Gotti Jr thinks new movie about his father is too violent
Junior Gotti has a reel beef with the upcoming movie about his murderous mob boss dad: “Way too much violence.”
“When Hollywood sees a mob movie it has to be a bucket of blood, not family,” the godfather’s son told The Post. “If Hollywood gets the movie 70 percent correct, I’ll be thrilled.”
Still, the Mafia scion said John Travolta, who stars in “Gotti” as the infamous Gambino crime family boss, “acted the sh-t out of the film.” While John Gotti Jr. hasn’t seen the final cut of the beleaguered biopic, whose Dec. 15 release was indefinitely postponed last week, he was on the set for nine of the 27 days of shooting.
“The days I was there, John hit the ball out of the park,” Junior said.
He says the film did not stick to the narrative of his 585-page book, “Shadow of My Father,” from which it was adapted.
Gotti said the original screenplay was a “monster” 189 pages about his father’s “blood family,” which would have meant a four- or five-hour movie to get it right. “The violence would have been appropriately staggered,” he said.
Now the blood gushes in a condensed 1-hour, 50-minute flick.
The movie has had four directors, including Barry Levinson, Joe Johnston and Nick Cassavetes and now, “Entourage” alum Kevin Connolly, who Gotti calls a “Long Island guy who grew up not far from the Gotti stronghold.”).
Junior said the Cassavetes version was “killings by the bucket,” including one fictitious scene with the Teflon Don “pulling up to a construction site with a dead guy in the backseat with a ‘Colombian necktie,’” a reference to the brutal throat-slashing M.O. of the drug cartels.
Junior said Cassavetes was an “OK guy,” but he “failed miserably” at re-writing the screenplay.
“To me it was ‘Jason meets Goodfellas.’ It just wasn’t the story that we had written,” he said.
Gotti said Levinson toned down some of the violence and the final result is a combination of the first and last screenplays, bloodier than Junior hoped for, but “less than what Hollywood wants it to be.” He said Travolta addressed his concerns about violence and that he was the “one constant” during filming.
He says Travolta “was so sure of his performance” that he negotiated a buy-back clause with the studio, Lionsgate, and is now activating it to give the movie its “proper respect.”
Gotti said that contrary to reports last week, the biopic wasn’t whacked by Lionsgate, but that the film’s producers, led by Travolta, sought wider distribution and bought the film back with the help of financier Edward Walson, whose resume includes five Broadway plays and eight films, including Woody Allen’s “Wonder Wheel.”
Gotti said Travolta invited Walson and his group for a private screening and Walson was “blown away.”
The new investors are looking to roll out the movie in May at the Cannes Film Festival.
Junior said now “Gotti” will no longer have to stare down the barrel of the “Star Wars” blockbuster during the holiday movie season.
Asked to sum up his dealings with Tinseltown, Gotti said, “There was a hell of a lot more honor in the street.
“When you shake somebody’s hand and give your word — you have to honor it — or else. In Hollywood, there is no ‘or else.’”
Meanwhile Junior says he is hard at work on a new project, a book and documentary called WITSEC Mafia, which profiles former mob turncoats who commit crimes following life in the Witness Protection Program.
https://nypost.com/2017/12/09/gotti-jr-thinks-upcoming-biopic-on-dad-is-too-violent/
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