Jeez, you two, get a log flume!

Gotti: In the Shadow of My Father was a doomed-from-the-start comedy of errors almost from the start, as would be true of any production that stunt-cast Lindsay Lohan for publicity. This story had so many moving parts that I don’t think I could properly sum them up, so I’ll farm out that duty to Brendon at WWTDD:

I used to think the producers of the John Gotti movie (including Stuttering John) were poser retards who had no idea what the f*ck they were doing. But it turns out their website plays the Madonna song ‘Hollywood’, which is where many movies are made. You can’t get much more professional than that.
And then they cast big names like John Travolta (who will act in literally anything and hasn’t made a good movie since 1998) and Lindsay Lohan (in a role so prestigious they first offered it to Kim Kardashian) and, amazingly enough, Joe Pesci.

Then they somehow managed to get Joe Pesci, a legendary actor who’s been in two movies since 1998, to put on 30 pounds to play a mob enforcer, but for some reason then tried to get him to agree to a smaller role and promptly got sued for $3 million. Nick Cassavetes was onboard to direct, then Barry Levinson. Now, it may shock you to learn, this brilliantly-conceived movie project may never see the light of day:

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This John Gotti biopic project, which always sounded more like some slimey producer’s wishful thinking passed off as reality over starlets and cocaine than an actual movie that was getting made, is really happening, at least if Variety is to be believed.  And Variety uses insidery slang like “thesps” and “helmer”, so I have no reason to doubt them.

Al Pacino has joined the cast of indie mob drama Gotti: Three Generations opposite John Travolta, Kelly Preston, Joe Pesci, and Lindsay Lohan.  Pacino will portray Gotti associate neil Dellacroce.  The film will be directed and rewritten by Barry Levinson — who replaced Nick Cassavetes last month — with additional writing by James Toback. Levinson and Toback teamed more than two decades ago on Bugsy.

Toback last directed the documentary Tyson, and is one of the great Hollywood blowhards, in the style of Robert Evans.

Preston will play Victoria DiGiorgio, the wife of John Gotti Sr. The couple’s daughter, Ella Bleu Travolta, will play the role of their daughter, Angel Gotti. Joe Pesci is on board as Gotti deputy Angelo Ruggiero and Lindsay Lohan will play Kim Gotti, the wife of John Gotti Jr. [Variety]

It was mostly the lack of any well-known directors or writers that caused everyone’s skepticism about this project, along with the fact that producers who use Lindsay Lohan for publicity don’t have a great track record. Toback and Levinson are certainly known, but Levinson’s recent track record… ain’t great. His last couple projects were the HBO movie starring Pacino as Jack Kevorkian and a 30 for 30 documentary, but in terms of features that actually opened in theaters, you have to go all the way back to What Just Happened in 2008,which was panned and largely unseen, as were his films Man of the Year, Envy, Bandits (it got 65% on RT, but trust me, it sucks)…  pretty much everything he’s directed since Wag the Dog, in 1997.  Long story short, this movie probably isn’t going to be good, but I get the feeling the making-of, with its intersection of opportunistic mob families, sleazy producers, washed-up Hollywood types, coke-addled starlets, and closeted homosexual Scientologists, would make for an awesome Elmore Leonard story.

In the surprise story of the century, it seems the story Dina Lohan has been feeding TMZ about Lindsay being in talks to join the John Travolta-starring John Gotti biopic might actually be true (as opposed to, say, the time she was supposed to play Linda Lovelace in that film the director didn’t even have the rights to). There was a press conference today with the producer of the Gotti biopic (Marc Fiore, pictured), and aside from confirming that Lohan was indeed “in talks” to play John’s daughter Victoria (IT IS DEFINITELY MAYBE A POSSIBILITY!), they announced that Joe Pesci would play Gotti’s friend Angelo Ruggiero.  Then John Travolta got on the mic and spewed some typical Hollywood PR bullsh*t from his farting mouth-butt.

