"The Bread, My Sweet" is a low-budget movie by a first-time director from Pittsburgh who shot most of it in a Strip District bakery owned by her husband. So how did the filmmaker, Melissa Martin, convince Scott Baio (TV's "Happy Days" and "Charles in Charge") to take the lead role?
"I've always wanted to learn to bake bread from scratch," Baio says on the phone from Palm Springs, Calif. "So I asked her if I could specifically learn how to bake bread, and she said, 'Yeah.'
"I just thought, this will be really cool. There's something very earthy about doing all that. I'm not a spiritual guy, but I just thought it would be fun to just start kneading dough and throwing flour around and pounding it with a rolling pin. And now, I bake bread at home."
But he also sensed that Martin had cooked up something good with her screenplay. Pittsburgh finds out tomorrow when "The Bread, My Sweet" opens the annual Three Rivers Film Festival. The movie screens at 7 p.m. at the Regent Square Theater.
The script came to Baio through his agent, who told the actor he probably wouldn't want to do it.
"What really got me into this was Melissa," Baio says. "I called her on the phone and started talking to her. I just immediately liked her. I thought, well, this will be kind of fun. She told me what she wanted to do and how raw she wanted to make it."
Baio plays a corporate shark who discovers a different kind of world when he meets an immigrant couple and finds himself moved to fulfill their last wish, even at the cost of his own success. Kristin Minter of "ER" also stars, along with Rosemary Prinz, John Seitz and numerous Pittsburgh actors.
He calls his character a simple guy who "realizes he doesn't want to be sucked into that corporate world. ... He just wants to bake. There's something really kind of sweet about that.
"I think he's good at two things. He's good at baking and he's good at firing people, which is what his job in the corporate world is."
Baio calls "The Bread, My Sweet," filmed in the summer of 2000, one of the best working experiences he's had.
"We instantaneously hit it off with everybody," he says. "It was like play. I mean that sincerely. This was fun.
"Walking around Pittsburgh was wonderful. The people were nice. I'm an Italian, East Coast guy, so I immediately bonded with a lot of Italian people down there in the Strip."
Baio's been busy in other films as well. He's in Palm Springs for the screening of his movie "Face to Face" at the Festival of Festivals. He stars in and co-wrote the movie, which is about a group of cousins who feel distant from their aging fathers and try to connect with the older men by forcing them to go on a long weekend getaway.
"Face to Face" won the award for best comedy at Florida's Marco Island Film Festival. The award for best drama at that festival went to "The Bread, My Sweet."
Thursday, November 01, 2001
