Nunzio 1978

Nunzio Sabatino David Proval is a grown man who moves through life with the demeanor of a child, living at home with his doting mother Morgana King and his brother James Andronica. He works as a bicycle delivery man for Angelo Joe Spinell, the neighborhood grocer, and what sets Nunzio apart is his vivid fixation on superhero motifs. He wears sweatshirts adorned with a shield and a bold capital “N” in the Superman style, completes the look with a cape, and frequently propels himself across the rooftops of his quiet block, as if the city itself could use a little caped rescue.

In the fabric of his days, the world feels simultaneously friendly and intimidating. Younger children in the area are drawn to Nunzio’s odd charm, especially Georgie Glenn Scarpelli, whom Nunzio believes will one day step into his role as the neighborhood do-gooder. Yet Nunzio faces persistent bullying from a street gang led by JoJo Vincent Russo, who mock his attire and exploit his vulnerabilities, making the streets feel like a battleground where kindness can be misread as weakness.

Across a series of vignettes, Nunzio’s longings and trials unfold in tangled emotional colors. He becomes smitten with Michelle Tovah Feldshuh, a pretty bakery employee, but heartbreak crashes in when he learns she is married with a child. After this disappointment, he starts refusing tips for groceries, convinced that true heroism should come without pay, mirroring his cape-and-courage ethos, a stance that worries his mother and brother. The weight of his choices grows heavier when he delivers groceries to Maryann Theresa Saldana, JoJo’s sometimes girlfriend, and she coerces him into a sexual encounter, leaving both of them unsettled and uneasy.

The moral tremors push Nunzio toward spiritual counsel, and a fiery priest cannot easily offer solace; he speaks with blunt, accusatory language about damnation, which only deepens Nunzio’s sense of guilt and fear that he is harming the people he loves. The burden of feeling like a burden compounds as he begins to neglect his job at Angelo’s, and a frayed argument with Jamesie nudges him toward walking away from home with a packed bag, into a city that seems both rumored and real in its dangers.

As he wanders, the confrontation with JoJo and his gang returns, yet Nunzio finds a critical moment of courage by hiding in a basement of an apartment building. In their pursuit, the basement catches fire, and the blaze races upward toward the stairwells and the roof. Nunzio, who was on the roof at the moment the fire erupts, descends the fire escape and moves from window to window to warn the tenants that danger is near. Most of the residents escape safely, but one occupant remains trapped—a woman with leg braces. Nunzio climbs back up to reach her, and she warns that she has a sleeping child. He returns, lifts the baby, and carries the two of them to safety, swaddling the infant in a makeshift bundle fashioned from his jacket and rope.

With the fire intensifying and the ladder unable to reach the roof, Nunzio improvises one last act of improvisational heroism. He descends to a lower landing and, after securing the infant to his back, leaps from the roof for a safer descent. Firefighters arrive in time to pull him and the rescued child from danger, and the memory of his selfless deed lingers.

A few days later, the neighborhood gathers on the building’s stoop for a commemorative photograph. Standing together with the mother and the child he saved, Nunzio and those around him hold a newspaper headline that calls him “Superman,” a label that captures both his fragile dream of being a savior and the real, human courage he showed when it mattered most.