Academy Award-nominated director Roland Joffé (The Killing Fields, The Scarlet Letter) is looking to tell the story of what really happened during the 48 hours leading up to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, at least according to mob bosses.
The upcoming film, titled November 1963: The Killing of a President, will cover the mob’s version of events, which were passed down to Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana’s nephew, Nicholas Celozzi, by Sam’s brother, the late Joseph “Pepe” Giancana, who drove around with his brother Sam during those two days.
Celozzi talked to Variety about the ongoing interest in the circumstances surrounding JFK’s assassination, even 60 years later, saying:
“The reason why there’s this fascination or anxiety is because people know that what they’ve heard so far doesn’t make sense. They keep talking about it because they’re waiting to hear something that makes more common sense.”
Celozzi, whose film producing and writing credits include The Legitimate Wiseguy, The Class, and the documentary Momo: The Sam Giancana Story, penned the screenplay based on what Pepe told him. Pepe told young Celozzi, who already was in the film business, to share the story one day.
“My uncle and I were very close when I was a little little kid,” Celozzi recalls. Even though he always knew the story was ripe for a film adaptation, he waited for the appropriate moment to tell it.
The project, formerly known as 2 Days/1963 and Assassination, was previously set up to star Courtney Love, Viggo Mortensen, Shia LaBeouf, Al Pacino and John Travolta, with David Mamet to direct and co-write with Celozzi. Barry Levinson later stepped in as director, but the project never came to fruition.
The story took new life when Sam Giancana’s middle daughter (and Celozzi’s cousin), Bonnie Giancana, came on board. “To be quite frank with you, she didn’t like the people I was working with at the time. She wasn’t ready to personally get involved as well. So there were two things that kind of held her back. And then when I kind of broke free and started changing individuals that I was working with, she was more apt to come along and work with me on the story,” Celozzi says.
“I’m not going to fictionalize,” he adds. “I’m staying with his story, as opposed to adding my own interpretation. I wrote everything down and just relaying his story. And that’s the screenplay that I wrote.”
Are you looking forward to this new take on the JFK assassination story?
Jessica Fisher
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