Monday, August 22, 2011

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:


“UPTOWN BRINGS WASHINGTON HEIGHTS
BACK TO LIFE”

New York, New York / United States / August 22, 2011
The riveting, pulse-pounding new cable series Uptown has the potential to be to New York City’s Washington Heights what Scarface is to Miami, what The Wire is to Baltimore. Creator/producer Rayroq Acosta has teamed up with director/producer TJ Allan of Studio 530 to envision the explosive Uptown as a seven-year dramatic exploration of Acosta’s neighborhood.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Heights was the cocaine capital of the world, led by a group of notoriously dangerous and colorful characters. Acosta knows the real story of Washington Heights, one that has never been fully told before.
“I grew up in Washington Heights,” Acosta, a 20-year veteran of the music and entertainment industry, says. “And I still know a lot of guys, so…”
Uptown the series has been percolating inside Acosta for 15 years, but it wasn’t until he was introduced to director, producer, and photographer Allan that he was ready to put his gritty tale of the mean streets of Washington Heights on-screen.
“We hit it off instantly,” Allan, who runs the 22,000-square-foot production facility Studio 530 in Yonkers, New York, says of their first meeting. “We shared the same vision of what Uptown could be.”
The two quickly began assembling the cast and crew, beginning with Harlem-born screenwriter Paris Qualles, who was nominated for an Emmy for the HBO film The Tuskegee Airmen and is a two-time winner of the Humanitas Prize, for the television movies A Raisin in the Sun and The Color of Friendship, among many other credits. And composer and record producer Zack Hemsey has signed on as music creative director for the exciting project; Hemsey has built his reputation composing the music for trailers for such big-time films as Inception, The Town, and Robin Hood.
Acosta and Allan discovered actor Ivan Goris at an audition and immediately knew they had their Ruben, a young Dominican in the middle of all the drugs and violence that dominated the Heights thirty years ago. Supermodel and actress Shannon Rusbuldt Fredo, a Tommy Hilfiger favorite, stars as Lazzaro’s love interest, with Sopranos veteran Dominic “Uncle Junior” Chianese rounding out the cast.
Shortly after filming began, Acosta knew that he had picked the right time, and the right people, to get the series going.
“When I first saw what Tracy was shooting, I said, ‘This is it,’” he explains. “My dream was becoming a reality.” (You can get a taste of the action by watching the teaser for the series at www.uptownseries.com.)
With Uptown, Acosta is dreaming big. He and Allan have already laid out a seven-year plan for the series, with multiple arcs to keep things fresh, promising lots of surprises. Acosta’s background in the music business is helping create a monster soundtrack that will shake things up even further.

“This project is moving much faster than I thought it would,” Acosta says. “My phone hasn’t stopped ringing. The Heights is ready to show the world what it’s made of.”



Source: http://uptownseries.blogspot.com/