Convicted Boston Mobster Whitey Bulger Says That Johnny Depp's 'Black Mass' Movie Is Pure Fiction

Carlos Greer at the New York Post reports on convicted murderer and mobster James "Whitey" Bulger's reaction to the film Black Mass.

Never- before-seen photos reveal that the real-life James “Whitey” Bulger was not a fan of Johnny Depp’s critically acclaimed 2015 Bulger biopic, “Black Mass,” depicting his crime story.

A guy described as “one step removed from the prisoner who was Bulger’s protector in jail” has offered up the pictures to LA-based memorabilia dealer Moments in Time, which will sell the 22 photos with convicted mobster and murderer Bulger’s inscriptions for $24,00 0. A couple of the photos are of Depp as Bulger in the film.

“Johnnie [sic] Depp on set with his girlfriend playing me on an anti Whitey movie put together by 2 reporters from the Boston Globe,” Bulger wrote. “Many years ago, shot up the building with a 12 ga pump shot gun . . . This movie is pure fiction!” he wrote and signed with his prison number 1428A.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://pagesix.com/2016/01/31/whitey-bulger-says-johnny-depp-biopic-is-pure-fiction/

You can read my interview with Dick Lehr, the co-author of Black Mass and Whitey via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/06/crime-beat-column-q-with-dick-lehr-co_17.html

Organized Crime Reporter And Author George Anastasia On 'Black Mass' Film And Gangster James 'Whitey' Bulger

Former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter George Anastasia (seen in the below photo), author of Gotti's Rules, Blood & Honor and other books on organized crime, offers his view of the film Black Mass and the backstory of the FBI and Boston gangster James "Whitey" Bulger for BBC.com.

It’s sure to be compared to The Godfather and Goodfellas, but Black Mass is in a category all its own. It’s a dark character study – grim, sinister and brooding. And while there’s lots of talk about loyalty and honour, as there was in The Godfather and Goodfellas it isn’t about those things – Black Mass is really a story of seduction and betrayal. That doesn’t make the film better than the two underworld classics to which it will be compared but it does make it more realistic.

Director Scott Cooper has kept the story as close as possible to the book on which it is based. And that book, Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI, and a Devil's Deal, by Boston Globe reporters Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill, is by far the best of nearly a dozen written about James ‘Whitey’ Bulger, the Boston wiseguy who used his role as an FBI informant to literally get away with murder. And drug dealing, gun running, loansharking and extortion.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150924-a-mobster-expert-separates-truth-from-fiction-in-black-mass

You can also read my interview with Dick Lehr, the co-author of Black Mass and Whitey: The Life of America's Most Notorious Mob Boss, via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/06/crime-beat-column-q-with-dick-lehr-co_17.html

And you can read my Philadelphia Inquirer review of George Anastasia's Gotti's Rules via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2015/02/my-philadelphia-inquirer-review-of.html 

Real To Reel Crime: Whitey Movie Eerie Experience For "Black Mass" CoAuthor

Dick Lehr, coauthor with Gerard O'Neill of Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob, offers an interesting piece in the Boston Globe about the making of a movie from his book.

Whitey Bulger relaxes on Miami Beach on a sizzling hot day, sharing a lounge chair with his girlfriend, Catherine Greig, a gorgeous blonde in a bikini who cuddles like a cat between the crime boss’s legs. Nearby, Bulger’s partner, Stevie Flemmi, pulls on a cigarette. FBI agent John Connolly peels off twenties to pay for rum drinks as Boston businessman John Callahan, an executive with World Jai Alai, eagerly sips his. Bulger’s protege Kevin Weeks struts from the surf and joins them.
 

It’s the Whitey Bulger Gang, circa 1981, riding the wave of its unholy alliance with the deeply corrupted FBI. The notorious gangster is catching a break from the underworld grind, even as he mulls yet another murder, that of Callahan’s boss, the owner of World Jai Alai.

