Author: Tom Stockman

“America’s Last Little Italy” explores the deep historic roots of the Hill, St. Louis’ iconic Italian neighborhood. Italians who immigrated to St. Louis in search of the American Dream built a “Little Italy” in the city’s heart that still flourishes to this day. Similar neighborhoods in other urban areas have long ago lost their specifically Italian character, making the Hill the last of a dying breed. The first feature by St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase alum Joseph Puleo, whose short “Top Son” won Best Comedy at the 2016 event, “America’s Last Little Italy” was the audience-choice winner as Best Documentary at this year’s Showcase.

AMERICA’S LAST LITTLE ITALY: THE HILL screens as part of this year’s St. Louis International Film Festival November 5th – 22nd. Ticket information for the virtual screening can be found HERE

Joseph Puleo, director of AMERICA’S LAST LITTLE ITALY: THE HILL , took the time to talk to We Are Movie Geeks about the film

Interview conducted by Tom Stockman July 6th 2020 (This interview originally posted when AMERICA’S LAST LITTLE ITALY: THE HILL was part of the St. Louis Filmmaker’s Showcase)

Tom Stockman: Congratulations on your documentary AMERICA’S LAST LITTLE ITALY: THE HILL. It’s very well done.

Joey Puleo: Thank you.

TS: Everybody likes The Hill. What is your relationship to the neighborhood? 

JP: I had family that lived on The Hill, so growing up I used to visit all the time, but I didn’t really know the history behind the neighborhood. I just knew it was a place where my Italian relatives lived and because of the familial connection and my Italian American heritage, I’ve always felt a kinship to The Hill.     

TS: How did you come up with this idea of making a documentary about The Hill? I’m a little surprised no one has before. 

JP: Rio Vitale, our Executive Producer, had written a book on The Hill and he  came to me with the idea of me directing a documentary on it.  There has been a lot of books written about The Hill, but no documentaries. There has been programs on PBS about the restaurants, and the news stations would often go down there and highlight toasted ravioli and things like that, but there’s never been a film about the history of the neighborhood. The thing that really lit a fire under Rio was that the older generation on The Hill were starting to pass away. He was worried that if someone didn’t come along and film interviews with these people now, then all of these stories and all of this history was going to be lost. 

TS: Good point. And some of these participants in your film have indeed passed away. When did you film all of these interviews? 

JP: Rio came to us in late May 2018 and within five days, we were on The Hill interviewing.  Basically anybody who was old and lived on the hill, we wanted to interview. We did 25 or 30 interviews with people who were over 80 years old. That’s where we started.  We knew we could wait with the younger residents, but the main goal was getting the interviews of the elderly done first.  So that entire summer, for three months, we did interviews. We interviewed around 70 people and about 55 made the cut.  We waited on the B-roll until the summer after. I would have a shot list so I would know what footage to get. The timing worked out beautifully for us and everything just fell right into place.

TS: Your film is very well-organized. Did you start out with a treatment, or did you just start filming and see where the story took you? 

JP: It was kind of twofold there.  When Rio told me that this was what he wanted to do, he gave me a few books to read. One of those, Immigrants on the Hill: Italian-Americans in St. Louis, was written by Gary Mormino, who is probably the star historian of our film.  Another book was An Urban Design Study For The Hill by Phillip C. McCurdy. He’s an architect who is also in the film. Those two books were what I used to lay out an outline, so I had a loose framework as to what I thought was important.  When I was doing these interviews with the old-timers, that’s when the story started to take shape. Everybody kept telling us that The Hill is the last real ‘Little Italy’ and that stuck with me, so I figured if I was making that claim, I had to be able to back it up.  So the first act of the film is the history of the neighborhood until till World War II. The second act was when we started getting into Father Polizzi, and seeing all of the other ‘Little Italys’ in America go under and him taking the steps to try to make sure that The Hill remained Italian and keep its ethnic identity. 

TS: You go into the history of The Hill, and illustrate how it started out as a clay mining community. Do they still mine there today?

JP: No the mines are buried under where the hill is today  

TS: Have you seen Bill Streeter‘s documentary BRICK BY CHANCE AND FORTUNE about St. Louis bricks?

