John Gotti Must Be Turning Over In His Grave

The train wreck that is soon to be the John Gotti Bio pic is slowly coming together. Junior has already made comments to the media on how he's going to salute his father's legacy, and get the real story about him out there in the public so we should all probably expect Ghandi 2 in Ozone Park (maybe with a couple of scenes of the Teflon Don being mean to his baby boy). The most glaring sign of a possible Troll 2 like turkey in the works has to be the awful casting.

I can envision how this all went down: In 1977, John Gotti, then a soldier for the Gambinos, goes to see Saturday Night Fever at the Jamaica Ave. Multiplex, sees himself in the leisure suits and styled guido hair do, and tells his teenage son, "I don't care how old he is, when I die I want dat mug Travolta playing me in a movie about my life. Oh, and while you're at it, get da skankiest, cracked out whore you can find in Long Island to play whoever you end up marryin'" (or something along those lines). More realistically it was because those two will work for fettucine alfredo, especially since one of them is about to go to the clink.

But Travolta? This guy hasn't been believable as a street guy since Barbarino (and even then he was a pretty boy more than any type of tough guy). Recent developments that may confirm long held suspicions only add to the problems. Other than his name ending in a vowel, there is nothing about this guy that is remotely Mafia like. Don Cheadle would better capture Gotti's essence. Hopefully he doesn't use any of his Scientology voodoo on poor Lindsay, since the last thing we need is another reformed weirdo preaching the virtues of a science fiction writer on Twitter.

Unfortunately, I don't have any suggestions for an appropriate replacement for Travolta. Gandolfini seems to want to distance himself from the Boss roles (and he would just be looked at as Tony Soprano anyway) and DeNiro is firmly entrenched in his goofy, embarrassing dad roles . Armand Assante did a serviceable job in that other Gotti movie, maybe they should just bring him back. Regardless of the fact that the real John Gotti was a scumbag degenerate gambler who ruined many lives despite the barbecues he threw for his neighborhood, and who actually did more harm to the New York Mob than help with his flashy ways and uneven leadership; he was an icon that, in the right hands, could make for an interesting movie. And if the movie did well, and won awards, it would at least piss off that dick head Curtis Sliwa and his stupid beret. I guess we'll have to wait for a real production to see if a Gotti film can be pulled off correctly. Until then we'll have to make do with this straight to dvd mess. Least it can't be worse than Old Dogs right?