The Irishman is based on the book about the life of hitman and union official Frank Sheeran. Hear Frank’s story from the man he chose to tell it: Charlie Brandt, author of “I Heard You Paint Houses.” Plus, Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese discuss how they discovered the story themselves and what drove them to bring it to the big screen.
The Irishman is based on the book about the life of hitman and union official Frank Sheeran. Hear Frank’s story from the man he chose to tell it: Charlie Brandt, author of “I Heard You Paint Houses.” Plus, Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese discuss how they discovered the story themselves and what drove them to bring it to the big screen.
Netflix Presents: BEHIND THE IRISHMAN
EPISODE 1 – “The Way I Heard It”
COLD OPEN: ROBERT DE NIRO: Frank's caught between these two guys who he's indebted to, and has to make a terrible decision. And I think Frank had this thing he’s trying to unload. The guilt that he felt about what he had done, that played on him, it ate at him. And he was, you know, looking for absolution.
[music starts]
SEBASTIAN MANISCALCO (NARRATOR V.O. IS BOLDED THROUGHOUT):
Frank Sheeran was always looking for a way out.
At first, he was a small-time grifter.
A truck driver who ended up catching the eye of the Bufalino’s—
Philadelphia’s organized crime family.
He liked to drink, he kept his mouth shut… and above all, was a reliable assassin.
They took him in. Called him “The Irishman.”
But Frank had another side… In public, he was high up in the Teamsters. The most powerful union in America.
There, he was the right-hand man to “the big guy”—Jimmy Hoffa. The President of the Teamsters Union.
A larger than life figure who fought for the little guys, like him.
And Frank and Jimmy, man, they were thick as thieves …until on day Hoffa vanished.
His body never found.
[music out]
Now there’s been millions of theories about what happened to Hoffa…
But according to Frank’s deathbed confession… Hoffa died in the suburbs of Detroit, on the wrong end of Sheeran’s gun.
[Cue music: ‘Methodic Doubt’]
The Irishman: the latest movie from Martin Scorsese, recounts Frank’s story, in all its vivid color and chaos.
Now to pull it off, Scorsese recruited the heaviest hitters: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci… and pioneered groundbreaking de-aging technology to take the audience through the many stages of these complicated characters’ lives.
This is “Behind the Irishman,” the official companion podcast from Netflix.
Now we’re gonna explore the life of the real Frank Sheeran, how his story found its way into Scorsese’s hands, and how he crafted Frank’s version of events into a decades-spanning cinematic masterpiece.
I’m Sebastian Maniscalco. I play Crazy Joe Gallo—a notorious New York gangster and the victim of a brutal gangland assassination.
Spoiler alert – if you haven’t seen The Irishman, now would be a good time to go watch it…
[music fade]
Frank kept his mouth shut for a long time. But in this episode, we’ll meet the guy Frank spilled his guts to—Charlie Brandt.
CHARLIE BRANDT: I got a call one day from a guy named Franny McDonald on behalf of the Philly mob to get Frank Sheeran out of jail.
He was put away in ‘87 for labor racketeering… with a 32-year sentence.
BRANDT: I’m a retired Chief Deputy Attorney General in the state of Delaware, and I got him out.
That’s when Charlie figures out why Frank chose him.
BRANDT: Frank took me aside and told me that he had read my book in jail, called The Right to Remain Silent. It's a novel, but it's based on homicides that I solved through interrogation. He wanted me to write a book for him. Because at that point, there were six books and they all had him “in the matter,” as he would call it.
[music starts]
Frank’s name had a way of poppin’ up in association with Hoffa’s disappearance. He wanted to set the record straight.
BRANDT: You gotta remember at that point, nobody had any idea how Hoffa died. So, I thought, well, I'll meet with him. And it was just Frank and me against the world.
ROBERT DE NIRO: Charlie had a way of doing it. He gets confessions out of people, the way I understand. And that takes a certain knack, a certain sensitivity.
You guys know that voice: Robert De Niro. He plays the title character.
