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Young man moves to big city.

Adventures ensure.

It's a tale as old as time.

But when the young man in question is Steve Guttenberg and the city with the bright lights is Los Angeles, you know it's going to be far from an ordinary story.

"It's an everyday man coming out into an atmosphere with all these really exotic characters who are so far removed from his upbringing," Guttenberg says of "Tales From the Guttenberg Bible," now playing at George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick. "How he navigates the waters and tries to make a career for himself while keeping his values − and not getting into trouble."

While Guttenberg hopes audiences will walk away touched by the story of a young man striving toward his goals, he also says they should prepare to laugh − a lot − "because situations are pretty extraordinary."

Guttenberg, 64, has a film and TV career spanning nearly a half-century and is known for his work in "Three Men and a Baby," "Police Academy," "Cocoon" and so many more cultural touchstones.

More:In Andrew Lloyd Webber's new Broadway musical, Cinderella has some badass attitude

"Tales from the Guttenberg Bible"also stars Arnie Burton, Dan Domingues and Carine Montreband, playing scores of characters of who shaped Guttenberg's early career.

Despite the sliver of Guttenberg's career that the play focuses on, it was a period packed with potential material. In fact, his first draft was 300 pages. It's since been whittled down to 68 or so, with the help of George Street Artistic Director David Saint, who also directs the show.

"What I really love is how open Steve is," Saint said. "I told him first, write me everything, write me anything you want to write. What I love doing is editing and cutting and shaping a script and giving you the shape and the dramatic form."

Saint says he learned his love of editing from playwright Arthur Laurents, who he calls his mentor. "He used to say everything needs cuts, even Shakespeare," Saint said. Fittingly, "Tales from the Guttenberg Bible" will be performed in the Arthur Laurents Theater at New Brunswick Performing Arts Center.

More:Curtain up! Here are the plays, musicals opening soon on Broadway

Saint says it's Guttenberg's likability and innocence that will make audiences root for him from the outset.

"Then you see all the remarkable people that he has met in his lifetime. I mean, can you imagine being 17 years old and getting on a private plane with Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier, to go make the movie 'The Boys From Brazil' and having your mother and father bring some salami and hard candy to the jet to give to them, because as his mother says, 'the food on airplanes is terrible?' I mean, the amount of innocence is so astonishing, and yet, he landed on his feet every time and people just liked him."

It's intimidating though, Guttenberg says, to let people peek into such a personal tale.

"Your life is intimate, and private. So when you bring other people into it and allow people to see your life, I had to let things go and open the doors and trust that people would understand my life. And I also understand that there are going to be judgments. Some people are going to like it and some people aren't," he said.

For that reason, and more, it was important to separate the actor Steve Guttenberg from the character Steve Guttenberg, both Saint and Guttenberg said.

More:How did a giant teddy bear costume help this Broadway legend after COVID?

This is the first time Guttenberg has worked with George Street Playhouse.

"It's a beautiful theater," he said. "And David Saint and the board have made a great contribution, not only to New Brunswick, New Jersey, but to the arts."

Go: "Tales From the Guttenberg Bible," tickets $25 to $70, through May 21; George Street Playhouse, at the Arthur Laurents Theater at New Brunswick Performing Arts Center, 11 Livingston Ave., New Brunswick. GeorgeStreetPlayhouse.org.

Ilana Keller is an award-winning journalist and lifelong New Jersey resident who loves Broadway and really bad puns. Reach out on Twitter: @ilanakeller; ikeller@gannettnj.com

Actor Steve Guttenberg will throw out the ceremonial first pitch and hang out with fans at the Somerset Patriots April 18 game.Photo Credit: Courtesy Somerset Patriots

By Marc Russinoff

PublishedApril 14, 2023 at 6:50 PM

BRIDGEWATER, NJ – The Somerset Patriots, the New York Yankees Double-A affiliate, will host actor Steve Guttenberg at their Tuesday, April 18 game at TD Bank Ballpark.

The Patriots take on the New Hampshire Fisher Cats (Toronto Blue Jays) at 6:35 pm.

Guttenberg will be starring in a new show, "Tales from the Guttenberg Bible," playing at George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick from April 25 through May 21.

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Guttenberg will throw out a ceremonial first pitch prior to the start of the game and also meet fans on the main concourse for pictures and autographs at the George Street Playhouse table.

