Three music industry veterans are getting a chance to flex new creative muscles thanks to the upcoming inspirational film The Thursday Night Club: Legendary rock drummer/songwriter Carmine Appice is contributing Christian songs he’s written to the film; disco icon Gloria Gaynor opens a new chapter as an actress; and award-winning New York radio personality Valerie Smaldone makes her bow as a feature film director.
“They told me what it was about, and I loved the whole idea of it,” Gaynor tells Billboard of the film, which is slated for a November release. Known for her signature Hot 100-topping anthem “I Will Survive,” the two-time Grammy winner portrays Dr. Poitier, a doctor overseeing a bone marrow patient. “The basic message is giving back. The film is about recognizing that humankind is a family, and we need to begin to act like that.”
The Thursday Night Club is about five college friends who meet an inspirational man whose legacy of giving inspires them to change their lives, with each character seeing a sign from God to guide them to help others. The Thursday Night Club began as a podcast before becoming a film. “Steve Manchester wrote this little novella, a Christmas story, and right around December of 2019, [Story Plant Entertainment Company] serialized it as a podcast and it did very, very well,” says Smaldone, who also serves as executive producer. “The next idea was to make The Thursday Night Club into a film, because it really resonated with the audience. Then the pandemic hit.”
In August 2020, Smaldone began working with Story Plant, a publishing company launched in 2008 that has expanded into podcasts, films and other media. A five-time Billboard Award winner and New York radio legend who previously held the No. 1 spot hosting middays on WLTW, Smaldone began producing a docu-series on how Americans responded to COVID. “That was my first production with them. We were developing new product, but we really wanted to get back to The Thursday Night Club,” she says. “I became executive producer on the film, but as it was developing our director had to leave for other projects. He could not fulfill his obligation. So, literally right before we started shooting, I stepped into the role of director and went up to New Milford, Connecticut, where we all hunkered down for a pretty cold March [and shot] the film in three weeks.”
Gloria Gaynor, Raquel Jean-Louis, Thomas Koobatian in ‘The Thursday Night Club.’
The Thursday Night Club will begin airing Nov. 1 on Pure Flix Entertainment. Plans to air on other streaming networks were being discussed at press time, and the film will also be licensed to churches and faith-based institutions. Story Plant will also offer a companion workbook based on the principles of the film for churches and other institutions to use as an educational tool. “The workbook pulls principles from the film based on the Bible where churches can use them as study guides and Sunday school conversation pieces — not only in churches, but colleges, high schools, retreats and elder care facilities,” Smaldone says. “The goal of this film is to show that there is kindness, that you should look outside of yourself. Don’t just be consumed with your career, your phone and your contacts, but how can you help somebody else? The film is about looking beyond yourself, paying it forward, simply being kind to others, and, in a larger spiritual sense, looking for signs that are around us, that guide us.”
The positive message appealed to Appice. He became involved in The Thursday Night Club when Smaldone was visiting him and his wife at their vacation home in the Caribbean and he shared new music with his longtime friend. “I’d written the song ‘Jesus Forever,’ and was playing it,” says Appice, who has worked with Ozzy Osbourne, Jeff Beck, Vanilla Fudge and Rod Stewart, the lattermost of whom he co-wrote “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?’ and “Young Turks” with.
Appice began writing faith-based songs after he experienced a medical scare. He was returning from a European tour in 2018 when the plane had to make an emergency landing routing him to a small hospital in the Azores. “Nobody spoke a lot of English and at one point, they packed my nose and they knocked me out to do it,” he says of doctors trying to stop near fatal hemorrhaging from his nose. “When I woke up in this big room, it was all black with one little light in the corner. I thought I died. I grabbed my cross and prayed to Jesus, ‘Get me out of here. Please help me’ . . . When they got me back to New York, they took out the gauze and they said 24 more hours with this gauze in my nose I would have been dead because it was infected. This was definitely God looking out for me. So I started listening to the Bible. I’m not the kind of a Christian who pushes it on people, but I pray for people.”
