Word: nesses
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Like the TV show that spawned it, The Untouchables dramatizes the holy war that Federal Agent Eliot Ness (Costner) proclaimed against Chicago's racketeers in the waning years of the Volstead Act. Al Capone (De Niro), with the police and politicians in his silk pocket, runs the city, abetted by gun- crazy Frank Nitti (Billy Drago). Ness's "untouchable" aides are an Italian- American sharpshooter (Andy Garcia), a bespectacled accountant (Charles Martin Smith) and an aging cop, Jimmy Malone (Connery). Malone is a father figure, an Obi-Wan Kenobi to Ness's Luke Skywalker, alerting him to the ways...
...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 up a story about two of the good guys: Ness and Jimmy Malone, the idealist and the pragmatist...
...Fortunately, Paramount let me really run wild." Steel also suggested the essential extravagance of signing Giorgio Armani, the Milanese couturier, to dress most of the characters. Working from photos of '30s gangster films, Armani reworked period shapes into a style that was less stiff, more drapable. Instead of dressing Ness blandly, Armani put him in darkly glamorous three-piece suits; rather than make Nitti gritty, he clothed him like a sepulchral angel, in gleaming white synthetics...
...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...
...walks off into the sunset. It's a simple story told in a classical way." That might seem a bit too simple for De Palma, Mamet, De Niro and the other smart lads who have made careers breaking popular icons instead of retooling them. But like Ness's, and Capone's, theirs is a story of hard-earned success. And what's so bad about making good...