Hangin’ With the Mob

Mike Newell, the British director of such charming small films as “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “Enchanted April” and “Into the West,” takes on the Brooklyn mob in his new film, “Donnie Brasco,” starring Al Pacino and Johnny Depp.

Written by Paul Attanasio, “Donnie Brasco,” which opens Friday, is based on the true story of FBI agent Joseph Pistone, a.k.a Donnie Brasco, who successfully infiltrated the mob in the late 1970s and helped send to jail dozens of mob members.

Newell, 53, doesn’t envision “Donnie” as a variation of “GoodFellas” and “The Godfather” films but as an Arthur Miller-esque study of friendship, loyalty and betrayal.

Pacino stars as Lefty Ruggiero, a two-bit aging hit man who makes a huge error in judgment when he befriends and trusts the young Donnie (Depp). In turn, Donnie finds himself at moral and ethical crossroads when he becomes deeply immersed in the exciting, violent world of Lefty and his mob.

A graduate of Cambridge University, Newell began his career as a production trainee at Granada Television. He made his feature directorial debut with the forgettable 1980 thriller “The Awakening.” He drew great acclaim for “Dance With a Stranger,” his 1984 film about the last woman to be executed in England. Newell also directed “The Good Father,” “Amazing Grace and Chuck” and “An Awfully Big Adventure.”

During a recent visit to Los Angeles, the director chatted about making a big-budget movie in America and how he had a blast running with the mob in Brooklyn.

Question: Audiences are going to look at “Donnie Brasco” and find it hard to believe it was directed by the same person who did “Enchanted April” and “Four Weddings and a Funeral.” Did you make a deliberate decision to do something different and infinitely more darker?

Answer: That truly wasn’t part of it. After “Four Weddings,” I obviously was going to have a crack at making a film here. But [wanting to come here] can turn against you very quickly, wherein people say, “By what lunatic act of self-importance does this guy think he can stroll into our institutions and stamp around?”

It didn’t seem like that to me [making the film]. The story seemed very familiar, I think, because of the whole Arthur Miller thing--the way there was sort of a kind of real tough humanity in the narrative and that was the real subject of the thing. I felt very at home with [those themes] because of having been brought up on those plays.

My particular generation, when we first started to go to the movies in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, you would see “The Hustler” and say, “Whoa! What a great film!” Then after a bit, you would think there was something more that was going on in “The Hustler” than simply a really exciting movie about a pool player. It had something to say for itself.

Q: Is it true before production began you hung out with mob members in Brooklyn for research?

A: I had a wonderful time. The thing at which they are best is dealing with you one-to-one. They leave school at age 10, 11 or 12. But what they lose in formal education, they more than make up for it. It isn’t just street-wiseness. They are something midway between a doctor and a neighborhood therapist. They were wonderfully charismatic and charming and fun to be with. To get drunk with the mob. . . .

Q: Did it take you a long time to gain their trust?

A: It probably took me six to eight weeks before I was talking to the real thing. All of this time, there was one particular man, Rocco, who would take me around. He is the son of an old mob family. We spent a long time drinking in the right bars and eating in the right restaurants. Then one day he just said, “I have some people for you to meet.” We knocked on the door of a place that looked like a hairdresser salon and inside there were the lads. I ran with them for a couple of months.

It was very interesting. It really is like a tribe up the Amazon. There are basic ground rules that have nothing to do with the way we live. The people trust one another or they don’t trust one another.

Q: The mob still has a $500,000 contract out on Pistone and he lives under an assumed name. Did he ever venture onto the set?

A: He was with us a lot of the time. We were very jumpy about that because there is an open contract on him. He is in the folklore memory of that section of Brooklyn society and they don’t necessarily like him. You could see their faces clenching slightly when we first went in there. But he said, “I don’t think it will happen. I think the only kind of person I am in danger from is the 22-year-old wannabe who would like my scalp on his belt.” Aside from that, a lot of people are still in jail and a great many are too old to really care.

But Joe’s always careful. You never talk directly to Joe on the phone. You talk first to a beeper number and then Joe will phone you back. I still have no idea where Joe lives and Joe has several aliases.

Q: Can you talk about the differences in making a big studio movie in America versus a small independent European film?

A: On the one hand, I loved it because there was always money to spend, and that makes a huge difference. If something is wrong, you just go on until you get it right. You don’t have production managers yapping at you at the end of every day that you shot 9,000 feet of film and you said you would only shoot 6,000. So that side of it is a great relief.

But then on the other hand, going against that there was the whole business of lugging actors with huge reputations around. Both Al and Johnny are very humane, decent human beings. But nonetheless, when the first assistant comes up to you right first in the morning and says, “Al wants to see you in his trailer,” your heart does drop because you know the day’s negotiations have begun.

Q: Negotiations?

A: [Directing them] is much more like a protracted negotiation than it is simply saying: “I want you there and you there and you there.” It isn’t like that. It is all persuasive and has to be framed differently. You have to present a case for the way a certain scene should be done. I really stress that both of them had their mouths hanging open for it. They are not the sort of people who come in with a “screw you” attitude--the reverse in fact. But nonetheless, you can’t just push them around like pieces of furniture because they are the most expensive furniture you’ve ever had.

Q: Returning to “Four Weddings,” were you shocked at the enormous success the film achieved?

A: Yep. I sat in front of a rough version [before] we brought it out here for a test screening. I thought it was the most terrible, crude piece of just witless storytelling I had ever seen. Not Richard’s [screenwriter Richard Curtis’] script. Richard’s script was a thing of wonder, but what I had made of it was dull and graceless and witless and I was going to leave the known galaxy for the period of its release and then creep back hoping that no one noticed. Then we had 400 people down in Santa Monica and they started laughing in the first half minute or so. I couldn’t believe my luck. Every dog has its day and everybody is due a certain amount of luck. All my luck came concentrated in that one bash. I was lucky, lucky, lucky.