Results tagged “dolcevita”

A new restaurant in Little Italy, Dolce Vita, has been trying to serve food that would make the tourist-flooded neighborhood "authentic" again, but according to an open letter posted on Eater, the other restaurateurs are jealous and trying to destroy them: "If you are the new guy on the block and not in everybody else’s back-pocket or part of Old Little Italy, you apparently do not have a prayer of making it. Police are sent to my establishment from these restaurant ‘ghosts’ regularly checking for a liquor license, or a sidewalk café license or what ever else citation they can come up with as soon as a whiff of a busy Dolce Vita is caught from around the block." The jeremiad goes on, but the moral is simple: You're asking for major agita trying to serve good food in Little Italy.

When New York Magazine calls your film a "glossy gay remake" of La Dolce Vita, it was probably inevitable that the people who have the rights to La Dolce Vita would sue. Whoever does own the rights to La Dolce Vita (Pathe?) is suing gay porn king Michael Lucas for violating trademark laws and sullying the original Federico Fellini classic's reputation. Here's how New York described the film last year:

Lucas has been rather busy of late. There was some pesky legal business to attend to, and he just wrapped his newest film, La Dolce Vita, a glossy gay remake of Fellini’s classic that includes a “non-sex” cameo by triple-X starlet Savanna Samson. For a porn production, it’s had an unusually public profile. Photographs of Lucas and Samson cavorting in the City Hall fountain (all proper permits were obtained) made it online, raising the ire of government officials, who with the most cursory of Google searches could have avoided this problem.

We bet the city is behind the lawsuit! Lucas tells the Post, "The similarities are so little, I would say it was maybe inspired." Yeah. For starters, La Dolce Vita takes place in Rome; Luca's version is in New York! And it stars Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg, who are totally not in his film! And Nino Rota is not doing the score for the gay porn version. Plus, City Hall Fountain is like the Trevi Fountain. Finally, wasn't La Dolce Vita about debauchery anyway? But if Lucas tried to remake 8 1/2 (10"?), maybe a lawsuit is appropriate.

Michael Lucas, 34, Porn Star/Director/Producer, From Moscow, Now in Chelsea

Paul Theodore Gelinas, Designer/ Restaurant Owner

For Fellini fans, Gothamist has your next two nights of movie viewing sewn up.