Editor

Weight-loss Story Launches Film Festival Programming


In anticipation of its fifth annual Port Townsend Film Festival in September, event organizers launch their annual spring membership drive March 21 with an advance screening of a film entitled "Lbs."

New York actor/writer/producer Carmine Famiglietti will journey to Port Townsend to discuss his narrative film that created a sensation when it played at the Sundance Film Festival in January.
In a tale about food addiction, Famiglietti made mincemeat out of method acting by actually losing 170 pounds during filming that took a couple of years to complete.

Obsessed and controlled by food, the Queens-based actor tried everything to reduce his intake and his 380-pound frame. Nothing seemed to work. Finally, the 27-year-old decided he needed a "a lifestyle change, not just a diet," he recalls.
He began to write about his experience, then enlisted long-time friend Matthew Bonifacio, a self-made filmmaker from Brooklyn, to help him make a movie about weight loss. He wanted to produce and star in his own movie, with Bonifacio directing, and he promised to lose weight throughout the shooting schedule.

"I basically had to build a massive support group for myself" in order to lose weight, Famiglietti remembers.

As the project moved from story to screenplay, he and Bonifacio staged readings to hone the script and elicit financial support. The readings provided good input on the script, but because Famiglietti had as yet lost no weight, no one was willing to put cash on the barrelhead. After he lost 40 pounds, Famiglietti and director Bonifacio made the rounds again. This time enough investors were convinced of Famiglietti¹s sincerity to provide the cash to allow filming to begin.

John Cooper, who selected the film for the 2004 Sundance program, says of Famiglietti: "Carmine is not your typical matinee idol, yet he has the power to break hearts."