“Sure,” I say. “What’s the article?”
Lisa says, “It’s called ‘The Brand.’”
“Forget it,” I tell Lisa. “I read it. It’s a great story, but no one is ever going to make that movie.”
“Please, meet this guy, my partner. His name is Anthony Mastromauro. He’ll come to New York to meet you. Just hear what he has to say.”
I am working out of offices at High Times magazine on Park Avenue South. Along with Norman’s son, John Buffalo Mailer, and Annie Nocenti, a talented writer and former editor at Prison Life, I have been brought in to try to rebrand the now forty-year-old publication and to take it from the essentially cannabis cultivation magazine it has evolved into and reposition it more in keeping with founder Tom Forcade’s original vision for the publication as a magazine about the impact of cannabis on the larger culture in America. It’s a thankless task. We are up against a trend of dwindling sales of print magazines and magazine ad space. The staff at the magazine, and the trustees of the family trust that took control of the company after Tom’s death, are resistant to change. They claim to want to see High Times increase its subscription base and newsstand sales, but no one appears willing to go along with what I believe is necessary to keep the magazine profitable while repositioning it in the marketplace: fire three-quarters of the staff, move from the expensive Park Avenue office space, cut the overhead way down, and bring in new writing and editing talent as well as a new ad sales team while we beef up the magazine’s online and multimedia presence.
Anthony Mastromauro comes to New York and meets me at my High Times office. What do I think of his project to make a film based on the article in The New Yorker? I repeat what I told his partner, Lisa. Yes, I read the piece; it’s an amazing story. I know the material well. I did time with some of these guys while in prison in California. But the movie will never get made. Why do I believe that? Because the subject matter is too provocative and way too dark. I tell Anthony he’ll never find backers willing to put up the money to make the film.
But, Mastromauro counters, “What if I have Sean Penn on board to direct the movie?”
“Well, that’s different. With someone like Sean Penn attached, you’ve got a shot.”
Mastromauro says he’s headed back to Los Angeles, and, if he can set it up, would I be willing to come out to LA or San Francisco to meet with Sean?
“Sure,” I tell him. “Of course. I have tremendous respect for Sean Penn.”
The New Yorker article, “The Brand,” written by David Grann, tells of a huge racketeering case brought by a federal prosecutor in Southern California. The feds have indicted the entire ruling council of the imprisoned faction of the Aryan Brotherhood (AB), some forty defendants known as the Brand. They are accused in a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) indictment with committing more than thirty murders while running a far-reaching, powerful criminal organization from inside some of America’s most secure federal penitentiaries. These guys are all doing life without possibility of parole; many of them are locked down in solitary confinement twenty-three-plus hours a day, never allowed out of their cells unless they are cuffed behind their backs and escorted by at least one prison guard. Most have been convicted of killings while in custody, both of rival gang members and, in some instances, of prison guards, as well as arranging hits on the street carried out by AB members. Some of these men are legendary convicts in the prison system; most have been locked up for nearly their entire adult lives. Men like T. D. Bingham, known as the Hulk, whose chilling short story of revenge won a Prison Life magazine first prize for fiction and was published in the magazine, and Barry Mills, known as the Baron, who, along with Tommy Silverstein, a talented visual artist who has been locked up continuously since his early twenties, was convicted of four separate prison homicides, including the murder of corrections officer Merle Clutts at the maximum-security penitentiary at Marion, Illinois.
David Grann’s New Yorker article details how the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang bosses are able to communicate and dispatch orders to other AB members through an elaborate prison messaging system, sending what are known as “kites,” coded notes from gang leaders in solitary confinement at supermax prisons to their lieutenants and underlings in penitentiaries all across the country. Grann lays out the byzantine inner workings of the AB’s ruling council, the characters themselves with their intricate body art tattoos and secret rituals of blood in and blood out, and the breadth, reach, and diversity of their criminal enterprise throughout the federal and state prison system. And certainly the story of how these convicts have adapted and learned to control their environment while in the strictest confines of the American gulag not only has the makings of a great prison drama, but the story says much about our deeply flawed American penal system and the kinds of supercriminals who are being shaped and educated by life in our prisons.
