Sitdown with "The Best Gotti Ever" Armand Assante - Part 1 | Michael Franzese

hey everybody welcome to another sit down with michael francis hope everybody is doing well you know a couple of weeks back i had the pleasure i would say of going to atlantic city and attending two events mob movie con and sopranos con and there's an organization that puts on these con things met a lot of the people from sopranos you know a lot of the cast members we got to interact and talk and i was asked to come by the way by the hosts the organizers of the event and i was able to sit down with a few people and prior to that i had been speaking quite a bit to armand asante i think i mentioned that you know he and i had connected and we were going to get together and do a sit down and we were going to do it by zoom because armand lives in new york area and armand actually mentioned to me you know what i'm going to be at mob movie con why don't we meet there michael and i said well you know the organizers asked me to come i wasn't going to come but if you're going to be there and we get to sit down we get to meet maybe that's better so i decided to go we spent several hours together and i got to tell you something he's just a great guy you know he impressed me in so many different ways aside from the fact that you know i have boasted about the hbo gotti movie with amman playing john gotti i've been boasting about that movie for 20 years it was in my opinion i think it was the best mob movie ever made i really mean that it was an hbo it wasn't in theaters but it was so brilliantly acted the story was everything about it was great i just loved the more i probably watched it 20 times and i've been plugging it and plugging it and plugging it just because i like it you know and armand was appreciative of that he noticed that he was following me and he saw that i had done that so we were talking for quite some time great guy i actually interviewed him live in front of several hundred people at the soprano con thing we were on stage together we have some video of that and then i got to sit down with him and just talk there's so many things i was impressed with number one his social consciousness his awareness his just command or control of so many different subjects was really impressive to me so aside from his acting it was just him as a person that i just enjoyed so much and i have to say we've struck up a friendship now i'd love to have him in my television series and i'm not saying that that could happen of course you know there's there's a business involved in this but i'd love to have him i see him in so many different roles he'd kill the role of my father i mean he'd be brilliant in it he's just a brilliant actor first time i saw him was in a movie called q a if you haven't seen it it's with nick nolte and armond asante armond plays a uh puerto rican drug dealer and he's terrific in it i mean just terrific everything he does is great but just some of the standout movies you know unfaithfully yours with dudley moore my wife loved that movie you know he was terrific in that mambo kings shows you how versatile an actor he was terrific in that gotti of course i mean i can't say enough about that movie he was an american gangster played another mob guy then he was terrific there and of course q a with nick nolte he was so good there was one scene in there he was just electric in the scene gotta watch it so here it is we spent about an hour and a half together my sit down with armando [Music] enjoy [Music] [Music] come on i got to say that this is a a real pleasure it's an honor and a privilege because you may not know this but i've been following you since uh q a first time i saw you in that movie and i thought you were terrific puerto rican drug dealer the one scene i remember you were facing timothy hutton remember you guys were all in a room and you just the way you got down on that i was hooked from that moment on so that's an interesting story you know that was written um q a was written by the former supreme court justice of manhattan edwin torres who literally came out of spanish harlan in that neighborhood and a lot of what edwin wrote including carlito's way he wrote a number of features but sydney took his book and sydney wrote the screenplay edwin had an amazing life in spanish harlem i got to know him and uh actually some amazing coincidence is good my family was from washington heights not so far away and the thing is that edwin's understanding of those characters and that that actually is based on a true story and his understanding having a visceral understanding growing up in the neighborhood with these guys that was amazing i actually watched him as a judge and he was a hard task master very um i mean your harps your heart skips a beat when you see somebody who's sentenced for real it's horrible yeah but he was a good uh a great judge and he was a hard like i said task master and i'm sure a lot of guys uh a lot of guys did time under him he was tough great man though and a wonderful writer and i'll tell you a wild story i actually um through him i got permission for that character to actually listen and i literally was given like five minutes i said i want to listen to a real character of that background and life they put me in touch with the da they allowed me like five minutes that was it i had to get out i listened to one