Apple Pie

Having just purchased a copy of this forgotten little oddity on an obscure video label called North American Video (NA 1033) I figured to watch it right away. I had been admonished by the seller that this was an unusual movie. He wasn't kidding. After viewing it, there's no doubt it's "Independent Cinema". That's not a bad thing, but one must view this picture with an open mind if one is to derive any enjoyment from it. Any viewer expecting conventional plot devices is going to be in for a strange awakening because this movie has no real plot and has a kind of anarchic structure to all the activities that go on. What story there is revolves around Jacques Blinbaum (played by the rubber-limbed Tony Azito), who appears to be a gangster nicknamed The Falcon. His father is played by Brother Theodore at his most "normal" (I use the term loosely). Jacques then describes, in a fantasy-like way, his experiences beginning at age 17 where he gets the idea to fake his own kidnapping and extort money from his parents. There's a kind of surreal feel to this film and I watched it twice in one day because I thought it was interesting. APPLE PIE appears to have been filmed entirely on location in and around New York City. Whether one likes APPLE PIE or not, the ending is really cool! One last thing, the video box says "approx. 90 mins.", but it really runs only about 80 minutes.

This now 50 year old movie is an example of low budget, high weirdness New York City filmmaking that ended in the early 90s. Tony Azito is the propellant that fuels the various set pieces. Miami Vice fans may recognize Azito as the sinister but soft-spoken drug lord Manolo in a 1988 episode called Mirror Image (Season 4 episode 22). Azito didn't play the role as some raving, violent Mafia coke dealer. He was colder than cold and his spidery physical movements, like Dracula, added to the menace.

Azito was going to continue working in the show, presumably as Manolo, but fate intervened. He was hit by a cab and badly injured, then diagnosed with cancer and HIV. Which killed him.

I recently found a VHS copy of Apple Pie on the net and re-watched it. What a treat. I hadn't seen this film in over 20 years! I first saw it at the Deauville Film Festival in France the same year I saw Nashville and Love and Death there. It was a big hit and got a standing ovation the night I saw it.

The film is a kind of hodge-podge of ideas. It stars Tony Azito (who was a big deal in NY on Broadway and Off-Broadway. He died of AIDS a few years ago). It starts out with him as some sort of gangster who then tells the story (in flashback) of how, when he was a kid, he kidnapped himself and got a ransom from his parents. Then he becomes some kind of nighttime costumed prowler and then he winds up leading a huge dance sequence in the streets of New York (pre-Flashdance) to the music of Darryl Hall and John Oates! It all sounds kind of weird in the re-telling, but once you get the hang of it, it all makes sense. The whole film is a lie made up by the main character (Tony Azito), as a kind of manifestation of his own weirdness. Once you get that none of it is to be taken literally you start to understand it as some kind of fractured New York fairy tale.

This is what independent filmmaking was once all about.

I am a cinephile or a film critic. I had seen many so called film cult movies. This had never entered my list and would leave my interest as soon as I put the dot at the end of this long sentence; garbage.

...as I was when this movie came to an end.

How this film has anything less than a 7.5 rating is beyond me. It should be required viewing - especially for anyone in the arts industry.

Every choice made by every person involved - the writer/director, the cinematographers, the costume designers, the actors (most of whom were clearly given creative freedom to move around and adlib) was a perfect choice.

The whole thing is so genuine and authentic that it feels more like witnessing a camera follow real people around during a random day of their lives. You want to know these people and interact with them.

And as for the incredible dance number at the end: it makes "You Cant Stop the Beat" from Hairspray feel more like an 8 year-old's dance recital. If it doesnt have you on your feet, moving and shaking (or at least sitting there with a gigantic, goofy grin on your face), then you may want to check your pulse for signs of life.