Derick and Steven Martini have been dutifully banging away at the indie film game for a decade now (they made a minor splash of sorts back in 1999 with Goat on Fire and Smiling Fish), so it’s heartening to see the boys finally get a shot at directing their own material. Apparently, I’m not the only one who felt they deserved the opportunity: their coming-of-age dramedy, Lymelife, is being executive produced by Martin Scorsese.
And produced by Alec Baldwin, who’s also agreed to appear in the suburban Long Island tale of familial discord, real estate snafus and one very nasty tick-borne malady. Joining Baldwin is Emma “Niece of Julia, Daughter of Eric, Star of Aquamarine” Roberts, the likable Culkins (Rory and Kieran), Timothy Hutton, Cynthia Nixon and Jill Hennessy. Not a half-bad cast. If Hutton is the patriarch of a disintegrating family, there could be some interesting Ordinary People echoes here. And if Nixon has a boyfriend who’s secretly manufactured an atomic bomb with plutonium stolen from John Lithgow, I could be straining to make an unfunny reference to The Manhattan Project.
Lymelife is scheduled to begin shooting next week in New Jersey (which, according to most maps, is not in Long Island). There’s no distributor yet, but I’m sure they’ll figure that out. Good luck, fellas.