Cipri, Maresco honor bebop hero

U.S. clarinetist to be subject of Italian pic

By NICK VIVARELLI

ROME — Cult Italo directorial duo Daniele Cipri and Franco Maresco will pay homage to U.S. clarinetist Tony Scott, the bebop great of Sicilian origin, in a docu focused on Scott's return to his Italian roots.

Scott, who played with Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington, among others, wound up in Rome during the 1970s, having gained a considerable reputation. He settled in Italy until his death in 2007.

Tall, often clad in black, with a shaved head and a long white beard in his later years, Scott was born Anthony Joseph Sciocca in 1921 in Morristown New Jersey, from Sicilian parents who had come Stateside from Salina, Sicily.

High-profile docu is being financed and produced entirely by the Sicily Film Commission, which recently co-financed Wim Wenders' "The Palermo Story."

Besides lots of interviews and archive material, Cipri and Maresco's love letter to Scott will include footage from a tribute concert being organized in Palermo.

Completion is expected in early 2009.

Cipri and Maresco's often provocative previous works include Sicily-set absurdist comedies "The Uncle From Brooklyn" and "Toto Who Lived Twice," and, most recently, the docu "How We Got the Italian Cinema Into Trouble: Franco & Ciccio's Real Story," a tribute to a pair of late Italo B-movie comics who also hailed from the Sicilian isle.