While his new film "Feed the Fish" is still in the process of gaining a wider release, Tony Shalhoub says he has more Wisconsin film projects in the works.
"We want to come and do more films," he told me Thursday evening at RDI Stages in St. Francis, where some of the work on the film was done. "We have a couple projects that we're working on."
But one of the things holding up those projects is the very thing that helped make "Feed the Fish" possible: Tax incentives from the State of Wisconsin.
"There's no way we could have done this movie for the budget we were working with and the time frame, the schedule, that we had, without those incentives in place," he said. "It was absolutely essential. But those incentives have been greatly reduced, and we need to work to get them reinstated."
Alison Abrohams, one of the film's producers and another Wisconsinite on the project (she's from Milwaukee) agreed with Shalhoub.
"The tax incentives were really crucial," she told me. "When we got down to the very end of our fund-raising process, that was what really gave us the green light really to go ahead. If we didn't have them in place, we probably would have had to consider shooting in another state, although Door County is crucial to this movie. It's almost a character in the film."
Right now, Shalhoub and the folks behind the movie are working to get a wider release for "Feed the Fish."
"The Marcus Theaters are showing it around the state, it's been performing really well in small towns all around. It ran in Madison for a month. It's back in Madison in a different theater. It's opening in Appleton, Green Bay and New Berlin, I think, next week.
"We've had conversations with people in other states, who have seen the movie and are interested. The quicker we can get the investors their money back, the quicker we'll be able to start the next project," he said.
And he'll be promoting the film Sunday, when he's at Lambeau Field for the Packers game. A couple versions of trailer for his movie playing to the crowd.
"They're going to be shown a few times on the Jumbotron. I don't know that that's ever done before." He jokes that it'll start "a huge trend, it'll be like a fever sweeping across the country."
Shalhoub's no stranger to Lambeau. "I grew up in the Lombardi era. I remember, the biggest thrill as a boy, I mean going to the games was great, but we also got to go on the field for this thing called Punt, Pass and Kick."
"Great memories of the place," said Shalhoub.
Shalhoub cited "a million reasons" for wanting to make more movies in his home state.
"First of all, you've got four beautiful seasons; or three beautiful seasons and one challenging season. And then you've got amazing locations, you've got pretty much everything you could ask for here. You've got miles and miles of coastline. And you've got this amazing population of great people with a tremendous work ethic who I know would really want the work.
"It's a no-brainer," he said.
But there's more on his plate than "Feed the Fish," there's "Men in Black III, "Too Big to Fail," an HBO film on the financial bailout, and his voice will be part of "Cars II.
Shalhoub is best known as "Monk," which ended its run last December. Any chance of a reunion?
"It's a little too early for that, although there's been some rumblings of it," he said. "There's still a lot of interest there... in terms such a broad demographic that gravitated toward the show. I keep thinking it would be a great feature, of course I'd have to convince half a million other people that that was a good idea."
"Feed the Fish" has one more screening as part of the Milwaukee Film Festival, at 4:45 p.m. Sunday at the Oriental Theatre.
At the film festival: As the Milwaukee Film Festival enters its final weekend, I highly recommend Friday's 2:45 p.m. screening of the Czech film, "Kawasaki's Rose," at the Oriental Theatre. It also runs at 9 p.m. Saturday at the North Shore.
The Czech entry in the Oscars deals with the painful memories of Communist times, and the lies that even good men tell, as a famous dissident prepares to be honored in Prague. and a TV crew digs into rumors about his past.
It helps to be versed in the complexities of Communist Czechoslovakia. But even without a background in that tragic period, you can still marvel at the paradox of people done wrong, who end up living better lives because of the unsavory acts of others.
Here's the trailer:
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
