Harvey Keitel joining The Irishman?
Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman looks like it’s set to be one of these greatest films to ever go into production. Not only does the film have the most tremendous cast in Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci and Bobby Cannavale, but it also has the freedom of Netflix as the streaming company has bought worldwide rights to distribute it.
The latest news is that Harvey Keitel is the latest Hollywood heavyweight to join the project, if new reports are correct. The Tracking Board is the outlet stating that Keitel is in talks to join the aforementioned in the film as none other than Jimmy Hoffa.
The film itself is about Frank Sheeran, a family man who was also reportedly a contract killer for the mob. Sheeran had 25 hits to his name, one possibly being that of Hoffa, who disappeared in 1975. It is based on the book ‘I Heard You Paint Houses’ by Charles Brandt, the synopsis for which can be read below.
‘I heard you paint houses’ are the first words Jimmy Hoffa ever spoke to Frank ‘the Irishman’ Sheeran. To paint a house is to kill a man. The paint is the blood that splatters on the wall and floors. In the course of nearly five years of recorded interviews Frank Sheeran confessed to Charles Brandt that he handled more than twenty-five hits for the Mob, and for his friend Hoffa.
Sheeran learned to kill in the US Army, where he saw an astonishing 411 days of active combat during World War 2. After returning home he became a hustler and a hit man, working for legenday crime boss Russell Bufalino. Eventually Sheeran would rise to a position of such prominence that he was named as one of only two non-Italians on a list of the twenty-six most wanted Mob figures.
When Bufalino ordered Sheeran to kill Hoffa, the Irishman did the deed, knowing that if he refused, he would have been killed himself.
Pacino is still in talks to play Russell Bufalino, the head of the Pennsylvania mafia, Joe Pesci as Bill Bufalino, a well-connected Teamster lawyer with no relation to Russell, while Bobby Cannavale will play a low-level mobster named Skinny Razor.
The Keitel deal is still up in the air, but we’ll bring you more news as it comes out way.
