Brutal_ The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob - Kevin Weeks [139]
After the television and newspaper interviews, people recognized me all over the place, which is never a good thing for a criminal. Luckily, I have no desire to continue my former life as a criminal. I tell myself every day that I will not commit a crime. So far, I have not. Nor do I intend to. My life today is very simple and that is the way I want it to be. Andy Warhol once said that everyone gets his fifteen minutes of fame. As far as I’m concerned, my fifteen minutes have lasted too long.
THE DEPARTED
Still, I never quite know what surprise is going to come my way. One afternoon after the 60 Minutes interview, I was asked by a retired major in the Massachusetts State Police to spend some time with movie star Leonardo DiCaprio, who was in Boston shooting Martin Scorsese’s The Departed. Although I wasn’t anxious to do that, I acquiesced. I met the actor in his suite at the Sheraton Hotel outside of Boston, and spent two and a half hours with him. It was easy to see that his role as Billy Costigan was, in fact, not based on my relationship with Jimmy, nor did the character he played resemble me or my life in any way. Over lunch, I found DiCaprio reserved but very intelligent. He was anxious to question me about what my reaction would be in certain circumstances, the circumstances his character would encounter in the film. When I finally saw the film, I found that he had acted on some of the advice I had given him.
As for the movie itself, I felt it failed miserably in portraying Irish organized crime in South Boston. I know it was based on Internal Affairs, a Hong Kong thriller, and it tried to jump on the climate of interest in the Irish gangs of Boston in this adaptation. But the film had nothing to do with South Boston or the people in Brutal. But what can you expect from a movie based on organized crime in Hong Kong?
There were little details that rang especially untrue for a South Boston gang; such as the word “guinea,” a word Jimmy or I would never have used. I found the use of the woman in the projects opening the door, smoking despite her portable oxygen tank, insulting to the good people of South Boston. The busing scenes, I noted, were from Charlestown, not South Boston. Also, Jack Nicholson’s character Frank Costello barely resembled Jimmy, who was always perfectly coiffed and well dressed in expensive suits or casual wear. The fact that they tried to show that the Irish mob was infiltrated by undercover state police was absurd, especially since Jimmy would never allow anyone around us who wasn’t known to us or had been around us for a great portion of his life. The attempt by the writers to incorporate certain events written about in local newspapers made the movie disjointed in various scenes. The only character that rang at all true was Mark Wahlberg’s Dignan, who was similar to a sergeant in the State Police Organized Crime Unit who was intent on getting us.
A lot of extras who appeared in the film were from South Boston, including a friend of mine, Mike Byron, who played one of Jack Nicholson’s enforcers. William Monahan, the guy who wrote the screenplay for the movie, was certainly not from South Boston and showed no understanding of the people who lived in South Boston or the people in this book.
As for the real thing, there have been no legitimate sightings of Jimmy in the past year. Since The Departed came out, however, the book sales have gone up. Evidently people have more interest in the Whitey Bulger story. Perhaps this will translate into more sightings, but for the moment, there do not appear to be any worth discussing.
Jimmy’s still at large, and still on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.
CONFLICTING BOOKS
Around the time that Brutal came out, there were two other books written about us. Howie Carr’s book was filled with inaccuracies, and in some cases, complete fabrications. For instance, he attributed murders to Jimmy Bulger