conversation between a father and a daughter the daughter was graduating from harvard law school the father was literally a character like bobby tex and i remember one thing he said to the daughter he said you know in my life there was a day i was on the block i could have gone right or i could have gone left and i took a left and that's why you are where you are and i am where i am and it blew my mind and i thought the perception that these people are just inhumane is wrong they're people that end up in circumstances in life that blow their lives apart you know and that one choice he made just that one spontaneous spontaneous moment blew his lifetime and i've i've always believed that um it's wild you know coming from that neighborhood i don't want to touch upon eddie again but coming from that neighborhood i grew up in in 1993 to i'm standing on the corner of 72nd and broadway guy pulls up on a pickup truck looks at me he says hey you recognize these eyes i looked at them i said your joy i have not seen this kid since i was seven years old i used to run around the neighborhood with him and uh he almost started to cry he was so moved he said you know i see what you do with your life you did so many things i saw you on television and i saw you in the movies he said you've had an amazing life already you know and i i said i was so touched and i said to him what are you doing where you going what are you doing he said you know i just got off 28 years of heroin i never left the block and i thought my parents took me off that block when i was 8 years old and it changed my life and to get back to what i was saying life happens in seconds you know what i mean yeah and i played so many of these i played probably more bad guys than the 39 precinct is chasing like you're so good at it my point is that life happens in seconds when you study you study the characters that i've played the um you know diabolical people that i've played i mean conditions are everything to me when i when i study a character and coincidentally edwin taurus always thought it was q a former supreme court justice of manhattan unequivocally has written the best script on the mob i've ever read it's never been produced because it's a very expensive film fiction but fictionalized yeah it's about his life and his brother's life in spanish harlem growing up and tony salerno fatonia he had an operation in that neighborhood yeah spanish harlem that's right i think after prohibition yeah yeah i kept there there was a few people up there well he was there right until the mid 80s when he went to jail he had a social club in holland that was his area i knew tony well is that right yeah well i liked him i liked him a lot and he's a wonderful character in the film and the way eddie portrays those characters and it's all told through the eyes of these two brothers and a tragedy that ensues i don't know you know but eddie became supreme court justice i don't know what happened to his brother but it's an amazing story and and through the two viewpoints of these boys you get a picture of the mafia like you've never you've never seen it really remarkable really remarkable so that was a big event in my life because sydney lumet had been watching me as a young actor and uh when he picked me up with a role i was i was not only flattered but the love thing i loved about sydney is that he gave me the script in may and we started rehearsing rehearsing which nobody does anymore literally as if we were in the theater for almost two or three weeks before we made the film then we shot everything in the film literally literally in one take actors actors today want 10 20 thanks one take filming for everybody including nick nolte wow we just zipped sydney's normal day on a film set was seven hours that's it the crew loved him because as you know most films you work 15 hours sure seven hours that was it that's how prepared he was wow but he did expect almost everyone to bring in in one take it was wild but i'm i'm thrilled that you like that film because uh i think it's one of the best films i've ever been in and and also it's a great story about it really is it's very timely when you look at what's gone on yes in this city in the last few years i mean it's very timely it really was nick nolte was terrific timothy louis was on so many great eyes they're all great all great let me ask you this you know you have uh you've won more awards than i can even recall you know for in so many ways not only here but internationally everywhere i've been loving terrific and i knew you grew up washington heights parents took you out did you know from an early age that you were going to be a success in this business do you have did you did you feel it right away i knew i knew as a boy i was a performer because my parents took me to broadway theater and i grew up watching musicals the first the first musical i saw was peter pan so i was trying to fly ever since then i was four years old i was jumping off pianos forever i knew then that i i was struck with the magic of theater and i spent many years in the theater a lot of people don't know that i spent 10 years in the theater before i made my first film i did theater and i also did television at rockefeller center i did two slopes in the state about three or four years and i was doing theater at night so i used to work literally from seven in the morning to like