HBO’s Mob Story : Movie takes an unflinching look at Teamster boss known for charm and corruption

Jackie Presser, the late Teamster president who had close ties with the Mafia and was an FBI informant, is a perfect metaphor for our times.

So believes Oscar-winning Abby Mann (“Judgment at Nuremberg”), the writer and co-executive producer of HBO’s new movie “Teamster Boss: The Jackie Presser Story,” starring Brian Dennehy as Presser.

“Here is a guy who was working both the Mafia and the FBI without either one of them knowing it,” Mann said. “I don’t see him as a villain. I see him as product of our times.”

The Ohio-based Presser, who was president of the Teamsters from 1983 until his death at age 61 in 1988, also was the first union leader to give his support to Ronald Reagan and George Bush when Reagan was president and Bush vice president.

“Teamster Boss” incorporates the images of real politicians through archival footage and videotape. In footage of Presser seen in the company of Reagan and Bush, Dennehy has been inserted as Presser.

According to producer John Kemeny (“The Josephine Baker Story”), the movie took on a more political tone once the archival footage was discovered.

“The political edge was not so sharp when I read the first draft,” Kemeny said. “Obviously, there were references (in the script), but when we actually saw the footage and I saw him with Reagan and Bush, then we started significantly sharpening that side.”

Presser’s life seemed stranger than fiction. The son of Teamster executive Bill Presser (Eli Wallach), he was nicknamed “Humpty Dumpty” because of his Gargantuan size and considered an intellectual buffoon by the Teamsters’ old guard. Married five times, he doggedly pursued women and then usually lost interest in them as soon as he won their hearts.

“He was this piggish-looking human being,” Kemeny said. “But women fell for him. They couldn’t resist him. They said he was so charming. He had five wives and I don’t know how many dozens of girlfriends. It wasn’t because of his power or money. He had a strange attraction to women.”

Dennehy said Presser’s sexual escapades were an example of a “classic American, perhaps male, attitude toward sex. It was all part of his life. Everything was consumed by him and once it was consumed, he wasn’t interested in it anymore. In terms of relationships with people, he was like a big kid. He just gobbled up everything in sight. There is something charming about him even though you know he is not the type of person you could count on for anything.”

Presser fascinated Dennehy “not so much because of his achievements as a union leader, which are dubious, but his life, which was crazy, so chaotic, so improvisational.” Playing Presser, Dennehy said, was an enormous amount of work. “But it was fun to do,” he said. “There were a couple of cases in my career where I had huge jobs where you knew you would be incredibly involved. When you look at it ahead of time you think (it will be) such a nightmare, but it’s not. It is really fascinating to completely shut everything else out and concentrate on what you are doing. It is very liberating.”

He did, though, have a “minor debate” with Mann over his interpretation of Presser. “I always wanted to make sure that we got the darker side of this whole thing,” Dennehy said. “There is always a tendency to make these guys heroes and romanticize them. In many cases they are just thugs. By any measurement, that is what Presser was. He didn’t have a sense of honor among his friends because he was a snitch for years. I wanted to avoid the trap to make this guy some kind of working-class hero.”

Though Presser hated the tactics of his predecessor Jimmy Hoffa (who happens to be the subject of the December feature film starring Jack Nicholson), he continued Hoffa’s tradition of corruption. In fact, before his death, Presser was close to being indicted on federal charges of racketeering and embezzlement. Presser paved the way for Ron Carey, the first democratically elected Teamster head in its history.

“I believe deep down he would have liked to have changed, but because of the support he got from the mob and because the way he was an informant, it was impossible,” Kemeny said. “It had to be Carey, who was completely clean and was always struggling and was never accepted by the Establishment because the Establishment was supported by the Mafia.”

“Teamster Boss” ends with footage of Carey’s swearing-in as Teamster president. Mann said he hopes audiences will find the movie pro-union.

“I think we say (the union) got into the wrong hands and that power corrupts,” Mann said. “I hope people realize unions serve a particular purpose. Ron (Carey) liked it. While he thinks he would like to see more of what the constructive people are doing, he knows it was exactly what it was like.”

“Teamster Boss: The Jackie Presser Story” premieres Saturday at 8 p.m. on HBO; repeat dates include: Sept. 15 at 8 p.m.; Sept. 20 at 10:30 p.m.; Sept. 23 at 11:30 p.m.; Sept. 26 at 3:30 a.m. and Oct. 4.