Blu-Ray Release of Cooper & Hemingway: The True Gen

Richard Zampella at Transmultimedia announces the Blue-Ray release of Cooper & Hemingway: The True Gen to coincide with the birthday of writer Ernest Hemingway. The two disc collectors set includes a unique 16 page fold-out Arts-in-Review booklet comprising articles, photographs and original newspaper reviews and advertisements of Ernest Hemingway’s novels and stories and Gary Cooper’s films. In addition, the box set includes a brand new audio commentary by director/writer John Mulholland and hours of never-before-seen interviews and footage.

The documentary is narrated by Sam Waterston with Len Cariou as the voice of Ernest Hemingway. It includes interviews with Kirk Douglas, Charlton Heston,  Patricia Neal, George Plimpton, Robert Stack, and dozens more.

About Cooper & Hemingway: The True Gen

In many ways it was the perfect match:  Ernest Hemingway, whose heroes on the page personified courage - "grace under pressure" - and Gary Cooper, the man who often portrayed those characters on screen. Yet, in other ways - politically, emotionally and personally - Hemingway and Cooper were a study in contradictions. The story of this extraordinary 20-year friendship is the focus of The True Gen.  Written/Directed by John Mulholland and Produced by Richard Zampella.

To order your limited edition 2 disc set visit: http://cooperhemingway.com/blu-ray/

An Ode to Tennessee Williams on his Birthday

Most people have never seen a live performance of a Tennessee Williams play, but you will certainly recognize his words. Lines from his works have become have become part of the lexicon of our language in which his vocabulary is inseparable from his writings — and the kinds of characters who speak them.

"Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." — Blanche Dubois, in A Streetcar Named Desire.

"Stella! ... Stella!" — a shattered  Stanley Kowalski, filled with liquor and guilt, calling to his wife from the darkened streets of New Orleans in the same play.

Blanche is Stanley's sister-in-law, a faded Southern belle that is both fixated and repulsed by the brute.

"He's like an animal, has an animal's habits," she tells Stella. "There's even something subhuman about him. Thousands of years have passed him right by and there he is — Stanley Kowalski, survivor of the Stone Age, bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle. And you, you here waiting for him. Maybe he'll strike you, or maybe he'll grunt and kiss you. That's if kisses have been discovered yet."

Streetcar launched the career of Marlon Brando, who later starred in a film adaptation of the play with Vivien Leigh. Streetcar launched the career of Marlon Brando, who later starred in a film adaptation of the play with Vivien Leigh.

The observer of humankind who crafted those words, Thomas Lanier Williams, was born 105 years ago — on March 26, 1911 — in the Mississippi Delta town of Columbus. In a career that spanned half a century, he redefined what a play could do. He created some of the most remarkable characters in world drama in his more than 70 plays, including Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Sweet Bird of Youth, The Rose Tattoo and The Night of the Iguana. He also wrote two novels, several collections of poetry and stories, and adapted many of his plays to the screen.

He changed the history of American drama and drama in the English-speaking world with his first two plays because they were so different, He broke free of what had been going on in the 1920s and the 1930s — all those social-protest dramas — and gave us something totally new, this wonderful understanding of human nature, human suffering ... human foibles.

With both The Glass Menagerie and Summer and Smoke, the first two of Williams' plays to be produced in New York and it was in New York that the playwright made his first big impression. The Glass Menagerie enjoyed a successful Broadway run and won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for best play of 1945. He fell in with a circle of actors, writers and directors that included Marlon Brando (whose career was launched by his portrayal of Stanley Kowalski in the stage version — and later the film — of Streetcar), and Eli Wallach.

Eli Wallach once said, "We were not interested in doing any films. We were interested in doing plays. And Tennessee was right at the top. His writing excited all of us."

Wallach spent the first five years of his career acting in Williams plays. He originated the character Kilroy in 1953's Camino Real. He won a Tony for creating the role of the truck driver, Mangiacavallo, in 1951's The Rose Tattoo. But he says his favorite remains The Glass Menagerie.

"What a play," he says, a bit of awe in his voice. "You take a family and you wring it around. ... Audiences were startled by this man's ability to do that."

Williams' ability to express his guilt and anguish in his work won him many honors. He received two Tony Awards, two Pulitzer Prizes — for A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof — and four New York Drama Critics Circle Awards.

And though age and alcohol had begun to catch up with Williams by the mid-1960s, he continued to write — every day, from six in the morning until noon.

The writings of Tennessee Williams teaches us an important lesson. "He said of his sister when somebody inquired about how she was doing in the nursing home ... he said, 'She's surviving with grace.' And I think he, in so many ways, taught us how to do that”.

Tennessee Williams died in a New York hotel room in 1983 at the age of 71.
He's buried in St. Louis — where he grew up — alongside his sister Rose.

October 4th – Commemorates the Birth of St Francis of Assisi

Richard Zampella Returns the Tomb of St. Francis of Assisi 37 Years Later

October 4th marks the birth of - St. Francis of Assisi. He renounced his family's wealth and founded the Friars Minor (Franciscan Order).

In 1977, I traveled to Assisi in the province of Perugia in the Umbria region, on the western flank of Monte Subasio. It is the birthplace of St. Francis, who founded the Franciscan religious order in the town in 1208. On that trip I was 11 years old and brought there by my father Arthur Dante Louis Zampella (1917-1992). My father was born a Roman Catholic and despite his eventual conversion to a protestant, he never forgot his humble Catholic beginnings . Throughout his life, my father was sensitive to the unique needs pertaining to the care and protection of the elderly, animals and children. As a result, it was fitting that he would be interested in visiting the birthplace of Saint Francis, the patron saint of animals and ecology.

It was a late afternoon in 1977 that we arrived in the provincial town of Assisi. The Papal Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi (Italian: Basilica Papale di San Francesco, Latin: Basilica Sancti Francisci Assisiensis) is the mother church of the Roman Catholic Order of Friars Minor—commonly known as the Franciscan Order—where St. Francis was born and died. The basilica is one of the most important places of Christian pilgrimage in Italy.

Halfway down the nave of the lower basilica one can descend into the crypt via a double stairway. This burial place of St. Francis which was discovered in 1818. His remains had been hidden by Brother Elias to prevent the spread of his relics in medieval Europe. By order of Pope Pius IX a crypt was built under the lower basilica. It was designed by Pasquale Belli with precious marble in neo-classical style. But it was redesigned in bare stone in neo-Romanesque style by Ugo Tarchi between 1925 and 1932.

Upon entering the crypt and paying solemn respect to the tomb of St. Francis, I sensed a hesitation in my father that suggested that he wanted to stay for a moment. I stepped to the rear of the chapel and peered out from behind a column in order to see reason for the delay. From that spot, I observed him kneel and genuflect to signify both his respect and adoration to St. Francis. Upon rising, he turned where we caught each others eyes. In that moment we both understand that he had shown me a deeply personal side of himself. We never spoke a word, and I know he was glad that I was able to see this aspect of him. He took my hand where we quietly ascended the stairs of the basilica together.

In 2013 I returned to the crypt of St Francis to photograph the chapel and quietly reflect upon his experience with my father 37 years earlier.