one in the morning but i was young and and it was a phenomenal um training ground uh discipline wise because any actor with assault his life is about discipline if you don't if you don't discipline your life to the work that you're you're given you can't achieve anything as an actor so that was an incredible uh incredible the active period of my life but uh incredibly uh the people that i worked with i've been blessed all my life i mean the people that have have crossed my path in my lifetime have been angels i mean i've been guided for real by angels i mean there's so many phenomenal people and so many phenomenal minds that i work with and um it's been a blessing you know but i think early on uh having been to broadway so many times i was like i said i was very caught up in the magic of theater oddly enough i was a musician as a boy i was a professional drummer and singer for years and music came automatically to me it was my mother was a musician and came automatic acting did not acting was a very difficult process for me i didn't realize how immense the process of acting was and also how immense the amount of study and homework that was into acting so i mean it really was a form of education because i went to drama school they demanded that you read i have read volumes of theater volumes of literature phenomenal because i never went to university or school i went straight from high school to drama school and straight into the theater i would say first 10 years in the theater was a form of education for me because it was the amount that i was obligated to read and study but acting never came believe it or not acting still doesn't not come easy really no you wouldn't you wouldn't i find what's happened because of economics and especially for young people today they have almost thrown the creative process out the window they literally want to throw you before the camera they expect you to have a great performance ready and in truth to be a professional actor you should have your performance ready to go i'm not saying that but i'm saying for young actors they don't understand they need time to process they need time for osmosis they need time to put things into their dna to be able to perform i find that part of it uh very disappointing i've walked on so many sets where i thought this is such an unfair environment to put people in but that's economics that's all money yeah you know and i think now in the advent of the way thing you know for barry diller to come out and say virtually that well virtually that um feature films may disappear now and theaters may disappear for barry diller to say that it's a sign of the times and also the process i feel is uh is going to be worsened by the speed that this technology gives us it's amazing technology but technology's got nothing to do with the art or the creative process or someone who's going to you know evoke or or um expose the soul you know yeah no i you prefer theater or film you know i i love working in the film and i work in the theater a long time i love theater i always have the amount of time that theater takes as well as film is enormous but i will say that the theater process is much more difficult because if you're doing eight shows a week the demands on your body and mind are extraordinary as it is in film but in film i prep it honestly my film process is my theater process to me everything is theater in fact i really believe that really good actors um that really connect um it's all theater because if you were to watch a set of dailies for instance and you see when an actor gets in the zone of what he's doing what's natural doesn't convey it's energy-less there's no energy what conveys is what's theatrical even though it may be done in the most minimalistic way it conveys its theatrical energy and i find the real the really gifted actors are whether they trained in the theater or not they have theatrical energy and that's believe it or not that's what registers on film it's amazing to watch i i see what you mean let me ask you when you when you're making a decision to take on a role what's the most important aspects of that project that or that role that you're looking for well it's a very interesting question because i tell you the biggest dilemma that any actor has and i have it a lot is the writing the writing is everything and and i can't stress it enough i was so blessed in my life i work with some phenomenal writers i've also worked with writers that need help they have good ideas that you can work around improvise with and play with but writing to me is everything i mean you know when you look at the great actors that did great scripts such such as brando the man was a poet on camera he was a poet also because the language the succinctness the minimalistic writing it was almost like poetry it was so simple and so so small but so powerful and sometimes the greatest statements are made in a poem they're not made in the elaborate uh monologues that people go through but but i think right writing to me is number one and flaw is number two i find the really good writer doesn't have to necessarily give you the flaw consciously but subliminally he's placed a flaw in there if you can locate the floor of a character you locate the vulnerability of a character by locating the vulnerability of a character you're completely open to making mistakes as the character