived in the outer boroughs."

The filmmaker's award-winning movie Two Family House (2000) explored the dreams of a working man in Staten Island in the 1950s. "For City Island, I chose a family living in this idyllic little fishing village in the Bronx," he explains. "The people of City Island are the living infrastructure of New York City: the firemen and police, the factory workers, the secretaries, the cab drivers."

City Island boasts a singular view of the Manhattan skyline, which provided De Felitta with a visual metaphor for the unspoken ambitions of his main character, Vince Rizzo, a corrections officer who dreams of being an actor. "I wanted to see that golden destination through the eyes of a local resident," he says. "Even for someone living just across the water, Manhattan can be a place of destiny and dreams, as out of reach as another civilization. Vince goes into the city to take an acting class and hopefully become a new person."

De Felitta cites influences as diverse as Pietro Germi (Divorce Italian Style, Seduced and Abandoned), Woody Allen and James L. Brooks in creating this film. "Germi managed to make every uncomfortable situation both true and funny," he says. "Woody Allen's deepest work, like Hannah and Her Sisters and Manhattan, shows how dangerously close to the emotional abyss we can fall before being redeemed by life and love. And Brooks' films combine humor with fearless emotion and always are plotted with an intricacy and emotional ingenuity that I find masterful."

The writer and director met the movie's star and producer, Andy Garcia, through their mutual agent and asked him to take a look at the script. "You could say that it's about the secrets of a dysfunctional family," Garcia says. "But it's also about hidden dreams and their fulfillment. The tone of the film has a certain dysfunctional absurdity to it, but it's always rooted in emotional truth. There are a lot of surprises in it as all the different secrets and journeys of the characters intersect with one another and come together in the climactic moment.

"Raymond's a terrific writer and his sensibility is reflected in the script," adds the actor. "And as they say, 'If it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage.'"

Continue: 1 2