by Danny Aiello
For a trial run, Hasan selected one of the songs from Live from Atlantic City, “Bésame Mucho.” We sat together in the car, listening to the rough track of what he had put together. He rapped over my song and the results weren’t like anything I had ever heard before. Somehow, two ends of the musical spectrum came together and we wound up with some wonderful songs.
Hasan and I created an album called Bridges, released in 2012 and mixed and mastered by Jason Corsaro at Dream Makers Music. The title refers to bridging the gap between two genres, rap and standards. The album features several originals. Charles Lallo’s “Home America” is on the record. Up-and-coming singer-songwriter Davido contributed “Running Every Red Light,” while “City of Light” was written by Mare Maisano, a brilliant singer-songwriter.
We had a great group of people collaborating to make Bridges. Mark Eddinger, with his beloved wife, Lena, by his side, helped produce the album and arranged and played keyboards on the opening cut, “Save the Last Dance for Me.” ASCAP’s John Titta, also often accompanied by his wife, Lana, helped me understand the maze of music publishing. Vincent Favale, who was my CBS liaison on Dellaventura and is now one of David Letterman’s producers, gave me his song “Talk to Me,” which came from his play Hereafter.
Hasan and I went on to do live performances together. We also completed videos for three songs off the album, “Bésame Mucho,” “Save the Last Dance,” and “City of Light.” The Bridges videos were created from my original concepts, produced by Jules Nasso, and directed by Frank Nasso, with my friend Paul DeAngelo deeply involved.
My project manager in making all three videos was Louie Baldonieri, who created, produced, and directed the platinum recording artists Dream Street in 2001. In addition to being a producer, Louie was a longtime tap teacher and hoofer. The magnificent choreography in all three videos and for Dream Street was done by his wife, Claudia Swan.
The music video of the Bridges cut “Bésame Mucho” has compiled over one million hits on the Internet, over five hundred thousand on YouTube alone. Hasan and I were the first artists ever to do classic standards remixed with rap.
* * *
My life during this period was centered on friends and family as much as on my career. In 1999, we had left Ramsey and moved to Saddle River, New Jersey. We loved our home in Ramsey, but it was a corner property. The yard was small in size and not large enough for a swimming pool, which as everyone knows is an asset if you are going to be entertaining grandchildren.
Our new home was a raised ranch of ten thousand square feet, set on two acres of land. Sandy has always loved to swim. I love water when drinking it or washing with it. Otherwise, not so much. Fish swim in it, and I’ve already made my feelings about those little fuckers clear enough. Besides, I can’t swim to save my life.
What better way to see your grandchildren as often as you would like than by simply building a pool? We built one in our backyard in Saddle River, and it worked, at least during the summer. It failed us in the winter, since our pool wasn’t big enough to hold an ice-skating rink. But with the seasonal holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas, Sandy and I see the brood often throughout the year.
Right now we have ten wonderful grandchildren: Dawn, Allison, Brielle, Ricky Jr., Victoria, Sydney, Gabrielle, Zack, Jake, and Willie. I always have a simple bit of advice for my grandchildren, which actually holds true for everyone. If you decide to go into show business, I tell them, make sure you don’t do it the way I did.
Rick continues his successful acting career. Jaime became one of the top headhunters in the profession, recruiting executives for financial companies. Stacey and her husband, Will, are busy running after my grandson Little Willie D.
Sandy and I share our home with the most beautiful little girl you’ve ever seen, Sofi Belle, our tiny Maltese. She weighs in at slightly less than four pounds and has dark eyes and hair the color of snow. She sleeps with me every night, always in the same spot: under my left arm, right near my heart. The whole time I was writing this book, she was sitting on my lap. Sofi remains in my arms no matter what’s going on, even while I’m yelling and cheering while watching football.
Sandy presented me with Sofi Belle twelve years ago. My wife chose her because she was the runt of the litter and looked lonely. She has come to mean so much to me. My only regret is we didn’t adopt her brother and sisters, because Sofi has lived her whole life without other animals around. She will not coexist with other dogs. She only barks at them.
As a matter of fact, she barks at everything and everyone. Her intention, of course, is to protect us. She never leaves our house, not because she doesn’t want to, but because I’ve been told that there are coyotes in the area that feast on little pets. That’s not going to happen to Sofi. I wouldn’t know what to do if this little one wasn’t in my life.
These years marked the passing of my sister Helen, my sister Gloria, and my brother Joseph. My sister Rosebud passed away from Alzheimer’s disease in 2006. Rose’s son, my nephew, the New York Yankees announcer Michael Kay, organizes an annual charity dinner that benefits the Alzheimer’s Association, in memory of his mother.
In the mid-1990s I had partnered with a group called HeartShare Human Services to create the Frances Aiello Day Habilitation Program, a treatment center in Brooklyn. This is a day-care place for adults with developmental disabilities, including those with mental retardation, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, autism spectrum disorders, and neurological impairments.
