And come June 16th, everyone in Chicago will have a chance to experience "Fred & Vinnie" on-screen at the Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State Street (between Lake & Randolph), 8 pm when the award-winning film premieres in the Windy City. Nora Dunn, actress and comedian best known for her work in NBC's Saturday Night Live, will present director-writer STEVE SKROVAN, writer-star FRED STOLLER and star ANGELO TSAROUCHAS with the Christopher Wetzel Award for Independent Film Comedy. Q&A and reception follows.
First screened at Slamdance in January (during Sundance '11), "Fred & Vinnie" has become one of the darlings of the indie festival circuit. In the dark comedy (shot in & around Los Angeles over 19 days), loner Fred Stoller is thrilled to find out his good friend, Vinnie D'Angelo-the world's happiest agoraphobic and fattest vegetarian-is coming to live with him, until Vinnie begins to prove he is the world's most maddening roommate. Based on a cadre of actual answering machine audio recordings, "Fred & Vinnie" has been called "a heartfelt gem of a movie" by Paul Mazursky. The Huffington Post says "Stoller, tall and rail-thin, together with the generously proportioned Tsarouchas, cut a classically comic pair when seen onscreen together." The legendary Fred Willard makes a pivotal cameo.
Video footage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLLq1fsv14o
Film's website: http://www.fredandvinnie.com/