DE NIRO: You gotta make the person trust you and genuinely trust you because you had something coming out of you that’s genuine and even if you’re doing another job that has another agenda you still moment to moment are interacting with that person in a way that’s real and sincere. And the guilt that he felt about what he had done probably added to it. And he was, you know, he was beyond upset.
De Niro connected deeply with Frank’s character and pitched the story to Scorsese. Marty remembers the meeting like this:
MARTIN SCORSESE: He came in and he described this book to me, he described really this character, Frank Sheeran. And as he did, he became very emotional about it. And I realized that was the connection. And there was, we use the word “gold,” in a way. We know each other kind of so well that we didn’t have to say anything at that point. I know if he could tap into that character that way, based on the structure of the story and the situation these people found themselves in, I know I could go there.
Now for Charlie, this movie captures Frank’s situation perfectly.
BRANDT: We were very, very close. That’s part of what you do. And there was genuine feeling there between the two of us. And that feeling I got from Bob De Niro. I'm sitting there thinking, oh my god. This is just how I felt with Frank Sheeran, this desire to talk. But, fear. He had some fear going on.
When Charlie saw the first scene in the movie, it took him right back.
BRANDT: My wife and I looked at each other, absolutely floored. Because we saw him a lot in the nursing home. I was with him during his aging years.
It was there that Charlie got to know Frank.
BRANDT: The interrogator encourages the feeling that you’re feeling better. You talk about this, and you’re getting it out of your system.
The first time they sat down, Frank only confessed to being part of the conspiracy.
BRANDT: He admitted to being guilty. He admitted to being there when someone else pulled the trigger, and there for the purpose of Hoffa’s assassination. So technically, any law school student would say, okay, you're guilty of the crime. You're there, you're part of the conspiracy. But he hadn't yet told me that he had pulled the trigger. It was hard for him to express that. And I reached a point in questioning him where I knew that he had done it. He had killed Hoffa. But he wasn't yet ready to say “I am the one who pulled the trigger.” And I knew I'd get it the next time.
But when he hands Frank the first draft, everything grinds to a halt.
[music starts]
BRANDT: And he said, “You can't write this stuff. Russell Bufalino is still alive, all these various people that he mentioned were still alive.” And he said, “They're not pussycats either...”
They didn’t talk for 8 years.
BRANDT: He would call the office every once in a while. He tried to get through to me, but I was staying, for self-preservation, I was staying far away from him.
While Frank’s guilt continued to grow.
BRANDT: He’d been to a priest. He confessed to all his sins, but he didn't have to give names. So, he didn't have to say more than “I committed murder.” And then we spent the next five years together with me, bringing him out little by little by little. And initially he was doing it to please his daughter so that he could be buried in a Catholic cemetery. But I was careful not to not to let anyone know that Frank was serially confessing to me. Confession after confession after confession.
[Music cue / act transition]
Frank was born in South Philly, a notorious rough and tumble neighborhood, in 1920.
BRANDT: He was a Huckleberry Finn kind of Philadelphia guy. A prankster more than anything with the rest of the guys in Philly.
When he’s old enough, he joins the military and gets out.
BRANDT: He was assigned initially to be a paratrooper, until he broke his shoulder. And then they put him in the military police.Then came Pearl Harbor. And he asked for combat, volunteered for it. And in those days, you could get it if you volunteered for it.
He gets assigned to the 45th Infantry Division.
BRANDT: He was in three amphibious invasions: Solerno, Anzio, and Southern France. The unit he was in, it was given the assignment, by Patton, to be my killer division. Patton gave two speeches to that division and explained to them that they don't understand German, and so when a prisoner tries to surrender, how do you know what he's saying to you? You need to kill him.
During World War II, the average GI saw 80 days of active combat, Frank saw 411.
[music starts]
He learns to kill without remorse.
BRANDT: He would be told, take this prisoner behind the line for questioning, he would take the prisoner behind the line for questioning. If the lieutenant added the words “and hurry back,” that meant take him behind the line, kill him, and get your ass back here... So he learned a lot about combat.
