Other Latest Jules Nasso article

December 20, 2002


MOVIES
On the edges of influence in Hollywood
Yes, he's under federal indictment, but what really steams Jules Nasso is the suggestion that he's not a player.

By Paul Lieberman, Times Staff Writer


Julius R. Nasso has been waiting six months for this trip down Wilshire Boulevard and he is determined to make it in style, with a diamond pin as the top button of his white shirt and a limo decorated with twinkle lights. And an entourage, of course.

Here's who piles into the limo with him for the drive to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences theater Tuesday night: Two of the bodyguards who have been watching over him since his attempted extortion indictment in New York. One of the lawyers waging Nasso's legal war with his old partner, the action star Steven Seagal, the same man Nasso is accused of trying to shake down. The former maitre d' from Spago. And the mandatory babe -- a young woman from Czechoslovakia well cast for the role of being escorted over a red carpet before 30 TV crews and dozens of still photographers. Most are there to get shots of Tom Cruise, who soon will be striding the carpet as one of the executive producers of the -low-budget but buzzed-about film "Narc."

But the man in the limo will be looking for another name when the producer credits roll.

"Now the show begins," one of the entourage announces as Jules Nasso pulls up to the curb.

When we last encountered Nasso over the summer, he was steamed, and not only because of his indictment in June. He was concerned, naturally, about the Feds' accusation he had sought out the local Mafia capo on Staten Island to cook up the plot against Seagal, who Nasso complained had reneged on an agreement to do four more films with him.

But what rankled him almost as much as being branded a mob "associate" was something else a federal prosecutor called him at a bail hearing: "a self-styled film producer." Nasso kept saying, "He said what? 'A self-styled producer?' Self-styled?"

The Mafia charges he could answer in court. But this slur cut deeper for the 5-foot-6 pharmacist by training, who had been bitten by the Hollywood bug as a young man when Italian director Sergio Leone came to Brooklyn to shoot the mob saga "Once Upon a Time in America." Nasso spent the next two decades trying to establish his bona fides, getting his break when he befriended Seagal, the rugged martial-arts instructor he saw as "the next John Wayne."

Though some studio veterans viewed Nasso as more of a personal manager and peacemaker for the temperamental actor than as a traditional producer, no one could take away the credits he racked up during more than a decade of Seagal-Nasso Productions.

After FBI agents arrested him at his waterfront Staten Island mansion , he brooded at how the prosecutor made him sound like some wannabe again. That's when he began talking about the trip to Los Angeles for the premiere of the film that would prove any such naysayers wrong, once and for all.

He flew in Monday night on low-cost Jet Blue -- security costs have been killing him, he said. Tuesday morning, he had two egg-white omeletes on the patio of his Wilshire Boulevard hotel, the first one being too small. He took a cell-phone call from a gossip columnist back in New York who was preparing to fling another bit of dirt from the central evidence in the mob case, FBI tapes recorded at a Staten Island restaurant.

Nasso fretted, as he would off and on through the trip, that maybe he shouldn't have come. "I don't want to hurt the movie," he said.

As Nasso tells it, he got the call on "Narc" about six months after he split with Seagal in 2000, from an old friend who does completion bonding for films. A production in Toronto was in trouble. Could he help out with some "bridge money"?

Nasso says he borrowed about half a million dollars, "not off the street, not gangster money," for the then-obscure project of a fledgling writer-director, Joe Carnahan. The shaved-head son of a grocer had a one-film resume, "Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane," which he'd made for less than $8,000 and somehow gotten released in 1998.

Carnahan, now 33, had grown up as a fan of the gritty cop movies of the '70s, such as the "The French Connection," in which justice eluded an antihero Gene Hackman in a climactic warehouse shootout. He tried making a short like that in college, about a warehouse confrontation between cops and drug dealers, but it got a C-minus, Carnahan said. Nonetheless, he wanted to "revisit" and expand the scenario as his second feature, drawing on the life of an old friend, a heroin addict, to craft a script about two Detroit detectives obsessed with solving the murder of a colleague.

The studios were not sold. "Everyone said no: A-tier, B-tier, C-tier on down," he recalled.

Carnahan's agent passed the script to another client, actor Ray Liotta, who was looking to develop material for himself. Poised for stardom after "GoodFellas" and "Field of Dreams," Liotta had seen his career slump instead. He decided, "It's not how good you do in the movie -- it's how good the movie does. And mine weren't doing so good.... I did 'Operation Dumbo Drop,' so that gives you an idea."

Sounding like many actors, he added, "I wasn't crazy about the movies I was getting ... so we formed our own production company." Liotta and his wife named it Tiara Blu Films -- after her taste in headgear and the color of his eyes -- and settled on "Narc" as their first project. Liotta would play one of the cops, Jason Patric the other.

They began shooting in Toronto in February 2001, under a financing deal with Los Angeles-based Cutting Edge Entertainment, one of whose principals mortgaged his house to come up with part of the $3-million-plus budget.

