Cosa Nostra News

For one brief moment in 1996, it seemed he was back.....The coiffure, the swagger, the scowl, the air of menace, threats, and schemes. The wit, the philosophizing....But John Gotti had been sitting in a 7-by-8-foot cell in the maximum security wing of the Federal Penitentiary in Marion, Ill., serving a life sentence for murder and racketeering since 1992. (He died serving that sentence in 2002.) Armand Assante last weekend in Atlantic City. Photo by Barry Brown. Armand Assante didn't so much play John Gotti in the two-hour HBO movie Gotti (which was based on  Gotti: Rise and Fall by Jerry Capeci and Gene Mustain, plus FBI tapes and court transcripts) as serve as a vessel for the mobster's reincarnation. Assante achieved something remarkable  in the movie (and his portrayal certainly bested John Travolta's more recent attempt, in our book anyways).  ''I did a tremendous amount of homework.'' Assante said of his preparation for the role in an interview with th...

UPDATE AT END:  Fiore Films, LLC  is trying to keep the publicity machine running for its yet-unnamed John Gotti project by reporting that it has signed with ICM to represent the film. What is missing is the meat and potatoes: Who is going to star in the film? Hopefully, it won't be a re-working of HBO's Gotti , which starred the great Armand Assante (probably the highest-profile mob character actor working today) and was supposedly made with help from Gotti's relatives -- as will Fiore's project. HBO's Gotti was also based on strong source material, the key to why it is pretty decent: the Jerry Capeci/Gene Mustain book , Gotti: Rise and Fall. However, Junior wasn't even a character in the Assante film, so hopefully we're in for something new -- and something more than a hagrio-pic (a word I think I just invented); in other words, a biopic that turns the character into a saint rather than portraying him realistically. With Junior involved we have to won...