Big night at Telluride’s Library: Film Fest features “Big NIght,” 5/10

Telluride Film Festival Cinematheque, a collaboration between the internationally renowned Telluride Film Festival and the five-star Wilkinson Public Library, is a vehicle for film lovers in the greater Telluride community to watch and discuss great films year 'round. Thanks to programming genius of Festival co-director Gary Meyer, the grand finale of the winter season in the "All About Food" series is the critically acclaimed "Big Night," (1996, 107 minutes). The event takes place Monday, May 10, 5:30 p.m. for the pre-show reception and 6 p.m. for the screening.

"Big Night" is a delicious tale of mouthwatering food and boiling passions. The story is built around a belt-popping pig-out at a Jersey trattoria which can't get no respect. The engaging dramedy revolves around two brothers in the pursuit of the American Dream.

Tony Shalhoub is Primo and Stanley Tucci, also the film's co-writer and director, is Secondo, the bickering Pilaggi brothers, torn between their devotion to one another and wholly different game plans to save their restaurant, whose competition is Chef Boyardee and Spaghettis R Us of 1950s America. (If nothing else, "Big NIght" is a lesson in timing is everything.)

Secondo is the smooth front-man who struggles to keep his restaurant financially viable, despite the slow drip of patrons through the door. Primo is the genius chef who must prepare his masterpiece, the glorious meal of a lifetime for their big night when bandleader Louis Prima comes to save the day. Also with Marc Anthony, Minnie Driver, Isabella Rossellini, and Liev Schreiber.

“Big Night is one of the great food movies, and yet it is so much more. It is about food not as a subject but as a language–the language by which one can speak to gods, can create, can seduce, can aspire to perfection…. By the end of the movie, we have been through an emotional and a sensual wringer, in a film of great wisdom and delight," Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times.

Patrons will be treated to Italian spaghetti, bread and Italian beverages.  The SHOW will be hosted by popular TFF Ringmaster Seth Berg.