Director's Statement

With Anchovies…Without Mamma is a Faux-Crime narrative documentary.  A prologue to circumstance.  The film was intended to be a brief journey through what lies beneath the flesh of human limits; all those parts that give way to motive.  It was through this journey that I wanted to pose the question, “Where does story truly lie?”

I wanted to do with With Anchovies...Without Mamma what Errol Morris did with A Thin Blue Line, which was to take a genre and re-imagine it.  What Errol did with a documentary, I set out to do with a mockumentary.  Focus on narrative, but explore the characters at the heart of the story.  Mamma is a short film taken from what was a feature script, and what will hopefully be a feature film.  A companion piece that allowed me the opportunity to search for the tone and structure that would suit this story.  I was hoping to leave some unanswered questions behind the film, and an interest in the broader situation that my characters are a part of in the feature script.

It was my goal to make With Anchovies…Without Mamma an absurdist allegorical look into the challenges that capitalist America can pose to the romantic soul.  With this film, I hope to ease viewers, with a somewhat farcical hand, towards recognizing what can happen when a culture melts too far into the melting pot.