For a long time, I had a deep abiding desire, a feeling that occurred to me again and again. I wanted people to know my mother’s name, that she had lived, that she had once laughed and loved and existed on this earth. I usually hate public tears, but when I think that the people at the Day Habilitation Program are being helped in my mother’s name, well, it just breaks me up crying.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Danny, My Son, My Son
I can’t conclude this book without a dedication to the memory of my son Daniel Aiello III, who passed away in 2010 and left a terrible hole in my life that I’m still struggling to fill.
I didn’t see Danny as often as I would have liked after he made it big as one of Hollywood’s premier stuntmen. When we did spend time with each other in the last few years of his life, he seemed troubled and was reluctant to talk. It was as though he just wanted to keep busy and not give himself time to think. I knew it had something to do with his relationship with his family, which wasn’t the greatest.
In the early 1990s, I got a call from North Carolina, where Danny was working on the film Ricochet, starring Denzel Washington and John Lithgow. Danny was doubling Lithgow in a scene that required him to fight Denzel’s stunt double on a two-hundred-fifty-foot tower.
Danny and the other stuntman were on the tower, preparing for the scene, and my son just couldn’t do it.
“I froze, Dad,” Danny said when he called me. “I’ve never felt so vulnerable, not since Lauren passed away.” His infant daughter had died when she was two days old. Now further troubles at home were bearing down on him.
He was not living with his family at the time. Divorce proceedings had been going on for years. When he tried to make the situation easier, it only seemed to get worse. The difficulties at home, plus Danny III’s feelings of guilt over the passing of his baby Lauren, became too much for him to bear. He found himself unable to do his job.
Film work can be relentless. Whenever a stunt person cannot perform a stunt, it’s immediately assigned to someone else. If it ever became known that a stuntman froze up during a stunt, it could damage his whole career in the business.
I felt bad about that, but I was much more concerned about my son’s health. I related to how he was feeling. I recalled when the pressure had become too much for me to take as a young man, when my anxieties put me in the hospital.
“Forget the stunt and come home,” I said.
Charlie Picerni, his stunt coordinator on Ricochet, told Danny to take a few days off. My son rest
ed, recuperated, and returned to the Ricochet set four days later. Normally by that time, the stunt would have been done by someone else. But Charlie had held it for Danny, who then completed the stunt. I will never forget what Charlie did for my kid.
Later that year, the divorce finally happened, but Danny III’s relationship with his ex-wife never really recovered. Each of them got remarried. My son always thought his connection with his children could have been better. He felt that way until his passing.
In the summer of 2009, I was at our new home in Saddle River rehearsing a stage play called Capone: The Musical. Robert Mitchell was there with me, the author of the work that we were hoping to bring to Broadway. My son Rick walked in. “I have to talk to you, Dad,” he said.
“Can I just finish the song?” I responded.
“I have to talk to you!” Rick repeated. Something about the urgency in his voice made me break off from what I was doing.
“Danny was just diagnosed with pancreatic cancer,” Rick said.
I went numb. All I could think about was that the next thing I had to do was tell my wife. I just couldn’t do it. My son went into the bedroom to talk to his mother. I heard Sandy scream from the next room, then her sobs.
Mechanically, I turned to Robert Mitchell. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but we have to cancel the rehearsal.”
Eleven months after my son’s diagnosis, the whole Aiello family sat together in the living room of Danny’s home in Hillsdale, New Jersey. I went into his bedroom, where he was resting. He seemed to be in terrible pain, but he was trying to say something. His strength almost gone, Danny extended his arms awkwardly toward me.
I got down on my knees beside his bed and placed myself close, my face touching his face, his arms holding me tightly. At that moment Sandy walked into the room, saw what was happening, and began to cry softly.
Danny whispered into my ear. The words were faint.
I looked up at my wife, my voice choking with emotion. “I think he said he loves me.”
A few hours later he had passed. Afterward, the moment brought to mind that day in church when Danny was a little boy. He had passed out in my arms and I thought he had died.
Only this time, he really was gone.
* * *
How do you come back after something like that? I dedicated my Christmas album to the memory of my son. It was a paralyzing time for me and my family, and for the musicians working on the record with me as well. But somehow we got through it.
If you are in the midst of deep sorrow, then you probably shouldn’t be singing a lot of holiday music. Christmas songs tend toward the sentimental, which leads to nostalgia, which in turn leads you into sadness for the loss of days gone past. At the end of that path lies bitterness, and I thought if I entered into that, I might not ever get out. For the sake of Danny III’s wonderful life, I resolved to emphasize all the good times we had together.
I have the same feeling about my son as I have about my late mother. I want everyone to know him, to remember him, to realize he lived. The outpouring of support and remembrance from his colleagues in the film industry was incredible. Episodes of TV shows that he had worked on were dedicated to him. It all served to recall that Danny was well loved by all who knew him.
There’s a simple line that I always remember from the bleak Irish playwright Samuel Beckett. “You must go on . . . I can’t go on . . . I’ll go on.” Somehow the rhythm of those words marks my days and ways ever since I lost my son.