 

But this isn’t 1981. It’s July 11, 2014 — and it’s not Whitey Bulger, but Johnny Depp. Nor is that Catherine Greig, but Sienna Miller. John Connolly is Joel Edgerton, and so on. It’s also not Miami Beach, but our own Revere Beach, transformed magically with imported palm trees and popsicle-colored cabanas to resemble the Florida coast.

This is Scene 91 in director Scott Cooper’s adaptation of “Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI and a Devil’s Deal,” a book Gerry O’Neill and I wrote that built off of years of reporting we and others did for The Boston Globe.

Since May 19, Cooper and his vast crew have been moving around the area, making a movie out of the murderous collusion between Whitey and the FBI. I was invited to the set soon after, and it was a Chelsea morning in early June, under a gray, unfriendly sky, when I first met Depp — or, I should say, Whitey. I had arrived while they were shooting a scene where Depp as Whitey, driving a Malibu, gets pulled over by a Boston police officer on the payroll of Mafia underboss Gennaro “Jerry” Angiulo.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/07/30/whitey-bulger-film-black-mass-comes-revere-beach-and-suddenly-again/PszhmfhKxyoOx2x7SFwGON/story.html

You can also read my interview with Dick Lehr via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/06/crime-beat-column-q-with-dick-lehr-co_17.html

Actor Johnny Depp In Character As Boston Mobster Whitey Bulger

Eleanor Gower at the British newspaper the Daily Mail offers a piece on Johnny Depp portraying Boston mobster James "Whitey" Bulger in an upcoming film.

You can read the piece and see photos of Depp as Bulger via the below link:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2629535/Johnny-Depp-bald-cap-wig-role-mob-boss-James-Whitey-Bulger-begins-filming-biopic.html

You can also read my Washington Times review of Whitey: The Life of America's Most Notorious Mob Boss via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/06/my-washington-times-review-of-whitey.html

And you can read my interview with Dick Lehr, co-author of Whitey and Black Mass via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/06/crime-beat-column-q-with-dick-lehr-co_17.html

Johnny Depp Talks "Whitey"

Stephen Schaefer at the Boston Herald offers a piece on actor Johnny Depp portraying Boston mobster and murderer James "Whitey" Bulger in an upcoming film.

LOS ANGELES - Johnny Depp tackles one of the most challenging roles of his storied career next month in Boston when he begins filming "Black Mass" where he plays convicted mobster Whitey Bulger.

“I don’t think of him as Whitey – it’s James ‘Whitey’ Bulger,” Depp said at the Four Seasons Hotel yesterday during a press day for his science fiction thriller “Transcendence” which opens April 18.
While Depp, 50, played an undercover FBI agent getting the goods on a mobster in the 1997 true crime classic “Donnie Brasco,” Bulger is definitely a shift to the dark side.

“The reason to play it is obvious to me,” said the three-time Oscar nominee.  “He’s a fascinating character. I don’t think it’s like anything I’ve done before and I’m very excited to slide into that skin for a little bit.”

“Black Mass,” directed by “Out of the Furnace” writer-director Scott Cooper, is based on the 2001 New York Times bestseller “Black Mass: The True Story of the Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob” by Dick Lehr and Gerald O’Neill.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://bostonherald.com/entertainment/movies/movie_news/2014/04/johnny_depp_talks_whitey

You can also read my interview with Dick Lehr, co-author of Black Mass and Whitey via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/06/crime-beat-column-q-with-dick-lehr-co_17.html

My Washington Times Review of 'Whitey: The Life of America's Most Notorious Mob Boss'

The Washington Times published my review of Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill's Whitey: The Life of America's Most Notorious Mob Boss.

There have been a good number of books written about Boston’s Irish mob boss, Whitey Bulger, and up to now “Black Mass: The Irish Mob, the FBI and a Devil’s Deal” by Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill was the best one in my view. But Mr. Lehr and Mr. O’Neill have surpassed themselves with “Whitey.”