And he takes every opportunity to indulge in extra-curricular activities.
BRANDT: He liked to party, he liked to drink red wine. He liked the Italian women. He explained to me that you could go AWOL as long as your unit had not moved up to the front. If your unit had moved up to the front and you weren’t with your unit, your Lieutenant could kill you. He would get back in time for his unit to move on. So, he never really got in trouble during the war, he knew how to play the angles. And he lost what we call “a moral compass” in the war. You want something, you just took it. There was no such thing as stealing, whatever you wanted, you took.
After the war, he returns to Philly, a very different man.
BRANDT: And he said we didn’t have “traumatic syndrome” as he would call it. We didn’t have traumatic syndrome then. You'd wake up in the middle of the night wondering what you were doing in a bed, because you'd slept so long on the ground for so many years. And then sometimes things from the past in the war would merge into things from my life.
But he sucks it up. Eventually gets married, finds a job as a truck driver.
BRANDT: That's how he ended up joining the Teamsters union. Initially he got a job as a truck driver. And he was taught by the old timers who work there, how to steal sides of beef, how to steal chickens and resell them. And, so, he was hustling at that time. Those days, everyone stole at work, including me. Whether it was stamps, whatever you could get your hands on. And then one day he was driving his truck. And his “horse,” as they would call it, his horse broke down. He was trying to get it started. And this older, short Italian guy, came over to him and said, “Can I give you a hand, kiddo?” And Frank said, “Sure.” It was Russell Bufalino.
Russell Bufalino—played by Joe Pesci—was the head of the Bufalino crime family. A small but influential outfit out of Pennsylvania. Scorsese describes Russell’s relationship with Frank like this:
SCORSESE: It's Russell Bufalino who takes him under his wing in his syndicate, so to speak, you know, that part of the organized crime northeast of America, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh.
Here’s Charlie again.
BRANDT: It was Russell Bufalino. A man who owned a drapery store in a small town called Pittston, PA. You could go to him to get your car fixed. He was a master mechanic for the Canada Dry Corporation. You could also go to him to get Castro whacked.
Frank quickly falls in with Russell’s crew.
BRANDT: Russell asked him where he hung out in Philly. The next thing you know, Frank sees Russell at Frank's hangouts in Philly. And then Frank gets invited to come to their hangouts. As a boy, he lived in Italian neighborhoods and when he went overseas, he was in all the campaigns in Italy. And he picked up some Italian there, and so he spoke Italian and he was able to speak Italian to Russell. Russell was very impressed with Frank's abilities.
For the first time since the war, Frank finds a real connection with someone. Scorsese explains it this way:
SCORSESE: This character Frank finding himself in this kind of extended family, a man coming out of World War Two finds himself in a world. He understands that he's, he's already died a few times. And what's left living for? He's got a family, he does his best with them, has to earn money, has no education. And he falls in with these people who appreciate him, they actually love each other.
Frank revealed to Charlie how he earned his stripes in the family.
BRANDT: He goes to work for Skinny Razor, the Friendly Lounge, which is the mob hangout. And those are the ones that would give him odd jobs.
He proves reliable. Always gets the job done. And he starts to get noticed. Eventually, a patron of the Friendly Lounge named Whispers DiTullio recruits Frank to handle a big job. With a big payday.
BRANDT: Whispers talks to Frank about a job he wants him to do. He wants him to torch a linen service called the Cadillac Linen Service in Delaware. And he will get paid $10,000. $2,000 down, the other $8,000 when the job is completed. But said Whispers, you can't tell anyone what I just said to you ever. This is between you and me. But it's an opportunity for you to start making some decent money around here instead of this hundred-dollar this, and $50 that. Sheeran then took the job, took the 2000 in cash, and visited the linen service to case it from the outside. It was in Delaware, and he's got Pennsylvania license plates. And so, the Cadillac people see this giant of a man looking at their business from across the street. The next thing that happens to Frank is he's told by Skinny Razor that Angelo wants to see him. Angelo Bruno.