But my reservations persist: Who is going to put up the money to get such a film made, even if Sean is on board to direct and will possibly star? I have my doubts even as I board the plane and fly out to San Francisco to meet with Anthony Mastromauro and Sean Penn.
Meanwhile, I have been in touch with my friend, the ex-con novelist Eddie Bunker, who knows several of the men who comprise the Brand. Eddie did time with T. D. Bingham and Tommy Silverstein and several other members of the Brand while in the California prison system at San Quentin where the AB was founded. Eddie was on a trajectory not unlike that of T. D. Bingham and Tommy Silverstein, destined to die in isolation in a maximum-security prison until he was saved through becoming a writer. He assures me that he can help me get some inside perspective on the story of these men’s lives, and how they have come to rule a criminal organization from within America’s toughest prisons.
AT THE AIRPORT in San Francisco, Mastromauro meets me along with another man, Paul Herman, an actor originally from New York who is now the celebrity meeter and greeter at Robert DeNiro’s restaurant, Ago, in Beverly Hills. Paul is a close friend of Sean’s and the one who has made the connection for Mastromauro. We rent a car and drive up to Sean’s home near Sausalito. Sean is pumped after just having finished a workout. He says he’s definitely interested in the story, and he wants to hear more about my take on the material. That night we load in a car and head into San Francisco, where we meet with a writer friend of Sean’s. I immediately like Sean. He’s smart, engaged, not at all full of himself, and eager to put his energy behind telling relevant, important stories. He spent some time in jail and understands the need to expose the truth about a prison system that is an intense microcosm of a distorted larger culture. By the time I’m ready to leave the next day after a morning meeting with Sean, he and I agree to work on the project together. We make plans to meet in LA and visit the prosecutor who is behind the RICO case against the Brand. Sean says he knows someone who might be willing to put up the money to get the screenplay written.
Sean does have an investor, Bill Pohlad, the son of billionaire financier Carl Pohlad, owner of the Minnesota Twins baseball team. Before the agreement can be made, Paul Herman is ready to strangle Mastromauro when he attempts to cut Paul out of the deal. Finally, I am contracted to write the script. Sean is committed to direct the movie, until he’s not. He and Pohlad go off to make another film Sean is directing, Into the Wild. It comes as no surprise when Pohlad drops “The Brand” from his production company’s slate after reading my first draft of the screenplay and pronouncing the subject matter “too violent.”
Well, one is inclined to say, I told you so.
Sean and I remain friends. He agrees to do a cover story for Details magazine when asked by the editor and requests to have me write the article. I spend a few days with Sean in New Orleans while he is working on All the King’s Men, directed by screenwriter Steven Zaillian. And I join Sean in Toronto for a few days during the Toronto Film Festival. The story is published in the Details December 2004 issue.
THE TRAVELING, THE long and frequent separations,
and finally Kim’s drinking have made our marriage untenable. We separate soon after Street Time wraps and are soon in the process of divorce. I’ve left our home in the Hudson River Valley and have moved into the city full time. In one bitter exchange, Kim tells me, “You’ll leave this marriage the way you came into it—with nothing.” Ah, yes, but when I came into the marriage there was one child on the way, Maxwell; and now there are three children, Max’s younger brother, Dash, and their sister, Sarah Alexandra, called Sasha. They are the ones who will suffer.
But, it seems clear that, had we stayed together, things would only have gotten worse.
I have begun seeing the woman I met in Sonny Grosso’s office, the lovely Antoinette Harrington. She is with me after some months go by, possibly even a year, when Sonny calls again. He’s pissed off, accuses me of stealing Antoinette away from him. The real reason for his call, however, is to invite Antoinette and me to join him for dinner with Kevin Reilly, who is in town for the TV industry Up-Fronts, where the major television networks preview their upcoming fall and midseason shows for advertisers, the press, and other networks.
