Lightning Over Braddock: A Rustbowl Fantasy

The name Tony Buba may not top anyone's list of famous filmmakers unless you've lived near the town once called Little Pittsburgh: Braddock, Pennsylvania, where Buba is a local celebrity after making more than a dozen short documentaries about the once prosperous but now dying steel town and some of the more colorful characters still living there. In his first full length feature Buba embellishes his own documentary work with some unique, original low budget creativity and plenty of tongue-in-cheek Catholic guilt over his continuing success in a depressed economy. All his old pals are on hand: eternal optimist and professional failure Jimmy Roy; new wave accordion player Steve Pellegrino; middle aged street punk and jealous would-be star 'Sweet Sal'; and Buba himself, the quintessential struggling independent filmmaker, whose social conscience is constantly at odds with his dreams of making a big budget Hollywood musical. His film is a funny, irreverent, one-of-a-kind 'rust-bowl fantasy', intended as a cross between 'Mean Streets' and 'Amacord' but resembling instead a bittersweet collaboration between Studs Terkel and Errol Morris.