Angelo Bruno, played by Harvey Keitel, was the head of Philadelphia organized crime.
BRANDT: So Skinny Razor’s in the backroom. And Angelo’s sitting there with Russell Bufalino. And Angelo says, “What were you doing at Cadillac Linen?” And Russell tells Frank “Now's not the time to remain silent. Tell the man.”
Frank spills everything. He soon finds out, the real owner of the Cadillac Linen Service… was sitting right in front of him: Angelo Bruno.
BRANDT: He was ordered by Russell Bufalino and Angelo to take care of Whispers. In other words, take this man behind the line for questioning and hurry back. And so that's the first one. That's the first one that he kills in America. And anyone would say Whispers had it coming, because Whispers would have, it was explained to Frank, by Russell and Angelo, Whispers would have let you hang out to dry and you would have been killed by me. And instead now you've got to kill him. So that was his first hit.
The hit proves Frank’s loyalty to the organization, and to Russell.
BRANDT: From then on, he said “I got a different kind of respect. There were no charges for the drinks.” And now he was available to kill people for Russell. He said to me, “A lot of people think that Angelo lent me out to Russell, it was the other way around. Russell lent me out to Angelo and that was to kill people for Angelo or Skinny Razor or whoever needed him.” And one day, he was talking to Skinny Razor, who said to him, “you know, they should be doing more for you. Cuz you don't get paid for those murders. You just do one as a sign of respect, and you're hoping for some break, you know, along the line.” So he said, “I'd like to get into union work.”
I mean, a union job was something Russellcould easily provide. But, Frank’s relationship to the Bufalinos, his reputation as a trusted hitman, and his devotion to the union, earned him an introduction to Jimmy Hoffa—President of the Teamsters and the most powerful union leader in all of American history.
BRANDT: Frank is sitting at a table in the Friendly. And Russell gets a phone call. Russell brings the phone over to Frank and says, “Say hello to your boss, Jimmy Hoffa.” And Jimmy Hoffa says to him on the phone:
[Clip from movie: phone rings, dialogue “This is Jimmy Hoffa, I heard you paint houses” “Yes, I do my own carpentry work too.”]
BRANDT: And that means that he gets rid of the bodies as well as killing them. Within a couple of days, Frank was in Detroit, doing killings for Hoffa. And so now he was an official hitman for Hoffa, and for Russell.
Hoffa was known for wheeling and dealing—doing business with organized crime while amassing power for the union. Here’s Irwin Winkler, one of the producers of The Irishman.
WINKLER: Hoffa ran this incredible fund that the Teamsters had amassed, and then invested it in all kinds of schemes, most of which turned out to be pretty successful for the Teamsters.
These guys used the Teamsters’ billion-dollar pension like their own personal piggy bank. In exchange, labor leaders got muscle… and their own piece of the action.
BRANDT: You could get in your head that you wanted to build a casino in this new place called Las Vegas. And you’re a mobster in Chicago. Sam Giancana let’s say. Momo. You could go to Alan Dorfman, Alan Dorfman was in charge of the finances of the central state’s pension fund. That was the Teamsters $1 billion, which was a lot of money in those days, pension fund and you could decide that I'm going to borrow money from the pension fund to build a casino. If you’re Sam Giancana you go to Pittston, Pennsylvania and you asked to speak to Russell. You tell Russell what you're doing. Russell tells you how much to borrow. And Russell gets a 10% kickback. Russell splits that kickback with Jimmy.
To see the results of this arrangement between the Teamsters, guys like Russell, and Vegas, check out Scorsese’s 1995 masterpiece, Casino.
BRANDT: All of a sudden, you've got Las Vegas, and it's built on Teamsters pension fund money. And the Teamsters, they’re getting killers, they’re getting pieces of the action under the table. And so, Jimmy put a lot of it to good use. Jimmy always had cash in his pocket and needy union men would be the recipient of handfuls of cash.
Hoffa was like Elvis and the Beatles combined. He was a hero to every guy in America who wore a hard hat or punched a clock.
