An offer we can refuse

[Photo: TNT] Gangsters in Boss of Bosses include, from left, Dayton Callie as Neil Dellacroce, Mark Margolis as Piney Armone, Chazz Palminteri as Paul Castellano and Richard Foronjy as Tommy Bilotti.

By TOM ZUCCO

© St. Petersburg Times,
published June 1, 2001

Once again a movie about the Mafia portrays Italian-Americans as lifelong criminals. And folks of Italian heritage are wondering why they must keep dealing with this tired stereotype.

A lot of older Italian-Americans, including my father, aunts and uncles, could never bring themselves to watch any of the The Godfather series. Not in theaters, not when the films went to video, not even on TV.

They didn't say exactly why; it just made them uncomfortable.

I didn't understand what made them uneasy.

But I do now.

It's not always easy, if you're a white person living in America, to understand why a black person, a Jew, an American Indian or anyone else can be deeply offended by stereotypes. It's not that you're insensitive; it's just that prejudice doesn't affect you. You can't quite make that emotional connection between some symbol or depiction and the hurt it can cause.

And then it hits home. Someone makes a gross exaggeration about your religion or ethnic background, and you get the picture.

The picture in this case is Boss of Bosses, a made-for-TV movie that airs Sunday night on TNT. According to the press release, it's "a fascinating, true account of Paul Castellano's reign as the head of the Gambino crime family."

That's a stretch that could reach cross the Grand Canyon.

But more than that, Boss of Bosses is a movie that might make a lot of Italian-Americans finally throw up their hands and say, "Enough already." It romanticizes an ugly person, employing every tired stereotype in the book along the way.

The movie depicts Castellano, played by Chazz Palminteri, as some sort of bad boy CEO, a self-made millionaire who wants to make the mob legitimate, a strong family man who favored the Wall Street Journal over the the Daily Racing Form and negotiation over brutality.

"No drugs," Palminteri scolds his underlings. "And no violence."

(Somewhere, right now, Francis Ford Coppola is getting his lawyer on the line.)

Here's the real story.

Paul "Big Pauly" Castellano wasn't particularly bright, by most accounts. He dropped out of school in the eighth grade and started running numbers for his father. That led to armed robbery, extortion and murder.

Castellano was put in charge of the Gambino crime family in 1976. He didn't know until months after the fact that his 17-room mansion on Staten Island had been bugged by the FBI. The 600 hours of tapes reveal that he talked disparagingly about other Mafia bosses and, worse, discussed Mafia business with just about every person who came into his home.

Castellano suffered from diabetes and had an affair with his housekeeper. It was the housekeeper who helped the FBI bug his house.

The wiretap is probably what sealed his fate on Dec. 16, 1985. There were rumors that Castellano, 70 at the time, was ready to cut a deal with the feds to avoid a lengthy jail term. It didn't help that he had made an enemy of an eager young Gambino family racketeer named John Gotti.

So it wasn't a big surprise when Castellano was gunned down in front of Sparks Steak House in Manhattan. Mob informant Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano would later testify that he watched the shooting from a car across the street. Seated with Gravano was John Gotti.

That's who Paul Castellano was.

A "fascinating" man?

Palminteri, a native New Yorker who wrote A Bronx Tale and was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in Bullets Over Broadway, defended his portrayal of Castellano. "I worked with the wise guys, threw dice with them, knew them really well," he said in a recent phone interview. "I remember the feeling of seeing the boss walk in. He could have been the CEO of a company."

And that would be what? Moron Incorporated?

Palminteri argued that the public is naturally drawn to characters like this.

"Mob stories appeal to emotions that are not very positive," he said. "Power, greed, domination. It's incredible to be the person that nobody can touch. People are afraid of you. Anything you say, people do."

But don't films like this run the risk of glamorizing the mob? And of pegging every Italian-American as a criminal?

"Sure. But I want to be honest with the character. He was no altar boy.

"I just played him the way he was," Palminteri added. "It's almost a love story."

It's that kind of logic that moved U.S. Rep. Marge Roukema of New Jersey, the granddaughter of Italian immigrants, to ask House members recently to sign a resolution criticizing movies and television shows that portray Italian-Americans as gangsters.

"I decided this has gotten to be so discriminatory and stereotypical of Italian-Americans as mobsters, and denigrating women and families," Roukema said, "that I thought I have to speak out."

It's not likely to have a much of an effect. But Roukema and others will keep fighting the good fight.

Dona DeSanctis, director of research and clinical affairs for the National Italian-American Foundation, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group, said the Mafia as most people think of it doesn't even exist anymore.

"According to the Justice Department," DeSanctis said, "the Italian-American component of organized crime is almost dwarfed by other ethnic groups -- Russians, Koreans, Chinese -- and all of the major Mafia figures in the 1970s or '80s are either dead or in jail."

DeSanctis, who saw an advance copy of Boss of Bosses, described it as a very tired, watered-down Godfather wannabe.

"It's sad to see that the American public has fallen in love with these characters. The star of The Sopranos said he has been invited to talk to kindergarten kids."

Not long ago, American Indians were nearly always portrayed in the movies as savages, African-Americans were servants or entertainers, and Italian-Americans were gangsters.

It could be argued that only the Italian-Americans haven't made at least some progress.

"If anything," DeSanctis said, "it's gotten worse."

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