In pictures: Inside story on Robert De Niro playing a dad in 'About My Father'

US comedian Sebastian Maniscalco wanted to make a movie for and about his father. Salvo Maniscalco had immigrated from Sicily to America in 1960 when he was 15. At 18, he became a hairdresser and raised and supported a family in Chicago. Like anyone dream casting a comedy about an Italian American man of a certain age, one name topped the list: Robert De Niro.

Maniscalco had worked on a film with De Niro before, on Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Irishman’, but it was brief and didn’t exactly establish anything like a friendship where he could, say, call him up. Then one day he got word that De Niro had the script, through producer Paul Weitz, and wanted to do a table read with some actors in New York. It’s something he likes to do if he’s taking something seriously, he said.

The set-up for ‘About My Father’, which releases in UAE theatres on June 1, is a meet-the-parents situation. Sebastian brings Salvo to his girlfriend’s family home for the Fourth of July weekend.

Ellie’s (Leslie Bibb) family is wealthy – Kim Cattrall plays her mother, Tigger, and David Rasche is her father, Bill. Her brothers are played by Anders Holm and Brett Dier. And the culture clashes ensue.

But before they could start filming, De Niro had a little homework to do. He invited the elder Maniscalco to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he was filming Scorsese’s ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ so he could pick his brain about everything from being a hairdresser to Sicilian dialect.

Later, he would call him for refreshers which Maniscalco was happy to oblige — though one time he told De Niro he’d have to call him back. He’d interrupted a pizza dinner. De Niro understood. And, at least according to some Sicilians who turned out for the Chicago premiere of the film, De Niro nailed it. Someone even told Maniscalco that his Italian was better than it was in ‘The Godfather Part II’.

“It’s not every day that you send off your father to sit down with Robert De Niro and talk about a script, especially when my father doesn’t really know anything about moviemaking and script analysis and what have you,” Maniscalco said. “But, from what he was telling me, he really helped him with the Italian... He never taught me Sicilian. But he taught Robert De Niro.”

Maniscalco, who left Chicago for Los Angeles in 1998 to pursue a career in stand-up comedy, brought Hollywood back to his hometown for the world premiere of the film recently. It was a bit of a full circle moment for him to be surrounded by relatives, friends and in-laws. “When we left the theatre last night, a lot of people came up and said to me, ‘Man, it made me want to call my father,’” he said.