Vito Brancato’s career as a filmmaker has unusual roots. For 9 years beginning in the mid 80’s he promoted pro wrestling throughout the midwest, building a successful independent promotion from the ground up. He went on to produce Chicago Championship Wrestling for SportsChannel (now Fox Sports) in 1987, making his indie wrestling organization the first to score a television deal.
Vito also performed in the ring as "The Razor" and eventually parlayed his colorful wrestling persona into comedy TV. He created the half-hour comedy program The Razor Show and quickly garnered a loyal cult following among Chicago viewers.
The Razor Show led to two indie features; the Italian-American satire The Life & Tales of Tony D and the hard-edged crime flick The Right Thing.
Blackstone soon followed. This political thriller tells of a botched hit on JFK that takes place in Chicago one year before Dallas. It was broadcast on PBS affiliates on the anniversary of the assassination. Brancato weaved together real characters and events with fictional ones to give the story an eerie sense of possiblity and create what he calls “historical fiction”. For even more realism, Brancato intercut archive footage of Kennedy at the Blackstone Hotel in the fall of '62 during the film's climactic scene. "I can remember growing up in the old neighborhood, my grandfather and his old Italian buddies in their black pants and white dress shirts, sitting in front of the corner store trading stories from the old country," recalls Brancato. " I realized then it wasn't the truth that was so important, but how well you can tell the story."
Brancato’s most recent effort has pulled him head first back into comedy. He's teamed with Italian jazz/folk musicians Chris Damiano and Luca Chiappini for “i Monelli”, a series of very popular short films he hopes to spinoff into a TV series and/or a feature film.
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