The Long Island International Film Expo Gives Local Filmmakers The Spotlight

Director Sal Del Giudice (left) at the club with one of the subjects of his documentary, Long Island Uncovered, focusing on the lives of musicians in Long Island’s cover bands.

The Documentarian

Half a mile away from Bellmore Movie Theater, on the ground floor of a sun-filled split-level house rooted firmly on a peaceful stretch of bucolic tree-lined sprawl, Sal Del Giudice sits at his kitchen table, his Mac laptop at arm’s length. Del Giudice is stout and solidly built, with a feathery brown mullet and a neatly cropped Van Dyke. He looks like he plays bass in a Long Island heavy metal cover band—which is perhaps because he plays bass in three Long Island heavy metal cover bands. In fact, that’s where he got the idea for his own new film, Long Island Uncovered, a documentary about, yes, musicians in Long Island cover bands. Del Giudice hoped to examine these men and women, mothers and fathers, in their 30s and 40s, and understand how they juggle careers and families with their musical passions and alliances. It was an idea that occurred to Del Giudice one night, when both he and his wife—unbeknownst to each other—had rehearsal with their respective cover bands, and no one to look after their 12-year-old son.

“There’s such a thriving cover and tribute band scene here on Long Island,” says Del Giudice. “There are so many places to play; there are so many musicians our age who are still doing it. It’s a lot different than it was 25 years ago when we were trying to do this professionally and get a record deal—nobody’s out to do that now. This is about enjoying yourself, it’s about passion, it’s about the support you get from your family.”

Long Island Uncovered will be screened on Saturday, July 9, in the LIIFE’s 7 p.m. film block (at the LIIFE, most films are screened in blocks of five, six or more); it is one of 29 documentaries featured in this year’s Expo. That’s a substantial number to the people behind the festival itself: The director of Nassau County’s Film Office and the LIIFE’s chief organizer, Debra Markowitz, has termed this “the year of the documentary,” noting that, “Eleven documentaries were released theatrically last year, more than any other year to date.”

Long Island Uncovered is Del Giudice’s third film and his second documentary. (His first doc, 2009’s Miracle Ball—about his search for the “Shot Heard Round the World” home run ball hit by Bobby Thomson to give the New York Giants the 1951 National League Pennant—premiered at the LIIFE in 2010, and took home the festival’s award for Best Documentary.) For Uncovered, Del Giudice began his storytelling process by finding local musicians who fit the profile he was hoping to document—men and women who, along with playing in cover bands, are Cub Scout troop leaders and soccer coaches, working moms and dads—and started filming: doing interviews, getting coverage of their bands in action. He then gave the subjects cameras, so that they could film their own lives and turn over the evidence afterward.

“I don’t think there was a piece of footage that I didn’t use,” says Del Giudice. He further integrated into the picture, for transitional shots, scenes of LI landmarks: Jones Beach, the Robert Moses Bridge. The film features music from guitar god Joe Satriani and narration from Twisted Sister’s Mark Mendoza—both LI musicians with ties to members of the cover-band scene.

“I just wanted to tell a story of how these people do it,” says Del Giudice. “Because it’s tough—it really is. If you had any less passion than what these musicians have for their craft, they wouldn’t be doing it.”

Del Giudice got his start in film a few decades back, when he did a favor for a friend who worked in the biz. Del Giudice was tasked with driving a 15-passenger van full of actors from Manhattan to Great Adventure, in New Jersey, for the filming of a Citibank commercial. “Once I got there, and I saw what was going on, I was hooked.” He took a job as a production assistant—the lowest position on any set. He studied film and worked his way up the ranks: production manager, producer, executive producer at a production house in NYC. In 2002, he started his own company, Tangerine Films (named after the classic Led Zeppelin ballad), which produces TV commercials, Web content and films.

He describes Long Island Uncovered as a “labor of love,” i.e., it likely won’t make much, if any, money. (Miracle Ball, though, is being discussed with distributors now, and will net a return for Del Giudice and Tangerine.) He’s currently at work on his next film, Seven Fishes, about the rituals of his Italian-American heritage. Del Giudice’s films cover his passions in life: baseball, music, family. He has three children, and he equates the processes of filmmaking, songwriting and child-rearing. Making a film, he says, much like writing a song, “is like raising a child. You have to feed it every day, and you have to nurture it every single day, until it’s fully developed and ready for the world.”

For Del Giudice, planting, watering and watching that seed grow is the basic joy of filmmaking.

“I love how we start with a small idea and we bring it to life,” he says. “The whole idea intrigues me on a daily basis.”