A kind of unknown legend within the film industry, you’ll have probably seen vagrant Craig Castaldo — known affectionately as Radioman due to the radio he keeps on string round his neck — in the background on many films set in or around New York. British filmmaker Mary Kerr charts the rise and life of Radio, from his entrée into movie world via a drunken conversation with Bruce Willis on the set of The Bonfire Of The Vanities to his talismanic status within the movie world, appearing in over 100 movies (he has a relatively large appearance in Scorsese’s Shutter Island).
There are A list contributions (George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Robin Williams — who should definitely play Radio in the film of his life), not all of them complimentary (James Gandolfini, Ricky Gervais) and a strange sojourn to LA that delivers some of Tinseltown’s harsher realities. But for the most part what you are left with is an engaging, if hardly groundbreaking, portrait of a likeable, gentle soul.