SCRANTON \u2014 The trouble with \u201cThe Trouble With Cali\u201d movie produced and filmed in Lackawanna County years ago is that it\u2019s really bad, county officials said Wednesday.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s so bad that it\u2019s actually good \u2014 in a cult classic sense \u2014 and they hope that an upcoming documentary about it might go viral and produce some cash for the county.<\/p>\n
To that end, the Lackawanna County Commissioners on Wednesday approved an agreement to license clips from the movie to documentary filmmaker John Mikulak and his company Monkya Films LLC for use in a documentary by him titled, \u201cUntitled Documentary about \u2018The Trouble with Cali\u2019 Movie.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Trouble with Cali\u201d was directed and filmed in the late 2000s by legendary actor Paul Sorvino and funded in part by $500,000 in public money from the county. The movie also stars Sorvino\u2019s daughter, Mira Sorvino, who is an Oscar winner.<\/p>\n
County General Counsel Donald Frederickson said that after some litigation and wrangling, the county a decade ago received some copies of the film.<\/p>\n
A few months ago, Mikulak requested permission from the county to use 5-10 minutes of clips from the movie in a documentary about its making.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hope is that this may generate some interest in the movie,\u201d and that the Mikulak flick might end up on streaming services and go viral, and the county might receive some money from that, Frederickson said.<\/p>\n
Commissioner Bill Gaughan said he watched \u201cThe Trouble with Cali\u201d for the first time a few months ago when Mikulak came forward with his request.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not a film buff, but this is the worst film, the worst movie \u2014 it has to be the worst in the history of movies, in the world \u2014 but it\u2019s so bad, that it\u2019s funny,\u201d Gaughan said.<\/p>\n
Mikulak, who was not present at the commissioner meeting, apparently hopes his documentary goes viral, Gaughan said.<\/p>\n
Commissioner Chris Chermak said, \u201cAnd they can piggyback off the TV show \u2018The Office.\u2019 That\u2019s a cult classic as well and it brings people here. So, who knows?\u201d<\/p>\n
Commissioner Chairwoman Brenda Sacco added, \u201cHopefully it will generate some revenue for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Frederickson said: \u201cThe more you watch it, the funnier it gets.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SCRANTON \u2014 The trouble with \u201cThe Trouble With Cali\u201d movie produced and filmed in Lackawanna County years ago…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[182,139,178,180,179,181],"class_list":["post-38969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-top-stories-stt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}