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| Photo courtesy AJ Vittone. All rights reserved. |
Set in Miami, Florida, in the year 1959, Magic City tells the story of Ike Evans (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), the owner of Miami's most glamorous hotel, the Miramar Playa. Evans is forced to make an ill-fated deal with Miami mob boss Ben Diamond (Danny Huston) to ensure the success of his glitzy establishment. In episode six, titled "The Harder They Fall," Ike and Ben make a huge bet on a boxing match, and the ring announcer is the smooth-talking Jimmy Powers, played by none other than Mr. Vittone! It sounds like perfect casting...
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| STN 10-year reunion, 2003. Photo courtesy Mike Cohen. All rights reserved. |
Channel 2 is still going strong to this day... AJ and I went back for the ten year reunion of STN, and I was amazed to see how far the organization (and technology) had come... hell, we thought we had it good with a chyron machine-!
After college, AJ went on to work at WENY-TV in Elmira, New York, and I was extremely grateful when he helped my cousin Damian find a job as a fellow sportscaster at the station. It was weird to visit Damian not long after he had secured that job, and see the two of them bantering back and forth on highlight reels!
When I started working in the Berkshires in 2001, I learned that AJ had also moved to the area. A native of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, he had decided it was also time for a change, and moved back to his hometown to start doing more freelance work, and began hosting Sports Page Live on the Cox Sports Television network, based out of Providence, Rhode Island. It was good to reconnect again, and he hadn't lost any of his trademark silliness...
In the years that followed, he began filling in for some of the TV news stations in the Albany, New York area, as well as developing his own TV program devoted entirely to the sport of boxing. After a brief stint in Florida, he decided late last year to move to Los Angeles, California... I think I may have been one of the first to learn about his plans, and was happy to hear about his fulfillment of a long-time dream.
The gig with Magic City was apparently a fluke--an "outside the box" tip from his agent (pun intended). It sounds like AJ's background as a sports announcer (including actual ringside announcing for boxing matches) has paid off. Since the show is based in the 1950s, he tells me that he had to endure makeup and wardrobe to get the look (hopefully he fared better than my dorky reporter get-up for the movie Taking Woodstock). Apparently he also ad-libbed some of his lines, which made it into the final scene. Here is a preview of the episode:
The show seems to be an attempt to mine the "retro goldmine" a la Mad Men. I'm dying to see it, as well as the episode! Unfortunately, we don't get the Starz network, and I don't see the episode online yet. Nevertheless, I'm proud of my friend-- there never really was any doubt AJ would find success after UHA. Of course, he has also caught the acting bug-- even landed a role in an independent film recently. It's nice to hear when good people get a break, and I hope he keeps the "jaaaammm...." going!
Related Links:
"Native lands cable role," Berkshire Eagle, April 6, 2012
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