The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Randy Beach: The pizazz of artist Pauly Popolizio
You can see it all if you snag an invitation to “Pauly’s Museum”: here’s Pauly with John Travolta! Here’s Pauly with Robert De Niro! And here he is with Sylvester Stallone!
How does he do it? How does Pauly Popolizio, this self-described “starving artist” from Hamden manage to track down these superstars and get them to pose with him?
“I’m one of those very determined people,” Popolizio told me during a recent tour of his bedroom, a second bedroom and his basement studio in the house he shares with his parents. “When I want something, I make it an obsession until it happens.”
Each of those rooms is covered wall-to-wall with Popolizio’s artwork and photos. In the studio you can feast your eyes on his drawings of Jerry Garcia, Jim Morrison, Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra, Stallone, etc. (It’s not really a museum; that’s what his friend Ron Gagliardi has nicknamed the spread.)
But Popolizio is not content to just draw the celebrities. He has made it his mission to seek them out, bring his portraits of them as an introduction and then ask them to pose with him and that portrait.
“I’ve met over 150 celebrities,” he said, “including Ice-T.”
But the holy trinity for Popolizio, the big three, are Travolta, De Niro and Stallone.
He landed Travolta outside Lenny’s Pizza in Brooklyn. Another actor Popolizio had met and kept in touch with, William DeMeo (“The Sopranos,” “Gotti”) tipped him off that Travolta would be making an appearance at that pizza place.
“It was nuts outside, thousands of people,” Popolizio recalled. “Finally Travolta arrives. I held my painting up. But he didn’t see it! I was thinking, ‘Oh no! Forget it, I’ve gotta get out of here.’ But after Travolta had a slice of pizza and gave a little talk, he came out and started walking toward us. My friend Victor jumped over the guardrail with the painting; Travolta’s walking with politicians and other important people of Brooklyn and lots of cops.
“Then he sees my painting! He pops up with a Sharpie in his hand and says, ‘Oh, that’s a great painting.’ What a great guy he was to do that!”
Victor quickly snapped a photo of Popolizio alongside a smiling Travolta.
Popolizio’s second big “get” came in 2008: De Niro. “I had met his driver, Rocco, in Atlantic City. I told him I had a ton of De Niro art at home and I showed some of it to Rocco. Then one day Rocco called: ‘Come to the (New Haven) train station. I’m with De Niro.’”
Indeed, the actor was in town, filming a scene for the movie “Everybody’s Fine.”
“I drive to the train station, I’m all excited,” Popolizio said. “I get there and call Rocco. He gets me onto the set. De Niro walks right by me! I’m thinking: ‘Oh my God! It’s De Niro!’ This is my ultimate idol.”
When De Niro took a break from the shoot, Popolizio approached him. “I said, ‘Bobby, I’m a huge fan!’ He said, ‘Where you from, kid?’ I said, ‘Hamden.’ He said, ‘Oh, over there’ and pointed. I gave him that kid in a candy store look and asked if I could pose with him for a photo. He said, ‘I’m kinda busy.’ I said, ‘Come on, just one!’ I didn’t have my De Niro art there; I wish I did.”
De Niro posed with him, then Popolizio quickly backed off. “I always want to give celebrities their space. I don’t want to bother them.”
The Stallone “get” also came about as the result of a tip and this happened only about three weeks ago. “I called my friend who lives on Martha’s Vineyard and he told me: ‘Pauly, Stallone is on the Vineyard!’ I said, ‘Oh my God! I have so much artwork of his!’ I packed my bag, threw in all my Stallone art, got into my car and drove for five hours in the rain. I got off the ferry. I was saying, ‘I’m gonna meet Rocky!’ Just being positive, even though I knew there was just a one percent chance.”
Popolizio met up with his friend and some others, who knew only that Stallone was in Edgartown. They walked around on a beach, not knowing where to look, then got back in the car.
“I was thinking, ‘Aw, I came all the way out here. All I want to do is meet Stallone.’ Then my friends starting shouting. I look out the window: there he is!”
“I jump out of the car. I’ve got my art. I introduced myself and showed the art to him. I said, ‘Can I get a picture with you?’ He said, ‘Sure.’ He didn’t say much. I was so excited that I just left. But to me, that was amazing.”
Popolizio added: “If I didn’t go, if I didn’t take that opportunity, it wouldn’t have happened. Sometimes you just have to drop everything. You never know.”
Of course there are many misses and disappointments in an artist’s life. There was the time he drove down to Stamford, to the office of World Wrestling Entertainment, to show them his artwork of wrestlers, including Hulk Hogan. “They wouldn’t even open the door for me. They treated me like a window washer.”
Gagliardi, who was listening to that story, said, “We still have a plan to get into the wrestling world.” Gagliardi showed me some of the soda bottles for the wrestling-theme “Pauly Pop Pop” line of drinks the two of them are marketing. The flavors include: Brute Beer, Gruesome Grape, Tag Team Cream and Injure Ale.
“You never know,” Gagliardi said.
“That’s right!” Popolizio said. “The thing is, you can never give up. I never give up on life.”
He added, “I want to inspire others” to think the same way.
Popolizio started drawing when he was 3, imitating comic strips he saw in the Sunday New Haven Register. He picked up on that from his dad, John Popolizio. “I kept saying, ‘Draw this! Draw that!’ Finally he said, ‘You draw it!’”
After his dad suffered a stroke and could no longer draw, his son, then in fourth grade, resolved to take over his father’s hobby. “I give my dad all the credit for inspiring me.” (His dad sat nearby, with his wife, Carol, both enjoying seeing their son being interviewed.)
Popolizio, now 40, told me that after he graduated from Hamden High School, he was accepted at the California School of the Arts. “I never went. I decided to go to Paier College of Art in Hamden because I wanted to be close to home.”
He spoke several times of wanting to have his own place, to get a full-time art job in New York City. But he added, “I want to stay close to my family.”
Popolizio took me next door, to the home of his sister, Melissa Dietz, her husband, Jason, and their daughters, Julianna and Bella. Popolizio showed me Julianna’s bedroom, its walls covered with the colorful “Sponge Bob” mural he painted. “This took me about two months.”
Through the years Popolizio has landed some acting work on TV shows (“Destination Fear,” “Dirty Little Lies,” “The Man Who Built America”) but he hasn’t pursued that for a while. In order to make ends meet, he does work at area Shop Rite stores.
There remain the side projects. He showed me his business card for his website: Iwanttodrawyourface.com.
As for the celebrity searching, Popolizio said: “Hulk Hogan. That’s the last celebrity I want to meet.”