By Debbie Hall with Provided Content
All photos courtesy of Stephen Sorrentino
For over 20 years, musical comedian Stephen Sorrentino portrayed Elton John in “Legends in Concert” and starred in his Riviera-based comedy show, “Voices in my Head,” in Las Vegas. In 2016, he decided to say “Goodbye to Yellow Brick Road” and take a different route with his career. The road to Hollywood gave him the opportunity to display his talents in a new medium. Stephen will explore facets of his life in “Amends of the Father,” his self-written, self-produced, self-directed, self-starring, self-cast, and self-scored independent film. It will debut at the Las Vegas Premier Film Festival at the Galaxy Theater, 3680 S Maryland Parkway, on Aug. 9.
“I was Debbie Reynolds’ opening act for five years, and that’s when I realized that Hollywood was the place to go,” Sorrentino says, “Debbie called me and told me that I was an actor, not just a comedian and singer. I used to get up in the morning and drive five hours to Hollywood from Vegas for auditions and then five hours back to Vegas to do two shows a night at the Imperial Palace back in the day.
“I used to watch other people write scripts,” he adds. “They seemed like they were making it look hard. I said to myself, ‘I can do that.’ Although ‘Amends of the Father’ is my first big movie, I’ve won over 75 International film awards since 2021 worldwide as an actor, producer, director, and film scorer. But ‘Amends of the Father’ is a very personal piece. It is not pretty; it is very emotional. It’s based on my own story. I didn’t know I could write a script about or play a character that is unlikeable, not the norm for a comedian. Over the past few years and with wearing all of the different hats of filmmaking, I truly feel like I have become an artist.”
Calling the movie semi-autobiographical, Sorrentino notes that every single character is a part of his persona, ranging from charitable to angry, vindictive, loving, self-loathing, and touching on his dark side. Candy Clark, Academy Award-nominated actor in “American Graffiti,” and Randy Jones, who sang as the cowboy in the musical group The Village People.
“It’s a very dramatic thing,” he emphasizes. “It takes you to times and places you wouldn’t think it would go.”
The film also features all of Sorrentino’s music from the 1980s and 1990s, including a new piece specifically written for this movie and recorded in Las Vegas in 2022.
“There’s concert footage of me in the 1980s when I was a struggling rock singer-songwriter trying to keep my head above water in a world filled with booze, drugs, and self-sabotage,” Sorrentino reveals. “This is also a statement on the current culture and what people will do to be famous I have always been honest about who I was and some of the struggles that I have had growing up and living in this show business world. Evolving into a more rounded artist has proven to be a wonderful thing.”
His goal is to create “Amends of the Father” as a two-season series on Netflix.
There will be a Q&A and a cocktail reception following the viewing of the film. Tickets are available for AMENDS OF THE FATHER at the Las Vegas Premier Film Festival is available by clicking here.
