A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
Short description
Dito Montiel wrote A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, a crime drama set in Astoria, Queens. It follows a successful author who returns to his old neighbourhood after roughly fifteen years away, drawn back by his mother's call about his ill father. Revisiting the streets he grew up on, he pieces together the summer of 1986, when he was a teenager caught between friends drifting into trouble and a home life he needed to escape. Most of the people he knew are gone, jailed or dead. In flashbacks, the young Dito navigates a tough Italian and Puerto Rican neighbourhood, where street fights, drugs and the pressure to follow his friends shape his choices. The question of how he got out runs through the film.
Dito Montiel directed from his own screenplay, based on his memoir, and this was the first film he directed. Robert Downey Jr. plays the adult Dito, with Shia LaBeouf as the younger version, while Chazz Palminteri and Dianne Wiest appear as his parents and Channing Tatum and Melonie Diaz feature among the younger cast. Robert Downey Jr., Clara Markowicz and Trudie Styler produced.
Released on September 29, 2006, the film runs 104 minutes. On IMDb it holds a 6.5 rating from 354 votes, and a critics' rating of 6.6 from 94 reviews, so reviewers and audiences are closely aligned. Montiel went on to direct further features, including Fighting and The Son of No One.
What's left behind the scenes
- Dito Montiel did not want to cast Shia LaBeouf as young Dito because he wanted to see an unknown young actor in the role. However, after an initial unsuccessful audition, Shia LaBeouf went through a second casting. He walked into the office and punched a hole in the wall, thereby convincing Montiel that he could be angry enough for the role.
- In the scene where Monty has a heart attack, Antonio throws a table through the glass window of the door. This was an improvisation by Channing Tatum, and none of the actors expected it, but they all finished the scene without showing their fear of Tatum, who had lost control in the heat of the performance. Montiel included this take in the original version of the film.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
