Nicholas Celozzi has spent much of his life reviewing the events prior to the murder of former president of the United States, John F. Kennedy.
The stories of silence filled their childhood house. Conversations with your uncle Joseph [Pepe] Giancana, brother of the chief of the Mafia de Chicago, Sam Giancana, then helped shed light on the possible participation of his family in one of the most debated moments in US history.
After decades of film and television representations of Sam Giancana, Celozzi is reconceptualizing the Kennedy shooting in 1963 with an focus on the main players of the Chicago outfit, a powerful Italian-American criminal organization.
For Celozzi, his last script effort is more than telling another murder story. It is the family.
“My family, my cousins, really got tired of people using our name, monetizing our name and telling a false story,” said Celozzi in an interview.
“These are not fictitious people … They are real people. They are vulnerable, they have nerves, they make mistakes, they are not very sure of things.”
Sam Giancana, head of the Chicago outfit in the 1950s and 1960s, was widely known for his ties with the Kennedy family. He was shot dead in his house in 1975, and his murder remains unsolved.
Many have speculated that the mafia group also played a role in Kennedy’s murder, and this is explored in Celozzi’s November 1963that began to film in Winnipeg this summer.
Trusting the stories of Pepe Giancana, Celozzi focuses on the 48 hours prior to murder.
Giancana, a filling driver for his brother, had been a fly on the wall in the days before the murder, said Celozzi, who is also one of the producers of the independent film.
Many conversations led to what Celozzi calls the “Pepe Chronicles”, a series of stories that detail the ties of the family mafia.
“I was always aware of who they were. These are not things that everyone simply go home and speak. It is a conscience. It is a strange reality in which you are born,” said Celozzi.
Pepe Giancana died in the mid -90s, leaving his stories with Celozzi.
Driving by honesty
The writer said he knew he wanted to do something to honor the history of his family without degrading them to cartoons that are often found in the Mafia films. Then he began working with Sam Giancana’s daughter, Bonnie Giancana, to create the script.
In the course of several years and rewritten, Celozzi said they worked to ensure that every detail was precise.
“I needed to keep that honest with the story Pepe gave me, or why do it? If I was not going to be honest with what he gave me, I had no purpose in me,” said Celozzi.
The veteran Canadian producer Kevin Dewalt of Minds Eye Entertainment to produce the film, which wrapped the filming in Winnipeg last week and enters postproduction in Saskatchewan.
“I don’t think the family is proud of what happened … it was important for them to tell the truth before dying,” Dewalt said.
The cast includes John Travolta, Dermot Mulroney and Mandy Patinkin and is led by the English filmmaker nominated for the Academy Award, Roland Joffe.
When it was time to choose a place that could imitate Chicago from the 1960s and the historic Dealey Plaza in Dallas, where Kennedy was killed, the producers chose Winnipeg over other important cities such as Atlanta and New Orleans partly due to their neighborhood of exchange district. The producers decided that Winnipeg was a perfect substitute for Windy City.
Dealey Plaza, and the famous grass Knoll, were built from scratch in the Birds Hill Provincial Park, northeast of Winnipeg.
The film presents 1,500 extras and 75 to 80 period cars to precisely portray the period of time.
Dewalt said he hopes that spectators be impressed by the ability of the film to contribute a new level of authenticity and validity at the time of history.
“People will leave the theater with their own impressions about what everything means,” he said.
“At the end of the day, we have at least given them the tools for one of these things that have been said, and they can make their own impressions in terms of how they feel about it.”
When asked if he believes that the film could stir the feathers with historians, governments or members of the mafia, Celozzi said that this is not its goal.
“What I am doing is simply putting that missing piece, not glamorize, just write it.”
