GANGSTER CAFE

Winner of several festival awards including the prestigious Silver Remi at Worldfest Houston, Vito Brancato’s film Driving John Lennon centers on the climactic scene of his original feature screenplay Our Night with Elvis and lets viewers eavesdrop on a dramatic and revealing conversation between rock and roll's two biggest icons – inspired by an actual meeting between the Beatles and Elvis on August 27, 1965. So the story goes, after an evening of clashing egos, Presley and Lennon go for a drive in Elvis’ flashy red Coupe Deville and have it out on a lonely stretch of Mulholland Highway.
Set on the outskirts of Chicago’s notorious west side (in a building once owned by Al Capone), the filmmaker's old-world Italian caffe serves as his production office and an authentic film set for his indie web-series Gangster Cafe .
The series follows a local crew of hoods who use a neighborhood coffee shop as a front for their criminal activities. The plot thickens when a sex addicted FBI agent stumbles onto their scheme to smuggle heroin in bags of coffee beans.
Using the full length, 10 episode web-series as a low budget prototype, Brancato takes his vision a step further with a sexed up, steroid injected version called The Taylor Street Social Club.
From Italian coffee to Italian cooking...
THAT’S SOME GOOD GRAVY follows the classic “show within a show” format as the World’s Biggest Chef Mario Manfredini (standing nearly seven feet tall and weighing ….) demonstrates old world Italian recipes on screen while he battles off screen with his flamboyant (and very cute) co-host Michael Dulek.
Brancato’s career in television has its unusual roots in the colorful world of professional wrestling. Vito cut his filmmaker teeth on Sportschannel’s (Fox Sports) Chicago Championship Wrestling as an editor, writer, director, producer and the villainous star performer Tony “The Razor” DiVito.
After a four year run, Vito parlayed his colorful ring persona into the half hour comedy TV program “The Razor Show” which garnered a cult following with Chicago viewers. The success of "Razor" led to a string of independent films and videos including a dramatic film for PBS, BLACKSTONE - The Chicago Plot to Kill JFK.
Originally broadcast nationally on the anniversary of JFK’s assassination, BLACKSTONE is a political thriller and an unlikely love story woven within the biggest conspiracy in U.S. history.
Based on true-life characters and actual events, Chicago 88 is an epic gangster yarn wrapped around a steamy, sexy love story that spans three decades…