ABOUT THE FILM
Danny Aiello leads an all-star studded cast in 2 Days In The Valley, a highly underrated comedic crime caper from 1996. Set in the San Fernando Valley, it is a film where everyone appears to be less than six degrees of separation apart from one another and lives interconnect unexpectedly. The action unfolds rapidly when two mismatched hitmen, Dosmo Pizzo (Aiello as the hitman with a heart of gold) and Lee Woods (a sadistic James Spader), enter the bedroom of a sleeping couple and proceed to tranquilize Becky Foxx (Teri Hatcher), while killing her ex-husband (Peter Horton) who is there with her. Upon leaving the scene and winding up in an abandoned area, Lee then tries to double cross Dosmo and frame him for the murder they just committed, and flees with his icy girlfriend (a smoldering Charlize Theron in her first credited film role). Once detectives Wes Taylor (Eric Stoltz) and Alvin Strayer (Jeff Daniels) are called upon to investigate the situation, all the makings are set in motion for a modern take on the hitman-crime noir genre, mixing satirical wit with great suspense, quirky characters and complex plot twists. Giving it three out of four stars when it was released, Roger Ebert proclaimed “it’s fun to watch 2 Days In The Valley in the moment, and then fun afterwards to think about the way the story was put together.”
Rated R | In English | 107 minutes
ABOUT THE AUTHOR & BOOK
Nominated for an Academy Award and Golden Globe for his role in Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing, beloved Italian-American actor Danny Aiello reminisces about his Hollywood years in this candid, fascinating, and entertaining memoir. Good instincts, hard work, and great energy are three things Danny Aiello has relied on his entire life—and it has paid off. Whether it was shining shoes at Grand Central Station, joining the US Army at age seventeen, being married to the same woman for fifty-eight years and a father to four children, or going from a thirty-something no-name from the Bronx to successful Hollywood actor for more than four decades, he’s worked hard to get to where he is today. It wasn’t always a smooth ride, though. One of seven children raised in New York City, Aiello had numerous run-ins with the law growing up, and was temporarily committed to a psychiatric ward for a nervous disorder. After securing a job at the Greyhound Terminal in New York City, he worked his way up the ladder for ten years, from a baggage man to president of the Amalgamated Transit Union. But a strike cost him his job, and in order to support his family, he began stealing. Fate intervened when the owner of a famous New York comedy club, The Improv, offered Danny a job as a bouncer. From there, he launched his acting career. And though he’s found great success, Aiello has always felt like a man on the outside looking in, and still feels that way. Here, for the first time in print, he shares what it’s felt like to be an outsider in the acting community—the good, the bad, and the downright ugly. With more than eight-five films to his credit, including The Godfather Part II, Moonstruck, and Do The Right Thing, Aiello has become a household name, a legend, and a national treasure. This memoir is life as Danny Aiello knows it.
Signed copies of I Only Know Who I Am When I Am Somebody Else will be available for sale at the Avon. To buy tickets, call the business office at 203.661.0321 or the box office during showtimes at 203.967.3660×2.
Tickets are FREE for Carte Blanche Members, $15 for members and $25 for nonmembers.
Avon Theatre
272 Bedford St, Stamford; (203) 967-3660