I can’t go on. I’ll go on.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Searching for Me (Reprise)
In the months after Danny III’s passing, I embarked upon a desperate search for distractions, good ones, things that would keep me from going out of my mind. I felt as though I was in the grip of a paradox. I wanted not to dwell on my son’s death, but somehow that made me think I was attempting to forget about his life.
I threw myself into a couple of theater projects because I thought they might distract me from my grief. We did a staged reading of Capone: The Musical, with me singing the lead. The whole time I felt the process to be a little unreal, as though I were sleepwalking through it. Nothing made sense to me. I wasn’t myself.
In 2011, I partnered with a writer and producer named Susan Charlotte on her two-act play The Shoemaker. In July we opened for an off-Broadway run at the Acorn Theater in New York City. We did twenty-seven performances and sold out every one. For a brief moment that summer, we were the hottest ticket in town.
During my appearances in The Shoemaker, I continued to have a sense of confusion and unreality. The play revolves around the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, and a couple scenes required me to cry onstage. I recall asking myself whether I was really crying because I was in character or if the tears were over my own terrible loss.
In 2012, the director John Herzfeld called me at home. By that time we were going on forty years of friendship, and I think he felt for me. We reminisced about my son. John knew Danny almost as long as he had known me. My son had stunt-doubled me on John’s film The Preppie Murder. He and I had many good memories to share.
Attempting to make me feel better, John gently tried to prod me out of my funk. “It’s been two years,” he said. He asked if I would do his next film, Reach Me.
But when he e-mailed me the script with the suggestion I play the role of a gangster, I turned him down. “John, I’ve done mobsters before, plenty of times. I’m just not interested in playing another tough guy.”
I thought that would be the end of it. I had done the unimaginable and turned down a John Herzfeld movie.
John called me back. “Pick out any role you want, then,” he said.
I thought about it for a moment. John’s script did have a character that had struck a small spark in me. “Okay. The only part I’m interested in is the priest. But it’s underwritten.”
“I’ll expand it,” he said immediately.
“I want to play the kind of priest that has never been seen on the screen before,” I said.
Working together, we came up with the character of Father Paul, an individual who put on the collar for all the wrong reasons. The role exactly fit my mood. I was dwelling on spiritual matters and asking myself the big questions.
As we shot the film I gradually felt myself returning to life. I recognized that I would never be the same person now and that I would carry grief with me wherever I went. But I didn’t obsess over my son’s death as much as I celebrated his life. Being with my old friend John, who knew Danny III well, helped in the process.
Musically, I began to push forward, too. I’m currently working on a blues album. Meanwhile, I keep on doing gigs, maybe a half dozen per year. Appearing in front of a crowd always gives me a shot of energy.
I can’t go on. I’ll go on.
* * *
So, yes, I’m working, acting onstage and in films, singing and doing albums. But I’m also thinking about my life. Those meditations led to the creation of this book. I’ve tried to come to terms with what my chosen profession really entails, what it really means to be an actor.
I understand that what I do onstage and on the screen has been around for a very long time. I’m just one guy at the end of a long line of performers, actors, comedians, minstrels, jesters, and stars. I’ve tried to do honor to a job I backed into almost by mistake, but one that raised my life to unthinkable heights.
I think about taking my place in the endless parade when I recall a story about the fine actor James Gandolfini.
I met him only a couple of times. The first was at the West Bank Café on West Forty-Second Street near Ninth Avenue. It was September 2000, and the cast and crew of The Sopranos were celebrating the debut season of the HBO series and the Emmy award given to Gandolfini as outstanding lead actor in a drama series.
I was at the party with my cousin Anthony, who acted under the name of Tony Ray Rossi and had appeared in “College,” perhaps the most memorable episode of the series.
I was confused. I thought Jimmy might be putting me on. My cousin whispered in my ear: “That’s just the way he is. He’s a real sweetheart, a real nice guy.” So I thanked Jimmy for his strange three-word tribute. He said, “You’re welcome,” and walked away.
Then it happened again, years later. Tony Darrow, a cast member from The Sopranos, holds an annual golf outing to benefit children with catastrophic diseases, and I make it a point to attend every year. As I sat in the clubhouse with my buddy Louie, I noticed James Gandolfini on the other side of the room. Once again he walked over to my table, placed his two hands together, bent at the waist, and said, “I honor you.” This time he added, “I’m glad to see you here.”
“Thank you,” I replied.
“You’re welcome,” Jimmy said, and returned to his table.
Once again, I felt a little mystified. “Louie, is this guy putting me on? He told me the very same thing about twelve years ago at the West Bank Café.”
When Jimmy passed away in June 2013, I began receiving phone queries from the media, asking if I would like to make a comment.
“I’m sorry, but I really didn’t know him,” I said to the reporters. “But everything I heard about him makes me wish I did.”
I asked them not to print any of my remarks. I didn’t want to be one of those people who claimed to be great friends of James Gandolfini, saying how their lives would never be the same because of his death, writing articles about their relationship.
Then, a day after his passing, I received a phone call from a New York Post reporter, who said that, many years ago, a fourteen-year-old boy had approached the stage after a Broadway show one evening, clearly starstruck. He spoke to one of the lead actors.