Comedian Sebastian Maniscalco enlisted Robert De Niro to play his father

Comedian Sebastian Maniscalco wanted to make a movie for and about his father. Salvo Maniscalco had immigrated from Sicily to America in 1960 when he was 15. At 18, he became a hairdresser and raised and supported a family in Chicago. As a man from a different generation and culture, he could be aggressive and embarrassing at times — especially in situations involving different cultures and tax brackets as with Maniscalco’s in-laws — and the set-up seemed ripe for a big screen comedy.

Like anyone dream casting a comedy about an Italian American man of a certain age, one name topped the list:

Robert De Niro. Not that Maniscalco thought they stood a chance landing the two-time Oscar winner, but it couldn’t hurt to try.

Maniscalco had worked on a film with De Niro before, on Martin Scorsese’s

The Irishman, but it was brief and didn’t exactly establish anything like a friendship where he could, say, call him up. Then one day he got word that De Niro had the script, through producer Paul Weitz, and wanted to do a table read with some actors in New York. It’s something he likes to do if he’s taking something seriously, he said.

“It sort of lifts it off the page a little bit,” De Niro said. Between the Sebastian/salvo relationship and director Laura Terruso’s background as an Italian American with Sicilian roots, he said, “I knew I’d be in good hands on both sides. So we decided to do it.”

The setup for About My Father, opening nationwide on May 26, is a meet-the-parents situation. Sebastian brings Salvo to his girlfriend’s family home for the Fourth of July weekend. Ellie’s (Leslie Bibb) family is WASPY and wealthy – Kim Cattrall plays her mother, Tigger, and David Rasche is her father, Bill. Her brothers are played by Anders Holm and Brett Dier. And the culture clashes ensue. AP