After months of speculation, Variety has confirmed that John Travolta will star as John Gotti in the biopic Gotti: Three Generations, a Nick Cassavetes project based on information from an as-yet-to-be-published, tell-all book written by Gotti’s son, John Jr.. I thought about just leaving this banner picture here (via ThePlaylist), as it seems to sum up the project better than words ever could. But against my better comedic judgment, I feel like this brings up an interesting issue.
On the one hand it seems weird that actors like Winona Ryder, Jonah Hill, Jon Stewart, Natalie Portman, etc. don’t just go by their real last names, Horowitz, Feldstein, Leibowitz, and Hershlag, since it’s not like anyone’s surprised that they’re Jewish. Or that actors like John Travolta and Kevin Spacey refuse to admit they’re gay, when pretty much everyone already knows that they are. Especially when Hollywood seems like the last place you’d face discrimination for being gay or Jewish. But then something like this happens, and it makes you wonder if a family of mobsters would be so hot on John Travolta playing the old boss if he didn’t at least have plausible deniability about the whole chugging wieners thing. Sure, I don’t care, and probably you don’t care, and no one in Hollywood cares, but if The Sopranos has taught us anything, it’s that mafia guys still kinda do care. It makes me wonder if maybe we shouldn’t be so hard on Kevin Spacey for not just coming out of the closet, which in turn makes me laugh because I just typed “hard on.”
Maybe they’re right to be secretive? I don’t know, food for thought. And yes, you’re right, I should’ve just made a “johnnycakes” joke.
Man, they even have the same facial hair.