Cross Bronx

Screenwriter Larry Golin made his directorial debut with this coming-of-age story set in New York. Four friends move in together in a ramshackle apartment in the Bronx as they try to figure out their next move while they finish up their senior year in high school. Schiek (Nashawn Kearse), star of the baseball team, wants everyone to think he's had a successful tryout with a major-league ball club, when the truth is he's washed out of his best shot with the minors. Vivo (Jerry Ferrara), who comes from a family of bush-league gangsters, wants to join the mob, but has a hard time becoming the tough guy he thinks he's supposed to be. Ike (Max Greenfield), who has talent as a wrestler, needs to get his own demons in check if he's to make anything of himself. And Rob-O (Badge Dale) wants to be an artist; he thinks he's found both a business manager and a girlfriend in the attractive woman who lives upstairs, Elizabeth Keener, but he isn't sure how to tell her that he's a good bit younger than she thinks. Cross Bronx was screened as part of the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival.