BEHIND THE SCENES
Production Notes from Dave Lewis

Realizing that we had to be extremely well organized to shoot a “period piece” with over 100 actors, we gave ourselves a full three months of preproduction during which many of our crew worked 7 day weeks preparing for the 10 day mid-August shooting schedule.
     As the writer/ director I chose to cast all the actors myself since I felt that would insure a stronger relationship between us in rehearsals and on set. This time was also well spent by the wardrobe/makeup and art department who labored countless hours preparing sets and actors for scenes covering 3 different decades. As a reward for our thoroughness, no extra shooting days (for pickups or re shoots) were necessary to complete the project.
      The monumental task to casting over 60 kids and scheduling production during the last week in August before they all returned to school was made even more ominous when we were plagued by thunderstorms that reeked havoc on an already temperamental and overbooked shooting schedule.
      Our last day of shooting was the most challenging as all hell broke loose Our Emmy award winning DP was finishing another project and couldn't be on set till 7 pm. With our Second Camera filling in, things went smoothly till it became apparent Will Barrett, our DP, was late and couldn't be reached. In addition, one of our lead actors who was pregnant (which we all- herself included- had found out about when we were deep in preproduction ) was growing increasingly fatigued and had set 10 pm as her finnishing deadline. Then another key actor notified us she also had to leave at 10 pm. To make matters worse, my ex- wife, who's house we had taken over and been shooting at for the past 4 days, had arrived back early from her trip and wanted her home back.. Add to this rats nest the fact that Our DP had the shot list for the final scenes with him and you have the ingredients of a very combustible situation. Luckily Will Barrett finally arrived at 9 pm and we rushed to complete the last scenes and ended production 6 grueling hours later at 3am.!
     This was followed by 8 months of painstaking post-production where we worked closely with our editors and composer, Bob Fine, to sculpt the final version of the film.
    As a mirror to the story, I wanted the music to contrast the two cultures in a very obvious way. Bob fine did a masterful job of composing all original music in traditonal Klezmer and Italian styles that both reflects the emotional highs and lows of the story as well as adding the right accent to comedic elements of the tale.
    After countless days of peering over the editors shoulder, it's easy for a director to lose a fresh perspective on the progress of the project. Unlike the studios who can afford expensive test screenings in front of live theatre audiences (as an example, the Farrelly Brothers did 7 test screenings for “Dumb and Dumber”), in order to guage our progress, we decided to schedule numerous small screeenings at each step of the post production process for anyone and everyone we could find. Although its psychologically tough to endure the flood of criticisms that come with such screenings of a “ work in progress”, the feedback was immeasurably helpful.
    On April 30th 2005 we premiered “Spaghetti and Matzo Balls” at the Regent Theatre in Arlington Massachusetts to rave reviews by the nearly 500 people in attendance.