I was only about 7 or 8 when I caught my first glimpse of Tony Buba, as an extra wearing a sombrero in “Dawn of the Dead”. “I just wanted to be able to see myself in the movie.” Last year Alex Lei and I made a pilgrimage to Pittsburgh PA, more specifically to Braddock PA to interview Tony, not about my favorite movie since I was in 3rd grade (we saw the Monroeville Mall and the Christian Stavrakos’ bust of George Romero, before its well-publicized closure), but about Tony’s art, specifically some of the finest works of non-fiction and meta-fiction ever made in the country.
Tony was described as a regional filmmaker and given access to a lot of the world’s backrooms because of his talent and the eccentricities of his background (his last name alone granted him entry into a program when he was younger – evidently someone just had to know what a “Buba” looked like). While Tony was cataloguing the fortunes of Braddock, his brother Pat was making friends with Thelma Schoonmaker, which got him gigs editing “Casino” and “Heat,” which in turn lead to his final credits, working for Al Pacino on his Salomé project, having become the actor’s favorite editor.
Tony thus had a window into how Hollywood worked via his brother and chose to stay away. Even working for his oldest collaborator, George Romero, became more of a slog when his budgets increased. He didn’t want to just make fantasy; he wanted to apply it to the lives of every day people, to give Braddock the fullness of cinematic empathy.
It’s thus doubly shameful that Tony’s sole fiction feature is not just completely unheralded it’s basically completely unseen. Even die-hard fans of his haven’t seen it. I had to get a copy straight from the director’s hands. I want to dedicate this work not just to Tony’s tireless efforts to help Braddock in its many hours of need, but to his lovely wife Jan, whom we had the pleasure to briefly meet on our trip to their home, and to Pat, who died of cancer in 2018, and to everyone who can’t quit their Pittsburgh accent, the sweetest sound in the world. To everyone who traded better fortunes to help out where they can make a difference.
