Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1081203
25 Q1 2019 / CINEMONTAGE by Peter Tonguette Y ou might say that Tommy Vicari, CAS, is the beneficiary of good timing. A few years after director Sam Mendes and composer Thomas Newman were the toast of the film world for the Academy Award-winning American Beauty (1999), Vicari was asked to serve as scoring mixer on their follow-up film, Road to Perdition (2002). The crime drama, which unfolds in Illinois during the Great Depression, stars Tom Hanks as Michael Sullivan, a worker bee in the Mafia operation of John Rooney (Paul Newman). Adapted from a graphic novel by Max Allan Collins and Richard Piers Rayner, the storyline takes off when one of Sullivan's sons with wife Annie (Jennifer Jason Leigh), Michael, Jr. (Tyler Hoechlin), is an inadvertent observer to a Mafia hit. Having themselves become targets, father and son skip town in flight from the mob operation, including Rooney's son Connor (Daniel Craig) and menacing photographer/killer Maguire (Jude Law). With its potent blend of humanity and thrills, the DreamWorks Pictures release received admiring reviews and impressive box office receipts, grossing over $100 million during its summer release. "Imagine this: Sam Mendes wins Best Picture for American Beauty, an incredible movie; and Tom Newman is nominated for Best Score," Vicari reflects. "This is their follow-up, and they've asked me to do this movie. This is my first major motion picture — the first time that I'm the engineer: 'This is my movie.'" Although Road to Perdition was Vicari's most significant film to date, he had worked in the record business — and flirted with the film business — for decades. A native of Southern California, he grew up in a family of music-makers. "My mother was a singer in a big band; my uncles were musicians," he recounts. "I remember listening to Ray Charles when I was a child — and Sinatra, Jackie Wilson, Nat King Cole and Dean Martin. As a teenager, I loved the British invasion with the Beatles, and I loved the Phil Spector records." MY MOST MEMORABLE FILM Tommy Vicari on 'Road to Perdition' Tommy Vicari. Road to Perdition. DreamWorks/Photofest