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Screen : Film
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In Italian, a good man is “a piece of bread” - plain, simple, and always welcome. Dom Pyzola (Scott Baio) is a second generation Italian-American corporate raider who has a post-graduate degree, a hot car, and an inkling that he’s not a nice guy. And he’s living parallel lives! In the corporate world he is the designated asshole; in the Biscotti Company which he owns, he is a piece of bread : he takes care of his older mentally handicapped brother (Shuler) and keeps a day job waiting for his brother, Eddie (Billy Mott), an actor. He is a surrogate son to Bella (Rosemary Prinz), an Italian immigrant who lives above the bakery with her husband Massimo (John Seitz) and who has been saving, dollar by dollar, for her daughter’s (Kristin Minter) American wedding since the day she gave birth. Set in the Italian section of Pittsburgh’s Strip District, The Bread, My Sweet is a love story about what happens when Dominic’s worlds collide. When he, alone, discovers that Bella has six months to live, he quits his corporate job, finds Lucca (Bella’s daughter), and tries to convince her to marry him and to stay married only for as long as her mother lives. The Bread, My Sweet is about love of family and culture - it’s about sacrifice. It’s a journey to a place where work is hard, wine is made in the basement, the future is stored dollar by dollar in coffee cans, and where people may believe that doing the outrageous thing is better than doing nothing at all.
"The Bread, My Sweet" played to a packed house at Friday's $20-a-seat premiere (with reception) at Regent Square Theater, where the picture inaugurated the 20th annual Three Rivers Film Festival. Judging from the prolonged applause afterward and a standing ovation for Martin and Wehr, the movie is positioned to do well when it opens, possibly as soon as Christmas. Wehr told the crowd she and her partners hope to distribute the picture themselves in the States, beginning in Pittsburgh, and are considering offers for foreign distribution. Several cast members attended the premiere, as did musician and singer Rachel McCartney, who performed before and after the screening. One of the songs she performed was "All of the Joy," from the movie.Prinz, who plays the dying matriarch of an extended family of Italian pastry bakers, told the audience she's had a long career and that "nobody can be nicer to work for than Melissa and Adrienne." As the applause continued, she added, "I feel like Sally Field. "I couldn't have asked for a more wonderful experience than this," said Seitz, who plays her irascible husband. "I believe in the (independent film) movement and in the vision of the artists. It was not only a labor or love but an act of love." It was a joy," said Hensley, referring to "the level of trust and ease of working with this ensemble of actors." He plays the most childlike of three brothers (with Baio and Billy Mott) who run the older couple's pastry shop. "Every day, they turned it in," Martin said of her cast. She recalled a moment during the first day of filming when she realized, "Oh, my God, it's going to work ... It was like taking a driver's test in a Ferrari, working with these actors."
MOVIE AWARDS : Stony Brook
Film Festival 2002,
Audience Choice Award Santa Monica International
Film Festival
MOXIE Awards 2001 Worldfest-Houston 2001
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It offers especially fine work by.......Hensley as the slow brother
who is wounded to the core by his brothers' unintentional, yet
credible, insensitivity. (Ed Blank, PittsburghLive.com) 
