Life and Work
After completing her courses at Queens College, Flushing, New York, Savoca went on to graduate in 1982 from New York University’s film school, the Tisch School of the Arts. While there she received the Haig P. Manoogian Award for overall excellence for her short films Renata and Bad Timing. Around this time she met Rich Guay, then an accounting student working at an Italian deli near her home. They were married in 1980. Once out of film school she worked as a storyboard artist and assistant editor on an independent film. But her first real hands-on professional experience was as a production assistant to John Sayles on his film: The Brother From Another Planet and as an assistant auditor for Jonathan Demme on two of his films: Something Wild (1986), and Married to the Mob (1988).
In 1989, her very first full length movie, the privately funded True Love about Italian-American marriage rituals in the Bronx won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. The movie, starring Annabella Sciorra and Ron Eldard, both making their film debuts (and co-starring a number of familiar faces from The Sopranos including Aida Turturro and Vincent Pastore), was hailed as one of the best films of the year by both Janet Maslin and Vincent Canby of the New York Times. Savoca was nominated for a Spirit Award as Best Director. MGM/UA snapped up the distribution rights and RCA released the soundtrack, seeing two of the songs reach the Top 40 hits on the Billboard charts.
Since then she has written, directed and produced movies for the big screen, for television, has written or polished scripts for other directors, and has directed a number of episodes in ongoing television series. Her most famous work for television was co-writing all three segments of the Demi Moore produced If These Walls Could Talk, a mini-series about abortion rights, and directing the first two segments. The second segment starred Sissy Spacek trying to decide in the mid-70’s whether her marriage could stand the strain of another child. Cher starred in and directed the third segment. In it she played a modern Planned Parenthood doctor, the victim of a pro-life fanatic.
In 1998, Savoca was feted as a "New York trailblazer" at the New York Women's Film Festival. Savoca was also honored by the Los Angeles chapter of the advocacy organization, Woman in Film and Television (WIFT).
Two of Savoca's films, Household Saints and True Love, are listed in The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made St. Martin's Griffin.
Her film, True Love was called one of the "50 Greatest Independent Films of All-Time" by Entertainment Weekly.
Nancy Savoca’s work has also been the subject of a retrospective by The American Museum of the Moving Image.
Read more about this topic: Nancy Savoca
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