As I mentioned before, Cinematical had a chance to visit the set of Dito Montiel's (A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints) new film, Fighting, last night, which was shooting on seventh avenue and 54th street here in New York City. We'll have a full set report for you in the coming weeks, but why not share with you a few nuggets of information now. I was on the set for about four hours before we finally got to speak to director Dito Montiel. After it began pouring out, they called lunch, and myself -- along with one other writer and Montiel -- ran across the street, ducked into a diner and sat down for some conversation over soup and a beer. We talked for a good half hour about Fighting, among all sorts of other things, but toward the end of our chat Montiel revealed that he will indeed adapt and direct his latest book, Eddie Krumble Is the Clapper, for the big screen.

For starters, Montiel will be leaving New York for the first time, and making this film elsewhere. Here's what he had to say about the film: "Yeah, I'm setting up to make that movie -- it's a whole different trip -- and it's in Los Angeles, so I get to sneak out there for a minute. It's called Eddie Krumble Is the Clapper, and it's about a guy who's a clapper for shows. They hire people to clap and laugh at bad jokes. It's a little different world; they get $35 a show." I asked Montiel if this was based on someone he knew, and he replied, "Yeah, my friend Eddie. Not Eddie Krumble -- I named him Eddie Krumble -- but my friend Eddie; he's from Long Island City and he moved out to Los Angeles. He gets thirty-five dollars a day, he does like three shows a day, and he sits in on whatever shows people don't go to. It's like extras, except it's a little bit below extras."

And does he have anyone in mind yet to play this clapper? How about Channing Tatum (who's working with Montiel for the second time on Fighting, after also starring in Saints)? When I brought up Tatum's name, Montiel laughed and said: "Hey, you never know. Channing would make a badass clapper -- he'd be the toughest clapper ever!"

I'm of two minds about A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, a new dramatic film written and directed by Dito Montiel and written from his own memoirs of growing up in Astoria, Queens during the mid-80s. Parts of it are engaging, thoughtful and affecting, from the first-rate cast (headlined by Robert Downey, Jr. and Shia LaBeouf as different ages of Montiel) to Montiel's skill in demonstrating through visuals and dialogue how what we're watching is not necessarily the past as it happened but as Dito remembers it. At the same time, it's hard to be too engaged by the adolescent struggles of Dito and his friends Nerf, Guiseppe, Mick and Antonio as they drift aimlessly through a humid swamp of testosterone and ignorance.

In the present day, Dito's a writer, living in Los Angeles, far from New York. But a call from his mother Flori (Dianne Wiest) imploring Dito to come home to see his ill father Monty (Chazz Palminteri) puts Dito on the next plane to New York … and onto the on-ramp for memory lane. Dito (played in the past by LaBeouf) is spending a sweltering summer in Queens hanging out with his pals. He has the possibility of pleasure in a romance with neighborhood girl Laurie (Melonie Diaz) and the possibility of danger as a local graffiti war heats up. …