JP: I have not.

TS: Oh you should. It’s all about how the mud in St. Louis produced such gorgeous red bricks. It really made me appreciate how attractive our bricks are compared to a city like Chicago which has sort of pukey yellow bricks. 

JP: I’ll have to see that. 

TS: You discuss in your film how the Northern Italians with look down on the Southern Italians, but they were all working class, I assume. 

JP: There were prejudices there that go on to this day, but that really goes back to the old country, to Italy where that’s just the way it is. The Sicilians were the peasants who worked the fields. There’s also the speaking of different dialects, not being able to understand each other.  Sicilian culture is a completely different culture than the Northerners. The Northern Italians are a lot more laid-back and subdued. When you’re thinking about Italians, you’re typically thinking about Sicilians. They are a bit more boisterous, so it’s kind of a culture clash.  Me being Sicilian helped in making the film in that it made it less difficult to talk about those things. 

TS: Was there anybody that you wanted to interview for your film but we’re unable to? 

JP: No not really.  Everybody basically wanted to be in the movie. 

TS: Yes, there’s a lot of pride in that neighborhood and I think that really comes through.

JP: Yes, they were excited about the fact that we were just there making the documentary and they wanted to be part of it. 

TS: When I was a kid growing up in West County my dad would drive us to The Hill to eat, but he would always precede ‘Hill’ with a certain derogatory  ethnic term that was used by many outsiders back in the day. I noticed that you really don’t mention that in the film.

JP: Yes, that was something we avoided on purpose. My whole view with this project was to focus on the people of the neighborhood, so I didn’t go through the thought process of people throughout other parts of St. Louis and how they view the neighborhood. The people on The Hill never referred to themselves as living on anything but ‘The Hill’, so when I was talking to them I  made the conscious decision not to mention that. I wanted to keep it insular  

TS: I get it. I get the impression that these people are likely thick-skinned. I think if someone said that term perhaps they might not be particularly offended by it. 

JP: I agree. That is just one of the names that people called it. A film gets into prejudice somewhat when we’re talking about how Italians would be viewed in someone’s head. 

TS: Yes you keep your film very positive. So many documentaries today have to have an agenda, while AMERICA’S LAST LITTLE ITALY: THE HILL just documents.  I like the way your film illustrated how those on The Hill addressed crime. There’s this fellow Joe Causino in your film who encouraged young people on The Hill to participate in sports instead of joining gangs and causing trouble. It seems like The Hill is always been somewhat crime-free at least in terms of violent crime  

JP: Yes, and we get into that in the second act showing how the neighborhood kind of policed itself. There’s a guy in the movie named Jim Merlo and he says that if there was anything that residents of The Hill saw in terms of activities that would not bring pride to the neighborhood, they were going to step in and tell you about it. That was really the thought process of everyone on The Hill. You go down there and see the well-manicured lawns, everything is taken care of, everything is dealt with with pride. They are just not going to accept crime going on in that neighborhood. We do touch on some crime there during prohibition, but that was really a way for them to make money when they had to get involved in prohibition. It’s always been a safe neighborhood and I attribute that to members of the community not allowing criminal activity to go on.  

TS: That’s really in the spirit of Joe Causino who you talk about in the film.

JP: Yes, in the 1930s and 40s there were a lot of boys on the hill. Italians at that time we’re having a lot of children, so they were these boys in the neighborhood and Joe Causino came in and did what he did to keep them from getting into trouble. He started these sports clubs and many incredible athletes came from these clubs. It’s really a tribute to him that he saw a need  and provided an athletic arena for them to play in.  And of course from that you got Yogi Berra, and Joe Garagiola, and Frank Borgi and the other members of the 1950 soccer team that defeated England in the World Cup. 

TS: The vintage footage you used in the film spectacular. Was all of that footage on The Hill? 

