Movie Pizza Love is a VERY low budget film we shot in 2006 (happy 20th anniversay to everyone who was involved). It took a couple years of struggle through post production to get the film out in front of audiences, which is why IMDb lists it as a 2008 film.
My editor friend Marceline De Angelis and I have been working on what we're calling the 'restored 2026 version' of the film. It still isn't perfect - shooting for free in restaraunts and bars means weird sound issues when fridges and fans turn on in the background.
This first group of pictures is from a pre-production meeting, held at the Monkey Pub, which we later shot scenes in, for free. The Monkey Pub is still there, on Roosevelt Way in Seattle. I've fallen out of touch with the old crew from back in the day, but it looks like the same vibe is still around.
If I remember right, all of these pictures - except for Brett's face looking up into B camera - were taken by my sister Keren.
I remember walking into the Monkey Pub one day - I knew a couple regulars and a bartender there - and asking the owner about the idea of shooting some scenes there. She was all for it. I sheepishly brought up money, and humbly mentioned that we were a very low budget operation. "No Problem," she said. "It's free publicity. You can shoot here for free." So we scheduled some afternoons - they didn't open until 5pm, so we got 4 hours a day, 12:00 to 4pm to do whatever we wanted. This of course included blocking out the big window doors that were letting in afternoon sunlight, to make it look and feel like nighttime.
The irony around this nighttime look is that we also shot in the pizza place I was working at. They let us shoot at night - Midnight to 6am - and we had to do the opposite. We hung bright lights outside the windows to make middle of the night look like daytime at the pizza place.
The title, Movie Pizza Love, comes from the fact that there is a movie within a movie, there's pizza and there's love. Simple.
While I did write the script, I have to concede that a few of the best scenes were improvised, such as the picture above with cinematographer Brett Sechrist looking into B Camera, and improvising - along my old friend Smitty from behind B Camera - maybe the funniest scene in the movie.
The film ended up being an award-winner at IndieFest, where it also won the Original Song Award for Jen Casebeer's "Trashy Novel." That's Jen Casebeer with the red hair, in her only acting role ever (so far), and I thought she was brilliant.
When I emalied her recently to let her know that we were working on a 'restored version' of the film, I was happy to hear back from her, and even more happy that she gave us her blessing. The original film landed on YouTube in 2013 and managed to make it onto several people's 'fav films' list. It's true. Back then there was a social network/Facebook knock-off named, if I remember right, 'pplsbk.' I began to run into several lists on that site with Movie Pizza Love listed as a favorite. The film was also pirated. This is also true. There was an illegal website called (I think) movietorrents, and this film landed on the site illegally. Now, before I tell you my REAL response, I have to be responsible and remind everyone...DO NOT PIRATE MOVIES. There, that's out of the way. Now... my REAL response? I loved it! Seriously. Someone cared enough to pirate my movie. I was thrilled.
Not long after, though, both the social network and the pirate website both went under and disappeared.
After that, the film was on Amazon Prime Video for a few years back before 2020. I don't know if everyone is aware of this. but Amazon has been dropping indie films in recent years. I know of many films - some by friends of mine - that used to be on Prime Video and have since been dropped. I feel fortunate and happy to say that I still have two films on Prime. Movie Pizza Love is not one of them, though, at least not right now...
Whether it makes it back to Prime - or another streamer - is still up in the air. This restored version is not extremely different from the original. It is the same movie. We just tried to clean up some of the weird sound issues (remember what I mentioned at the top about shooting in real restaraunts and bars?). We tried. There are still some surviving sound issues in the new version, though. We also trimmed a couple little edits, tightening a couple of transitions, making the film just a tiny bit shorter (literally just seconds shorter).
Stay tuned for updates about where it becomes available. I would expect to see it somewhere within the coming couple of months.
Here's the new trailer, although it hasn't changed much from the original trailer.
