Joe Lo Truglio’s Movie Career Is REALLY Getting in the Way of His Sports Fandom

Joe Lo Truglio's movie has a problem. It keeps premiering on top of the biggest sports moments of his year.

He walked Rich through it, and the timing is almost too good. The film premiered at Sundance on January 25th, which happened to be the night of the NFC Championship between the Rams and Seahawks. The game kicked off as the movie started in the Eccles theater, a 1,200-seat room in Park City. Lo Truglio decided to stand in the back and double-screen it, since he had not seen the finished cut yet.

That is when it went sideways. He looked down at his phone, saw Wollan pick up a taunting penalty, and the next thing he knew Puka Nacua was hauling in a touchdown. He nearly screamed and ruined the movie from the back of the house. Then they pulled him up for the Q&A two minutes before the film ended, so he sat through the entire panel with no idea what was happening in the game. The Sundance crowd, not exactly a sports crowd, did not share his pain. He had to walk off afterward and find out the depressing news on his own.

Flash forward to this June, and it happened again. The movie premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on the night of game four of the Knicks. The film started at 8:00, and the score was not looking good. He sat through it, checking. There was a Q&A. Still not doing well. He was with Ken, an enormous Knicks fan, who shrugged that he does not run the team and it is not his fault.

Then the night turned. They headed to the after-party, which started around halftime, and there was a TV in the room. Little by little the crowd drifted toward that screen. And the most joyous New York experience Lo Truglio has had in a long time exploded right there at the party.

That kicked off a four-day sports bender. The next day he caught a Mets matinee against the Cardinals and got a win, which he noted is roughly an under-.500 proposition this season. Then he flew back to Los Angeles on the morning of the 12th to take his son to the United States and Paraguay match, an incredible game with full World Cup fever in the building, Brazil knotting one up with an equalizer along the way. And the day after that, a Saturday, he was at his house jumping around with his son as the Knicks, after 53 years, finally brought it home.

"It was an incredible four days of sports for me," Lo Truglio said. He also walked away with a highly successful, fun movie that kicked all of this off back in January. The sports fandom and the film career are at war. He is somehow winning both.