DeNiro Signs On as Mob Hit Man, Frankie Machine

The announcement that De Niro is set to star in Frankie Machine with Michael Mann rumored to direct had me running to the bookstore looking for the source material. The film is based on The Winter of Frankie Machine, a novel by Don Winslow. I picked up the book and devoured it, keeping in mind Mann’s new digitized visual style and De Niro as the lead.

The premise for the film (from Imdb.com) is listed as:

An ex-mob hit man (De Niro) living in rural comfort is lured back into his former profession by the scheming son of a Mafia Don.

Now, the book isn’t the script and it’s certainly not going to be the film, but it does give an indication as to what the primary building blocks of the project will be. With that in mind, I took a few notes. Some of the elements seem tailor-made for Mann as a storyteller; others (one in particular) would be unique for him. For De Niro, it’s a perfect fit.

Location: The setting is primarily San Diego, California. This is a landscape that Michael Mann knows well and can easily deliver on: the beaches of California, nightclubs, scenes in the back seats of limos, safe houses, all under the cover of night. Winslow seemed to be writing his locations with Mann in mind.

Characters: One word – Mafia. The story features a sprinkling of civilians by way of the family Frank has built over the years (ex-wife, daughter, lover), as well as Dave Hansen, an FBI agent and friend to Frank. Hansen and Machine have a grudging respect for each other, which is due, seemingly, to the individual code of honor each has toward life and work. Frankie Machine is a made man who leads a meticulous, controlled, life. Now well past 50 years old, he is a man now at peace who savors his morning egg and onion bagel. Frankie is the type of man who takes the time to roast and grind his own coffee beans, oil an old butcher’s block for months to bring it back to life, and create and nurture a fake ID (bills, rental house, etc.), just in case it’s needed. Frank was a sniper in Vietnam and learned his lessons well. If a man needed a bullet to the head, you called Frankie Machine. This is the type of character Michael Mann knows well.

Plot: Ex-mob hit man (De Niro) does favors for the son of the Mafia don only to find it’s a double-cross situation, and must now find out who wants him dead and why.

Violence: Controlled, but R-rated. This isn’t the type of violence you would find in a Scorsese film, but the gristle is there in a shotgun-to-the-face kind of way. The question is whether it happens on-screen or off. In some passages of the book, the blood spurts right off the page. But for the most part this will be no more shocking than most of Mann’s previous films.

Issue of note: Throughout the story Frank is searching his memory for who it may be that wants him dead and why. This sends him back into many, if not all, of his Mafia-related hits. The story itself is told in two parts, half present day and half in flashbacks that take him from being a teenager, through his military days, and up to present day. If the structure of the story is kept intact as a script, this would be the first film Michael Mann tells in flash-backs.

Innovation: There is an opportunity here for some very clean, seamless CGI by way of character animation. We all know what De Niro looked like at almost every age, from early his early 20's (Taxi Driver) through his 30’s and 40’s. Rather than hiring Shia LeBeouf to play an unbelievable young De Niro, why not have De Niro act the part, voice the part, and let the CGI alchemists push his age back to the proper time?

It was done seamlessly in X-Men: The Last Stand with both Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen so why not here?!? There is every reason to do so and no reason whatsoever not to. If handled in a classic, clean, manner, it would send the critics and fans alike back again and again to see the young De Niro (without the Taxi Driver Mohawk) tromping through the bush of Vietnam or putting his first bullet into a mooch that seriously deserved it, even if he was already dead (you’ll have to read the book to find out what I mean).

Conclusion: This could become the event film of 2009. This could be the De Niro film everyone has been waiting for. With Mann at the helm and if he taps into the technology available, this could become a high-water mark for both actor and director.

Thanks to Cole Drumb

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Ex-DEA Agent Sends Cease & Desist Letter to "American Gangster" Move Studio

Since American Gangster's blockbuster release in theaters, the movie has been surrounded by controversy. Billed as being based on a true story, real-life characters have spoken out against the adaptation, calling it little more than fiction.

Now, one New York City Drug Enforcement Agent is threatening to make it a legal issue, accusing Universal Pictures, the studio responsible for the flick, of making "false and defamatory statements," according to TMZ.

Gregory Korniloff, a retired NYC DEA agent, sent a cease and desist letter through his attorney to the general counsel of NBC Universal and to the president of the studio.

