NYC in the Raw, Issue 3: MOONSTRUCK (1987)
As I was compiling my list of films for this series, I felt it was necessary to not just show the gritty side of what NYC used to be – especially before 9/11 – but to show how the city can be a beautiful and wonderful place. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love these old NYC films equally, whether it’s showing the down and dirty or the glorious and transcendent. However, the films I have discussed so far + the ones that will be talked about after this entry will be mostly crime drama, action adventure or thriller in genre. We are very fortunate to have a NYC-shot film that is purely a romantic comedy, and quite honestly, one of the best to ever do it, while showing the city in a beautiful real light during the late 80’s. We are here to discuss Norman Jewison’s perfect film, Moonstruck.
The tumultuous situation at the center of this movie revolves around single and content Loretta Castorini (the flawless Cher), who after becoming engaged to the jittery and frankly infantile Johnny Cammareri (Danny Aiello), is tasked by him to ensure his estranged brother Ronny attends the wedding (Nicolas Cage, going at 120% as always), but eventually ends up falling in love with the fiery brother who awakes something in Loretta. Hanging over this main plot thread, the movie is really about the Italian American family, the various ways they interact and deal with what life throws at them and how not talking things out/keeping secrets from each other will always, eventually, end up coming to a head. Moonstruck, outside of being a great romance as well as a comedic masterpiece, is ultimately a refreshing look at Italian Americans without it being about the mob, criminals or dealing with the seedy underworld of organized crime (see Goodfellas, The Godfather Trilogy, Casino, etc.). This, simply put, is a well-crafted three act film with a flawless script, pitch perfect performances (special call outs to Vincent Gardenia and Olympia Dukakis as Loretta’s parents, both at the top of their game) and paced immaculately.
For this entry, I wanted to do something a little different. Moonstruck presents a very distinctive look at the Italian American family dynamic, and I wanted to interview someone who, at least to me, embodies the culture and familial vibes that comes along with what this movie presents. I found no one better than someone I work with every day. Gabrielle is a Group Director at my day job. I am sure she wouldn’t mind me saying this, but when I think of the Italian side of my family and the Italian American family that is presented in Moonstruck, no one comes to mind faster than her, no hesitation. I wanted to get her insights and feelings on this movie, which she has confirmed to me is one of her all-time favorite films – as well as being a die-hard Cher fan, as we all should be – and get her thoughts into how the film represents her culture and some general inquiries into aspects of the movie (and her real life) that I am genuinely interested in. What follows is the Q&A I conducted with her on 4/8/25:
MAYO: Seeing the establishing shot of Cammareri Bros in Moonstruck brought me back to the days I used to shop for pastries and bread at the Sugar Bun and Pasticceria La Torre in Howard Beach, Queens. When you see that establishing shot of the bakery, do you also have any vivid memories of your favorite Italian bakery from your childhood or even today? What was your favorite order/go to when stopping at the shop? What about your family?
GAB: Yeah, I have. When I was growing up, Michaels, the restaurant on Ave R in Brooklyn, they have a bakery attached to the restaurant, and it was the closest like to the house that I grew up in and so it was the go-to bakery for like any kind of like Italian delicacy. That being said, there were different bakeries that my parents and I will go to for different things. So there was Michaels, your catch-all if you needed like a tray of cookies to go somewhere. If we wanted any kind of bread, we went to Vito’s Bakery, which was in like Sheepshead Bay, the Gravesend area. They had the best bread and the best butter cookies. Then, if we wanted 7-layer cookies, there was Tasty Pastry, which is in Dyker Heights/Bensonhurst, and they had the best 7-layers around. They also did, like, a cannoli gelato, which is very good.
The bakery I would say, though, that has the most significance for my family is Cuccio’s, which is on Ave. X and West 1st. The house my grandmother initially lived in, when her parents moved to that part of Brooklyn, was in that neighborhood. Cuccio’s is known for their cream doughnuts or crumb buns, and, like, their catch phrase is “the best buns in Brooklyn”. So that bakery has a lot of significance, like for the family because of just the proximity to where my grandmother grew up, we always had Cuccio’s like every Sunday. That was what was on the table.
The doughnuts there like… they’re not doughnuts. Like, you know, on Saint Joseph’s Day, how there’s the two types of pastries? There’s the cannoli cream, and there’s the regular cream. It’s like the latter one, but in a doughnut. They’re crazy. And they’re like, they’re dense. They’re like this… this wide (illustrates the size of it) and fat. Yeah, they go off and their crumb buns, just like a coffee cake, amazing. We definitely had our go-to bakeries, we weren’t just freeballing it.
