"Snakes on a Plane" Influenced by Mafia

Rumors abound about "Snakes on a Plane."

Even though the movie doesn't open until late Thursday night, the blog-based buzz has turned it into a pop-culture phenomenon.

Here's some of the data echoing through the rumor mill:

-Blog pressure swayed filmmakers.
-Blogs sparked a Samuel L. Jackson catch-phrase.
-The director was a second choice.
-Scenes were added late to bump the PG-13 rating to an R.
-"Snakes" is a dog, so no early screenings.

The truth is: yes, yes, yes, yes, and no.

To guide you through the mythology, this "Snakes on a Plane" primer begins with the film's premise: Two FBI agents escort a former minor Mafia member from Hawaii to California.

To silence him permanently, a time-release crate filled with hundreds of deadly snakes opens during the flight.

Panic ensues.

Jackson stars as one of the agents. He signed on because he liked the title as well as the mix of action, horror and monsters on the loose. Hong Kong action whiz Ronny Yu joined as director, then quit over budget problems and the familiar "creative differences," whatever that means.

David R. Ellis, director of "Final Destination 2," took over.

Although nothing was broken, the studio decided to fix it.

New Line bigwigs changed the title to the milquetoast "Pacific Air 121."

Reportedly, execs felt the original lacked "class" and, thus, no one would take it seriously.

Of course, that's the point — two basic fears, flying and snakes, tapped into by one title.

Jackson got it. He struck. The actor kept telling the media he was at work on "Snakes on a Plane."

By this time, "Snakes" blogs were listed among the top Web sites in hits. Dazzled by the cheesy first title — "cheesy" meaning "a fun time" — they joined the fray.

The good guys won.

A second gaffe was also the studio's.

"When I signed on it was an R-rated film," director Ellis says in a phone interview. "During the course of developing the script, New Line decided they wanted a PG-13."

Jackson and Ellis recoiled.

"Sam (Jackson) and I did not like that. We loved the film, but we had to cut away from the snake attacks," Ellis says.

Common sense, pressure and tepid scenes showed the studio the error of its ways. New Line OK'd a change back to an R and green-lighted the filmmakers to do whatever they wanted to put "Snakes" back on track.

During five days of reshoots, they added "more violence, and gore and snake deaths," Ellis says. "We included nudity. We increased the (profane) language with Sam.

"We were aware of everything they wanted on the Internet so we were able to incorporate everything."

That included the blog-inspired Jackson catch-phrase: "I've had it with these motherf.... snakes on this motherf.... plane!"

The problem now for the media: no advance screenings.

That usually signals a bottom-barrel picture that studios want to protect from early bad reviews. Not in this case, Ellis says.

"It's not the same because we didn't even test the movie," he says. "When I showed it to New Line and all the executives, my kids and some of their friends, people were very open with me about what they like and don't like, I knew it would really, really work.

"I knew there was no way to improve the benefit from the buzz, only lose from it."

Fans should judge "Snakes on a Plane" before anyone else, Ellis says, "especially since it's not the kind of film most critics like. (I pointed out there are exceptions. It went nowhere.)

Ellis says he just wants people to "laugh, get scared, jump out of their seats, have fun and escape everything else going on in the world, and go back and see it again."

Thanks to Barry Caine

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The Feds Say That Galante Diverted Millions from Trash Businesses

Friends of ours: Matthew "Matty the Horse" Ianniello, Genovese Crime Family
Friends of mine: James Galante, David Magel

A Danbury trash magnate arrested in a Mafia case in June diverted millions of dollars from his businesses to his minor league hockey team, no show jobs, race cars and questionable stockholder repayments, federal authorities said Thursday.

James Galante, whose businesses handle about 80 percent of southwestern Connecticut's garbage, carved out exclusive routes for his companies and paid Genovese crime family boss Matthew "Matty the Horse" Ianniello $120,000 a year for mob muscle to enforce his territories, authorities said. That meant higher prices for businesses and homeowners, authorities said.

Galante and Ianniello were among 29 people arrested in connection with the alleged scheme. In a related development Thursday, another trash hauler became the first defendant in the case to plead guilty.

Galante's defense attorneys challenged a court order putting federal marshals in charge of his businesses, saying they were ruining the businesses. But federal authorities said they had improved the cash flow by stopping diversions that amounted to more than $4 million last year. They also said the businesses are now facing competition.

"If any 'blame' is to be assigned for the changes wrought by these incidents, it lies squarely on the shoulders of the defendants, who decided many years ago to operate the 25 companies as an illegal bid-rigging and price-fixing cartel," prosecutors wrote.

A hearing is planned Tuesday on the challenge to the federal monitoring. "Our position is by their own admission they're running it into the ground," said Hugh Keefe, Galante's attorney. "You took a guy's business away from him and turned it over to a bunch of incompetents."

Keefe said the reported diversions will be dealt with during the trial. "Even if that was true, the business itself was thriving up until the day the feds decided they knew more about running a trash business than Jimmy Galante."

Authorities said they were monitoring the businesses, not taking them over, and denied they intended to sell the businesses. Galante owns the Danbury Trashers team of the United Hockey League. The team was disbanded after Galante's arrest in June.

Meanwhile, the trash hauler who admitted his involvement in the scheme Thursday, David Magel, 33, of Baldwin Place, N.Y., pleaded guilty to a racketeering charge in U.S. District Court in New Haven. Magel is general manager of CRP Carting in Elmsford, N.Y.