To fill such big shoes, they tapped one of the all-time greats: Al Pacino. He sat down with Scorsese, De Niro, and Pesci to discuss his character: Jimmy Hoffa.
PACINO: Jimmy Hoffa was most popular, second to the President.
He gave these guys someone to root for, because he was on their side. Here’s Scorsese:
SCORSESE: And you forget about the unions and what it took to get working guys a good, a decent pay.
Once again, Producer Irwin Winkler:
WINKLER: Well, I think Hoffa was a really, really, probably the most important individual in the American labor movement. He was the epitome of a labor leader he ran, with an iron hand, The Teamsters, one of the most important labor unions in the world.
In Charlie Brandt’s opinion, history would have played out much differently if Hoffa hadn’t disappeared.
BRANDT: Hoffa was a superstar of labor and of all social issues. There would be no discussion of, of healthcare right now. If Hoffa had survived. He would have handled health care for the masses a long time ago, he delivered to the men and women that that were in his union. He believed it, when he talks about solidarity.
[Clip from movie: Pacino giving Hoffa speech on solidarity]
BRANDT: He really did believe in it, and he made Frank a believer. In those days, the most prominent voice that you would hear was Elvis Presley's. You couldn't not know it was Elvis. Well, that was the effect that Jimmy Hoffa had on listeners. These days, what does a union leader mean? Is it going to be a baseball strike? In the age of Jimmy Hoffa, there were a number of famous union leaders but none of them with the fame of a Jimmy Hoffa.
For Pacino, Hoffa has always been a known entity.
PACINO: Throughout my young life I knew of him. Because he was well known, he was very well known and people talked about him. As a matter of fact, he was like a household name, we knew he was the head of unions. And there was something about him that was shady, or whatever, he was always being accused. This is the kind of guy he was. That’s interesting.
Frank gets installed as Hoffa’s personal bodyguard and travel companion. Over time he becomes Hoffa’s confidante.
SCORSESE: Bufalino introduces him to a man he respects and loves, his Jimmy Hoffa. And he becomes a great friend, cohort, trusted man. And appreciated by Hoffa.
Joe Pesci sees this as a brilliant move on Russell’s part, a way to keep tabs on Hoffa through “The Irishman.”
He breaks it down with Scorsese and the rest of the cast.
PESCI: It was very sharp of the character I play.
SCORSESE: Oh, Russell.
DE NIRO: Russell.
PESCI: To put him next to you. That was the thing, that was the whole move. I mean, this guy was, to even be thinking that way, he just thought he was getting this great job. “Thank you, Russell. Thank you, Russell.” Pah pah pah pah. Next thing, you become like this with him.
PACINO: They become so close.
PESCI: And when it comes time. [Whistles]
SCORSESE: Well that's the closest thing. Yeah, that's the most that's the most important move.
PACINO: I mean it's a crazy relationship when you think of it.
SCORSESE: I know!
PACINO: We sleep in the same room! Twin beds.
SCORSESE: Well, you have to remember body guards, you have to have in the next room in case something happens in the hallway. [Laughter]
Frank becomes president of Teamsters Local 326 in Wilmington, and grows even closer to Hoffa. But, he still takes his orders from the Bufalinos.
BRANDT: And the Teamsters had an unhealthy relationship with the Mafia. Nationwide.
But that unholy alliance was hidden from the public. That is until… the U.S. Senate proved there really was an international organized crime syndicate. This was the first time the average American learned that the whispers about La Cosa Nostra were true.
BRANDT: At the time, we knew there was an Al Capone, we knew there were individual gangs of mobsters. But the public did not know that we had this organized crime network throughout the entire country until it was exposed by Bobby Kennedy in the McClellan Committee, and then afterwards, as the Attorney General. In the meantime, there was this organized crime out there that nobody could prove existed.
The hearings were a national sensation. Dozens of alleged criminals and their associates were interrogated on live television. It was almost like the first reality TV. They leaned on their union affiliation for cover. Which put more pressure on Hoffa.
