FAQ

When the director's came up with the idea that they wanted to make a movie together, they were both working at the Virgin Megastore in Times Square. At the time they both had two-way radios and were in contact with each other this way. To cover their identities, Frank Pina branded himself Rasputin O'Dwyer and Eric Norcross branded himself Conrad Moynihan.

Later on Norcross came up with the name Monticello Palermo, the first name coming from the famous American estate and the second coming from the famous town in Sicily. Other names, some of which were cut out of the final movie included but aren't limited to: Senator Charles Deakins, Dunstan "Snowtoe" De Canter and Alphonso Montgomery.

The Senate Armed Services Committee Assembly Room, located in the Rayburn Office Building in Washington, DC.

It was filmed in a classroom at Hunter College on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where Frank Pina was a student.

Stony Brook University - the movie was supposed to open on his last day of class and the idea was that he was just heading home for the summer.

The footage was home-video aerials of the Town of Long Island, Maine from 1993. The narrative is Eric Norcross talking about Long Island, Maine and its secession from Portland, Maine. This actually happened and is the catalyst for Rasputin's secession idea.

For more information on the Town of Long Island's REAL secession movement, there's quite bit of archived news footage on youtube to educate anyone interested in how it all went down.

It is the Met Life building, formerly the PanAm building, between 42nd Street and 44th Street on Park Avenue. The building is also connected to Grand Central Terminal, the terminus point for the Metro-North Railroad and Connecticut Transit. The name Moynihan was digitally placed over the Met Life sign by Visual Effects Supervisor Joe DiValerio.

Eric Norcross shot the entire movie with a Sony VX2000E PAL camera. Because the frame rate of a PAL camera is closer to the frame rate of film, when converted to NTSC, it ends up looking very similar in movement. Technical details below:

PAL (European Video Standard) - Runs at 25 frames per second. NTSC (American Video Standard) - Runs at 29.9 frames per second. Film (16mm or 35mm) - Runs at 24 frames per second.

If you shoot film and downgrade to NTSC, it looks slower than it would when projected. The same thing happens when you transfer PAL to NTSC.

As for the cinemascope look, when Norcross finalized the film on Avid, he placed a matte-box over the top and bottom of the screen to give it that effect. Of course don't think you're missing much, he actually shot the film with the intentions of matting it for the widescreen format by framing everything tightly below the matte-lines.

There has always been threats but the establishment in place is far too powerful to let a legitimate movement shake the foundations.

The painting is of actor John Tully's dog that he had when he used to live in Los Angeles, California. He has a picture of the Moynihan Building on his computer because the director assumed that he found Moynihan to be a threat and is always watching him (or his building.)

Battery Park in Lower Manhattan. To find out more on Lower Manhattan and Battery Park, please visit Eric Norcross' youtube channel at youtube.com/norcrossmedia and view Tour America: Episode 4 - Lower Manhattan, hosted by Long Island Project actor Robert Youngren.

This film is now on DVD. You can purchase the 2 disc special collector's edition on Amazon.com.