Tony Montana (filmmaker)

Montana began acting on television in 1988 with a four year stint portraying a villain wrestling manager on Chicago’s SportsChannel most notably managing WWE Hall of Fame Superstar Abdullah the Butcher.[1]

Montana in 1988 restraining Abdullah The Butcher

Montana studied acting with Bill Hickey (protege' of Uta Hagen), Tracey Roberts (protege' of Elia Kazan), Joel Asher (protege' of Sanford Meisner), David LeGrant (protege' of Lee Strasberg), and Catherine Carlen (protege' of Stella Adler).

In 1996, Montana began an eight year journey producing and directing Overnight which chronicled the rise and fall of Troy Duffy, director of The Boondock Saints. The film documents Duffy's clash with Miramax co-founder Harvey Weinstein and subsequent blacklisting in Hollywood. Premiering at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, Overnight was theatrically released in North America, Australia, Germany, Denmark, the United Kingdom and Russia.

The film received two thumbs up on At the Movies with Roger Ebert proclaiming it "the best documentary about Hollywood I have seen".[2] Screen International recommended Overnight as "a must-see for anyone in the film business and a necessary addition to any film school curriculum". In an editorial in the same issue titled "Let It Be A Warning To Us All", Mike Goodridge described Duffy's flameout as "the well-deserved fall of a 25 year-old man whose monumental ego is one of the most memorable movie monsters in years".[3][4]

Montana was one of the first independent filmmakers the late film critic Roger Ebert tweeted about when social media site Twitter first launched in 2006. After attending the 2008 Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films screening of Rebuilt, Ebert tweeted "A flawless performance by Tony Montana".[5] Of Montana's 2010 short film Discover, Ebert tweeted "How powerful can a 90-second film be?"[6]