Korniloff is demanding a retraction of statements made in the movie. The letter claims that the movie -- which portrays the life of infamous '60s and '70s Harlem heroin dealer Frank Lucas (played by Denzel Washington) -- incorrectly states that a third of NY DEA agents were convicted on charges related to Lucas. The letter also alleges that facts in the movie are misleading including heroin being smuggled in Vietnam veteran coffins and the amount of money stolen from Lucas' home during a raid.

Korniloff was the case agent for the DEA and "personally participated in the search of Lucas' house ... and the arrest of Lucas on that same day." Korniloff's lawyer, Dominic Amorosa, says the way the movie portrays that search "destroys the reputation of honest and courageous public servants by deliberately misrepresenting the facts."

As SOHH previously reported, other real-life characters and people close to the events aren't happy with the way things were depicted in the movie.

New York-based DEA agent Joseph Sullivan said the whole thing is a pack of lies. He was at a raid on Lucas' Teaneck, N.J., home after two members of the Mafia ratted out the drug lord.

"His name is Frank Lucas and he was a drug dealer - that's where the truth in this movie ends," Sullivan said.

NBC Universal did not respond to requests for comment.

Thanks to Brandi Hopper

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Tampa's Mafia Boss Just a Working Joe?

He lives in a stucco ranch home with a well-manicured lawn on a quiet Brandon street.

For the past four years he's served as the food and beverage manager at a Mediterranean-style country club in Carrollwood.

Now 70, Vincent Salvatore LoScalzo says he's just an ordinary member of the middle class, trying to make it like the rest of us. "I'm working my tushie off," he said.

Such humdrum trappings are a far cry from LoScalzo's alleged street profile. Although LoScalzo was never successfully prosecuted for any serious crime and has regularly said he was a legitimate businessman, law enforcement agencies have, since the mid 1980s, repeatedly identified him as Tampa's Mafia kingpin.

That once meant something. Yet unlike the crime families in larger cities such as New York and Boston that are flourishing, Tampa's mob is considered almost irrelevant in 2007, said Scott Deitche, author of Cigar City Mafia: A Complete History of the Tampa Underworld, a history of the Tampa mob.

So when LoScalzo says he's just a regular Joe working for a living, he probably means it, Deitche said. "His profile has declined quite a bit in recent years," he said. "Most of the old-timers have died, so his organization has faded away. But for a time, he was recognized nationally among mobsters in other cities as the head of the Tampa organization."

LoScalzo's turf at the Emerald Greens Golf & Country Club includes a grand ballroom, poolside bar, three high-class dining rooms, and two bar and grilles.

Asked to elaborate on what his duties at the club were, LoScalzo replied: "Most of my work is office work."

The restricted membership club came under new ownership in 2003.The public faces of the project, which included millions of dollars in renovations, have been Frank Hayden and James Manley. They won permission from the County Commission three years ago to build 106 townhomes around the club. An attorney for the club, Rich Sadorf, said many other investors own the club with Hayden and Manley, but he declined to disclose them.

Sadorf said he advised Hayden and Manley not to answer questions about LoScalzo's employment because of privacy concerns.

Along with the standard golf tournament banquets and its weekly Italian night, the club recently hosted separate political fundraisers for Hillsborough County Commissioners Brian Blair and Ken Hagan.

Hagan didn't return calls, but Blair said he didn't know about LoScalzo or his history stashed in investigators' files. "I've never heard of the guy or read about him," Blair said. "I don't know who he is."

For years, LoScalzo was a top target in law enforcement circles.

He owned bars in the 1980s. One of them was Mike's Lounge and Package on Nebraska Avenue, which state alcoholic beverage records show he was forced to sell after agents charged that the bar was a trading hub for drugs and stolen property. Rather than fight the charges, a company controlled by LoScalzo sold the license in 1985 to Michael Napoli.

Napoli was arrested four years later, and pleaded guilty to using four Hillsborough bars, including Mike's Lounge, for cocaine distribution. Investigators said he headed the cocaine laundering operation in Tampa for the Trafficante crime family. He served 61/2 years in prison.

LoScalzo was never charged, but during the FBI's investigation of Napoli, informants frequently mentioned his name, according to a 1992 Times story.

Santo Trafficante Jr., widely acknowledged as the head of Tampa's Mafia for decades, died in a Houston hospital after surgery in 1987. Two years later, Broward County organized crime investigators named LoScalzo as the power behind Tampa's mob. In 1991, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement identified LoScalzo as the heir to Trafficante. "I don't know about the Mafia," LoScalzo told the Times that year. "I am a legitimate businessman."