"Tales from the Guttenberg Bible" is a farcical, laugh-out-loud story written by and starring Guttenberg. The show is a hilarious journey from the Guttenberg’s family home on Long Island to the glamour of Hollywood as Guttenberg himself tells all.

The versatile actor made a name for himself in leading roles in films like Diner (1983), Police Academy (1984), Cocoon (1985), Short Circuit (1986), Bedroom Window (1986) and Three Men and a Baby (1987).

On stage, Guttenberg appeared in The Boys Next Door (1993) in London's West End, Prelude to a Kiss (1995) on Broadway, and Furthest From The Sun (2000) at the June Lune Theatre in Minneapolis. Guttenberg also played Henry Percy in 20150 The Hudson Warehouse Theatre's production of Henry IV.

He has produced an Emmy-nominated television special, Gangs, performed in the original Miracle On Ice, and also ABC's The Day After, which is still one of the most watched television events of this century.

Guttenberg has the record for most original films to go to franchises in film history, and appearing in the most films in The Screen Actors Guild from 1980-1990, tying Gene Hackman.

He also received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

More information about Tales from the Guttenberg Bible, or to purchase tickets, please visit georgestreetplayhouse.org.

The Somerset Patriots are the New York Yankees Double-A Affiliate and develop today’s top minor league talent into the pinstriped superstars of tomorrow for MLB’s winningest team. The Patriots are the reigning Eastern League Champions and play their home games at TD Bank Ballpark in Bridgewater, NJ, where fans get to enjoy the unique experience that is minor league baseball. To learn more, visit: somersetpatriots.com.

A fire involving a remodeled three-story wood-frame, mixed-occupancy building resulted in a labor-intensive battle by firefighters from the North Hudson Regional Fire & Rescue that protects five Hudson County (NJ) municipalities.

Shortly after 9 p.m., on November 19, 2021, an AFA assignment of three engines, one truck and a battalion chief were dispatched to 201-70^th Street in the town of Guttenberg, New Jersey. Police Officer Jabber arrived and reported smoke in the rear of the first-floor restaurant. Upon arrival of the first fire companies, the assignment was filled out, dispatching another engine, truck, rescue, safety officer, rapid intervention team, and Deputy 1.

Firefighters made an interior attack as smoke continued to thicken. All occupants of the restaurant and apartments were removed and a second alarm was transmitted. Interior units reported fire traveling “voids on the ‘C’ side,” and a third alarm was struck by Deputy Chief Mike Falco.

Inside the building, firefighters were compelled to pull tin ceilings to find hidden fire, a labor-intensive operation. Heavy smoke rolled out of the building and covered the neighborhood. Fire eventually broke through the roof of the structure located at the corner of Broadway. Flames attracted a New York TV station news helicopter that flew overhead to cover the story.

Numerous handlines were used along with a lot of “truck work.” The first two ladder companies on the assignment were aerial ladders. The second alarm truck, Tower Ladder 3, was a block away due to the narrow and congested streets that are common in this area. Truckies used an aerial ladder and saws to open up the top-floor sidings on Broadway, where firefighters had difficulty gaining access to flames from the interior. After the heavy fire was knocked down, apparatus was moved from the Broadway side of the building and Tower Ladder 3was placed into position. Firefighters opened up the space along the “B” side of the building to expose the hidden flames and knocked them out with a tower monitor.

One firefighter suffered nonlife-threatening injuries and was taken to Palisades Medical Center in North Bergen, where he was treated and released.

The main body of fire was was knocked down around 10:40 p.m. Weary firefighters took breaks outside of the building and walked a block away from the scene to the Gong Club canteen truck for bottled water, hot chocolate, or coffee.

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Peter LaVilla is many things – a Jersey City native, the former mayor of Guttenberg, and a former Jersey Journal reporter. LaVilla is also a playwright and filmmaker whose offerings including “Mollie and Friends,” starring an Oscar nominee, are available on YouTube. And as LaVilla, 80, is holed up in his place in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida due to the pandemic, he’d like people to know his work is among their free viewing options as something different.

Included among his work is the aforementioned “Mollie and Friends,” which stars Rosemary Gore, Jeannie Evans, and Academy Award-nominee for Best Actress Sally Kirkland.

