How Does It Feel To Be "Stuck In The Middle" ?

"A mail room slacker dies after a bizarre experiment and finds himself sentenced to Purgatory - working in the mail room.  There he falls for his beautiful manager and to win her over, he must stop a greedy tycoon from closing Purgatory down and sending everyone to Hell" -

Yes, this is what it is like to be "Stuck in the Middle" - Written by brothers Joseph Pepitone a two time New York Emmy Award winner and Billy Pepitone a retired cop. 

"Stuck in the Middle" as Film Threat calls it: "Is more than just the novelty of its storyline, and is actually quite funny" 

Watch out Farrelly Brothers time to check in with the Brothers Pepitone and find out about their trip to Purgatory.

JP: Michael Shinafelt, how's it going?

MS: Fine, just let me shut something down I was doing on my computer while I was waiting for your call. How are you?

JP: Just fine I'm here with my brother who co-wrote the script, Billy.

MS: Hi, Billy!

BP: Hey how are you?

MS: Good. So Joseph, have you worked in a mail room before?

JP:  No, no, I've worked in offices, so I picked the occupation as the one that I thought would be the lowest on the totem pole. I've never worked in the mail room, but I have been working in offices half my life.

MS: Well you picked the perfect place for Purgatory, I've worked in a mail room before and it sucks that hard. (laughs)

Joseph & Billy Pepitone

JP: That's the feeling I got. (laughs)

MS: Yep, the mail room would be Purgatory in an office for sure! (laughs) OK, why did you choose auto-erotic asphyxiation as the cause of death for your mail room worker Michael?

JP: When I originally started writing the script it was going to be a wacky sitcom, and he died by getting his tie caught in a paper shredder. I thought it was lame and I needed something better. I was writing right around the time that David Carradine wound up killing himself that way. It was perfect, this is the way the character should die I thought.

MS: More effective than a paper shredder I must say. (laughs) Obviously your surroundings inspired the script.

JP: Basically, yeah, write what you know. Working in an office combined with sixteen years of Catholic School. Working in an office isn't really Heaven or Hell, it's just sort of dull, like Purgatory.

MS: If the concepts of Heaven and Hell actually exist, I think Earth is Purgatory.

JP: That's funny! I just did an interview where that is exactly what I said.

MS: How funny!

JP: We're living in Purgatory and we see what happens from here.

MS: Life on Earth is mostly just what it is, there are highs and lows, but most of the time it just is.

JP: We're on the same page.

MS: Billy you're a retired Police Officer, you have a lot of stories, tell me one.

BP: There's a thousand stories I could tell ya. Some of them are almost impossible to believe. So I tried to take some of the characters I've met over the years and incorporate them into Joe's story and it seemed to work well...a lot of the people in the movie truly exist. (laughs)

MS: Other than your obvious wealth of material to draw on what made you decide to go into writing with your brother?

Here We Are Now Entertain Us

BP: Writing was always a talent of mine that I never gave enough time, I've always been interested in it. Once I decided that I had enough time on my hands I decided that I was going to start writing. Screenplays, novels...when I read the script I immediately loved it. We developed a system, Joe writes sends it to me, I tweak it a little bit, we go back and fourth. Our styles are different and that seems to work.

MS: OK, tell me about the blasphemy, Film Threat stated there was blasphemy in your movie, I'm always up for that.

JP: I guess what they are referring to is Jesus actually is the figurehead boss of Purgatory. He's the boss's son and he's rarely there, he golfs all day - he has aligned himself with some of the bad guys in the film and started a merchandising business, Jesus has basically become a shill. (laughs) I think that's probably the blasphemy part. (laughs)

MS: Did you ever see Kevin Smith's film "Dogma"?

JP: Oh yea, I'm a very big Kevin Smith fan!

MS: Cool, I liked Alanis Morisette as God in it. So what's next for the Brothers Pepitone?

JP: We have two horror films in post production.

MS: I love horror!

JP: Great! One is called "The Meat Puppet" the other is called "Gravedigger" and we should be getting them to the horror festivals in the fall.

Feeling "Stuck"? "Stuck in the Middle" is released on Blu-Ray on Amazon July 30th: http://www.amazon.com/Stuck-Middle-Blu-ray-Eric-Etebari/dp/B00DWG5GTE/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1373913673&sr=1-1&keywords=stuck+in+the+middle

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Keep up with The Brothers at: http://www.diamondjesusproductions.com/