He has starred in movie classics from Spike Lee and the Coen brothers, been feted at Cannes and Venice, faced off against Batman and the Decepticons, and delivered Emmy-caliber performances in Severance, Monk, and The Night Of. But for John Turturro, his most personal work is one many of his fans have never seen.
Two decades ago, Romance & Cigarettes had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. Written and directed by Turturro, the film had a murderer’s row of talent both behind and in front of the camera. His longtime collaborators Joel and Ethan Coen were producers. The cast was led by James Gandolfini and included Oscar winners Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, and Christopher Walken, along with Steve Buscemi, Bobby Cannavale, Mandy Moore, Mary-Louise Parker, and Aida Turturro (John’s cousin and a star of The Sopranos). Channeling some of that off-kilter Coen sensibility, Romance & Cigarettes was a comedic rock opera about a fractured relationship and its impact on friends and family, told via elaborate music numbers soundtracked by Bruce Springsteen, James Brown, Elvis Presley, Cyndi Lauper, Tom Jones, and Janis Jopin, with additional tunes performed by the cast, including Gandolfini and Sarandon.
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The film was embraced by the Venice jury and shortlisted for the Golden Lion; a week later it had its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, a traditional springboard for Oscar runs. But then Romance & Cigarettes disappeared.
“It was a heartbreak for me, because we had a wonderful studio, United Artists, and we had a big release planned,” Turturro tells Gold Derby. “Everyone loved the movie. I got all that music. It took me two years to clear it all. And I’m making a movie that was twice the size for half the budget. And then we got caught in a giant merger, and they didn’t know what to do with that film.”
United Artists, the storied studio founded by Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith, was swallowed up by MGM, scrambling the UA slate and leaving many films, like Romance & Cigarettes, in limbo.
Turturro and the Coens fought for the film, and it eventually had an art-house run months later — Roger Ebert was a fan, titling his four-star review “Unfiltered Joy” — yet Romance & Cigarettes remained largely unseen.
“We were able to get a small release, and it did very well,” Turturro says, “it got a lot of critical acclaim, but I never felt like it had its full hearing.”
Loosely based on his parents’ relationship, the idea for the film had been kicking around his head for some time. He began the script while shooting one of his Coen films, Barton Fink, in which he played a screenwriter and frequently found himself in front of a typewriter. “The first scene in that movie I wrote on camera when I was doing Barton Fink,” Turturro recounts. “I was really writing things while they were filming.”
Because of his star power, Turturro was able to recruit an A-list ensemble, beginning with Gandolfini, in the midst of his star-making, Emmy-winning stint on The Sopranos. “Jimmy Gandolfini is great in that role,” Turturro says. “Jimmy was a guy who loved music. He loved singing along. He was shy, but he’s a beautiful guy, beautiful actor.
James Gandolfini belts out a songUnited Artists/MGM
“He met his match when he met Kate Winslet, let me tell you. He was like, ‘I’m intimidated by her.’ … And Kate Winslet was as good as she’s ever been. She’s hilarious and so sexy and so funny.”
Turturro also formed a close friendship with Walken, and when Turturro signed up for Severance, he recommended Walken to play his onscreen amour, Burt.
Ahead of the film’s 20th anniversary on Sept. 6, Turturro hosted a special screening at the Southhampton Playhouse in New York this week. He encourages fans to seek out the movie, which is streaming for free on Tubi, Pluto TV, and the Roku Channel, and is available to buy/rent from the other digital platforms like Prime Video and Apple TV+.
“We all have our private soundtracks, and that is what the movie is about. It’s something that I loved making,” he says. “If someone wants to know anything about me, they can watch that movie.”
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