BRANDT: And they didn’t have the right to remain silent. They had to answer questions, or their refusal to answer would be used against them if there was ever a trial, and they were trying to get them on perjury. And they were all claiming to be union delegates somewhere. They all gave as their occupation union shop steward, labor leader. And it gave the rackets committee the excuse to begin holding investigations into the role of labor in criminal enterprises. That was a phenomenal thing to watch.
For Scorsese, the character of Frank is the perfect illustration of this tense relationship.
[music starts]
SCORSESE: He's the in-between man. And it's a great deal of love. There's a great deal of support for all of them together amongst themselves, and a great deal of trust. And then there's of course, betrayal.
Charlie says Frank’s feelings for Hoffa ran deep.
BRANDT: Hoffa's family, his two kids, they loved Frank as a part of the family. And that human element of Frank Sheeran, being a part of the Hoffa family, and then being ordered to do what he had to do. But he adored Hoffa. Hoffa was his mentor. And Hoffa was his return to legitimacy.
For the next decade, The Justice Department tries (and fails) to get Hoffa on racketeering charges… until he finally goes to prison in 1967 for jury tampering and misuse of union funds. But even then, Hoffa refuses to give up his power.
WINKLER: He did a lot of things that were shady and ended up going to jail. And then fought to get back the union. So that was a story about his struggle and going from being lauded by presidents to sitting in a jail cell. So, it's kind of an interesting story about a man with all that power and how he's brought down, and how he tries to come back.
Prison doesn’t deter Frank’s loyalty to Hoffa, either.
BRANDT: Sheeran was on the list of people that could visit Hoffa. And so, he continued to be a Hoffa man, even though Hoffa was in jail, Frank did. And he took his work seriously. He loved the union. He loved that Jimmy loved the union. Having been trapped in the mob world by killing Whispers, his heart wasn't really in that. But most of it was above board, he would visit Hoffa in the prison and they would plot what was going to happen next.
Before Hoffa goes to prison, Sheeran helps install his replacement, Frank Fitzsimmons. Hoffa thinks “Fitz” is a pushover and he’ll play nicely in his pocket, even while he’s away. Charlie Brandt explains the logic:
BRANDT: Frank Fitzsimmons, was a union official on the board of the Teamsters, when Hoffa was convicted of these charges by Bobby Kennedy's “Get Hoffa Squad.” Fitzsimmons was a nobody weakling and he did whatever the mob told him to do. Whatever Russell or anyone told Fitzsimmons to do, he did.
All the while, “The Irishman” keeps taking jobs… embedding himself deeper in the family… with every kill.
…One of those jobs Frank took credit for was the execution of Crazy Joe Gallo.
[Movie clip of Gallo testifying “this carpet would be great for a crap game”]
64. Crazy Joe had no problem rocking the boat. This guy was a hothead. He was insubordinate, he was reckless, and thought that he should run the show. So, this guy orders a hit on his rival, Joe Colombo, at the Italian Unity Day rally.
The balls on Gallo...But Gallo’s gunman botches the job.
BRANDT: Colombo actually lives seven years--although in a coma--it was what they call a “bad hit.”
That’s when the powers that be decided something had to be done.
BRANDT: So, what kind of punishment should Joe Gallo get? Because there are old timers that don't want this kind of publicity. They don't want these people being shot at, you know? And so, it was almost happenstance. But Frank was at the Copacabana Nightclub, a famous club in those days, with Russell Bufalino. And in walks Crazy Joey Gallo, with a bit of an entourage. Gallo shows disrespect towards Bufalino.
And uh, he leaves. Sheeran follows him to really the only place really that was open at that time, Umberto’s Clam House in Little Italy. Sheeran enters the Clam House from a rear door, while John Francis, The Redhead, drives around the block to pick Frank up after he's done. Frank goes in and kills Crazy Joey Gallo, starts firing boom boom boom.
[Clip of Gallo hit SFX glass breaking and gun shots]
BRANDT: And that cemented Frank's career—and he already had a quite a career.
