By Amy Zimmer
DNAinfo News Editor
UPPER EAST SIDE — Move over "Gossip Girl," hair metal is coming to the Upper East Side.
No Serena Van Der Woodsens or Blair Waldorfs will be making appearances in the movie musical Ryan Guiterman will begin shooting here at the end of January. Guiterman’s 45-minute rock music film, "Thunderstruck," is about four men on the brink of middle age, who reunite their old AC/DC cover band in an attempt to get the glory that never was.
One of the band mate characters — the drummer, Les — is a doorman on the Upper East Side. One of his lobby scenes will feature a woman in a mink carrying a Pomeranian, an image that Guiterman considers a "spoof" of the Upper East Side.
Guiterman, 21, grew up at the Ruppert Houses, a three-building Mitchell-Lama complex around 93rd Street and Second Avenue, where minks were less popular than the uniforms of civil servants. His father is a retired fireman, his mother is a schoolteacher and one of his brothers, whose apartment in the building will double for the lead singer’s digs, is a police officer.
"I think of the Upper East Side as working-class families. My friends think of the Upper East Side as the rich world of 'Gossip Girl,'" said Guiterman, who is filming several scenes at Ruppert Houses, including those of the doorman’s post. "I did not go to a $50,000-a-year private school." He attended the parochial school, St. Ignatius Loyola before going on to graduate from the LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts.
Guiterman is now making the film for his senior project for the SUNY Purchase Film Conservatory. His salary from his summer job working with the maintenance staff at Ruppert Houses is one of the ways he’s paying for the $15,000 film, along with $5,000 he raised from the micro-finance arts site, Kicstarter. He also got a contribution from his parents.
He said he wouldn’t be able to make the film without the support of Ruppert Houses and the kindness of others — 170 people will be performing in the film. He’s also shooting at a family house in Long Island, the SUNY Purchase soundstage and the bar Manny’s on Second Avenue, whose entrance across from Ruppert Houses is obscured by subway construction.
The film’s big musical number, "Touch Too Much," is being shot at the Greenpoint church St. Cecilia’s.
"It sounds almost like a Chicago song — weird, but awesome," Guiterman said of the number. "We took AC/DC’s music and re-appropriated it to fit our narrative."
The first iteration of the screenplay, which was written by Charles Nechamkin, Guiterman’s college roommate (a die-hard AC/DC fan), was not originally written as a musical, but when the two joined forces for the senior project, they added songs. The rights cost $125 per song for student filmmakers.
Guiterman has wanted to be a filmmaker since he was 3, when his parents brought him to the Ziegfeld Theater to see Jurassic Park against the advice of friends who thought it would be too scary for the toddler.
"I remember I looked around and saw hundreds of people transfixed," he said. "I decided I wanted to transfix people…It’s cheesy as all hell, but it’s one of those things I’ll never forget."
The neo-noir he wrote and directed, "The Last Case of Detective Roles Martin," went to the Sundance Film Festival, Hamptons Film Festival and the Henri Langouis Festival in Paris.
Nelson Dubidad, the super at Ruppert Houses, wouldn’t be surprised if Guiterman’s work one day hit theaters.
"I see a bright future in him," Dubidad said. "He was a good worker, a 10."
The next script Guiterman is developing is based on Ruppert Houses.
