Spira brought down Steinbrenner, now says film producers are ruining his life

Howard Spira is a lot of things: Bronx guy. Mob informant. Degenerate gambler. Ex-con. And the man who famously toppled Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.

What Howard Spira is not: Someone who suffers in silence.

Spira, age 59 and unemployed for the last 10 years, declares in typically colorful terms that he’s engaged in a scorched-earth war to reclaim his life from a supposedly unscrupulous production company executive who once promised a feature film, a documentary and a book detailing Spira’s life and times — only to deliver bupkis.

“They have my name, my life and my story, and they’ve done nothing,” said Spira in a sit-down with the Daily News. “They’re perpetuating a fraud because they’re not allowing me to make a living. And they’ve ruined my life, because they’ve caused me literally more problems than George Steinbrenner, Dave Winfield and everybody put together.

“Steinbrenner was like a tea party compared to this.”

But as the late Yankees boss would attest, there are at least two sides to any Spira story. If Howie seems put out, you should hear his business partners.

Producer/director Ken Kushner and documentary co-director Rob Simmons describe Spira as cantankerous, overly dramatic and often his own worst enemy. Spira freely admits claiming that he had cancer in one effort to escape his 2015 deal with Kushner.

“He’s very impatient, and I understand,” said Kushner. “Howie’s been a handful, but it’s hard to stay mad at the guy. In spite of his outbursts, I am a fan of Howard.”

Spira, after speaking with The News about his woes, left an oddly menacing voice mail for Simmons through an intermediary. Typical Howie, sighs Simmons.

“The switch flips, and he becomes erratic — a loose cannon,” says Simmons, whose involvement with Spira dates to 2011. “He leaves voice mails wishing we all get cancer and die. It’s brutal. He’s got that dark side.

“If he could just go two months of just being totally calm and patient, a lot of things could be accomplished.”

The acrimony dates to 2015, when Spira signed a “Life Rights Agreement” with Kushner’s Massive Film