"A week into shooting, we got a phone call [telling us] we didn't have the money," recalled Diane Nabatoff, the principal producer for Liotta's new company. "Everyone told us, 'Walk off. Shut down.' "

They didn't, though. As Cutting Edge and others scrambled to find additional investors, Carnahan used whatever film they could afford and finished the shoot in an intense 28 days.

Carnahan, Liotta and Nabatoff all said they only learned later how many people had been recruited to help fund their film -- and how these strangers they had never met, or seen, had become "attached" as producers. They wound up with four listed producers (including Nasso), nine executive producers, five co-executive producers and their one line producer. That roster became a running gag this past Sunday when the lead actors, director and Nabatoff appeared on a panel after a screening at the Directors Guild in New York -- and not because one of the names was now also listed on a federal mob indictment.

No, the joke was the producer proliferation. "We bummed a cigarette off some guy -- he got an E.P. credit," Liotta quipped.

One of the other panelists invited the audience to get credits too, saying, "There's a sign-up sheet outside."

They were able to joke about it now because of the eventual twist in their movie-making ordeal: how "Narc" was a hit of this year's Sundance festival and later was screened for Tom Cruise and his producing partner, Paula Wagner, who then convinced Paramount Pictures to pick it up. Before long, Carnahan was lined up to direct a film with Harrison Ford, and the once precarious "Narc" was being slated for January release in up to 1,500 theaters nationwide, after limited release this weekend in Los Angeles and New York for, as they say, "academy consideration."

"If someone doesn't wake up and give you an Academy Award nomination, Hollywood is dead," a man in the balcony called down to Liotta at Sunday's New York screening.

Liotta called back, "Could you say that again?" and the audience laughed on cue, having no idea of the battle that the brewing Oscar campaign had set off between the actor and producer No. 4. That acrimony lingered even after both men arrived in L.A. for this week's premiere.

*

Bad news

At a Starbucks several miles from where Nasso ordered his omelets, Liotta told of calling Nasso a few weeks ago with some bad news. Under the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science rules, only three producers may be named for each film nominated for best picture. In the long-odds event that "Narc" gets one in February, Liotta said, the named producers would be the trio who did the "hands-on everyday stuff" -- Liotta, his wife and Nabatoff. Not Jules Nasso.

Nasso responded with a rant about how he had "saved" the film, Liotta said. Nasso has told friends that he did everything from help edit it to advise Liotta to gain weight to make his vengeful detective more convincing.

Such stories astonish the actor.

"Never saw him. None of those producers ever spent a day [on set]," the 47-year-old Liotta said. "I'll bet deep down the guy's really nice. He wants legitimacy. 'Who needs Steven Seagal -- I just did a movie, "Narc," with Ray Liotta.' I understand. But ... don't yell at me."

On Dec. 2, Paramount took out one of those full-page "For Your Consideration" ads touting "Narc" in Variety, and listing four other companies behind the film, including Liotta's Tiara Blu Films.

A week later, there was another full-page "Narc" ad, offering "Congratulations and Thanks to Our Cast and Crew." But this one was taken out by Julius R. Nasso Productions.

During the limo ride from his hotel to the premiere, the 50-year-old Nasso was regaling his entourage with how an old industry friend had told him, "Jules, we're ready to pull the plug and flush the film" until he came to the rescue. Nasso said he wasn't going to be "steamrolled by star power" and deprived of his credit.

"You did it, Jules!" said the former Spago maitre d', Bernard Erpicum, who, when he wasn't encouraging Nasso, kept talking about his own new project, hoping to recapture the "magic" he'd once had with Wolfgang Puck at Silvio de Mori's new place on Rodeo Drive.

The two bodyguards were seated near him, toward the front of the limo, as was Nasso's civil lawyer from New York, Robert Hantman, who is handling his $60-million suit against Seagal. Hantman, who was wearing a corduroy tuxedo jacket, said he had spoken with Liotta's manager about the credit dispute and come to an agreement -- it was way too premature to argue over Oscars.

Nasso's other guest, Christine Simrova, an economics student from Prague, already had had quite a day, including a "Pretty Woman"-like experience along Rodeo Drive: first a visit to a hair salon, then to the Armani store, when she asked, "Where do I find a dress?" Nasso explained that it was a platonic relationship ("she has a boyfriend") but she stayed by his side as he climbed out of the limo and marched across the red carpet, stopping to pose when some of the photographers called out "Jules! Jules!" Such are the rewards of notoriety, though once inside the academy headquarters Nasso wondered whether the "rag magazines," the tabloids, might use the photos to zing him again. Near the stairs to the academy's Samuel Goldwyn Theater, he passed Seagal's current producer without a word. But others stopped him for hugs or handshakes, including one that left him beaming, from Rob Friedman, the vice chairman of Paramount. "Self-styled?" Nasso said after the studio executive moved on.

