![]() These actors started getting freaked out. They all had names like the Chingalings, the Savage Skulls and the Savage Nomads. These gangs were from the South Bronx and they were mainly Black and Hispanic. The problem with the Bronx in 1978 was there were real gangs. “When they were shooting the recruiting scene with the Fordham Baldies,” Price recalled, “the actors were hanging out on the intersection of the Grand Concourse and Fordham Road right by Alexander’s Department Store and Loew’s Paradise, this massive Moorish movie palace. “It took a whole week to shoot that scene. Tony Ganios, who played Perry, spoke about the fight scene in Van Cortlandt Park. “I can tell you stories all night long of the bizarro stuff that happened while filming.” I wanted to write a photographic portrait of that time and place and that mentality,” Price said. Toni Kalem as Despie and Ken Wahl as Richie. And it was written with a fast-beating heart and oozing glandular secretions it was painful, scary, tragic, and funny as hell.” It was a dream of a time that was no more, a remembrance of a teenage urban yore, an idyll filled with angst, haunted by music seared into the brain. It was a world jammed with perils and thrills, told from the perspective of kids experiencing things for the first time-unknown, confusing things they were struggling to make sense of. The book stunned us: this Price guy was the Bronx Mark Twain! He was writing about coming of age not on the Mississippi but in alleys, basements, football fields and back seats of cars. “My son Peter was 14 when he read Richard Price’s book and told Rose and me to turn it into a film. In his director’s statement about the film, Kaufman writes about how the movie made its way over to him and his wife Rose, both eventual screenwriters of the film: Price may not have won the Italian girl over with his prose, but director Philip Kaufman ( The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Right Stuff), fell in love with the novel when it was brought to his attention by his teenage son. But it’s such a great movie.’ You win some, you lose some,” Price joked. I said, ‘You know it was based on a book?’ She said, ‘Yeah, yeah. I’m gonna see this movie 10 more times,’ she said. ![]() You know they used my bedroom to shoot some scenes.’ I said, ‘That’s great.’ ‘You know, I loved this movie. She was Italian from the neighborhood, and I said, ‘How many times did you see this movie?” and she said, ‘Six. “I remember being in line to see the movie and there was some girl in front of me. ![]()
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