Video Tapes... DVDs... Anthony Lapaglia...

When DVDs came out, I knew I would probably end up with a lot of them... with video tape, even if you get it brand new, after you watch it a few times, the tape gets stretched and on it's 20th run, you are no longer watching the same movie you bought...'

It was 2000, a video shop in my neighbourhood in Brisbane was closing down, they were liquidating all their stock, I ended up buying a shitload of movies, I remember it was close to 300 tapes... I had no time to read all the synopsis on the back of the case, so I made a lot of judgment calls on the art work of the video sleeve... with impulse buys, you end up with a lot of duds like "Tremors 2" or "The Glimmer Man" with Steven Segal and Damon Wayans... but out of that lot of tapes, I got a few gems, one in particular was a movie called "Jerry and Tom", Joe Montagna and Sam Rockwell play a hitmen duo, Rockwell plays the apprentice who learns a lot about the hitman business from Montagna and eventually finds himself surpassing Joe to become a better hitman... I remember watching that movie so many times, until one day, the tape snapped inside my VCR... I have been searching for the DVD of Jerry and Tom for years, still I haven't been able to find a widescreen version of the DVD...

Another gem from the video store close down sale is a film called "Phoenix" it starred Ray Liotta and Anthony Lapaglia, a gritty gangster story. Now my Phoenix tape didn't break, but I lost it after lending it to a friend, who is no longer a friend now since he failed to return the tape and still to this day maintains that he wasn't the one who borrowed it...

Anyways, I have been looking for the Phoenix DVD for awhile and again no luck, then it was 2007, I was at the Rome Film and TV festival having lunch at this restaurant when I see Anthony Lapaglia, sitting two tables across from me, signing authographs for people. This is during his Without a Trace era, so after the fans left, I went over to introduce myself, he once lived in Brisbane also and we talked about Rugby and other Aussie stuff... then he said he has to leave, and in my mind, I had two things I wanted to ask him, 1) Would you read a script I wrote, I thinkg you'd be great in it...   2) Do you think you can get a copy of "Phoenix" on DVD?

Any sane person knows it's bad manners to ask a movie star a favor, so I went with question 1) We setup a breakfast meeting the next day to talk about it, it was my first actor pitch... So that night, I walked all over Rome looking for a photocopy place trying to print my script out, but I couldn't find one, so I went back to my hotel and printed it out there, which cost me 40 euros, the most expensive script ever printed in the history of script prinitng...

The next morning, I went to see Lapaglia at his hotel, we ended up having breakfast at this cafe, I told him about my script, again, his face lit up and he said, he has a first look deal with Warner brothers that this film would be perfect for, I gave him the script, offered to buy him breakfast, but got beat to the punch by a really hot girl who works for the festival who saw us eating there... He gave me his agent's email and his own email, told me to send him the script and my reel...

I took me 2 days to realize after meeting him that the email he gave me was a dead account, the agent's email didn't work either, it took 2 months for me to realize he wasn't gonna call to talk about my script, now 2 years later, I realize what I should have asked was question 2... getting him to get me a copy of "Phoenix" would have been the right thing to do at the time, he proabably has boxes of them at his house he's trying to get rid of... I'd be doing him a favor...

Here is a photo of Lapaglia with Director Stanley Kwan that I took...  I should mention that I was working for Stanley at the time, pitching his new projects at the festival. the day I met Lapaglia was the day I was leaving Rome, I was late getting back to the hotel, Stanley and the actress Chow Muyan had to wait for me which resulted in me being yelled at by Stanley and his producer James...

So I have learned my lesson, the lesson here is, never piss off a producer to get a script to an actor and... never lend your DVDs to friends.