Summary: A mild-mannered Scots-Italian fish and chip shop owner is alarmed
when his two distant US cousins start persuading a local loan shark not
to reclaim his debt.
From De Niro to DiMaggio, Italian-Americans
celebrate their ancestry. Scots-Italians,
writes Sergio Casci, keep their heritage
very quiet - which is why he's set his
film among them
When Armando Casci stepped off
the boat in 1899 he thought he was in New York.
But he wasn't. He was in Glasgow. When he realised
his mistake it was too late - the boat had gone
- so he decided to stay. That's the story anyway.
Chances are he knew where he was all along. But
the Legend of the Addled Ancestor lingers, not
only among the Cascis, but among the Nardinis,
Rinaldis, Moscardinis and countless others whose
forefathers came to Scotland a century ago.
It must be a useful fiction; a psychologically
satisfying explanation as to how the families
ended up here. After all, why swap Tuscany for
Glasgow except by mistake? The hills they left
were no less beautiful then than they are now;
the sun no less warm. And what did they get in
return? A city where skies were grey and a single
soot-blackened tenement housed more families
than their entire village. More plausible, surely,
that the poor souls screwed up. They were looking
for America and took a wrong turn.
Many other Nardinis, Rinaldis and Moscardinis
did, of course, end up in the US. Yet the Addled
Ancestor doesn't feature in their family legends.
They don't doubt for a moment that when Nonno
stepped foot on Ellis Island, that's exactly
where he wanted to be.
The fundamental difference between Italian immigrants
on opposite sides of the Atlantic is at the heart
of my script for American Cousins. The film tells
the story of two New Jersey gangsters who take
refuge in their Glasgow cousin's chip shop after
a job in the Ukraine goes wrong. The Americans
are smart-suited, smooth-talking wiseguys who
fear nothing and no one. Their Scots-Italian
cousin Roberto is less smart, less smooth and
collects stamps.
Some of the reviews:
from Canada -
a postive review:
my favourite film to date is the romantic comedy/mob
movie American Cousins.
from Scotland - a negative one:
story is very
silly, very bland
from England - a neutral review;
spearheading a renaissance in Scottish filmmaking.
The site for American Cousins is here
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