Prosecutors said the scheme was enforced by extortion and threats, and participants sought to operate it in eastern New York. Magel met with several other members of the enterprise, two of whom were associated with an unidentified Connecticut-based trash carting company, at a diner in Mt. Kisco, N.Y., in 2004, authorities said.

After the meeting, Magel engaged in a series of telephone calls with other members of the enterprise to implement the scheme, prosecutors said. On Dec. 21, 2004, investigators intercepted one conversation between Magel and two members affiliated with the Connecticut carting company during which Magel agreed to provide inflated quotes to customers of the other participants in the conspiracy, authorities said.

"I'm shootin' for the ... gusto here," Magel said in the conversation. Magel faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced Oct. 25.

Keefe said he was not sure if Magel's guilty plea would affect Galante. Authorities would not comment on whether Magel was cooperating against the other defendants.

Thanks to John Christofferson

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Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti

Francesco Raffaele Nitto, better known as Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti (January 27, 1888 — March 19, 1943) was an Italian-American gangster, one of the top henchmen of Al Capone and later a mob boss in his own right.

Nitti was born in Sicily in the 1880s; his gravestone lists his birth year as 1888, but his US immigration documents say 1883. He emigrated to New York City after the end of the First World War, and later moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he set up business as a barber, with a profitable line as a jewel fence on the side. He built an extensive network of associates in the Chicago underworld, and came to the attention of Chicago Mafia boss Johnny Torrio. Later, for Torrio's successor Al Capone, Nitti ran Capone's Prohibition busting liquor smuggling and distribution operation, importing whiskey from Canada and selling it through a network of speakeasies around the city. Nitti was one of Capone's top lieutenants, trusted for his leadership skills and business acumen; despite his nickname "The Enforcer", Nitti used Mafia "soldiers" and other underlings rather than undertake much of the violence himself.

In 1930 Nitti, like Capone, was charged with income tax evasion. Capone was sentenced to eleven years, Nitti to 18 months. Upon his release, he was hailed by the media as the new boss of the Chicago Mafia; in practice he lacked the control over the capos that Capone had enjoyed, and the Capone empire began to fragment, with Nitti acting as a frontman. On December 19, 1932 two Chicago police officers shot Nitti in his office, nearly killing him. Some historians believe they were acting under orders from Mayor Anton Cermak (who, they believe, wanted to redistribute Nitti's empire to gangsters favorable to him). One of the police officers shot himself (non-fatally) to make the shooting look like self-defense.

Unfortunately for the Chicago police (and whoever was behind the shooting), Nitti survived and was acquitted of attempted murder in a February of 1933 trial. The two Chicago police officers responsible for the Nitti shooting were then summarily dismissed from the police force. Cermak decided to take an extended vacation and hang out with President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Florida. On the night of Feb. 15, 1933, a former Italian army marksman, Giuseppe Zangara, was waiting in a crowd at Bayfront Park in Miami. Zangara had three things going for him as an Outfit assassin. He had an inoperable disease, he had a family and he had a gun. From about 30 feet, he popped Cermak in the chest. Roosevelt was not injured because he wasn't the target. Zangara was later executed.

In 1943, many in Chicago organization were indicted for extorting a number of the largest Hollywood movie studios. Many of the higher-ups in the mob, most notably Nitti's second in command Paul Ricca, believed Nitti should take the fall for the rest of them. Fearing another long prison term and possibly suffering from terminal cancer, Nitti shot himself dead in Chicago's Illinois Central railyard on March 19, 1943.

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Gotti Has Charges Thrown Out

Friends of ours: John "Junior" Gotti

A judge on Monday tossed out the latest racketeering and money laundering charges against John "Junior" Gotti, but the son of the late mob boss still faces trial on charges alleging he ordered the beating of Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin was a blow to the government just weeks before Gotti's third trial on racketeering charges. Juries deadlocked at two previous trials in the last year.

In May, the government brought new charges of racketeering, witness tampering and money laundering to counter Gotti's contention in 1999 that he left the mob in the late 1990s.

In throwing out the new racketeering and money laundering charges, the judge noted that Gotti pleaded guilty to racketeering in 1999 and that charges identical to some of the new ones were dismissed by the government after Gotti satisfied the terms of his plea agreement. "The plea agreement cannot be both a sword and shield," she wrote.

Lauren McDonough, a spokeswoman for prosecutors, said there was no comment. A call seeking comment from Gotti's lawyer, Charles Carnesi, was not returned.

The judge said the government had also argued that Gotti used money from his racketeering activities to operate two corporations he formed in the early 1990s. "The problem with this second theory is that it is based on nothing but surmise, speculation and conjecture," Scheindlin said.

The government alleges that Gotti ordered a baseball bat beating of Sliwa and a kidnapping several weeks later that ended with Sliwa being shot three times before he dived out of a moving taxi. Sliwa recovered.

If convicted at trial, scheduled to start August 21, Gotti could face up to 30 years in prison.

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Hoffa Helps Open Caesars Palace

Caesars Palace creator Jay Sarno was giving UPI reporter Myram Borders a pre-opening tour in August 1966.

"I recall Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa being introduced to the opening night audience as a man who was instrumental in securing major financing for the hotel development," Borders said in an e-mail. Hoffa even went on stage, took the mic and said a few congratulatory words, she added. The mobbed-up Teamster pension fund money helped finance the hotel development.

Borders, who ran the UPI office here for decades, was in the massive press room on opening night when she spotted some names on a Rolodex. They were private numbers of "the boys," she said, referring to organized crime bosses. As she was leaving the room, a PR honcho from New York saw the list of names she had taken down and "we had a major tug of war over my precious piece of paper."

Thanks to Norm!

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