Word: linson
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Hollywood. Part of last week's media furor about the play, in fact, was the assertion that Mantegna's role is based on Ned Tanen, head of production at Paramount, which made The Untouchables, while the obsequious producer is said to be a sketch of Untouchables Producer Art Linson, a self-described Silver look-alike. Says the apparently flattered Linson: "Mamet has to get his material somewhere...
...with no space wars, no music videos, no cute beasties, no bikinis. It is a period film in the wrong period. Kids want to go back to the '50s, not to Chicago during Prohibition. They weren't even born when this movie was a TV series. The producer, Art Linson, makes little pictures, and Brian De Palma directs naughty ones that rarely go gold. David Mamet writes Pulitzer-prizewinning plays, not boffo movies. O.K., so who's in the cast? Robert De Niro: his last hit was 1978's The Deer Hunter. Sean Connery: splendid actor, but the only time...
...years ago David Mamet beheld Art Linson (Fast Times at Ridgemont High) across a Manhattan dinner table. "David," Linson recalls saying, "now that you have just won the Pulitzer for Glengarry Glen Ross, don't you think the right career move would be to do a remake of a TV series?" Mamet was faced with correcting a familiar flaw of biographical drama: "That something is true does not make it interesting. There wasn't any real story. Ness and Capone never met. Capone went to jail for income tax evasion, which is not a very dramatic climax. So I made...
...filmmakers needed was actors to fill the clothes. Harrison Ford and Mel Gibson were considered for Ness; both were unavailable. On the recommendation of Steven Spielberg and Lawrence Kasdan, and with Linson's avid support, De Palma selected Costner. Says De Palma: "Like Connery, he's very straightforward. He gives you everything he's got, but he wants you to play by the rules." It worked out fine; in a week the actor has gone from Who's he? to heartthrob. That is a status Connery has easily worn for a quarter-century, and he was happy to fall into...
...Hoskins (Mona Lisa) was hired. Then De Niro said yes, and the studio fired Hoskins and ate his $200,000 salary. De Niro's scenes were to be filmed at the end of the twelve-week shoot. "I met him when we were in the final stages of rehearsals," Linson says. "He was thin. He looked about 15, 20 years too young to play Capone. He had a ponytail. I panicked. We'd fired Bob Hoskins for a quiet guy in a ponytail looking 30. Then De Niro went off to Italy for ten weeks, and when he came back...