Sonny’s health has deteriorated significantly. He needs help just getting around. Antoinette and I arrive before Sonny and Chris, his longtime companion, show up. We sit at a table with Kevin Reilly and Sonny’s development executive. Reilly is eager to talk about Whitey Bulger now that there has been a new and seemingly final chapter in the saga with Whitey’s arrest in Santa Monica on June 22, 2011, his conviction at trial in Boston two years later in June 2013, and his two consecutive life sentences imposed on November 14, 2013. I expound on what interests me in this story: the ethnic tribal warfare in Boston, the long simmering conflict between the Yankee WASP blue bloods and the Irish who came to control local and even national politics with the Kennedys and to dominate the police force and the Boston headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. All of that came to a head when Billy Bulger stood firm in his defiance of the federal court order to integrate Boston public schools, when the Brahmins of Beacon Hill and Wellesley forced busloads of black kids from Jamaica Plain and Roxbury to attend school in Southie’s militantly white Irish neighborhood. This resonated for me as rich background to the story of Whitey, Billy, and Connolly—three Irish kids from Southie who grew up to be the archetypes of the immigrant experience.
Then I launch into a discussion of the scapegoating of John Connolly, which brings a whole new dimension to the story. I explain how and why my take on Connolly’s relationship with Whitey differs from pretty much all the writing and public discourse on the subject. Reilly is even more intrigued in the story now, given the saga of John Connolly from decorated FBI agent to convict. He turns to me and says, “I want to do eight, ten hours on this story, possibly even an open-ended series. I want big actors, top directors, for a major event series. And I want you to write it.”
Sonny comes in midmeal. “What’s going on?”
We are going to do a series on the Connolly/Bulger story. Sonny is to be an executive producer. Reilly asks if I have an agent. Yes, Steve Glick. Reilly says great, he knows Glick well, and he tells me to have Glick contact his office tomorrow and make the deal.
Glick is excited: another Whitey Bulger deal! This is the story that keeps resurfacing and paying the bills. But will it ever get made? Black Mass does get made, with Johnny Depp as Whitey. But it’s as superficial and misguided as the book and performs poorly in the box office.
Months go by. I write a bible for the series and a pilot episode and get paid once more. Sonny drags his feet, insisting on running the production through his New York company, which becomes a nonstarter for Fox. A new company is brought in to oversee production. Sonny is irate. He accuses me of negotiating behind his back. Antoinette and I go to dinner with Sonny at one of his favorite restaurants in Long Island City. He again chastises me for stealing Antoinette away from him. Midmeal, Sonny gags on a rigatoni and nearly chokes to death. Antoinette leaps up and saves him with a Heimlich maneuver.
“You should have let him croak,” I say on the way home.
Of course I don’t mean it; I’m fond of Sonny, and he’s been good to me. I lived for over a year on the various writing fees from the Bulger/Connolly project. We had many joyous evenings with Sonny and his entourage dining at his table at Rao’s, the celebrity wannabe restaurant in East Harlem. I have stayed in touch with John Connolly and done what I could to try to see him get released from prison—I got paid, and I did get the girl. Had it not been for Sonny and the Whitey Bulger/John Connolly project, I would never have met Antoinette. But by the time Sonny finally gives up on his demands to run the show and signs his deal, it’s too late. Reilly is already on his way out the door at Fox.
Once again, the Whitey Bulger/John Connolly project perishes in Development Hell.
Chapter Sixteen
DOG EAT DOG, CRUDE, AND MORE FALSE STARTS
AFTER WE PUBLISHED the Prison Life cover story on Eddie Bunker, “America’s Greatest Living Convict Writer,” in the September 1995 issue, Eddie sent me the manuscript of a novel he had written called Dog Eat Dog. The book had been rejected by several New York publishers Eddie’s agent submitted it to; they all found it too violent and the characters unsympathetic. I read the manuscript in one sitting and was impressed. I felt it was the best work that I had read of Eddie’s since Little Boy Blue, his autobiographical novel based on his childhood as a runaway in Los Angeles, and his induction into the criminal underworld while locked up in various juvenile detention centers on his way to San Quentin at seventeen—the youngest man ever condemned to the California animal factory.