Now living in Florida and active in his local church, Appice’s newfound faith has inspired him to write Christian music. When Smaldone began looking for songs for the film, she reached out to Appice and he was happy to have an outlet for his songs. “I didn’t know anybody to get a Christian record deal,” says Appice, who is also continuing his rock music pursuits. “So, when Valerie called me and said, ‘You’ve got these Christian songs I know you are writing, could I hear them? Because we have a movie that I’m directing, and I’d love to maybe put them in the movie.’ I thought, ‘Okay. This is perfect!’”
The Thursday Night Club features “Jesus Forever,” “Gamechanger” and “Oh My Lord.” The veteran drummer enlisted Florida-based worship leader Rory Comtois to handle lead vocals. “I love all three of the songs because they mean something to me,” Appice says. “I go to the church every Sunday; even when I’m on the road, I watch it online.”
In addition to serving up positive music and an inspiring message, Smaldone says they are using a major plot point in the film — one of the main characters saves a child’s life through bone marrow donation — to aid a worthy organization. “We are partnering with Be the Match, which is a national bone marrow registry, to cross promote each other’s entities,” she says. “We are putting in our workbook all of the information about Be the Match, how you can register to be a donor. There’s a tremendous need for people to get on that registry because it’s hard to match people for bone marrow and stem cell donation, especially for children, and it’s really difficult to have them thrive unless they have these lifesaving elements. So, working with Be the Match is fantastic.”
Smaldone even recruited actual bone marrow donor, Michael Mushaw, to appear in the film as a donor registry executive. “I cast a young man who was not an actor,” she says. “He’s a project manager at a construction company in Connecticut, and I found him because I did a search on individuals who are bone marrow donors in Connecticut. He popped up because he had gotten a lot of press. He was a young man playing football for Central Connecticut State University, and through a program that came to his coach, they just said, ‘You guys have to get on this registry. You got to sign up.’ He swabbed with a cotton swab, and he was a match for a little girl in Virginia. NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt and USA Today picked it up. I found where he worked. I called him, I said, ‘Hey, Mike, you don’t know me, but I’m a producer/director, and I’d love for you to be in my film,’ and he’s like, ‘Okay, that’s great. I want to spread the word about bone marrow donation,’ so there’s that element that we are very proud of.”
With a screenplay by Manchester and Lou Aronica, The Thursday Night Club cast includes principals Racquel Jean-Louis as Izzy, Mae Claire as Ava, Johan Gran as Kevin, Max Katz as Randy and Amanda Talero as Jesse. “We really wanted to have a diverse, inclusive cast so we have these wonderful young actors,” Smaldone says. “We did casting through Zoom because it was still the pandemic and we couldn’t see anybody in person. They were instrumental in that The Thursday Night Club had to have chemistry. They had to be youthful. They had to have enthusiasm. I think we found the right people for the cast.”
Smaldone is enjoying her foray into film and this exciting new chapter in her career. “When I left the station at the end of 2007, I began a new journey in my life,” she says. “I decided I wanted to be a little bit more responsible for content. I didn’t want to just say words or not produce the content, but I wanted to have a creative control. I have done so many things in the last 15 years, all related to media and entertainment. I do a lot of live announcing for award shows or conferences, charitable events, but I always had this desire to be in charge, to be in control of a project. That is one of the most exciting things you can do. Seeing your project come to life and people enjoying it is very rewarding. With this film, I feel like my journey has really brought me to where I’m supposed to be. We’re doing more production and planning for the next step. But right now, my focus is on getting this film out to as many people as possible. We’re very proud of it and very excited to get this message out.”
Beyond serving up an entertaining film, Smaldone hopes they can encourage others to look for opportunities to make a difference in their communities. “We’re going to have a place on the website where you go to join The Thursday Night Club and there’s a tab where you could post your project, ‘I’m doing such and such in this community.’ That’s part of our plan.”
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