which most characters are making mistakes constantly right that's what makes it fascinating makes it fascinating right but flaw is very important i look for what makes that person exceptionally vulnerable or what makes them silly or ludicrously funny or whatever it is and the other thing i look for believe it or not is uh where the writer has indicated the character has a sense of humor but i find that when i meet people i want to find out whether what the funny bone is because i get along with people that normally have a funny bone if they have no sense of humor it's a disaster you know yeah you know yes i don't know i just look that way well let me ask you this that brings us to uh one of my favorite topics and and one that i know the viewers want to hear about and that's the movie gotti and you know armand i've been plugging this movie for years i can't thank you enough yeah brilliant in in every way as a matter of fact whenever i rate it i rate it even over the godfather sometimes believe it or not i mean i think it's that well done and i think because i knew the characters well that i just got such a sense of that movie it was gripping from beginning to end i got to ask you that how did you get into the character of of gotti i mean did you ever meet him did you ever talk to him do you know him in any way because i got to tell you why because i was so fascinated in the way that you played him knowing him as i did and you just elevated his character i mean he was a bigger than life guy on the street let's face it everybody knew but you elevated that character even to another level thank you very much i studied the transcripts and believe it or not in the transcripts which a lot of people know he was the most recorded probably the most recorded character in history yes for real i mean they haven't taped inside and out i know i listened by the way i listened to some of those tapes yes i was fortunate enough to be able to listen to some of those tapes and i read the transcripts i know howard beach i know ozone park i know it's our city i know brownsville there's a cadence as you know there's a cadence and there's a rhythm to that survival what i did know about gaudi which which is uh sad in a way is that this is a man who literally as a baby as a baby was put on the street i mean he he came out of 13 children in one family i think the father pretty much abandoned the mother the point is that it's one thing to be a street kid because we know the street guys became the head of 18 and t and whatever god knows but my point is that um god he had no spiritual guidance he had no moral guidance he had no guidance for other street people and i think that very much led to his uh mantra of how to survive for himself and i think it very much is uh evident evident in the way he he behaved all his life and i think you know it's it it's very easy to to judge uh a street person and and say you know there are so many people in society that come from very similar backgrounds and i'll tell you if you look at the entire gotti's story he didn't have much to hold on to and i think that led to his incredible instinct to survive and to protect his space um can you imagine a young boy who's brought into this fold in i think it was east new york where his hero is albert anastasia i mean that's frightening yes he's absolutely frightening uh i mean he's brought into the world of literally murder incorporated as a boy and he's he's a driver for anastasia i mean his story is just highly highly unusual and that's what i that's what i knew and had read about him but i i must say the transcripts i remember i put some things that i found in the transcripts with permission from steve schagen and gary lucasy and robert harmon like i put some things in the transcripts that he had said off the cuff just out of the blue he would say something like um do you think that i'm putting the sauce for me for me to die uh for you to die rich and meepo [ __ ] john is bigger than killing the [ __ ] president hey you think i was put in this earth to make them rich and me poor maybe they're hit now for you to die richard newport who talks like that yeah i mean that is a line of a peasant revolutionary yeah people don't talk like that i mean he would say things that just blew my mind i thought where did you write did you write that did you did you me you don't say but it was the the construct that he lived in this absolutely fascinating character did you find him at all sympathetic because i know you say he he came out of a tough you know childhood did you find gotti at all sympathetic in studying him i could find i certainly could find what was sympathetic about him and what i found out about him is that he was a genuine family man yes he loved his family passionately and was devoted to his family but if that ain't the sign of vulnerability i don't know what is because when it comes down to family i think all of our all of our constructs that we live our lives and are thrown out the window because i do anything for my family you know i'm saying so i i think that um in that sense yeah he's so no he's not soulless i love i love this family i can tell you this um you know that tragic situation when his son was was killed i was at the funeral and um it was the first time that i saw a real vulnerability in john and he was really he was really broken up over that you know it was