By Shawn Smith
Food has a special way of bringing people together, and the new comedy NONNAS explores the relationship between food and family.
Directed Stephen Chbosky and written by Liz Maccie, the husband-wife team know that the dinner table is where fond memories are made and where traditions (and recipes) are passed on from one generation to the next.
“It was amazing…also because of what the story is about, the fact that we’re family, and this is about family,” Maccie told Movieguide®’s Kaelii Williams. “[E]verything became infused with…this extra tinge of love and magic.”
NONNAS based on a true story about Joe, played by Vince Vaughn, who quits his dead-end job to open an Italian restaurant, Enoteca Maria, in honor of his late mother, hiring nonnas, or grandmothers, to serve up their favorite dishes.
The movie also stars Susan Sarandon (Gia), Talia Shire (Teresa), Lorraine Bracco (Roberta) and Brenda Vaccaro (Antonella) as the titular cooks.
With Chbosky marrying into an Italian family (“So I know how much they talk with their hands,” he joked), he wanted to represent that culture well.
“I tried to capture that and honor that and what I love about what my wife…stands for in her life, but also in her writing…the reverence and the respect that she has for everybody,” Chbosky said.
While Maccie got to meet some of the real nonna chefs of the restaurant to create the characters, she said that she drew inspiration from her own relationships.
“They really were the women in my life and that are like all kind of pieces of that put together. So the women aren’t exact representations,” she said.
In addition to meeting the chefs at the Staten Island restaurant that opened in 2007, the creative duo met the real Joe Scaravella, and to Chbosky’s relief, who joked that the most negative part of the process “was the pressure not to screw this movie up,” the real-life restaurateur “loved” the movie.
“He loved every part of it. He was [such] a supportive guy the whole way through,” Chbosky said.
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Vaughn also had nothing but positive things to say upon meeting Scaravella, commenting on how special the concept of his restaurant is, saying that he is more about the food and the experience than running a business.
“He was more motivated by…a dish or a food, you know, creating a great environment for people to enjoy and connect,” Vaughn told Extratv’s Paul Costabile.
Joe Manganiello, who plays Bruno, couldn’t say no when he read the script and learned of the all-star cast.
“I love heart and humor together, and when that’s done well, I just think it’s like the perfect combination and and just unbeatable,” Manganiello said in an interview with Blackfilmandtv.com’s Wilson Morales. “So when I read the script, I thought it was great and then I met with Stephen Chbosky, and I loved THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER. I thought that was such a really vulnerable…piece of filmmaking for him, and I knew that this movie was gonna have heart.”
He added that he appreciated that it was a departure from some of the less family-friendly movies that he’s done in the past.
“I’ve been in a lot of projects that, like, I didn’t want my mom to watch…so they were not appropriate for children. Let’s put it that way,” he went on to say. “So it’s really great that there’s this big four quadrant fun movie that just… it makes people cry. It makes people emotional.”
A movie with humor and good food that the whole family can watch sounds like a recipe for success.
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