[Music break / act transition]
Meanwhile, Jimmy Hoffa is in prison. Working on a way out. A way back to the top of the union. So, he hammers out a deal with the President of the United States.
BRANDT: Nixon had had the Teamsters’ support for presidency. And Nixon made a deal to pardon Hoffa in exchange for that support. But attached to the pardon was a clause that said that Hoffa couldn't run for the Teamsters presidency. He had paid them half a million dollars and was supposed to get a legitimate pardon. That would make him free to do whatever he wanted. Instead, he got an illegitimate pardon, with restrictions that he couldn't run for union office.
After he gets out, he realizes the depth of the betrayal.
BRANDT: Hoffa had been tricked by his enemies in the Teamsters to give up his union job. And so he needed to start from scratch... He was plotting his return to take back the union from Fitzsimmons… And Frank was indispensable to him.
[music starts]
But at this point, the real people in charge trust Fitzsimmons over Hoffa.
BRANDT: The mob, particularly Tony Provenzano of New Jersey, they were very happy with Frank Fitzsimmons as the president. They selected him. They put him in and then he did whatever they told him to. Hoffa on the other hand was his own man. And he made threats against the mob. “And when I get out of jail and run for the presidency, I'm going to get back at everybody who double-crossed me.” I call it scratching the chicken pox. Hoffa was so full of rage that he had been double-crossed by so many. His retirement from the union had been sold to him by Bill Bufalino as a way to get his union back. If he retires then we can get you back in through the side door. And that wasn't the case. He retired, and they just left him out there.
Running out of moves, Hoffa threatens to give the FBI everything they needed to put his old buddies away forever.
BRANDT: He was advised not to do that by Frank Sheeran on behalf of Russell Bufalino. Go home and retire, play with your grandkids--but you're not to be in the Union anymore.
Frank warns Hoffa, to no avail.
SCORSESE: Frank’s character finally has to tell Jimmy that there was a serious problem that has to be addressed.
71. Hoffa refuses to listen. He is defiant. And by 1975, the bosses decided he’s too much of a liability—Hoffa’s gotta go.
To Scorsese, the outcome is inevitable:
SCORSESE: That world, it's a matter of elimination.
PACINO: That’s it, he's in the way.
SCORSESE: He's really in the way.
PACINO: He had a vision of how things are and he believed in and I don't think he ever thought that it was gonna happen to him.
SCORSESE: No you say don’t, they would never dare do it.
PESCI: He tried to save you so many times. But you didn’t listen. Jimmy didn’t even know! And he knew it was on him.
SCORSESE: When it comes to him, at a certain point, he's got to say, we tried everything. We tried everything. That's the life we're in. He has to go. That's it.
[music building]
BRANDT: The only one standing between Hoffa and the grave was Russell Bufalino. He didn't want Hoffa killed. He thought that Hoffa had done a lot of good. But Tony Provenzano had a big beef with Hoffa in prison that carried over afterwards. And so ultimately those who were on the side of Hoffa lost the debate among the mobsters in New York who ran the commission. They were the ones that needed to be convinced and they claimed they were going to stay neutral, but they didn't and they weren't. They were out to get Hoffa. And so Hoffa realizes what's happening. That even Russell Bufalino, his ally, has seemed to turn against him. And it wasn't long after that that Hoffa was killed.
[music out]
Charlie says the commission decided Frank was the only person who could pull this off.
BRANDT: That one is almost a no brainer in that Frank was a terrific hitman, and they knew that Frank Sheeran could get to Hoffa. He was part of the inner circle of Hoffa, part of Hoffa’s family.
Taking advantage of that trust, they lure him into a phony meeting with Tony Pro to bury the hatchet.
BRANDT: They set up a meeting with Frank, Jimmy Hoffa, and certain other gangsters and they lure Hoffa to a house in Detroit. And as soon as he walks in, he knows something's wrong. There's no noise. There's nobody drinking anything. And he turns to leave, bumps into Frank Sheeran, who was right behind him. And Sheeran shoots him twice in the head.