very sad so i mean obviously that's a tragedy but you could really tell that this guy had genuine feeling and genuine love for his family it's monumental shattering of the heart i mean yeah that's uh incredible let me was anybody else up for that role huh was anybody else up for the role of gotti it was there was from david sure i'm sure there was a lot you know i will say that i i was so fortunate in that project because i had an incredibly sensitive director robert harmon who was also an incredible cinematographer i don't you remember a film the history with ruggerhauer very unusual film but i remember the way robert shot that and and he would do these close-ups where he literally would be pulling emotion out of the actor it's incredible and and i loved the way he shot and when i heard he was directing it that that film clicked in my head and i thought this is great this guy really knows how to shoot and then i had gary lucas who was the former vice president of paramount who was a brilliant guy in his own right stephen shaigan who wrote it was a formidably gifted writer he was actually blacklisted i think in the 60s probably the 50s came back he wrote the formula for marlon brando and george scott uh an amazing writer and and i think he also very much pulled from the transcripts but the way he structured that film he had really done his homework he obviously did a tremendous amount of work on that script it was it was one of the few i mean i look back over the scripts that that resonate in my head and over the years and i have to say steve schaegen was a phenomenal writer i never given his that i mean i know he wrote for the theater but he certainly did not write nearly enough for film because he was a gift to our industry he's an amazing writer a formidable intellect i talked with him for a while he passed away a few years ago but uh he wrote a lot for the theater amazing writer so i mean what i'm saying is the team i don't need to see any other performances about gary or or show because you know when when you're with a group of men that just get it they have it in their loins you know they know what they're doing uh i had that team you know and once uh once anthony quinn came aboard at my suggestion they really gave me a kind of a little of the reins to say who should be in the film and i i picked out four actors that i fought for for a long time and i'm so thrilled that they went on to do the sopranos they had huge careers from from that project so i was very um i was thrilled for their lives i'll tell you why people don't realize um and i know because i've known so many actors that came out of the theater and went into the filming a life actor's life is so vulnerable there's no tomorrow people believe this at the moment there's no tomorrow you know if you don't if you know that you're not working tomorrow you're hustling you have to hustle every day of your life and i remember talking to anthony quinn once and i i asked him what was the most difficult sojourn of your career you got an amazing career he said between 50 and 70 i couldn't get any work that i wanted and i thought from anthony quinn to make a statement like that to me and at 50 it was his idea to buy the rights to disobey the greek and and who's over the group that was it that all came from him and he got nominated for the academy award i think actors have to be incredibly proactive today especially in lieu of what's happened in the whole industry in the last five years because if you're not proactive nobody will do the work for you i think a lot of agencies have even given up the idea of reading people don't read today they don't read they don't read the public record they don't read the news they don't read books but they don't read scripts and often they don't even know how to read scripts so i mean it's uh it's not the industry it was when i went into the industry there were very highly illiterate agents that really studied scripts and were thinking michael's right for this joe's right for that mickey's right for that they picked they picked roles in their head they said they're right for this they would think like almost like a casting director i don't think that happens too much and if you do if if you're an actor who's lucky enough to have an asian who has a literary head it's you're way way ahead of the game but the reality of getting that energy from somebody to study for you is out the window today so there you have it that's part one and uh you know what the best is yet to come so stay tuned for part two coming up shortly how do i always leave you you know it same way not gonna change be safe be healthy god bless you all yes i'll see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Michael Franzese

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Keywords: michael, franzese, michael franzese, mafia, mob, mobster, mob boss, mafia boss, caporegime, colombo, colombo family, colombo mafia, gambino, gambino family, bonanno, bonanno family, lucchese, lucchese family, genovese, genovese family, john gotti, gotti, american mafia, italian mafia, federal prison, fat tony, fear city netflix, sonny franzese, armand assante, armand assante as gotti, mob movie con, sitdown with michael franzese, hbo gotti, hbo gotti armand asante, mafia sit down

Id: XSqNYOtDg4g

Length: 29min 56sec (1796 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 05 2021