Kirkland specifically was nominated for her role in “Anna” (1987). Even if you don’t know her by name, her face has the kind of familiarity that comes from having been in everything – from “The Way We Were” to “Bruce Almighty” and recurring roles on TV on shows like “Roseanne.”

“Mollie and Friends” (also known as “Oak Hill” when it was originally released in 2008) is about the eponymous Mollie (Gore), a comedian in the Fozzie Bear tradition working at a shelter where she’s caught between trying to help two substance abusers, Madison and former actress Elizabeth St. James, played respectively by Evans and by Kirkland.

Kirkland’s role in LaVilla’s film is one of the rare times LaVilla doesn’t use local talent in his work. His former Journal colleague Ron Leir does appear in the film, as Leir does in more work available on LaVilla’s YouTube page.

“The only movie where I did not (use local talent) was ‘Mollie and Friends’ because that was a SAG movie, and most of the people that I hire locally are non-union, so that was a no-no with SAG.”

“Mollie and Friends” is unique among LaVilla’s film work for being a drama.

“(My films) are all to make people happy and make them laugh and feel good about themselves – not that ‘Mollie and Friends’ doesn’t make people feel good. It makes you look at times inward, rather than outward.”

The way LaVilla became a journalist in the first place seems to to speak to the way he’s approached much of his creative work.

“Back in the day I sent a letter to the guy who was the editor (of the Hudson Dispatch, later folded into The Jersey Journal) at the time … ‘You know, you do all this stuff about people from out of town and from New York, but what about the locals down here? You never do any work (on them), you never do any reviews.’ And then the guy called me and said, ‘Would you like a job doing it?’”

LaVilla reflected on his starting salary and being fortunate that rent at the Jersey City public housing he lived in at the time was according to how much you your salary was. He also reflected on later doing three one-act plays called “The 99 Cents Special” – “two of which were mine and one was one of the editors at The Jersey Journal,” he said.

The play was performed in the backroom of a Hoboken bar.

“We got a review in The New York Times. (The reviewer) called (one of the plays) ‘beyond gross.’ I took out an ad in The Journal, quoted the guy. I ran the show for eight more weeks. It was only 99 cents to get in.”

LaVilla can recall talking to people in the long line to see the play, finding out that many of them came from NYC because of that review.

“We know what gross is, but we don’t know what ‘beyond gross’ is,” one guy said, according to LaVilla.

The camaraderie of making something with friends, and of trying to make people laugh in a way that’s not unlike the vaudeville-like character he plays in “Mr. Las Vegas,” is something LaVilla built off of creatively.

“Mollie and Friends” star Gore co-starred with LaVilla in “Oil and Water,” where he played a veteran news man paired with Gore’s young gossip columnist character.

Gore had moved out to LA and became friendly with Kirkland, LaVilla said. She’s the one who suggested he reach out to Kirkland for the part in “Mollie and Friends.”

“I said (to her), you want me to call an A-list star?’ She said, ‘Call her.’ I gave her a call, I said, ‘Sally my name is blah blah blah. Rosemary told me to give you a shout. I got this script, would you be interested in reading it?’ I mailed it to her, about a week later she says, ‘Peter, I love the character, I want to make the movie.’”

In addition to having written the script, LaVilla has a role in the film as the director of the Oak Hill shelter.

Filmed at Palisades Emergency Residence Corporation (PERC) Soup Kitchen, in Union City, “Mollie and Friends” is a mixed bag bolstered by particularly endearing performances from Gore and Kirkland. It’s a film where you laugh and feel for the characters, but by virtue of the melodrama, you sometimes laugh a little at it.

Thematically it relies on stereotypes a little too much, and sometimes you wish for something more in tune with the energy of one of the most affecting scenes – where two quiet, emotive characters often in the background are having a meal together in the shelter and talking wistfully about where they came from originally, before their lives brought them there.

Like LaVilla – who still performs locally in Sunny Isles Beach and has made some his creative writing available on Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com, it’s a little all over the place but not without its charms.

LaVilla’s work as a filmmaker also has a particular distinction as part of Netflix’s transition from DVD-mailers to streaming. “Mr. Las Vegas,” a feature film which he wrote and stars in,” was among Netflix’s original DVD offerings.

“What happened was, a friend of mine said call this distributor up in Los Angeles. ‘They’re just getting started and they need talent.’ So I sent them a copy and the guy loved it. I signed a 7-year contract.”

