Behind the Baltimore summer success story known as the Little Italy Open-Air Italian Film Festival is another nice little story about a kid named Nicholas Seltzer. Nick, people called him. The festival is dedicated to him.
His name was mentioned again this past Friday night, as rain and lightning pecked away at an umbrella-covered crowd huddled at High and Stiles streets in Little Italy. On the screen above them, flashing black and white against a red brick wall, was the 50-year-old Italian classic, "The Bicycle Thief." "I'LL KILL YOU IF YOU DON'T RETURN IT" read one subtitle. On this night, there was no hiding from the drama or the weather.
But first a few facts about the film festival. Since its premiere on July 2 with a showing of "Rocky," it has screened eight films on a blank billboard above the parking lot of Da Mimmo restaurant. Three more Friday night movies are planned for the inaugural season, ending Sept. 10 with the showing of "The Endless Summer."
On nicer evenings, the outdoor screenings have attracted as many as 1,200 people for a show. Folks didn't even mind a little rain during the July 30 showing of "Moonstruck." Stories about the festival have made the news wires; NPR, ABC, CNN and other three-letter outlets have come calling; even German, Italian and Czechoslovakian media have booked flights to Baltimore to view the weekly event. (Count on the festival returning next year, organizers say.)
"It is so cute. I mean this whole idea is so darn cute," Sue Webb of Charles Village said Friday as she accepted "gratis fresh popcorn, which we know is the most delicious in Baltimore" from the hands of Tom Kiefaber. The popcorn, the Italian movies and the huge movie projector showing them from 89-year-old "Mr. John" Pente's third-floor bedroom (next to a wall crucifix, World Book Encyclopedias and his now-grown sons' twin beds) are compliments of Kiefaber's Senator Theatre.
Back in July, Mr. John said "Why not?" when festival organizers asked if a crew could schlep the 350-pound projector up three twisting flights of stairs in his home. After all, Pente's bedroom is a dead-eye shot to the billboard/movie screen across the parking lot. The Little Italy Restaurant Association had wanted the billboard for a mural to advertise its restaurants. But neighborhood residents had argued against it, worried the mural might one day fall in the hands of evil advertisers.
So the white billboard became a white elephant. Then some of the restaurant folks got together, and, as the story goes, Guido DeFranco at Caesar's Den said:
"It looks like a movie screen to me. It's a natural setting," DeFranco repeated Friday night, in between seating guests at his restaurant. The film festival became a boon for business. People come around 7 p.m., stake their claim in the parking lot for the night's movie, then go to eat. "Things were getting kind of slow around here on Friday nights," DeFranco says.
By the way, DeFranco hasn't seen a single one of the movies that play literally outside his door. He works Friday nights. "What are you going to do?" he says. "I have my own tapes at home."
Kiefaber comes in
Once the restaurant association embraced the film festival idea, Kiefaber, the P.T. Barnum of Baltimore, was approached in June. At the time, in the Death Star throes of premiering the new "Star Wars" movie, Kiefaber reluctantly agreed to hear a pitch from the association.
"Basically, I didn't think it would work. We were going to have them up to talk and then blow them off."
But when Kiefaber went to the parking lot himself, his furtive mind must have done cartwheels. The billboard screen was a perfect size for 16mm projection. Pente's bedroom window across the street was the perfect distance for such a projection, and Mr. John even had the right voltage for the huge projector. The Senator, meanwhile, had the Italian movies and the popcorn.
The rest has been Little Italy-community togetherness-mass media-subtitles under the stars history.
Getting it going
Friday night, Mr. John stayed dry beneath his awning waiting for "The Bicycle Thief" to get rolling while upstairs, projectionist Mike Wilkes finally got the sticky window down, so filmgoers wouldn't be watching the Vittorio Di Sica classic shadowed by a window ledge. To warm things up in the meantime, Wilkes had put Dean Martin's "Powder Your Face with Sunshine" on the sound system down below. A nice touch.
A man in an elegant, supremely confident purple jacket (someone thought he was the maitre d' at Da Mimmo) passed out gratis Pepsi. Guys scrambled around wiping off wet folding chairs on loan from nearby St. Leo's. It felt like club seats at The Yard.
"It's just the perfect setting," said 25-year-old Amy Friedman. "We have the best seats," said 23-year-old Emily Giosffi. Both friends, staying dry under a restaurant's awning, had come from Washington after they had read about the festival.
Out in the cheap seats beyond the lot on the closed-off street, the crowd that had once numbered maybe 500 had dwindled to perhaps 100. By this point, it was also raining on screen. "DAMN THE DAY I WAS BORN," another subtitle cursed. On the street, there was a different feeling. As the rain thickened, strangers scooted next to strangers to share their umbrellas. Legs entwined, as for some, date night continued unabated.
But what about that other story, about a kid named Nicholas Seltzer, and why the Little Italy Film Festival is dedicated to him?
The story comes from someone who does not attend the film festival. It would be too painful, too many well-intended people asking her about her boy, Nick, who spent so much of his last year in this neighborhood. He spent many days there with his grandmother, Nancy Azzaro, as his mom worked downtown at T. Rowe Price.
"Everybody knew him. He would play bocce with the older gentlemen. We even had his funeral in Little Italy even though we live in Bel Air," says Nick's mother, Maria Seltzer. Nick died on Father's Day this year.
Before succumbing to a brain tumor, the 9-year-old boy spent his last months watching about every movie he could get his hands on. He loved movies, his mother says, especially adventure flicks. By June, Nick was becoming too sick to leave home. "He was bed-bound," Seltzer says. "All he could do was watch movies. He couldn't speak any more."
But also by then, the new "Star Wars" movie had been released, and Nick had to see it. Through the Grant-A-Wish Foundation, the Senator Theatre was contacted about providing a private screening for a boy from Bel Air named Nicholas. Kiefaber knew little else about the child. He arranged a screening, but it turned out Nicholas couldn't leave his home.
Filmmaker George Lucas' production company was contacted, and a representative of LucasFilms actually took a train to Baltimore from New York, carrying a top-secret, highly guarded videotape of "The Phantom Menace." It arrived the Tuesday before Nick Seltzer died. "We had a few friends come over, and we just popped the movie in the VCR," Seltzer says.
For Nicholas
As plans began in earnest for the film festival, neighborhood organizers kept Nicholas in mind. It finally dawned on Kiefaber that the boy everyone was talking about was the same Nicholas for whom he had tried to set up the "Star Wars" screening. That settled it. The film festival would be dedicated each week to Nicholas Seltzer.
Oh, one more thing. The choice of "Rocky" as the first movie in the summer series? Kiefaber had simply overheard some kids talking about movies they loved. One kid said "Rocky." Perfect, Kiefaber thought. A fitting movie for the July 4 weekend in Little Italy: Rocky, of course, was Italian and fought nemesis Apollo Creed on the Fourth of July.
"We're brilliant!" Kiefaber says, jokingly.
Then, after the festival's debut, Maria Seltzer called Kiefaber. How did you know? she asked him.
How did I know what? he said.
"Rocky" was Nick's favorite movie, she told him.
Perfect.
Pub Date: 8/23/99