Photo: Any Day Now stars, from left, Taylor Gray and Paul Guilfoyle. Photo courtesy of Any Day Now / Provided by official site.
Writer-director Eric Aronson is a Boston native, and for his latest project, he wanted to create a story that depicted his hometown in a unique way. That thought is what led him to write and direct the new dark comedy Any Day Now, starring Paul Guilfoyle, Taylor Gray and Alexandra Templer. The film is now available on digital platforms after a run in movie theaters earlier this year.
“Well, I’m from Boston, and I live in Boston,” Aronson said in a recent Zoom interview. “The two great myths of my lifetime are the Gardner Museum robbery of 1990 and the Whitey Bulger story, and I don’t know, I never liked Whitey Bulger. He didn’t strike me as very funny, and so I decided to do the Gardner.”
Any Day Now, a fictional film, is inspired by the 1990 heist of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The thieves pulled off the unbelievable crime by using the St. Patrick’s Day parade as cover, according to press notes, and they ended up stealing many priceless works of art.
“I’ve been going to the Gardner since I was a kid,” Aronson said. “I used to sit in the courtyard when it was a quiet, sleepy museum. I remember before it was robbed actually. I remember these pieces, so it’s always been in the back of my head. And I’ve been a Hollywood screenwriter for many, many years, and I’ve been waiting and saving up for the right time and the right story. And this came to me as the one, and I knew Boston well enough that I knew I could tell this story.”
The director was quick to point out that this is not a nonfiction story. It’s not a biopic. The theft serves as a launching pad for a creative narrative that is pure Aronson. The filmmaker, who is making his directorial debut, loves the Boston feel of this story. He jokingly referred to the city’s “crazy wisdom” and how people seemingly have a “deep philosophical understanding about the way that the world works.”
“It’s sloppy and messy, but under it, there’s always something beautiful,” he said of his hometown.
For Aronson, the key to the feature was in the casting of these skilled actors. When he wrote the script, he actually had Guilfoyle in mind.
“He was the only person really that I ever considered for it, and I shaped it around him,” he said. “I’ve always loved his work. He’s an incredible actor and is being cast in very big movies as a character actor, and [as a character actor], he’ll come in and have his 10-15 minutes. And he’s amazing because everyone knows that he can do just about anything, and he can create a ballast to a scene. And he can make it feel real, and he could do something incredible with it. So what I wanted to do was break him out of that and give him a long runway to get his elbows out and have some fun, so I always had thought that he was the perfect art thief for me.”
Aronson said that Guilfoyle is the type of actor who can play two emotions right on top of each other. He can show kindness and be intimidating at the same time, and the filmmaker was able to capture that energy for the screen.
While Guilfoyle plays the character of Marty Lyons, an underworld figure, Gray portrays Steve, a night watchman brought into Marty’s world.
“Taylor I found because I wanted to find someone who was believable,” the director said. “Taylor is naturally a very cool guy, but I saw him in a role where he played a little uncool. And I was like, oh, that’s the journey that I want to make. I want to watch Paul and Taylor do this dance where Paul changes this kid, and he moves the needle just a little bit. If the needle is too wide, then the audience wouldn’t believe that he’s the kind of kid who could get the girl. We’ve got to get him in this believable place, and I think it was cast really, really well because of those reasons.”
Aronson and his team have been hard at work thinking up creative ways to promote the film. He actually displayed facsimiles of the stolen works in an art gallery show and created a “scene” that garnered buzz for the film. He’s also putting together commercials with actors portraying some of the artists whose work was stolen, greats like Rembrandt, Manet, Vermeer and Degas. The director called this campaign absolutely necessary in order to find success.
“We made a film at the very moment where the film industry collapsed, and most people are running around pulling out their hair,” he said. “I’m actually going to have fun with it. I think it creates opportunity. I found that the channels are not working anymore. The film-festival circuit is not working anymore. People can’t bring an undiscovered film to a festival, and a distributor comes along and gives them a good deal and distributes it for them. It doesn’t work that way.”
Aronson added: “So in order to break through that and to break through all the noise, I wound up teaming up with some Madison Avenue creative executives, and I call it ‘Indie Filmmaking Meets Madison Avenue.’ I saved a portion of my budget for this film just for marketing, and indie films don’t normally do that. They normally spend every dollar to try to get to the finish line, but we got a tax credit back from the state of Massachusetts. And I put that into this marketing push, and the first phase … was this gallery opening that we did. And we ‘returned’ the 13 stolen pieces of art to a Chelsea art gallery and opened the doors. We partnered with Improv Everywhere to fill it with actors and have an immersive experience. I just think films need to find their own way to break through, and it’s really, really hard. But it doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be fun.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Any Day Now, written and directed by Eric Aronson, is now available on digital platforms. Click here for more information.
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content
