Director: Forget What You've Heard About 'Gotti' Cast

By Ed Scarpo
Apart from John Travolta, it seems, all the other actors said to be part of the "Gotti" film apparently are not.

That is according to Barry Levinson, who is directing and writing the film, in a story posted on the U.K.'s Guardian.

"I told 'em when I got involved, I got to write the screenplay first. I can't write to a previously announced cast. I guess I could bullshit you, but I'm not going to entertain every name bandied about," he said in the article.

"Look, Travolta is Gotti. That's confirmed. It's hard to do the Gotti film without Gotti. There are certain things you understand, and you write to that, but I can't deal with any of the other components until the script is done."

Nevertheless, Levinson does seem enthusiastic. "I met with John Gotti Jr. [Gotti's son], and the conversations I had with him gave me insights into the crime family. I see it as an opportunity to do something more than just knocking out a mob movie."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular This Week

Conclusion Of Testimony Of Salvatore (Sammy The Bull) Gravano: When The Bull Was The Shooter

By Ed Scarpo
Image
The final installment touches on how James (Jimmy Brown) Failla (pronounced FYE-yal-lah) provided the first inkling that John Gotti and the rest of the Gambino family administration were seriously screwed after the Gambino capo told them how, when he went before a grand jury, he was asked if he had ever visited an apartment above the Ravenite. From left: Joe Butch, John Gotti, Jimmy Brown (in June 1984). Jimmy Brown, who died in 1999, was a senior statesman in the Gambino crime family , a powerful capo who for more than 30 years helmed the Association of Trade Waste Removers of Greater New York, the largest private garbage-haulers' trade group in New York City. Law enforcement first noticed the Brooklyn born Failla when he became driver and bodyguard for Carlo Gambino after Gambino took over the crime family following his orchestration of the 1957 murder of his predecessor, Albert Anastasia. Gambino put Failla in charge of the Gambino family's garbage-industry interests, and F
Read more

Judge Denies Compassionate Release Request For Reputed Former Genovese Consiglieri Bobby Manna

By Ed Scarpo
Image
UPDATED US District Judge Peter G. Sheridan denied the recent compassionate release filing for reputed former Genovese consiglieri Louis (Bobby) Manna, calling his criminal efforts "extremely serious and heinous." Louis (Bobby) Manna; picture source . Manna, 91, who once upon a time held court at Casella's Restaurant , the base of operations from which he supposedly helped run the Genovese crime family's Garden State operations, has been imprisoned since 1987. He was convicted and sentenced to 80 years in prison.  His crimes included plotting to murder John Gotti and John's older bother Gene and ordering the 1977 murder of Frank Bok Chung Chin, an electronics expert who agreed to testify for the government, and the 1987 execution of Irwin (The Fat Man) Schiff, a 350-pound mobbed-up businessman/con artist who was hit while dining at Upper East Side restaurant Bravo Sergio. Manna's attorney Jeremy Iandolo noted in court filings that Manna has Parkinson's dis
Read more

Hoodwinked: Restaurateur on Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares Was a Mobster

By Ed Scarpo
Image
Peter (Peter Pasta) Pellegrino, formerly of the Babylon, New York restaurant Peter’s Italian Restaurant, really is -- or was -- a gangster. Gordon gives a pep talk. Peter is ready for action..... The once-promising Bonanno crime family member who appeared in Kitchen Nightmares now calls himself a brokester . And the Bonanno crime family, with which he was once affiliated has disowned him. So has the rest of New York's Cosa Nostra, according to FBI documents and Peter Pasta himself. But before all that he appeared on an episode of Kitchen Nightmares in which he acted very much like the mobster he allegedly was trying to become around the time of filming. (See Peter's Italian Restaurant menu here .) Back then Peter Pasta was an up-and-coming Bonanno associate who "earned" $15 grand a week from bookmaking. At the time, he also owned two boats that he'd park in a pricey nearby Babylon harbor called Great South Bay. Gang Land News's Je
Read more

The Mob's Underground Railroad: How Allie Boy Persico Survived On The Lam For Seven Years

By Ed Scarpo
Image
In 1987, reputed Colombo boss Carmine Persico knew that, short of his lawyers one day cooking up a miracle, he would in all likelihood be spending the rest of his life in prison. He had been convicted in  two separate trials: the Mafia Commission trial and a separate racketeering trial involving the Colombo family's operations. (Persico died in 2019 at age 85 after serving 32 years of that 136-year prison sentence following his two convictions.) Allie Boy Persico was on the run for seven years. The cases were separate, but overlapped, the common denominator being FBI surveillance recordings of Colombo soldier Ralph Scopo’s conversations, which alerted the Feds to the initial evidence that would help them build the Commission Case. Scopo was the bagman in a large-scale ongoing racket involving shaking down concrete contractors at major construction projects. As the president of the Cement and Concrete Workers District Council of the Laborers' International Union of North America
Read more