In 1992, LoScalzo and 14 others, including the husband of then-Tampa Mayor Sandy Freedman, were charged with banking violations in an investigation of the Key Bank of Florida. The charges were dropped after it was learned investigators used wiretaps without probable cause.

What was reported on the wiretaps, however, suggested that LoScalzo had hidden interests in various bars, a violation of state beverage laws.

LoScalzo was arrested in 1994 and accused of taking part in a $300,000 scam involving oil filters. He pleaded no contest in 1997 to one count of sale of unregistered securities and was sentenced to three years of probation and 100 hours of community service. That same year, the FDLE issued another report that called LoScalzo the "reputed boss of the Trafficante crime family."

In 2000, the FBI raided ValuCar Sales and Superstar, a used car lot on Bearss Avenue owned by a man named Nelson Valdes. In 2005, Valdes was arrested and charged with grand theft, punishable by as much as 30 years in prison. The FDLE accused Valdes of directing employees to deceive Ford Motor Credit, which loaned ValuCar money to buy vehicles for its inventory.

In court, Valdes said he hired LoScalzo and paid him $104,000 as an inventory manager at ValuCar. He said he had known LoScalzo since childhood and "he never did anything illegal in front of me."

Later, Valdes helped the FBI investigate LoScalzo by wearing a concealed listening device. ValuCar is now defunct. The FBI never disclosed why it raided the Bradenton-based ValuCar or how LoScalzo factored into the investigation. Search warrants were sealed, and LoScalzo has never been charged. Former agents with the FDLE who investigated LoScalzo didn't return phone calls, either.

LoScalzo said prior charges about him are false, and he didn't want to talk about the past. "I'm working very hard," he said. "You guys are always looking for a needle in the haystack with me. If what was printed about me was true, then I wouldn't be working today."

The club's attorney, Sadorf, said the club has embarked upon an aggressive membership drive. The club's Web site touts its dining, which LoScalzo oversees, as a reason to join.

"Indulge yourself," it states, over a photo of a couple holding glasses filled with red wine.

"You will enjoy the elegance of high class dining," it says of the club's bar and grill. "With such a wide variety of drinks that you won't know where to start."

Thanks to Michael Van Sickler

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Mob Museum Obtains Almost a Million Dollars More

Las Vegas' historic downtown post office received $800,000 in new funding Monday and is also going to get help from the FBI and "Casino" author Nicholas Pileggi. And while previous city announcements have said the museum will focus on broader Las Vegas history, "including the influence of organized crime," a presentation Monday indicated that the museum's exhibits will be tightly focused on the valley's colorful Mafia past.

The Las Vegas Centennial Commission approved the funds for exhibit acquisitions and an expensive seismic retrofit. Interior refurbishing was recently completed, and there's at least two years of planning and construction left before the museum opens.

"It's a very complex project," said Nancy Deaner, manager of cultural affairs for the city of Las Vegas. "Not only is it a historic project for our community, but it has far-reaching tentacles all over the United States."

Deaner provided an overview of what the exhibits in the three-story building would cover, including:

• Las Vegas' development in the days of Prohibition and bootlegging.
• The influx of organized crime.
• How mob operations in various cities were connected.
• A guide to "following the money" from its sources through the money laundering process.
• The infamous Kefauver hearings on organized crime.

The post office building, located on Stewart Avenue next to the shuttered Lady Luck Casino, was also the city's first federal courthouse and was one of the sites of the Kefauver hearings, named for crusading U.S. senator C. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee.

Organizers recently met with FBI officials in Washington D.C. and secured a promise that the agency will locate and loan organized crime artifacts for the museum's displays. That could include photos, weapons, cars and other evidence, said Ellen Knowlton, the former head of the Las Vegas FBI office and president of 300 Stewart Ave. Corp., the nonprofit that's working with the city on the museum.

The commission approved a grant of $300,000 that the nonprofit will use to buy artifacts as they become available.

In addition, Mayor Oscar Goodman said Pileggi -- who wrote "Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas" as well as the screenplay for Martin Scorsese's 1995 film -- is willing to join the project, perhaps initially by writing a script for an introductory film. "He said whatever we need," Goodman said. "He wants to be a part of this."

Goodman, who defended organized crime figures in his pre-mayoral career as an attorney, has long championed the idea of a mob-themed museum. On Monday, he gushed again about some crowd-pleasing possibilities, including allowing visitors to purchase "mugshots" of themselves and having a recorded voice read visitors their Miranda rights as they enter the exhibits.

