The Irishman

Danny Greene

The “Irishman” is the story of Irish mobster Danny Greene. “Little Frank” Brancato Italian Cleveland family boss, deployed selected Irish runners and enforcers in the late 60’s, a move he would later regret. Danny was used to enforce the mob’s control over garbage removal contracts and other endeavors. Greene eventually rose up to the head the Cleveland Irish mob. He soon crossed the Italians by encroaching upon mob gambling, and vending operations. The gang wars that erupted between the Cleveland Mafia and Greene’s Irish mob consumed the city newspapers in the 70’s.

Greene was an Irish Catholic obsessed by his Irish heritage and Celtic pride. He saw himself as a modern day Celtic warrior shielded by his St Jude medallion, Saint Patrick, as well as the overall “luck of the Irish.” His favorite color – green – blanketed his office. He drove green cars, wore green clothes and handed out green ink pens.

Bart Rosenblatt Irishman Producer/Production Manager told us “Danny believed he had a guardian angel and that he was protected by Celtic gods, and he was protected by Celtic folk law. The mob tried to kill him many times, they blew up his car and he survived then they blew up his house and he survived because the refrigerator fell on top of him and actually landed on a countertop forming a teepee, and he was in that teepee when the entire house collapsed on him - we have dramatized all of this on film.”

Danny flamboyantly played up multiple failed assassination attempts to the press and public creating a well earned aura of invincibility. Greene killed more than eight attempted assassins. He walked away from two bomb explosions and dismantled a third. He was fired on by a sniper while jogging. Greene accelerated towards the sniper drew his gun and fired chasing him off.

Cleveland earned the title of “Bomb City USA” in the mid 70’s, the height of the Irish, Italian feud. In 1976 there were more than 36 bomb explosions in the city. The Cleveland Italian mob earned the stigma the “gang that couldn’t shoot straight” based on multiple failed attempts on Danny Greene’s life.

Detroit was chosen to represent Cleveland in the 70s because of its 70’s downtown look, waterfront scenery similarities and the film tax credit. The crew of the movie is approximately 90% from Michigan including Gaffers, Key Grip, 1st AC, Operators, and set decorators all the way down the line. Significant Hollywood crew representation includes Director of Photography Walter Lindenlaut, Patrizia von Brandenstein Oscar winning (Amadeus) Production Designer, and the AD department.

Producer Bart Rosenblatt commented “it’s great to be filming here. Detroit and the state of Michigan in total are very Film friendly. The Police have been very cooperative. The street on which we have been filming has been closed for several days. The fire department has also been extremely cooperative. We have blown up over 7 cars in this film. All of the pieces that might fly off, like the hood and the door have to be cabled so that they don’t fly more than 20 feet. After that two fire trucks come in and set down their equipment, then after about an hour and a half we wire the car and we blow them—they’ve gone really great - really good scenes in the film.”

Rosenblatt told us “one of the great things about being in Detroit is that it’s the “motor city” and we needed a lot of picture cars for this film, from the 60’s and 70’s. There are a lot of collector’s here. The hard part for us was that most of these cars are in pristine condition and worth a lot of money. In our movie they needed to look pretty beat up. It’s hard to take a $90,000 pristine Nova and try to get it to look like a beater car from the 70’s. We left that to our art department without destroying the cars. “

The film was partially inspired by the book “To Kill the Irishman: The War That Crippled the Mafia” written by Rick Porello, a Police detective in Cleveland during the 70’s. Coincidentally, Tommy Reid secured the movie rights from Porello on Saint Patrick’s Day 1998, prior to the book’s publication. The movie is written by Jonathan Hensleigh and Jeremy Walters.

Additional research, scripting and ultimate assembly of the production team took 11 years to come to fruition. Like the story, the movie is a family business too. Tommy Reid Sr. and Tara Reid coproduce along with Tommy Jr.. According to Tommy Jr., “my father and my sister, they're the ones who believed and invested in my idea to make this into the big movie and I set out to make the best possible film; get the best possible director and the best possible cast, and they've always believed in the story and they've always believed in me. I chalk it up to perseverance, really, and having great friends and family to really get through the process.”

The star studded cast includes Oscar winner Ray Stevenson (Danny Greene), Christopher Walken (Shondor Birns), Val Kilmer, Vinnie Jones, Linda Cardellini, Vincent D’Onofrio, Laura Ramsey, Paul Sorvino, Robert Davi, Bob Gunton, Mike Starr and Jason Butler Harner. With such a large ensemble of actors and over 50 sets, logistics for the film were challenging.

Bart Rosenblatt explained “we have 56 actors in this film and many, many locations and the difficult part about this movie is that a lot of the set pieces are very small 1/8 to ½ page scenes in the movie, so we’ve put a lot of logistics in to keeping all the actors together because you don’t want Chris Walken to be here for the entire shoot so we try to consolidate him to a few number of weeks on the show, and you try to consolidate all of the locations so what’s done here in Detroit is basically set up five different base areas where we sit and shoot as many locations as we can in one base area, than basically move to the next base area and satellite- so that was our strategy.”

After multiple failed attempts on Greene’s life “the mob bosses from Italy came in and they ask the local mob guys if they need some help killing Danny Greene. Finally, in an embarrassing way, the Cleveland boss puts his ego aside and admits that they can’t kill Danny because he has some kind of protection” said Rosenblatt. “People actually trace the beginning of the downfall of the Italian Mob to Danny’s downfall because a lot of the people turned state’s evidence on the mob during the trial after Danny Green’s death, so it’s actually a very important point in the history of organized crime in the United States.

The Irishman is one of the largest scope productions to be filmed in Michigan since passage of the new film credit. Despite its all star cast and 50 plus sets the film has set a standard for efficient production. The story is enticing, the cast and crew are inspired and the city of Detroit have rallied around this exciting project. We cannot wait to see the outcome. Like Danny Greene, The Irishman may just well prove to be invincible.

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