Private Screening of “The Final Fight” Highlights Guardianship Reform

How much can one work of art rewire the public’s understanding of an overlooked, and perhaps misunderstood, aspect of the legal system—especially one that affects thousands of New York City residents?

Community Board 8 member and screenwriter-director Todd Stein soon intends to find out, after hosting a private screening of “The Final Fight”—a short film that dramatizes a defining personal battle to help his late father avoid court-appointed guardianship—in the East Village on August 31.

Our Town attended the lively event, which included rolling out the red carpet and a post-screening Q/A with the cast, at Stein’s invitation. It’s worth noting that the film bears some striking similarities to the real-life family battle that consumed Stein in 2018, which was recounted in a long-form New York Times piece published in 2022.

Stein’s father Marvin, a former prizewinning boxer and health club mogul who hailed from the streets of Brooklyn, lived a rather cinematic life. Mob affiliates and celebrities patronized his gyms, with the former even paying him to throw fights during his days in the ring.

Yet as Marvin Stein aged, with the younger Stein moving across the country to become a film agent, he found himself living in a basement. He had married his third wife and become distant from Todd Stein’s mother.

It was then, the story goes, that Todd’s stepmother angled to push the legendary boxer into guardianship—which would have substantially stripped him of autonomy when it came to his own affairs, financial and otherwise. Without going into any detail, it’s fair to say that what happened next seemed fit for a thriller flick.

Cue up the new film, which could be described as just that. Josh Davis (“Law and Order SVU” and “Les Misérables”) plays a version of Stein himself, known as “Scott Cohen” in the movie, while Cohen’s father is portrayed by voice actor Tom Hair.

Trini Alvarado, a friend of Stein’s who is known (among other things) for playing the character of Meg in 1994’s “Little Women” film adaptation, plays a fictionalized take on the reporter that broke the story.

In a previous Our Town profile on the spring shooting of the film, which Stein hopes will now light up the festival circuit, he described the project as an exploration of how a loved one’s “guardianship” process can transform one’s personal conception of responsibility.

“I changed my life, and I realized that what was important was putting family first, and realizing that my dad needed me. We had somewhat been estranged in a lot of ways, because of circumstances,” he said then.

Stein echoed this sentiment at the August 31 screening, which was held at the Angelika East, located on Second Avenue and E. 14th Street in the East Village.

“‘The Final Fight’ is the fight that you can’t walk away from, the one where what you’re fighting for matters more than whether you think you can win. For me, that fight was my father, Marvin Stein,” he said in emotional introductory remarks.

Alvarado told Our Town that Stein, who she describes as having a “pure heart,” is “trying to spread a very important message right now.” Indeed, she added, what she had learned about the guardianship system from watching the film had left her “a little bit freaked out.”

Hair, who was tasked with channeling Marvin Stein, spoke about being drawn to the role for its “meaningful” message. “If I can help forward that cause, don’t tell anybody, but I’d probably do it for free,” he told Our Town.

After the film concluded, it became clear that such a cause is also being heartily taken up in the halls of power. Local City Council Member Virginia Maloney, who attended the screening alongside Council Member Frank Morano (Staten Island), described “The Final Fight” as the product of making an “idea” into a “reality.”

Morano is spearheading a bipartisan Council bill, which has garnered support from Maloney and 16 other representatives, that would create a commission in order to “identify challenges, share best practices, and develop expert recommendations on ways to improve the provision and receipt of Article 81 guardianship services in New York City.”

In extended remarks, Morano noted that he had no personal family involvement with the guardianship system. Rather, he said, he had heard countless “horror stories” about it from listeners during a previous stint as a late-night radio host.

To that end, Morano said, he believed that “The Final Fight” was a “masterful piece of filmmaking” and “an incredible story that needs to be told.”