Laughs, Tears, and Family: Sebastian Maniscalco Talks About My Father

Hi, I'm Allison with FlickDirect and I am here with Sebastian Matuskalko to talk about about my father. Hello, how are you? I'm great, thanks for being here. Thank you for being here. What made you think that a movie about your dad would be interesting? Well, I've been talking about my dad for the last 25 years of my act, so I thought this story would definitely serve itself up to a movie just because there were some stories there that really doesn't fit my stand-up comedy routine and thought this would be a great place to share those.

So yeah I wrote this movie with my writing partner Austin Earl about six years ago in my backyard not thinking that it would ever see the day of light. It was just a passion project. The next thing you know we're here talking about this movie and De Niro's playing my father which is unbelievable. Yeah. What did Austin bring to the script? So Austin and I kind of live similar lives in the fact that he married a woman from a better cut of cloth.

He married a woman who is upper-class, wealthy, so did I, and we always kind of bond over stories about going like on vacation with that family or what have you. What happened on your vacation? I don't know, I'm not gonna tell you what happened on mine. So that's kind of where we had this shared experience. Plus, ironically enough, when I met him, he had a Vespa, I had a Vespa.

It was just one of these... You had a Vespa? I had a Vespa. I had to get rid of it when I had kids because I didn't want to die and leave my kids without a father. So, yeah, we just have a lot, our sense of humor is really, really similar. So it's really easy for me and him to kind of write together so that's why we chose this movie to collaborate on.

- So did it kind of come organically or did you just have to think really hard about it? Was there a writer's block involved with it or did you say, oh, I can't tell that story about my dad or I can or? - Yeah, I never tell anything that's like a deep, dark secret in a movie or my act. I never put the people in my life in those positions or they feel awkward or uncomfortable.

And no, there was not a lot of writer's block. It came very natural to us. He's excellent, Austin, at writing dialogue. I kind of came up with the characters and who these characters really were and he kind of ran with it. So yeah, I won't say it was easy, but it wasn't like we weren't pining a lot over it. - Let's talk about De Niro. How does one actually get down on their hands and knees and beg Robert De Niro to be in your movie?

- You know, yeah, well when he was on his hands and knees, (laughing) I said, "Listen, Bob, get up." This is pathetic. No, I, I didn't have a relationship with Robert De Niro where I was able to call him up on the phone and say, "Hey, you wanna be my dad?" Although I worked with him in Irishman and then he had come to see me at the Radio City Musical.

Paul Weitz, who's a director, sorry, a producer on the film, worked with Bob a couple times prior and got him the script. He really enjoyed it. He wanted to read it out loud with a group of actors, which we did in New York City. He loved the way it sounded, and then he signed up to play my father. So there wasn't a lot of begging and pleading. He really kind of gravitated towards the script and wanted to do it.

- So last fun question. You have kids now. If they were to write a movie about you, what would that look like? - Well, they're six and three years old, So I don't know exactly, no. - Correct. (laughing) - A lot of pictures, stick figures. - Yeah. - No, but I don't know exactly. I try to take bits and pieces of my parents' upbringing and implement it into my own upbringing.

For example, chores and trying to teach kids responsibility and nothing comes easy. However, they are growing up in a different environment that I grew up in, so it's almost like triple as hard to instill like work ethic and what have you really got to be on them so hopefully when it's time to write a movie about me they'll you know it will be funny in its own right yeah who knows I don't know maybe you'll hate me.

Alright well we'll have to wait for that for another half dozen or so years probably longer but thank you so much the movie was a lot of fun. I appreciate this, thank you. Hit like, smash subscribe, and get notified for whenever reviews, interviews, and news go live. [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]