During the press conference at The Sheraton Hotel in midtown, the filmmakers said Joe Pesci will play Angelo Ruggiero. Travolta’s daughter will also have a role.

“This is probably the most interesting untold story in this country,” Travolta said, adding that a recent five-hour long meeting with Gotti Jr. put him over the top.

He cited the “beautiful love I feel from the family” and the dichotomy of Gotti Sr. as appealing, plus he said he is a fan of Growing up Gotti. [THR]

My favorite thing about covering entertainment are the statements celebrities make that are so preposterous that they make you wonder whether the teller is openly disdainful of his audience, believes the audience is so stupid that it doesn’t matter what they tell them, or just live such a charmed and utterly bullsh*t-soaked existence that they can’t even tell the difference between truth and bullsh*t anymore.  “The story of the Gotti family is probably the most interesting untold story in this country.  Also, I really loved that 41-episode reality show they made about them.”

After months of speculation, Variety has confirmed that John Travolta will star as John Gotti in the biopic Gotti: Three Generations, a Nick Cassavetes project based on information from an as-yet-to-be-published, tell-all book written by Gotti’s son, John Jr..  I thought about just leaving this banner picture here (via ThePlaylist), as it seems to sum up the project better than words ever could.  But against my better comedic judgment, I feel like this brings up an interesting issue.

On the one hand it seems weird that actors like Winona Ryder, Jonah Hill, Jon Stewart, Natalie Portman, etc. don’t just go by their real last names, Horowitz, Feldstein, Leibowitz, and Hershlag, since it’s not like anyone’s surprised that they’re Jewish.  Or that actors like John Travolta and Kevin Spacey refuse to admit they’re gay, when pretty much everyone already knows that they are.  Especially when Hollywood seems like the last place you’d face discrimination for being gay or Jewish.  But then something like this happens, and it makes you wonder if a family of mobsters would be so hot on John Travolta playing the old boss if he didn’t at least have plausible deniability about the whole chugging wieners thing.  Sure, I don’t care, and probably you don’t care, and no one in Hollywood cares, but if The Sopranos has taught us anything, it’s that mafia guys still kinda do care.  It makes me wonder if maybe we shouldn’t be so hard on Kevin Spacey for not just coming out of the closet, which in turn makes me laugh because I just typed “hard on.”

Maybe they’re right to be secretive?  I don’t know, food for thought.  And yes, you’re right, I should’ve just made a “johnnycakes” joke.

Man, they even have the same facial hair.

The dorkosphere is on fire with the incredible news that John Travolta may soon be working with Nic Cage.  “Hey, remember Face/Off?” said everyone, and laughed stupidly.  From Vulture, who broke the news:

The first to go could be Shrapnel, a script by Evan Dougherty [writer of "Snow White and the Huntsman"] that appeared on the 2008 Hollywood Black List of best unproduced screenplays, and which we’re told is readying for a June shooting start. It follows a former Bosnian soldier who seeks vengeance against the American who badly wounded him by disguising a deadly war game as a friendly backwoods hunting trip.

If this involves Nic Cage doing a Bosnian accent, I am in.

The other indie project competing for Cage and Travolta’s attention is a Chuck Roven–produced thriller called Sea Trial, from City Island writer-director Raymond De Felitta. Sea Trial is based on the eponymous novel by De Felitta’s father, novelist Frank De Felitta (Audrey Rose; The Entity). This second project, however, is still lining up financing.

I couldn’t find a description for Sea Trial on Amazon, but I did discover that it sells new for $94.93 and used for $ .o1.  I’m not an economist, but it seems like the laws of supply and demand may have failed us there.  Anyway, I’m sure this is exciting news for Nic Cage, who’s scheduled to be in four movies this year, to be working a guy who most recently hateful reviews for a flight safety video. I’m sorry, that’s unfair. There was also this:

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