Messy outcome
Real- life gangsters pour scorn on Johnny Depp mob biopic Black Mass.
IT’S been hailed as a major return to form for Johnny Depp and a potential contender for the 2016 Oscars. But the two men whose murderous activities form the basis of gangster drama Black Mass have dismissed the film as an inconsequential fantasy.
Whitey Bulger, the brutal mobster and FBI informant portrayed by Depp in Scott Cooper’s critically acclaimed movie, has not seen the festival season smash because he is currently serving back- toback life sentences for complicity in 11 murders and other criminal activities between 1971 and 1994.
The former head of the South Boston Winter Hill gang reportedly refused to discuss his life with the actor, and according to his lawyer Hank Brennan, is not impressed by the film’s success. “Johnny Depp might as well have been playing the Mad Hatter all over again as far as James Bulger is concerned,” Brennan told People magazine . “Hollywood greed is behind the rush to portray my
client, and the movie createdreal menace missedin my to the client’s Bostonreal case, scourgeduring the that around time the and countryin other– the mob federal cases government’sand every one complicityof those murdersin each with the top echelon informant programme.“
Meanwhile Kevin Weeks, who was Bulger’s right- hand man and enforcer, said Black Mass’ storyline was largely invented by the film- makers in an interview with the Daily Beast.
“We really did kill those people,” said Weeks, who is played by Breaking Bad’s Jesse Plemons. “But the movie is a fantasy.“
He added: “My character looks like a knuckle- dragging moron. The only resemblance to Whitey’s character was the hairline. The funny thing is, Whitey’s look didn’t really change at all, just his clothes. It’s like we were stuck in a time warp.
“And the mannerisms – the way that Whitey talked to us in the movie – he never swore at us. In all the years I was with that man,We The never openinghe never yelled scene sworeat of eachat me me other. getting once. beaten up? That never happened. They also have me talking to a black FBI agent in the beginning of the film, but I wouldn’t talk to the FBI. I spoke to a DEA agent, Dan Doherty. And my cooperation came after Winter Hill gang hitman Johnny Martorano started cooperating. Nothing in the film is chronological, really.” Weeks, author of the bestselling true crime memoir, Brutal: My Life In Whitey Bulger’s Irish Mob, also said suggestions by the film-makers that Bulger’s propensity for violence increased after the death of his son in 1973 were wide of the mark and typified Black Mass’ chronological unreliability. “I wasn’t there for the death of his son – that happened before my time – but I was there for the death of his mother, which he took pretty bad,” he said. “But really, Whitey
was violent long before his son’s death.”
The former mobster said Bulger’s enforcer Stephen Flemmi ( Roy Cochrane in the film) was portrayed in an overly sympathetic manner by Cooper, and argued the film- makers largely let the FBI off the hook for the agency’s role in overlooking Bulger’s crimes.
“There’s another scene later on where Whitey is yelling at Stevie in the car outside the police station where they’re waiting to pick up Deborah Hussey. The language is all wrong,” said Weeks. “We never really cursed like that unless we were grabbing somebody, and Whitey never would’ve berated Stevie, either. Stevie was a psychopath. Stevie would’ve killed him.
“The FBI were the ones that enabled Jimmy and Stevie to survive. Jimmy used to tell me, ‘ I can call any one of six FBI agents and they’ll come to me and jump in this car with a machine gun and go on a hit.’” – Guardian News & Media