Word: tucci
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...modified Robin Hood where "the den" is a circa 1954 sushi restaurant, and the merry men have been compressed into several burglar alarm salespeople bent on income redistribution. Anyone familiar with Los Angeles will realize the timeliness of their "rob the rich" scam in which Heinrich Grigoris (Greg Tucci) boosts the sales of his alarms by staging robberies in the neighborhoods of potential clients. The twist in Grigoris' scheme is Tommy, the new salesman played with adorable, bumbling style by David Arquette. A natural at the hook, the Tommy's moral sensibilities are deeply troubled by Grigoris' less-than-honest...
...Tucci got those offers, and faced just that decision, in the wake of Big Night's modest box-office take. "It wasn't just food movies," he says, "though there were some of those, and it wasn't just ethnic stuff. I got comedies, dramas, melodramas, tragedies." But Tucci, finally sprung from the saturnine-villain roles (Billy Bathgate, Murder One) that both fed and trapped him, had his eye on a story he had been mulling for years. The idea became The Impostors, an $8.3 million opus (Big Night cost $4 million) that Tucci describes as "a little Heidegger...
...Laurel and Hardy--think a snappier Saps at Sea--except that the Stan and Ollie here are Tucci and co-star Oliver Platt. Tucci, incapable of a gross moment even in the slapstick, seasick exertions of shipboard burlesque, nicely approximates Laurel's high, piping whine as counterpoint to Platt's unctuous exasperation. They are two actors stowed away on a '40s-ish ocean liner, ever scurrying from a British stage star who wants them arrested, gelded, dead. Also onboard are a deposed queen (Isabella Rossellini), a gay tennis player (Billy Connolly), a Teutonic chief steward (Campbell Scott) and a suicidal...
...plot takes as many turns as the actors, who fall down way too much. But that too much was perfect for Tucci. To foment zaniness, he created the "Jambon d'Or"--the Golden Ham--an award given daily to the actor "who went the furthest in their shamelessness. The winner got to keep it overnight. The next day you had to give it back. It was an independent film; you had to share the same award...
...Tucci dwells blissfully, for now, in Indieville. Singer, who was extravagantly courted by Hollywood (after 25 companies had rejected the $6.6 million-budgeted The Usual Suspects), is ready for Hollywood, on his terms. "My goal," he says, "is to bridge that gap between the independent and the mainstream film." Apt Pupil, a big subject compacted into a wee space and a tidy $15 million budget, may fall between the two. A bright high-schooler (Brad Renfro) learns that an old Nazi (Sir Ian McKellen) is living in his small town. The two strike up a symbiotic suspicion, each playing nastier...