Ray Romano, who grew up in Forest Hills, took the “write what you understand” trajectory when he and Mark Stegemann crafted the the screenplay for “Somewhere in Queens” — which also marks Romano’s big-screen directorial debut.
“I’d never written a screenplay and neither had Mark,” Romano, 65, told The Post. “I knew what I like to jot down about and it’s any such movie — a small but effecting dramedy — and I knew that I wanted to jot down about this Italian-American working-class world which I lived in and grew up in and, much more, married into,” said the previous “Everybody Loves Raymond” star. “The family dynamics and all of the tradition you see within the movie are more from my wife’s [Anna] side, actually — Sunday dinner, the banquet hall … I’ve been married for 35 years and it’s been [like that] since Day One.”
“Somewhere in Queens,” opening April 21, features Romano as Leo Russo, who works in his family’s construction business alongside his more polished younger brother, Frank (Sebastian Maniscalco) and his brusque father, Dominic (Tony Lo Bianco), who built the business and barely tolerates Leo — who’s quick to cite from the “Rocky” movies, is barely disheveled and is at all times late for work.
Leo and his wife, Angela (Laurie Metcalf), a breast-cancer survivor, live in a quiet Queens neighborhood with their only child, Matthew (Jacob Ward), aka “Sticks,” a highschool basketball star who’s about to graduate.
Sticks is socially awkward and doesn’t speak much outside of the home; Leo basks in his son’s reflected glory — which helps his oft-deflated ego — and within the attentions of Pamela (Jennifer Esposito), a widow who takes a shine to him.
The situation takes a difficult, awkward turn when Leo and Angela discover that Sticks has a girlfriend: spirited, independent Dani (Sadie Stanley), who works as a waitress in a neighborhood diner and builds Sticks’ confidence and self-esteem.
When Sticks lands a chance to attend Drexel University (in Philadelphia) on a basketball scholarship, moderately than, as expected, enter the family business straight out of highschool, Leo goes to great lengths to make sure this may occur — with significant ramifications.
“I wanted [the movie] to … hopefully appeal to everybody since it’s ultimately about family,” Romano said. “I had a few ideas for the story but it surely was really inspired by what I used to be going through in real life, which was my youngest son graduating highschool. He’s 6-foot-5 and one in every of his highschool’s star basketball players and we knew he wasn’t going to proceed [playing] in college and that his last game in highschool was his last game — and it got very emotional for me,” he said. “I noticed how I used to be going to miss that … I used to be going to miss being the daddy of the highschool star and, as sad because it sounds, I used to be going to miss the eye — like I didn’t get enough attention in real life!
“I believed, the crux of the story is that this guy [Leo] … that is all he has,” he said. “He feels very insignificant in his life and this makes him feel like anyone. I brought other elements of my life into it. My wife is a breast-cancer survivor and my other son struggles with social anxiety,” he said.
“We mixed all that in and tried to give you … a family dramedy that’s ultimately a couple of man attempting to do the perfect for his son for perhaps barely selfish reasons and going to limits he shouldn’t … involving family dynamics all of us can relate to.”
As “Somewhere in Queens” progresses, each major character evolves in several, nearly imperceptible ways.
“We give ’em a little bit sprinkle, only a nugget of niceness and humanity,” Romano said. “We were nervous we were wrapping [the story] up too neatly for each character, but even the slightest thing … like when [Dominic] throws [Leo] a bone — he did the perfect he could, but he couldn’t even take a look at him when he did it.”
Romano said that Matthew/Sticks was essentially the most difficult part to solid, since he and the production team needed someone with bona fide basketball skills (that’s Ward, and never a stunt double, in all of the basketball scenes — and he’s that good).
“I can’t let you know how hard it was to search out a child who could play basketball,” he said “To start with, we wanted [Sticks] to be 6-foot-5, so we removed that [requirement] throughout the first week of looking. Each actor put themselves on tape of their backyard or within the schoolyard and as soon as we saw the tapes, 99 percent of the time we knew these kids never played basketball.
“Jacob was on our short list anyway, and when it got here all the way down to probably three guys who had the essence and qualities we wanted … we took a probability on him,” Romano said. “He was a Postmates driver on the time; he’s very young and raw but has this innocent quality we liked about him.”
