Philly’s Four Seasons Total Landscaping is getting its own documentary, a year after that infamous press conference
A documentary on 'Four Seasons Total Landscaping,' where Rudy Giuliani held a press conference four days after the 2020 presidential election, is coming to MSNBC in November.
It’s not often that a family-owned landscaping business gets to host a news conference in the wake of a presidential election, complete with baseless conspiracy theories, a story swirling about a mistaken venue and, of course, copious finger-pointing and accusations.
But Four Seasons Total Landscaping, a Northeast Philadelphia landscaping business, did just that when Rudy Giuliani, then-President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, held a news conference in the business’ parking lot Nov. 7, 2020, four days after the presidential election.
Now, a documentary spotlighting the humble landscaping company is coming to television, exactly a year after the off-the-rails conference that shot it into international fame.
Four Seasons Total Documentary, set to premiere Nov. 7 on MSNBC, focuses on the landscaping business that inadvertently became the site of Trump’s last stand, as workers in the Pennsylvania Convention Center tallied some of the country’s final votes that made Pennsylvania a crucial swing state.
Giuliani, in a hastily planned news conference, disputed the still incoming results of the election that favored President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Giuliani’s rants were soon met with cars honking their horns as they passed the lot, shouting Biden and Harris’ names.
The documentary itself will focus more on the business, owned by Marie Siravo and run by her son Michael Siravo, daughter-in-law Melissa Siravo and Sean Middleton, and the rise from relative obscurity to a battleground of sorts in the contentious 2020 presidential election.
For the first few weeks after the infamous news conference, Four Seasons Total Landscaping was bombarded by offer after offer, including reality shows and films that centered on Giuliani’s conference and the political intrigue that characterized the 2020 presidential election, said Middleton, the company’s director of sales.
» READ MORE: Four Seasons Total Landscaping is putting on another rock show. It’s indoors.
It wasn’t until a month after the conference when the team began speaking with Christopher Stoudt, a director who convinced them that his film would be about the company and the people that helped build it, not the politics.
“There were conversations that we had where the opening topic was hitting us for information from the political angle and that’s something we weren’t really interested in because we’re not very political people,” said Middleton. “Chris seemed to actually want to tell the story of the company and how this landed in our laps and the opportunities we created after it all happened.”
Stoudt’s sincerity swayed the team and they agreed to the documentary, said Middleton.
Much of the notoriety surrounding the news conference and the landscaping business came from the initial mystery around how Trump’s team settled on Four Seasons Total Landscaping for what was essentially a last-ditch effort to cry foul as the election veered toward a Biden-Harris win.
Owing to a quickly deleted tweet by Trump on Nov. 7 that simply said “Lawyers News Conference Four Seasons, Philadelphia, 11 a.m.,” many believed that the decision to host the conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping was yet another blunder in a campaign often beset by mistakes and frenzied planning.
Many theorized that Trump’s team had been trying to book the luxury Four Seasons Hotel in Center City, but were relegated to the similarly named landscaping business because of poor planning.
But the New York Times reported that Giuliani and Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski had always planned to have the news conference in Northeast Philadelphia, anticipating a better welcome than in other parts of the city. Trump misunderstood the location, thinking it was the Four Seasons Hotel, according to the report.
» READ MORE: No, not that Four Seasons. How Team Trump’s news conference ended up at a Northeast Philly landscaping firm.
Middleton previously told The Inquirer that he had received a call the morning of Nov. 7 from Trump’s staff, asking if the company could host a news conference. About an hour later, after Middleton and Michael Siravo met with Trump’s staff at the company’s office, the deal was set, with a news conference scheduled at their landscaping business for later that morning.
The new tweet from Trump announced the specifics: “Big news conference today in Philadelphia at Four Seasons Total Landscaping — 11:30am!”
The rumors of a bungled news conference were enough to set social media aflame with roasts and jokes, with people gleefully imagining the damage control plan Trump’s campaign needed to throw together as the prospect of speaking from a parking lot dawned on them.
Since the infamous news conference, the landscaping business has become a tourist destination, with Siravo and her team capitalizing on the business’ fame, selling T-shirts and other memorabilia from the State Road headquarters. Visitors from all over the world have traveled to the kelly green-painted building to get a photo in front of a place where history was made, for better or worse.
While Middleton and the team haven’t yet seen the final cut of the documentary, they’re excited to see how it tells one of the more bizarre stories in recent Philadelphia lore. Not one to let another opportunity go unused, Middleton and the team have already begun getting estimates for a potential screening party of the documentary.
The potential venue? Where else? The Four Seasons Hotel, in Center City, said Middleton. Middleton is thinking a black-tie affair.