Projections call for the museum to attract 800,000 visitors a year and to serve as a daytime destination downtown. "I think our numbers are fairly conservative," Knowlton said, noting the popularity of the International Spy Museum in Washington D.C. That museum saw more than 1 million visitors in its first year, more than twice as many as estimates predicted.

The exhibits at the Las Vegas museum won't glorify organized crime, she said. The aim is to show the history of organized crime in America and how law enforcement worked to extract the mob's influence from gaming. "There's no other museum like this," Knowlton said.

A survey conducted last year found visitors and locals were divided about the most appealing museum topics.

More than 70 percent of the tourists polled loved the idea of a museum dedicated to organized crime.

A third of the locals in the survey, however, preferred a "vintage Vegas" theme that would look at the architecture, music and personalities that dominated the valley from 1930 through the 1950s. Only 17 percent put the organized crime emphasis in first place.

City spokeswoman Diana Paul said the museum's focus "hasn't changed."

"It's been pretty consistent as far as having the museum showcase the city's history through that period, emphasizing organized crime," she wrote in an e-mail.

Centennial commission members also voted to contribute $500,000 toward the anticipated $3.6 million bill for seismic upgrades to the 76-year-old building. The commission previously allocated $1.2 million for this part of the project, and the museum organizers will seek other grants to make up the difference.

The commission's funds come from the sale of license plates commemorating Las Vegas' 2005 centennial.

The overall preservation effort on the post office building, now dubbed POST Modern, has an estimated price tag of more than $30 million.

Thanks to Alan Choate

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Southsiders Producing/Filming Locally Mafia Drama "Chicago Overcoat" with Celebrity Talent

Indie Film “Chicago Overcoat” by Local Production Company

Attracts Celebrity Talent to its Cast

Chicago Overcoat, a feature-length crime based drama, is shooting throughout Chicago this month. The film stars veteran mob actor Frank Vincent (Goodfellas, Casino, The Sopranos) as Lou Marazano, and showcases the city and its infamous mob history.

The story takes a chilling look into what remains of the most powerful organized crime syndicate in the second half of the twentieth century. They were known as "The Outfit" and controlled the city of Chicago. Their most deadly hit man, the notorious Lou Marazano, killed several high profile officials without leaving a trace of evidence. Years later he is being pursued by the relentless Detective Ralph Maloney (Danny Goldring). With time against him, Marazano must finish the job as he struggles with old age, a splintered family, and a lifetime of regret.

Lou, played by Frank Vincent, prepares to deliver some Chicago Lightning with his Tommy Gun.

Overcoat also stars Mike Starr (Goodfellas, Dumb & Dumber) as the powerful street boss Lorenzo Galante, and Kathrine Narducci (A Bronx Tale, The Sopranos) as Marazano’s love interest. Most recently, Stacy Keach (American History X, Prison Break) joined the cast to play retired Chicago detective Ray Berkowski, and Armand Assante (Gotti, American Gangster) signed on to play mob boss Stefano D’Agnostino.

In addition to the impressive celebrity ensemble, Overcoat features a talented cast of local Chicago actors. Among them are accomplished actors Danny Goldring, who just played Grumpy in Batman: The Dark Knight, and Tim Gamble, who plays Jack Crawford opposite Daniel Baldwin in The Devil’s Dominoes. Also featured in the cast is local actor Dominic Capone, the great nephew of Al Capone. Dominic is one of the few Capone descendants who embraced the family name, but went into show business rather than the family business.

The film is being produced by Chicago based company Beverly Ridge Pictures. This is the first feature-length film for the production company known for its Shorts Collection with their premiere short The Small Assassin. Beverly Ridge Pictures consists of six recent Columbia College graduates who are trying to bring production back to Chicago: producer John W. Bosher, producer William Maursky, director Brian Caunter, production designer Phillip S. Plowden, cinematographer Kevin Moss, and casting director Chris Charles.

“We hope that audiences acknowledge the new roles for most of these actors,” says Producer John Bosher, “by casting people you’ve seen in the genre but not in this type of role. Frank Vincent has a lot of fans from ‘The Sopranos’ and ‘Goodfellas,’ but they’ve never seen him as a character with this kind of arc.” To follow the progress of Chicago Overcoat, you can check out the official Beverly Ridge Pictures website at: www.beverlyridgepictures.com. Watch out for Overcoat in theatres this Fall.

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