Rosalind Resnick's romantic comedy Townhouse Confidential, a hilarious spoof of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice set in New York's West Village, has been named Best Feature at the New York City Independent Film Festival. The cast is headlined by Samantha Simone (Blue Bloods, You Follow Me), Lee Tyler (While He Talks, Bad Guru film collective), Jonas Barranca (Hightown, One Dollar), Joseph D'Onofrio (Goodfellas, A Bronx Tale), Danny Bolero (In The Heights, Low Tide), Ernest Pierce (DTLA, Dance Flick) and Pepi Streiff (By the Grace of Bob, Broad City). Producing for Townhouse Confidential LLC are Lawrence Scott (Goodbye Butterfly, From Mao to the Met) and Bob Shewchuck (Profit & Laws) with Patrick Perez Vidauri (In Other Words, Divorce Bait) directing from a script written by Rosalind Resnick, the author of the novel Townhouse Confidential and one of the film's executive producers. Other executive producers are Rob Simmons (Last Call) and Ante Novakovic (Sanctioning Evil).
"To see the novel that I finished in my West Village townhouse while New York City was shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic transformed into an award-winning feature film surpasses anything that I could have dreamed up as a storyteller," Resnick said. "I feel truly honored to have had the participation of our masterful director, Patrick Perez Vidauri, our producer Lawrence Scott, and the amazing cast and crew that worked together to breathe life into my characters and my story."
Townhouse Confidential features a diverse multicultural and multigender cast reflective of Greenwich Village and its rich history as home to financiers and bohemians alike.
"I'm so proud to have guided this talented team and shaped this unique story into a movie that everyone can enjoy," said Perez, a Los Angeles filmmaker who has made several hit independent films in his native California since attending New York's Columbia University. "And to shoot this movie on the streets of New York City in the middle of a pandemic was nothing short of miraculous."
Inspired by Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Resnick's 20 years as a New York City landlord and Greenwich Village townhouse owner, Townhouse Confidential is a sexy romp through the economics of love and real estate in New York's historic West Village neighborhood that pits three struggling single sisters against an arrogant real estate developer in a battle to save their townhouse from foreclosure. The entire film was shot on location in Resnick's townhouses and in iconic locations such as the Magnolia Bakery, John's Pizzeria, Joe Coffee, The Little Branch Bar, the Washington Square Diner and New York's Hudson River piers.
When the three Perry sisters — Elizabeth (Samantha Simone, who ices cupcakes at the Magnolia Bakery), Lydia (Brittany Bennett, who works as a personal trainer at a gym) and Mary (Allison Wick, a reclusive blogger who chronicles the celebrity townhouse market) — inherit a New York City townhouse after their Austen-loving parents are struck by a tour bus, the race is on to find a wealthy tenant to rent their garden apartment to cover their mortgage, taxes, and repairs. When their real estate broker Sophie Minetta (Pepi Streiff) introduces them to the handsome venture capitalist Jonathan Grove (Russell Sperberg), the sisters think their problems are over. But Jonathan's best friend turns out to be the rude and arrogant George Barrow (Lee Tyler), a modern-day Mr. Darcy who's plotting to turn their beloved West Village into a hedgefunder Disneyland of 50-foot-wide townhouses with spas, movie theaters and in-ground pools. The drama builds when Liz receives a foreclosure notice from the bank and discovers that someone has stolen the checkbook for their home equity line of credit and drained $100,000 in equity out of their house. Now the sisters must scramble to raise the cash to save their home before they're forced to move to Brooklyn, Florida or — heaven forbid! — New Jersey.
Resnick, a New York real estate investor, technology entrepreneur (NetCreations, 1995-2001) and former Miami Herald reporter, published her novel, Townhouse Confidential, during the COVID-19 pandemic in August 2020 and adapted it as a screenplay in 2021.
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