LaVilla later got an email about Netflix trying out something called “streaming,” he said.

Its gist: “Netflix said they’re taking 100 films to test this thing called streaming, and ‘Mr. Las Vegas’ is among the hundred films.”

“Mr. Las Vegas” was joined by “Oil and Water” for a long streaming stint on the platform, but the shuffling of new content has pared them down to being available for Netflix’s still available mail-in option. And now, for something different, you can see them on YouTube. Just search “Peter LaVilla” on YouTube.

GUTTENBERG -- Wednesday night's meeting of the Guttenberg Board of Education drew an unusually large crowd for the modest district of 1,015 students in grade pre-K though 8.

And while the main order of business was a public hearing on the district's $18 million budget for the 2017-18 school year, that's not what drew most of the 30 attendees to the cafeteria of the Anna L. Klein School, the district's one and only building.

Rather, several people in the crowd were opponents of a proposal now being weighed by the board to send the district's 7th and 8th graders to North Bergen, at a cost of about $2 million a year in tuition.

"Don't do it," former student Diana Sanchez, a 31-year-old molecular biologist at Montclair State University, urged the board, recalling the middle school science teacher who inspired her to become a scientist.

The proposal came from North Bergen school officials, and would correspond to a district-wide reconfiguration in North Bergen scheduled to take effect in September 2019. That reconfiguration includes a move into a new North Bergen High School, configured for students in grades 10-12, and the creation of a new junior high school for grades 7-9.

North Bergen's new high school will be housed in the old Hudson County High Tech High School, which the township will purchase for about $20 million, reimbursed by the school district.

Guttenberg students already end up in North Bergen, though not until high school, under a sending-receiving relationship that dates back to the 1960's. The current proposal amounts to an expansion of that relationship by two additional grades.

But the proposal is opposed by some members of the Guttenberg school community, including the Guttenberg Federation of Teachers union, whose membership could lose a dozen jobs or more under the plan.

"We are concerned about how economically feasible this is to pay tuition to North Bergen to send our middle schoolers and pay for the addition to the Anna L. Klein School," the union's president, Elaine Heflich, said in a statement.

Heflich added that parents were concerned about the prospect of their middle school-age children having to cross Kennedy Boulevard.

Opponents include Guttenberg's own superintedent of schools, Michelle Rosenberg, who questioned why the district would want to shed about 225 students -- and pay North Bergen millions to do it -- just as the Klein school is nearing completion of a $20 million addition that contains a new gym and a dozen new classrooms, including three science labs specifically for 7th and 8th graders.

The board was not scheduled for any action on the proposal Wednesday night, and none was taken. But its president, William Holkien, read a statement he had prepared in order to "clarify" opponents' concerns.

"We were approached by North Bergen regarding the possibilities about moving our 7th and 8th graders to their school system. This is why I formed a committee to gather all the information and analyze what would be in the best interest academically and the fiscal impact on our school and the town."

North Bergen's director of elementary and secondary education, Nicholas Sacco, who also serves as the township's mayor and state senator, said his district would have been "remiss" not to have made the offer, which he believes makes sense educationally and financially for Guttenberg.

Sacco said Guttenberg students would benefit from enhanced facilities and broader opportunities at the newly created North Bergen Junior High School. And, Sacco said, Guttenberg taxpayers would save on the high cost of special education services, which Guttenberg contracts for, but which North Bergen provides in-house.

"We made the offer," Sacco said, adding that North Bergen would not see a net benefit from Guttenberg's tuition money. "It's their decision whether the want to come here."

With a total of 7,800 students in grades pre-K through 12, the North Bergen school district is huge compared to Guttenberg's. And the proposal has been opposed by fans of the Klein school's family-like atmosphere, who say many of Guttenberg's teenage students already complain of feeling lost at North Bergen High School. They say sending students to the larger district at an even younger age would be more traumatic.

Jenna Lanzaro, an 8th grade language arts teacher who spoke at Wednesday's board meeting, recalled her first year on the job, when she was watching some of her students play in a youth soccer game on a weekend, an entirely unofficial activity she did on her own time, but one common among Guttenberg teachers. While at the game, Lanzaro said she got a call from her surprised mother.

"'It's Saturday. Is that normal?'" Lanzaro, who lives in Jersey City, recalled her mother asking. And it was, Lanzaro said, at least in Guttenberg.