“This biography of James J. “Whitey” Bulger will explain the evolution of Bulger from juvenile delinquent in the 1940s to stone-cold killer in the 1960s, from unchallenged crime boss in the 1980s with the blessing of a corrupted FBI, to fugitive from justice in 1995, and, finally, to his capture sixteen years later in June 2011 at age eighty-one,” Mr. Lehr and Mr. O’Neill write in “Whitey.”

... I contacted Dick Lehr and asked him why, after the success of “Black Mass,” he and his co-author wrote a biography of Whitey Bulger.

“The bulk and the focus of ‘Black Mass’ is the Whitey Bulger-FBI years, basically two decades from 1975 to 1995. When Whitey was captured, we realized that this guy now warrants a biography,” Mr. Lehr told me.

Mr. Lehr said that he and his co-author realized that in 1975 when he cut his deal with the Boston FBI, Bulger was already 48. He lived half a life that the authors had barely scratched the surface of in “Black Mass.”

“There was this whole life that had not been explored, and Whitey Bulger has a place in American history as a significant crime figure,” Mr. Lehr said. “We wanted to put the “Black Mass” years in a larger context of his life story, a biography, in which we try to not just tell this dramatic and horrific story, but get more into the why and how in the making of this monster.”

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jun/13/whitey-bulgers-horrific-crime-span/?page=all#pagebreak

You can also read my interview with Dick Lehr via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/06/crime-beat-column-q-with-dick-lehr-co_17.html

Whitey: The Life of America Most Notorious Mob Boss

Chuck Leddy offers a review of Whitey: The Life of America's Most Notorious Mob Boss at the Boston Globe.

Much has been written about Whitey Bulger in the past three decades, but in “Whitey: The Life of America’s Most Notorious Mob Boss’’ Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill (who already wrote about Bulger and his unholy alliance with the FBI in “Black Mass”) have put together a comprehensive life and times of the mobster, beginning with his 19th-century Irish ancestors to his present perch in the Plymouth County Correctional Facility awaiting trial.

In recounting this epic, horrific tale, the authors have mined a rich vein of sources that include Bulger’s federal prison file, interviews with Bulger associates, government documents released through Freedom of Information Act requests, court records, and more.

Lehr, a former Globe reporter, and O’Neill, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former Globe editor, make it clear that Bulger’s life and career were shaped by a multitude of factors that begin with an upbringing in a dysfunctional family and an apparent personality disorder amid a South Boston culture of tribalism, violent internecine struggles in the heyday of Boston mobs, and morally-bankrupt FBI agents.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2013/02/18/book-review-whitey-the-life-america-most-notorious-mob-boss-dick-lehr-and-gerard-neill/i8CAaqANDLe3O280GBq70L/story.html

You can also read the Daily Mail's coverage of the book via the below link:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2277193/Americas-wanted-fugitive-James-Whitey-Bulgers-outward-hatred-Obama-led-capture.html

Note: Dick Lehr and Gerald O' Neill's Black Mass was a very good book and I look forward to reading Whitey.

'Most Wanted' Author Discusses Boston Mobster 'Whitey' Bulger's Arrest

Thomas J. Foley, the author of Most Wanted: Pursuing Whitey Bulger, the Murderous Mob Chief the FBI Secretly Protected, answered questions about Bulger's arrest, Nate Holman reports.

Former Massachusetts State Police Colonel Thomas J. Foley, author of Most Wanted discussed the 16-year odyssey of chasing one of America’s most wanted and notorious criminal mastermind, James “Whitey” Bulger at the BPL on Thursday evening. Former Boston Globe reporter and current Boston University professor Dick Lehr, author of Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob moderated a Q+A forum with the audience. 

You can read the rest of the story via the below link:

http://fenwaykenmore.patch.com/articles/most-wanted-author-discusses-whitey-bulger-arrest-at-the-bpl

You can also read my Washington Times review of Most Wanted via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/8/hunting-down-a-crime-boss/?page=all#pagebreak