JP: Yes. We got lucky. We sent out a message letting everyone know that if they had 8mm film, family home movies, we were hoping that could be donated for use in the documentary . Multiple Hill families came through with original reels of film that we were able to convert into HD. My family had some 8mm film that we were able to bring forward. That was huge for us getting that film, and not having to go to stock footage very often. We did go with stock footage for a couple of things that were happening nationally, such as things from the war, but when the documentary talks about a confectionery being on every corner, we have 8mm footage of a confectionery there.  When we talk about Family’s cooking Sunday dinners there, we have footage of that basement kitchen on The Hill. That was big for us.

TS: Oh, that was great. That’s really the heart of the film.  

JP: 100%. The biggest thing for me was keeping the audience in the era, so there’s a point where we are talking about the building of shotgun homes and the fact that a lot of the homes were built on stilts then filled in with concrete later.  I was able to go to 8mm film to show that as opposed to going down there now in 2020 and shooting in 4K and splicing it in. I really never wanted to take the audience out of that time. 

TS: What filmmakers did you collaborate with on this project? 

JP: My co-producer and editor is  Steve Cakouros

TS: Is he a St. Louis guy?

JP: Yes, we met at Lindenwood film school and have been making films together since.

TS: I remember the short comedy you made, TOP SON about the young man who looks just like Tom Cruise. I interviewed that film’s star Evan Ferrante. Wasn’t there talk about that film becoming a feature?  

JP: Yes there was. In 2016,  we did the festival circuit for TOP SON. In 2017 we got into a contest that Kevin Hart put on where our film got to go to Montreal is part of the ‘Just For Laughs’ festival. That was a huge deal for us. We came back to St. Louis and a local producer wanted to help us make it into a feature and we worked about another year on it and then the money fell through  and we were unable to go forward with TOP SON. But I guess everything happens for a reason because within a month, Rio came to us with The Hill idea and we started working on AMERICA’S LAST LITTLE ITALY: THE HILL. 

TS: So there is a TOP SON feature script out there? 

JP: Yes. Myself and Steve wrote a feature script, so we still have that one in the back pocket.  But this documentary about The Hill had to be made so that’s what we set our sights on.

TS: Have the residents of The Hill seen AMERICA’S LAST LITTLE ITALY: THE HILL yet? 

JP: No, July 10 when the St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase starts virtually will be the first time that anyone will have the opportunity to see it.

TS: It’s too bad about this virus. Did you have a big a plan for some sort of screening for the movie for the people on The Hill that were involved? 

JP: The dream was to have everybody from The Hill go to a packed theater and see themselves on the big screen, especially some of the older participants.  Corona really threw a wrench into that plan, but I’m trying to be positive about everything. More people than ever will be able to see the film because it is it streaming, including a lot of people that probably wouldn’t go to a movie theater. 

TS: Beyond the St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase, what are your plans for the AMERICA’S LAST LITTLE ITALY: THE HILL? 

JP: We have submitted the film to about 15 festivals, especially ones that are located in areas with a large Italian population.  Everything at this point seems to be going online, so I don’t know if there will be any in-person festival that I will actually go to, but the goal is still to have a festival run and potentially strike a deal with a distributor, or PBS or any of those options.  

TS: I could totally see KETC running your film. They ran Bill Streeter‘s brick documentary and Ron Stevens documentary about KSHE. They seem to enjoy showing well-made documentaries with local ties.

JP: The main goal for us is to get the film seen by as many people as possible and to bring awareness of this neighborhood to the masses.  To show that this neighborhood still does exist and that it’s still vibrant and strong.  Everyone thinks that all of the Little Italys are just tourist attractions where they are selling flags and trinkets, but there’s still a Little Italy here in St. Louis that exists in its original fashion. 

TS: The Hill in St. Louis has maintained its ethnic identity unlike any other Little Italy, and I could ask you why that is, but that’s what your film is about and I think watching your film answers that questions. 

JP: Yes that was the goal of the film, to answer that question. Hopefully we did so and made the neighborhood proud and made St. Louis proud. 

TS: What is your next project  Joseph? 

JP: We’ve been talking about the potential of doing a couple of other documentaries   We have a couple of ideas but nothing that I can share at this moment   The virus has put a hamper on all the plans that we have had moving forward.

TS: Best of luck with AMERICA’S LAST LITTLE ITALY: THE HILL and all of your future projects.

JP: Thanks so much.