By the time the film was over, buffet lines were set up in the lobby for the usual look-who's-here premiere party. Cruise apparently had left after his walk-and-wave down the carpet, but everyone agreed that he'd helped earn his own credit -- as one of the executive producers -- by attracting such a gantlet of cameras to a small-budget indie-style film. Nasso spent much of the next hour smoking cigarettes on the terrace area, and saying he probably should have stayed home on Staten Island. When yet another producer who worked with Seagal came up, however, he couldn't resist a little "How did you survive?" banter.

When the crowd thinned, the entourage returned to the limo for one last short stop at Ago Ristorante on Melrose. Harvey Weinstein was there following the Los Angeles premiere of his new Miramax film, "Gangs of New York." There were waves for Harvey, but Nasso reserved his hug for a fellow at the next table almost exactly his size, and smoking a foot-long cigar. Joe Pesci is another guy from the streets of New York who can't take this fantasy life for granted -- he was managing a Bronx restaurant when he got a call asking him if he'd want to play Robert De Niro's brother in "Raging Bull."

Now Nasso poured out his troubles to the great portrayer of wise guys, not needing to mention his criminal case, but complaining about these actors who wanted to put their wives and friends in the credits -- never mind that he for years had been the producing partner of an actor.

"I'd tell them, I don't want the credit -- just send me the cash," Pesci said. Then he said, "I'm so happy for you, Jules. Just relax. Just remember, everything must pass."

Nasso was to fly back to New York on Thursday, despite his lawyer's urging him to stay longer and follow Pesci's advice to relax. But the morning did not go well for "Narc," which received not a single Golden Globe nomination. Oscar nominations will be announced Feb. 11.

By then, the first trial stemming from last spring's indictment will be underway, if not over. Scheduled to be in federal court in Brooklyn on Jan. 6 are three Gottis and other heavy hitters in the racketeering case, including the alleged Staten Island capo, Sonny Ciccone. If there's no plea bargain, Seagal could be called as a witness. Nasso and his brother, Vincent, are not scheduled for trial until next September, when his lawyers may have to explain why he is quoted in the tape transcripts telling the waterfront boss, "Tell me what I have to do and I'll do it." Prosecutors have alleged that the group was conspiring to extort $150,000 per film from Seagal, though no money was collected.

Nasso, who says he has a good explanation for what's on those tapes and will show his innocence, spends much of each day on the phone with his lawyers. "I'm an alleged gangster. My concentration now is on facing my accuser, not worrying about all this Tinseltown stuff," he said shortly before he left Los Angeles. But the phone was ringing off the hook while he was here, he noted. . "Yeah, I got tons of deals. I'm still a young producer."
 

Amos Stevens

New Member
Hee hee, I was reading these comments of "idiot, dork,moron" & had to back up to see who you're all refering to....oh NASSO!
 

Lotussan

I Belong To Steven
As far as Nasso goes his comments and his demeanor really make him look bad, that's my personal opinion of what I have seen of him, and I have a right to voice my opinion even if Metro doesn't like it...However, I do apologize if anyone is offended by it...
 

Mama San

Administrator
Lotus,
I do agree that you are entitled to your opinion!
I believe you voiced it quite well and you did it
without being vindictive, disrepectful, being
hostile or calling any names! That's something
we all can do if we will only try!
Thank you!
God bless,
Mama san
 

Amos Stevens

New Member
I have been wanting to comment on something-all in tease people...did anyone notice how many members here look like Seagal? Under their names are their photos & boy we have a lot here! hee hee
 

Mama San

Administrator
Smarty!!!!!
Hahahahaha!!!!!!
Yeah! And you're a little red dot with gloves, shades and shoes!
I'm a little yellow happy face with gloves, shoes and one wavey arm! Do you think that makes us strange? I don't think that makes us strange! Hehehehe!!!!!
God bless,
Mama san
 

kickingbird

candle lighter
I've GOT to learn how to paste those cute little ditties here! ... or else I'd have a photo of Steven too! lol!
okay, here's one from rhetoric: imagine a red-hot chili pepper with a straw hat, muddy garden shoes, and a roto-tiller in one hand and a tall, cool lemonade in the other ... and a great big GRIN for ya'll for a HAPPY NEW YEAR! :) :) :)
 

Catlady

New Member
Originally posted by Lotussan
As far as Nasso goes his comments and his demeanor really make him look bad, that's my personal opinion of what I have seen of him, and I have a right to voice my opinion even if Metro doesn't like it...However, I do apologize if anyone is offended by it...


No you have not affended anyone. Metro is upset becasue we wouldn't let her call Steven a jerk and asked there be no namecalling on this board...Here you all call Nasso names and I didn't say anything to you so she PO about that ..
 

Amos Stevens

New Member
Kickingbird-you can add a little photo under your name under what they call avatars. Hopefully someone else here can assist more with directions on how to do so.

Too bad you can't draw yourself-aka chilli pepper,scan it & use it as your avatar!
 

kickingbird

candle lighter
Thanks Amos :) ... I'll see what I can do soon ... great idea!

Hope ya'll are beginning the New Year with good thoughts ... as they say on Vulcan: "Live Long and Prosper"
 
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