The way Charlie sees it, Hoffa’s disappearance caused more problems than it solved.
BRANDT: When they chose to make Hoffa disappear, they exhibited bad judgment. Because he disappeared, it became a kidnapping. And that gave the FBI jurisdiction, and immediately they hired 200 new agents.
At first, the public didn’t even know that Hoffa had been killed.
BRANDT: Initial impact was that he was up to something. Hoffa. Nobody knew where he was, but he knew where he was. And that kind of thing had happened once before with a mobster in New York, Joe Bananas. One day he disappeared. About eight months later, he surfaced as if he'd been nowhere. And so many of us at the time thought well, Hoffa’s going the way Joe Bananas went and will turn up. But of course as days became weeks became months became years. And then certain things leaked out.
No plot is foolproof. It was clear that he had mob enemies. Everybody knew that. And now it was clear that they had orchestrated his demise.
Now Russell Bufalino would later confide in Frank that Hoffa’s body had been cremated at a funeral parlor not far from the crime scene.
The public had its own theories.
BRANDT: My favorite outlandish theory was that he ended up in an oil drum that was transported to the East Coast. There is nobody in his right mind that would carry any human body across country in an oil drum. Makes absolutely no sense.
After 7 years of fruitless investigations, the government declares Hoffa declares legally dead in 1982.
BRANDT: It had a cruelty to it in that, because that body was gone, the finances of Jimmy Hoffa we're not distributed to the family.
That’s not normally how “the family” got things done.
BRANDT: The difference with the Hoffa case is that Hoffa disappeared. All the other ones were just left on the sidewalk or left in their cars dead... These murders were open and notorious. They sent the message to the other members of this nationwide organization that you got to play by our rules all the time.
For many, there’s a somber tragedy in the character of Frank Sheeran. His story isn’t glorious. Anna Paquin plays Frank’s estranged daughter, Peggy.
ANNA PAQUIN: Bob's performance is quite rare in this genre of film where, even though he's done some truly terrible, despicable things, that when you see that old broken sick man and his, you know, care home, my heart breaks for him. You know, he's obviously made choices that have led him to being that person that has no one left. But it's much more sort of emotionally intense, than I think sometimes the genre allows.
Charlie believes Frank never forgave himself.
BRANDT: He loved Hoffa. He loved his work. He loved being on the side of labor. He took it seriously. When he took over a new union client, he would go to work with the men. He took it very seriously. And he continued to advance and get decent jobs. And Frank said to me that the death of Hoffa was the worst thing that could happen to his career, because Hoffa was going to the top and was taking him along with him.
[start Irishman theme]
But he also thinks Frank had no other choice.
BRANDT: He said to me, “If I ever said no to Russell, Jimmy would have been just as dead and I'd gone to Australia with him, meaning down under, I'd have been killed.”
WINKLER: I think what made people think a lot about the story was the fact that nobody ever found the body. And I think there's that mystery of “Where did he go?” and “What happened to him” and “How did he die?” Well, we hope that our interpretation of it will solve it to some extent.
Frank Sheeran died in December 2003. Charlie published “I Heard You Paint Houses” the following year.
SCORSESE: The movie is not the real people. And who knows what the story really is.
DE NIRO: Right.
SCORSESE: And what you pick up on is the essence of the truth of a relationship. All three, who knows what really went on? We don't know. This is a version thereof, so to speak, but the truth is, the truth is in the relationships and the truth is in the, in the relationships within that world.
DE NIRO: What’s so great about the story is that it’s this triangle. These three guys. It’s a classic story about loyalty, about brotherhood, and betrayal. But betrayal for a reasosn people can understand.
SCORSESE: Necessity, yeah.
On the next episode of “Behind the Irishman,” we explore the story’s journey from page to screen. And how Scorsese got De Niro, Pacino and Pesci together for the first time.
This podcast was produced by Netflix with FannieCo and Crossroad. I’m Sebastian Maniscalco.
Thanks for listening.
-END-