“Plans—they never seem to work out.”
         — Petie Venuti in “Four Deadly Reasons”

They were shooting a movie in Narrowsburg the summer we bought our house here. We remember the toughs hanging around Richie Castellano’s office on Main Street, the New York City actors with Godfather-style gravelly voices and deadened expressions meant to instill fear. It was a heady time in this small town; even those who still cannot hear the Castellano name without bristling can remember the excitement his movie-making brought with him. His plans for the future of our little town were big, but his plans never seemed to work out.

After the success of his first International Independent Film Festival, Richie Castellano, now known as Costaldo, had the ear, if not the pocketbook of many a local resident as he spun his fantasy of Sundance on the Delaware to all who would listen. Some of us liked Richie’s idea of our small town hosting independent filmmakers. Better than gamblers, we thought. An independent film festival fit the idea of an arts-centered community and would only take a few weeks of our blessed anonymity away each year.

Better even than the festival, however, was the film. Local actors, experienced and (mostly) otherwise, got featured roles. Almost everyone got a shot at being an extra just for showing up on a day the cameras were rolling. The city actors seemed to like their roles as out-of-towners as much as their movie roles. They would chat up locals on Main Street or at a nearby table at The Chatterbox Cafe.

One local boy got a supporting role as the son of Castellano’s character. It was his first role in a motion picture but it was something he had dreamed of for a long time.

Castellano must have pegged him as a natural from the beginning. For whatever Richie’s faults, his instincts about movies were right on target.

The night the film was scheduled to premiere at Tusten Theater as part of the Second Annual Narrowsburg International Independent Film Festival, the local boy was there in his tux looking like a Hollywood brat-packer, with a star quality smile from ear to ear.

By this time though, Richie’s star was already fading, as creditors banged at his door and the hard-working small-town investors in his movie grew short-tempered at the thought of losing their shirts. Rumors swept through town like vultures, picking at our insecurities. As we waited on the sidewalk to enter Tusten Theater, a car sped down Bridge Street firing its muffler and nearly hitting Castellano as he stood outside.

The premiere turned out to be a few outtakes of footage, minus any of the local boy, and a pitiful attempt at an apology by Castellano and Joe Dinky, the producer. The local boy and his family were never given a heads up on this disappointment, so the fallen faces they wore had no time to restore themselves for the public.

“It broke my heart to see it sitting on a shelf,” said Paul Borghese, the self-described hired gun who directed the film, after all that he and the cast and crew had been through to shoot the film. Castellano had let everyone down and was unable to fund the film to completion. Instead of the role he had imagined for himself as the Scorcese of Sullivan County, he lived the real world life of his movie character, languishing in a jail cell for months unable to make bail. “The life followed me,” says Bobby Venuti (Castellano’s character) describing his inability to start fresh in a small town.

Three years later, on April Fools Day, 2002 the film was finally finished by Borghese. The second premiere of “Four Deadly Reasons” played to a sell-out audience in Hoboken, NJ, and went on to win an award at the Back East Picture Show Film Festival.

On Thursday of last week, in a screening room at Robert DeNiro’s Tribeca Film Center in Manhattan, the local boy finally saw his face on the silver screen. It was a younger face than he may have remembered, and he smiled too much, he thought. He wasn’t wearing a tux this time, and he barely made it to the theater to see the opening credits. In the fall the boy enrolls as a freshman at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts to study film making. His plans are working out just fine, thank you.