Kate Katzman’s path from Delray Beach to Burt Reynolds, Robert De Niro and FLIFF

With cameras rolling, in her first scene on her first day of shooting her first major motion picture — that’s how Delray Beach resident Kate Katzman first met Robert De Niro.

She was shocked to see him — “It was little bit intimidating,” Katzman says, laughing — but that was part of the filmmaker’s plan.

In “The Comeback Trail,” a rowdy comedy set in 1970s Hollywood, Katzman appears onscreen like an exotic flower, a world of dusty, dysfunctional men suddenly brightened by something beautiful, forceful and fresh.

The men in the scene are interviewing would-be film directors for a cheap western they want to make (a movie within a movie) when Megan (Katzman) walks in. She is a nervous novice, and even more out of place for being a female director, a rarity in the ’70s.

Katzman’s real-life unease at first meeting De Niro and co-stars Tommy Lee Jones and Zack Braff as cameras rolled is exactly what “Comeback Trail” writer-director George Gallo wanted as a baseline for Megan’s emerging strength.

“I thought that whatever nervousness she might bring into that room might actually help the character and help the movie,” says Gallo, whose credits include “Bay Boys,” “Midnight Run” (with De Niro) and well-regarded indie films “29th Street” and “Local Color.”

“I never told her, but that was the idea. I’m gonna throw her into this and I’m gonna watch her either sink or swim. I’ve got to tell you, she walked in there and she stood right up against everybody and she really delivered,” Gallo says.

De Niro: ‘I’m in'

“The Comeback Trail” is the opening-night feature for the 2020 Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, with socially distanced screenings in two theaters, Nov. 5-6 at Savor Cinema in Fort Lauderdale and Cinema Paradiso in Hollywood.

Also starring Morgan Freeman, the film follows a struggling movie producer and his sidekick (De Niro and Braff) who are indebted to a crime boss (Freeman). To pay him off, a desperate De Niro devises an insurance scam that involves shooting a fake movie and the “accidental” death of an aging western-movie star (Jones) during a stunt.

“The Comeback Trail” had its world premiere on Oct. 9 at the Monte Carlo Film Festival and is scheduled to open in theaters on Dec. 18.

On Thursday, Nov. 5, Katzman will receive FLIFF’s 2020 Star on the Horizon Award onstage at Savor Cinema before a 7:15 p.m. screening of “The Comeback Trail.” Katzman also will take questions from the audience following the film, then join a post-screening party nearby at the River House. Tickets for the film and party cost $75 (members $60) at FLIFF.com.

At the 7:15 p.m. Nov. 6 screening at Cinema Paradiso, Gallo will appear onscreen to introduce the film and the audience will be served pre-show champagne and appetizers. Tickets cost $50 (members $35).

“The Comeback Trail” is a remake of a mostly unseen 1974 film of the same name — it starred Chuck McCann and Buster Crabbe — that Gallo has been trying to revive for years.

Friends since he wrote the 1988 De Niro-Charles Grodin buddy picture “Midnight Run,” Gallo and De Niro were on the phone one day when the actor asked if Gallo had a script that might work for him.

“He said, 'George, do you have anything funny? I just did ‘The Irishman’ for eight months, playing a psychopath, and I want to cleanse the palate, you know?'” says Gallo, who sent him the “Comeback Trail” script. “He called me a few days later and said ‘This thing’s hysterical. I’m in.’”

With a story that echoes Mel Brooks' “The Producers,” “The Comeback Trail” balances despairing tension and the absurd. Characters played by De Niro and Freeman share their love of movies under a cloud of impending menace. Braff is an earnest and lovably clueless foil. Jones is a revelation as a broken and suicidal cowboy looking for redemption. Many of the funniest scenes go to his horse.

“[De Niro] is playing a very real person, even though the movie is pretty ridiculous. His character is coming from a very desperate place. He’s essentially involved in a murder. You have to believe that he’s totally desperate to do it, and only a real actor could pull that off,” Gallo says.

Whim and a prayer

The mother of an 8-year-old son and a 4-year-old daughter, Katzman, 37, is a former Miami model who made the leap to acting “on a whim,” with the help of the late Burt Reynolds.

A mutual friend introduced her to the South Florida legend in Jupiter, where he taught acting classes for more than a decade at the Burt Reynolds Institute for Film & Theatre. Reynolds gave her a script and told her to come back a week later to perform it.

Everything was riding on that scene, Katzman says.

“If he had told me it’s, you know, a fun pastime and that it’s never going anywhere, I never would have pursued this,” she says, recalling that Reynolds told her she had “chops.”

Katzman says she later was accepted to Reynolds' master acting classes.

Among several other Katzman projects near release is the crime thriller “Adverse,” with Mickey Rourke, Penelope Ann Miller, Sean Astin and Lou Diamond Phillips.

Katzman was among a group who attended Christmas and birthday parties at “Mr. Reynolds'” house and one of the chorus of locals with unlimited reverence for Reynolds as a performer, mentor and person.

“He was just the nicest guy. He really loved his students,” she says. “To this day if I feel like I’m having trouble with a scene … I ask Mr. Reynolds his take on things, for his help. He’s kind of like my little angel up in heaven.”

Katzman says her experience on the set of “The Comeback Trail,” shot in the New Mexico desert, was its own master class.

“Robert De Niro is very mannerly, very soft-spoken, just super nice. I wasn’t brave enough to go and ask him for acting tips, but I tried to pay attention to things that he did. It just seemed so natural and so easy for him,” she says.

“Tommy Lee Jones is incredibly smart. He just knows everything about filmmaking and the specifics of what camera to use and what lighting. It was just such a magnificent experience.”

Katzman introduced the film at the Monte Carlo Film Festival and is excited about doing it in South Florida, where she has lived since her family moved from Pennsylvania to Palm City when she was 7.

“It’s just amazing, even more so now, with the way the world is. I was afraid I wasn’t going to be seeing this film on the big screen at all. To be seeing it in Fort Lauderdale, which is an area that means a lot to me, where I’ve spent a lot of time, it’s just fantastic,” Katzman says.

“Mr. Reynolds loved the Fort Lauderdale Film Festival and always had such amazing things to say about it. So I’m sure he would be very proud that I was getting an award there,” she says.

The 35th annual Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival includes more than 170 films on screens from Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood to Dania Beach and Davie Nov. 5-22. Tickets to individual FLIFF screenings are available only in advance. To purchase tickets and passes, survey a complete list of films, schedules and locations, call 954-525-3456 or visit FLIFF.com.

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