Dog Eat Dog is the story of three boys brought up state-raised in the California criminal justice system who go on to the penitentiary as finishing school, get out after years spent in hardcore joints like San Quentin and Folsom, and want nothing more than to wreak havoc on society and use whatever skills they have learned and perfected while locked up to become master criminals.
I send Eddie’s manuscript to an editor I know at St. Martin’s Press, James Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald loves the book and ends up not only publishing Dog Eat Dog, but St. Martin’s makes a deal with Eddie to reissue his earlier novels: No Beast So Fierce, which was made into a film called Straight Time, starring Dustin Hoffman; Animal Factory; and Little Boy Blue; and his 2001 memoir, Education of a Felon. I tell Eddie I want to adapt Dog Eat Dog and direct the film. He gives me his word that the job is mine.
Eddie is in New York in the late fall of 2002 to meet with documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger, who has optioned Education of a Felon and wants to develop it as a feature. Eddie suggests Joe meet with me to discuss adapting Education of a Felon, and I drive in from Upstate to join Joe and Eddie for dinner at an Upper West Side restaurant and to discuss the possibility of adapting Eddie’s book.
The Education of a Felon project never really gets off the ground. While we are looking for backing, Berlinger asks me to collaborate with him to pitch and develop a series about a criminal defense attorney. He has been offered a development deal at FX. After meeting with executives in LA, I am hired to write a pilot for a series I call Solomon’s Law, about a high-profile criminal defense attorney straddling the ever-nebulous line between criminal and attorney—not unlike my former employer Ivan Fisher, and based on the careers of various trial lawyers I have come to know over the years, in particular Gerry Shargel, who represented John Gotti until he and Bruce Cutler were disqualified from the defense team by Judge I. Leo Glasser, who ruled that the two attorneys had become “house counsel” for the Gambino Crime Family.
Berlinger also hires me to adapt another book he has optioned, Facing the Wind, a harrowing, beautifully told true story of madness and familial murder. My script adheres closely to the book. The author, Julie Salamon, thanks me for being respectful of her work. Facing the Wind appears ready to go into production, literally on the verge of casting, when one of the investors insists that Berlinger hire his girlfriend as an actress. Be
rlinger refuses, and the project dies.
Around this time, a close friend, actor, and activist, Robert Galinsky, brings another attorney in to meet with me at the former Offline Entertainment offices and one-time Street Time writer’s room, now Marc Levin’s Blowback Productions headquarters. Galinsky’s friend is a man named Steven Donziger. They have a concept for a reality TV crime show they would like to develop with me. Steven edited a book I read and thoroughly admire called The Real War on Crime, published in 1996, which discredits much of the political pap being force-fed to the public to justify the massive build-up of the criminal-industrial complex. He’s a young Harvard Law School graduate, a former public defender who worked in the DC system and experienced the war on crime at the street level.
When Donziger and I meet, he is the lead American attorney involved in a huge civil suit against oil company giant Chevron. Donziger represents the indigenous peoples of the Oriente region in Ecuador, comprising the eastern slopes of the Ecuadorian Andes and the lowland areas of tropical rainforest in the Amazon basin. Their class action suit charges Texaco, now wholly owned by Chevron, with massive oil-related contamination of the local inhabitants’ lands making up an area the size of the state of Connecticut.
We soon abandon the reality crime TV show while the Ecuador litigation takes up all of Donziger’s time. The more I hear about the case, the more interested I become in the possibility of making a documentary about this epic struggle of a Third World people against a powerful multinational corporation. Steven invites me to travel with him to the rain forest region to see the contamination for myself and to meet the local residents. I decide to bring along my thirteen-year-old son, Max, an aspiring filmmaker. Max brings his video camera and films the plague of pollution Texaco and Chevron left in their wake after sucking out the oil and dumping the toxic waste in dozens of open, unlined pits that allowed heavy metals and other carcinogenic contaminants to seep into rivers and streams and pollute the water supply, infecting and poisoning the local wildlife and inhabitants who depend on the unfiltered water from rivers and streams. The pollution left behind by the oil company has precipitated an outbreak of cancers and skin diseases hitherto unknown to the local people.
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