After higher than eight a few years in enterprise, a Coney Island candy retailer is celebrating a sweet second inside the spotlight.
Williams Candy is getting some well-deserved recognition after being featured in a film now nominated for six Academy Awards: Sean Baker’s “Anora.”
The movie is a couple of youthful intercourse worker who marries the son of a Russian Oligarch — its been nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Director and loads of the movie was shot in Brooklyn.
Along with one considerably chaotic and violent scene on the enduring Coney Island candy retailer. The Surf Avenue staple is just down the block from Nathan’s scorching canines.
“It’s great! It’s exciting to see your store in a good movie in the Oscars. Millions of people watching, it’s great,” said proprietor Peter Agrapides.
Williams Candy, a fixture of Coney Island, was used for scenes in “Anora.”
Throughout the movie, Mikey Madison’s character, the titular Anora, go looking out for her misplaced husband with a handful of his family’s employed arms. They smash up the store using pretend glass cases for a scene that shocked Agrapides to see on film.
“After I saw the movie, I said ‘oh my god!’ And we were finding that glass all over the place for months after that,” he revealed.
Williams Candy has barely modified as a result of it opened in 1941. The shop has that primary old-school actually really feel that retains prospects coming once more and attracted the movie’s producers.
“They’re a great family, they deserve all the business they get,” said purchaser Lynn Marando.
“They come and they ask, ‘was Anora filmed here?’ and ‘where’s Billy the owner?’ I’m the owner! Not Billy! He was just the fake owner,” laughed Agrapides.
O’Brien in entrance of candy cupboards at Williams Candy in Coney Island. He performs the store’s fictional proprietor in “Anora,” now up for six Academy Awards.
Billy O’Brien, a Coney Island fixture since he was 5, performs the proprietor inside the film. He nonetheless hangs out on the retailer and parks autos within the summertime. He’s inside the scene the place the store will get smashed.
“I come back out again and they busted the whole place up with the glass. I come out and I say ‘what the hell?!'” he said.
Agrapides said he purchased paid a superb amount to give up his candy retailer for the day, nonetheless had no idea the success the movie would go on to have.
“I think I shoulda got more… if I knew it was gonna be an Oscar hit,” Agrapides laughed.
Throughout the meantime — he said he’ll benefit from the extra enterprise now that they’ve Oscar-worthy highway cred.
The cast of “Anora” share pleasant behind the scenes moments from filming and what it meant to be in Brooklyn and Manhattan for manufacturing. Info 4’s Brian Price critiques.
