Anyone who has heard Frankie Tartaglia – a scion of the Italian Market, the co-owner and co-operator of the late, great Connie’s Ric Rac – knows his history in television and film. He started his act as a stand-up comedian after his 11th birthday and won an HBO Young Comedians contest. He sold one of his scripts for a comedy series to MTV while still in high school. In the late 90s, he and his brother Joseph shot and starred in their own film, Punctuality. He’s had his hand in the editing process of director Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me and started his own production company, DroneHead, with partner Pete Pelullo.

Now comes Not for Nothing, a film directed and written by Frankie Tartaglia and Tim Dowlin, which debuted at the 31st Philadelphia Film Festival — a story of crime, family, drugs, vengeance, pride, and respect, all told within the glorious light and dark confines of South Philadelphia.

Frankie Tartaglia on Building Not for Nothing From Scratch

“First off, we never intended to actually make this film ourselves,” Tartaglia told dosage MAGAZINE. “We only intended on writing a script together.” Once he and Dowlin realized they couldn’t sell the script without a literary agent, they decided to make the film themselves rather than let it collect dust on a shelf. The characters, Tartaglia said, are based on real people he’s encountered over his years living as a South Philly guido. Dowlin wanted a modern Italian American mafia movie set in South Philadelphia; Tartaglia wanted the characters to be more than mafia stereotypes, with a motivation beyond simple greed. That tension resolved into the story’s core: a girl who overdoses on fentanyl, and the neighborhood guys who try to solve her suspicious death. “We both love Scorsese films and decided to make one,” Tartaglia said. Not For Nothing is, in his words, a reboot of Mean Streets crossed with The Magnificent Seven.

A.D. Amorosi: What was the most challenging aspect of making this film?
Frankie Tartaglia: Besides it being our first film, the budget being too low for what we were trying to accomplish, the most challenging thing had to be making the film during the peak of COVID. The schedule kept changing because we weren’t allowed to use extras unless they were tested for COVID the day before. It was a nightmare at times.

The Writing Process Behind Not for Nothing

A.D. Amorosi: How did you and Tim collaborate? What was the creative process?
Frankie Tartaglia: Tim and I have a great system for writing together. We essentially pitch each other ideas every day and the other one of us simply green-lights the ideas we agree with. If one of us changed the other’s writing — let’s say dialogue — we were welcome to change it again on the next pass, but it had to be something new. We couldn’t change anything back to what we had written previously. We either had to write something brand new that we both liked better, or we’d just leave it be. Post-production was pretty much the same process. Shooting was a little different, but we figured out a great system as we went along. Because we both knew the story inside and out, we were able to literally split up when needed — Tim would direct certain scenes alone while I walked off set to put out fires for the next day of shooting. Sometimes I’d take over directing completely if I had a very special shot and vision in mind for the sequence. It was bumpy at first, but by the end we were a movie-making machine, tackling twice as much every day as most bigger-budget productions — mostly because we had to.

A.D. Amorosi: What are you most proud of in regard to Not for Nothing?
Frankie Tartaglia: Mostly that we finished it. I know it’s not an easy thing to complete a feature. But also, that I got to do it with my good friends. Mark Webber, I’ve known since high school — we both majored in acting at CAPA. And Pete Pelullo, our executive producer and friend since first grade — we met at Friends Select School, where Tim is a part-time teacher now. But I’m most proud of Pete. He single-handedly raised all the money to get this film made. We would still be sitting on the script without him. I am proud to be his friend and partner. I’m stoked to be Frank.

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A.D. Amorosi

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