MAYO: If there is one thing that is as common as the sun rising, it’s movies featuring actors doing accents. Sometimes it works out beautifully, other times, it’s a pure disaster. When you watch Moonstruck and the various people from the ensemble, from someone who knows the neighborhood and culture, who does an admirable job in sounding like someone who is FROM the neighborhood and who doesn’t quite cross the finish line? Feel free to pull in other references from movies that got it right or got it WRONG.
GAB: Yeah, I think, in general, Moonstruck is a 10 out of 10 because most of those actors are Italian people from, you know, New York and New Jersey. The aunt in that movie is, like, John Travolta’s biological aunt from New Jersey. You know, they all are. You know, Vincent Gardenia grew up in Brooklyn. Like so, for me, they all really hit. I think if anyone is a weak link in the movie, it’s Nicolas Cage. I mean, it’s just, like, fine. It doesn’t offend me.
I think if there were to be someone, that’s like, awful, you know, I wouldn’t say that there’s anyone in that movie where I’m like, UH, I can’t. It doesn’t grate on my ears. I just think he is the least authentic because he is not from that part of the world, like, even Danny Aiello, they’re all native people here. So, you know, they have it down.
In general, I would say, I’m offended more (by bad accents) than I think people do a good job with it. I think the worst, the worst of all time, fake Brooklyn accent, is, I don’t know the actress’s name because she’s irrelevant to me (I looked up her name – Karen Lynn Gorney), but Stephanie Mangano from Saturday Night Fever… I don’t know who the fuck she slept with to get that job. And you could, I want that quoted in the article. Her accent is offensive. It’s painful, it’s brutal and literally the running joke in my family is like, literally, she slept with somebody to get there. Like, she was a casting couch girl. That’s how she got that job.
She’s also a terrible actress. So, you have those things, and she’s not even that good of a dancer. Like, genuinely, I do not know how this woman got the job. Even though the movie was made for like, $8 and a dream, she’s the worst. She’s really bad – worst of all time.
A recent horrendous accent for me is Mikey Madison from Anora. I’m sorry, You, you, you fucking went to Brighton Beach, my asshole, you went to Brighton Beach. (In her best Mikey Madison impersonation) You sat with the girls in the club. I just wanted to get a good sense of the girl (end impersonation). Everything she says is you could tell she’s thinking of… nothing about it was organic. It felt so forced. It was so over the top. And I liked the movie. I genuinely like, enjoyed the movie. I thought it was really entertaining, and I love that you could tell they shot it like on location, which I loved, but there were certain things that she said that I was like “Oh my God”. Like, how long did it take you to, you know, think about that word. It was just the worst.
MAYO: Moonstruck is ultimately a movie about family, the people who are there through it all, thick and thin. Do you think the family dynamic of the Castorini family (Cher, Vincent Gardenia, Olympia Dukakis, Feodor Chaliapin Jr) that is displayed throughout the movie is a true representation of the Italian American family? Did it get everything right? Did it fall short in some parts?
GAB: Yeah definitely. I mean, it’s a little different because I’m not… I’m not a divorced, I’m not a widow where, you know, they think I had bad luck because I got married at City Hall. But I think 100% it’s an accurate representation. You know, my mom used to say when I was growing up, we put the fun in dysfunctional and I think that like, they’re not always like lovey dovey. Like they’re very dysfunctional. They’re fighting one minute and they’re sarcastic with each other (the next). And they’re, you know, brutally honest with each other. Nothing is hidden behind this veil of, like, perfection or feigned perfection, right. Like everything is very “we’re telling you how it is” but we’re always together and everything is always, like we do everything together.
Particularly, the scene at the end (of the movie) where they’re all waiting for Johnny Cammareri to come. So that whole scene really reminds me of my mother and I ‘cause my mom and I, we could fight like that where my mom would be screaming at me for having a hickey, and “what are you doing?”, “your life is crazy”. And then, the next minute, she’s like going to bat for me and like, doing whatever I ask.
