After 20 years of residing in Las Vegas and portraying Elton John in “Legends in Concert” along with starring in his Riviera-based comedy show “Voices in my Head,” musical comedian Stephen Sorrentino decided to say “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” in 2016 and take a different route with his career.
It was the road to Hollywood that gave him the opportunity to display his talents in a new medium, the results of which will be seen in his self-written, self-produced, self-directed, self-starring, self-cast, and self-scored independent film called “Amends of the Father.” It will debut at the Las Vegas Premier Film Festival, which will be held at the Galaxy Theater on Maryland Parkway, on August 9th.
“I was Debbie Reynolds’ opening act for five years and that’s when I realized that Hollywood was the place to go,” Sorrentino says, “Debbie called me and told me that I was an actor, not just a comedian and singer. I used to get up in the morning and drive five hours to Hollywood from Vegas for auditions and then five hours back to Vegas to do two shows a night at the Imperial Palace back in the day.”
“I used to watch other people write scripts,” he adds. “They seemed like they were making it look hard. I said to myself, ‘I can do that.’ Although ‘Amends of the Father’ is my first big movie, I’ve won over 75 International film awards since 2021 worldwide as an actor, producer, director, and film scorer. But ‘Amends of the Father’ is a very personal piece. It is not pretty; it is very emotional. It's based on my own story. I didn’t know I could write a script about or play a character that is unlikeable, not the norm for a comedian. Over the past few years and with wearing all of the different hats of filmmaking, I truly feel like I have become an artist.”
Calling the movie semi-autobiographical, Sorrentino notes that every single character is a part of his persona, ranging from charitable to angry, vindictive, loving, self-loathing, and more. The film also gets in touch with his dark side. The other two actors in the film are Candy Clark from “American Graffiti” and Randy Jones, who was the cowboy in The Village People.
“It’s a very dramatic thing,” he emphasizes. “It takes you to times and places you wouldn’t think it would go.”
The film also features all of Sorrentino’s music from the 1980s and 90s, including a new piece specifically written for this movie and recorded in Las Vegas in 2022.
“There’s concert footage of me in the 80s when I was a struggling rock singer-songwriter trying to keep my head above water in a world filled with booze, drugs, and self-sabotage,” Sorrentino reveals. “This is also a statement on the current culture and what people will do to be famous I have always been honest about who I was and some of the struggles that I have had growing up and living in this show business world. Evolving into a more rounded artist has proven to be a wonderful thing.”
As Sorrentino sees it, the big plan is to make “Amends of the Father” a two-season series on Netflix.”
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