Untitled Pizza Movie

In the early 1990s, Independent Spirit Award winning filmmaker David Shapiro (KEEP THE RIVER ON YOUR RIGHT, MISSING PEOPLE) and his best friend Leeds Atkinson set out to find the perfect slice of New York City's biggest commodity: pizza. Under the guise of filming a TV series titled "Eat to Win", the two traversed pizzerias throughout their rapidly changing city until they found a favorite: Lombardi’s, widely acknowledged as the first pizzeria in the country. There they discovered Andrew Bellucci, a passionate chef whose humble beginnings segued into an unlikely role as a darling of the New York food world. But shortly after they film with him, the truth catches up to Bellucci - he was a Wall Street criminal wanted by the FBI. Dave and Leeds film him in prison, but eventually life catches up with the two friends. They drift apart and the film remains unfinished. Twenty years later, David receives an email: Leeds is dead. Shapiro, now an established filmmaker in his own right, pieces together their lost footage to find out what happened to Bellucci and Leeds. Weaving together an abandoned film with a triple character portrait, UNTITLED PIZZA MOVIE collapses fact and fiction, biography and autobiography, to paint a complex and original portrait that examines the faultiness of memory, friendship, gentrification, filmmaking … and pizza!