He's older now, with bugging eyes and an expanding midsection, but in his day he was quite a smoothie: thin, elegantly dressed, a suave mustache, and thick black hair often covered by a fedora. Right away you've got to be thinking Tom Hanks. And as the older brother, Michael Katen?
He's a little shorter, a little more muscular. Still good looking, but obviously a second banana. You'd need someone powerful and attractive, but not leading-man material.
Or better yet Chazz Palminteri, that guy who got an Oscar nomination for Bullets Over Broadway. Yeah, if he's not too busy, get him. You can see something light, something quirky.
Open with Omero struggling to be the first to cross the Verrazano-Narrows bridge at its grand opening. A snappy montage would convey his zeal to pay the first toll, just as he has at so many openings before this. Then you'd see how, with his brother's cunning assistance, Omero narrowly edges out his competitors and is first through the booth.
Cut to spinning newspapers that scream out the next day's headlines: "Mr. Add the background about how Omero became Mr. First, throw in a love interest (Bridget Fonda would be perfect as Omero's wife), and top it off with the emotional scene in which Michael pinch-hits for his brother and opens the Lincoln Tunnel by himself while Omero selflessly serves in England during World War II.
You've got a winner! Maybe tack on an epilogue about the two of them living in their current homes, in Fort Lauderdale and Margate, at their current ages of 80 and 82. Have them recalling the glory days, sharing a soda pop and cracking jokes.
It'll drive home that this is a true story, not the stuff of Tinseltown fiction. Siskel and Ebert will give it two thumbs up. Too bad the movie can't be made.
Despite a hot Hollywood studio's offer of $50,000 for the rights to the brothers' life stories, it's not going to happen. Omero nixed it. He's holding on to a contract he signed with an obscure Wisconsin filmmaker for a mere $1000.
Omero's decision to shun Hollywood, says his angry brother Michael, was a deliberate move to hog the spotlight. Counters Omero: There is only one Mr. First, and that means there will be only one person's story told or no story at all.
He's older now, with bugging eyes and an expanding midsection, but in his day he was quite a smoothie: thin, elegantly dressed, a suave mustache, and thick black hair often covered by a fedora.
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