But beyond that, in that scene, like the aunt and uncle, just like show up and you know, they’re not expected. And that that was how it was for me growing up. I have a really clear memory of my Uncle Joe. Literally my dad and I were sitting in the living room, hanging out, watching TV or whatever. And my, my dad was like “is that my brother’s car” and my Uncle Just stopped by. And it wasn’t like, “what are you doing?”. My dad, you know, we opened the door and he was like, “oh, what you want?”, “You want coffee?” And then we threw an Entenmann’s cake out on the table. I think it really is, I would argue, like the best depiction of Italian American families, because that’s how it is, there’s no, like, formality to it. When you grow up like that, it all comes down to having a fierce love for each other, but it’s chaos, a lot of the time.
You know, my friends who didn’t grow up with me, you know, people I’ve made friends with in my adult life who have come to my parents for like, dinner or something. They say “we don’t understand, it’s just three of you”. “Like, how is it so loud with just the three of you?”. I think that’s probably why my family and I love the movie so much, because it’s such an accurate representation of us and, you know, the Italian American experience. It’s not a stereotype like, yeah, it’s the only movie that I can honestly think of where it’s Italian Americans, but we aren’t in the mob, we aren’t like guido thugs, you know, like Jersey Shore-esque. Yeah, you know, tacky people. They’re (the Moonstruck Cammareri family) just there, you know, they’re a family that happens to be Italian and there’s the culture that’s associated with it, but it’s not exacerbating like the worst of this stereotype.
MAYO: From the little memory I have of the Italian side of my family (it’s been years since I have spent quality time with them), the place where all major matters of importance are discussed – fights, marriages, a new baby, bought a new house, etc. – would be in the kitchen. Director Norman Jewison has said in interviews that he spent endless hours working with the actors, usually without a crew involved, to get the various kitchen scenes in the movie down perfectly. Was this also true of how your family addressed various matters, or was there a different location that was the central hub where all the important issues were talked about?
GAB: Yeah, it’s definitely the kitchen. I mean, the kitchen in that movie is beautiful. It’s huge. Like the kitchen I grew up in, we could not fit a full dining table in that kitchen. And, you know, whenever we’re watching, my mother is always “Oh that kitchen”. It’s because so much of life happens in the kitchen. Any holiday, everyone’s in the kitchen. Like, if there’s, to your point, a serious something to be talked about, it’s at the kitchen table, like any kind of issue. I was perfect, so this did not happen often (soft voice), but any kind of like, you know reprimanding I ever got or stern talking to, was always at the kitchen table with my dad. I don’t think it was like, “oh, let’s go to the kitchen”. It was like, let’s go inside, and it was always the kitchen. Now that my parents have retired out in Long Island and they have a kitchen, on holidays, people will sit in the kitchen. Like, which I guess is an Italian thing, you didn’t want to ruin the nice furniture, so you wouldn’t converse in the middle floor of the house. That’s for show. You might have an espresso there, but that’s about it.
So, I think it also, in a way, goes back to that kind of mentality of like well, that’s you don’t ruin that part of the house. The kitchen is a workable location. You know what? Bring the drama to this nice pretty room.
The house I grew up in initially, the kitchen was like a separate room from the dining room. There was like a little doorway, or whatever, that connected the two. I think because, of the volume of just people that would always be in the kitchen, my parents had a renovation where they put in a countertop and they opened up the whole wall so that, even if you’re technically in the kitchen, if people are in the dining room of the living room, you could still see and be involved.
So, everyone sat in the kitchen. Of course, it’s also where the food is, so you know, if there’s ever like antipasto or they’re picking as my mother’s cooking food, it’s there the sample. So that’s where, you know, it all kinda goes back to as well.
After this interview was complete, I was even more confident in my assessment that Moonstruck is one of the best romantic comedies ever and a great and respectful representation of the Italian American family. Before I leave you all to go watch this classic, either for the first time or 50th, I did ask one question about a little thing that I always notice in two scenes of the movie. I leave you with this exchange, and bid you a good day:
MAYO: Side question, as we conclude…the champagne with the sugar cube.
GAB: Ohh, so Guinea.
MAYO: Is it? I always see it and I wonder “why?”.
GAB: Oh yeah, that’s a crazy Guinea thing. And, I could say Guinea, because I am one. But it’s the sugar cube and the champagne. It’s so disgusting.
GAB: Another thing is wine with either coke or cream soda. It’s disgusting. It’s so, it’s super Guinea. Yeah, like the OGs do that. Like no one that is alive now does that. But I’ve seen many an older person in my family throw in the sugar cube. And I think my aunt, she’ll do it now and again. But it’s not because she likes it, she’ll do it to like, honor the way that they used to do it. Kind of. We’re more like just give us like a glass of Anisette at this point.
