NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Sunday was another busy day at area airports, where thousands of travelers came and went this holiday weekend.
As CBS2’s Kevin Rincon reported, many passengers were greeted again with delays and cancellations.
READ MORE: Westchester County Police: 2 Dead In Multi-Vehicle Crash On Saw Mill River Parkway
Some 75 flights were canceled at Newark Liberty International Airport. The monitoring website FlightAware has been tracking the numbers. John F. Kennedy International Airport had 86 cancellations, and there was another 28 flights called off at LaGuardia Airport.
Airlines have been struggling to handle the increase in air traffic, coupled with the ongoing surge in COVID-19 cases.
COVID VACCINE
Passengers said they felt the pressure of traveling during yet another wave of coronavirus cases.
One man and his girlfriend flew in from Phoenix. They were planning to go to JFK, but their flight was delayed in Salt Lake City.
“It has been really, really stressful,” Christian Klein said. “We actually lucked out. We walked by this flight and said, ‘Hey, can we hop on?’ And we ended up here in Newark.”
Their travels started nearly a day ago, and it wasn’t ending in Newark. They said they were to take a car to see family in Connecticut.
READ MORE: Experts Tell CBS2 Though Omicron Variant Appears Less Severe, Now Is Not The Time To Be Complacent
Swani Schobert and her son from Stratford, Connecticut said they were planning to navigate their way to Germany.
“You definitely have to look for more things, do you need tests, do you need to be vaccinated, both or nothing. If you stop in another country, then the destination, what are there rules? It’s really confusing, but we managed,” Schobert said.
Nationally, United and Delta cancelled hundreds of flights over the holiday weekend. The airlines have been short staffed with COVID cases on the rise. They’ve offered employees all sorts of incentives to pick up extra shifts, on what’s one of the busiest travel weekends of the year.
CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC
Back at Newark Liberty, looking at the arrivals and departures, if flights weren’t cancelled, there’s a chance they were delayed.
Antoinette Randolph and her family said, despite the issues, there was still a willingness to fly.
“We still gotta do it. We still just live our life in a nutshell. We all gotta work together to stay safe,” Randolph said.
One thing travelers said is that they have felt safe with all the added precautions in place. That said, it will take time before we see things improve in terms of delays and cancellations, as more people either continue to try and see family during the holidays, or try to get back for work.
MORE NEWS: MTA: Train Service To Be Scaled Back Monday-Thursday Due To Surge In COVID-19 Cases
A Newark police officer has been charged with reckless vehicular homicide after prosecutors said he hit a pedestrian with his personal car and briefly took the body home, where he discussed what to do with it with his mother.
The Newark Police Department officer, Louis Santiago, was off duty on Nov. 1 when his Honda Accord drifted into the northbound shoulder of the Garden State Parkway around 3 a.m., the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office said in a news release on Wednesday. His car struck Damian Z. Dymka, 29, a nurse from Bergen County.
Officer Louis SantiagoCredit…Essex County Prosecutor’s Office
Neither Mr. Santiago nor the passenger in his car, Albert Guzman, both 25, called 911 or rendered aid to Mr. Dymka, the prosecutor’s office said. Instead, Mr. Santiago left and returned to the scene multiple times before loading the victim into the Honda and driving to his home in Bloomfield, N.J. The two men then discussed what to do with the body with Mr. Santiago’s mother, Annette Santiago, 53, according to the prosecutor.
Mr. Santiago eventually returned to the scene, the prosecutor’s office said. Mr. Santiago’s father, a lieutenant in the Newark Police Department, also called 911 to report that his son had been in an accident.
When the state police arrived, they found Mr. Dymka’s body in the Honda’s back seat.
Mr. Santiago, Mr. Guzman and Ms. Santiago have been arrested, charged and released on conditions, the office added.
In addition to vehicular homicide, Mr. Santiago faces charges including leaving the scene of a deadly accident, endangering an injured victim and two counts of official misconduct.
Mr. Guzman and Ms. Santiago each face charges including hindering apprehension and conspiracy to desecrate human remains and tamper with physical evidence.
News of the charges was reported earlier by the news site NJ.com and The New York Post.
The release from the prosecutors office did not name Mr. Santiago’s father or indicate when he had called 911. It also did not say when Mr. Dymka died or why he had been in the shoulder of the Garden State Parkway in the middle of the night.
The Essex County Prosecutor’s Office and the Newark Police Department could not immediately be reached for comment early Thursday morning.
Mr. Dymka was a nursing supervisor at the Preakness Healthcare Center in Wayne, N.J., according to the center’s website.
A Newark Police Officer struck and killed a nurse with his car and then drove the body to his mother’s house seeking advice before returning to the scene with the body, officials said on Wednesday.
Louis Santiago, 25, of Bloomfield was arrested and charged with reckless vehicular homicide, desecrating human remains and other charges after he hit and killed 29-year-old nurse Damian Dymka, of Garfieldon the Garden State Parkway, according to the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office.
Santiago’s mother, 53-year-old Annette Santiago, and passenger Albert Guzman, 25, were charged with conspiracy to desecrate human remains, hindering apprehension and conspiracy to hinder apprehension and tamper with physical evidence.
On Monday, Nov. 1 around 3 a.m. Santiago — who was off duty at the time — was driving a 2005 Honda Accord northbound on the Parkway near exit 151 when he drifted from his lane into the right shoulder and struck and killed Dymka, prosecutors said.
Neither Santiago nor Guzman called 911 or tried to assist the man, officials said, but returned to the scene multiple times before Santiago loaded Dymka’s body into his car. The two drove to Santiago’s home in Bloomfield, where they discussed what to do with the body.
Santiago then returned to the scene as his father — a lieutenant in the Newark Police Department — called 911 and reported that his son was in an accident. Police arrived and found Dymka’s dead body in the back seat of the Accord.
In addition to vehicular homicide, Santiago’s additionally charged with leaving the scene of a crash resulting in death, endangering an injured victim, desecrating/moving human remains, hindering one’s own apprehension, conspiracy to hinder prosecution, tampering with physical evidence, obstructing the administration of law, and two counts of official misconduct.
All three have been released with conditions, according to the Prosecutor’s office.
Streaming viewership for David Chase’s “The Many Saints of Newark” is coming into focus, as is the massive bump it gave the series that inspired it, “The Sopranos,” according to WarnerMedia’s metrics.
While the film’s theatrical rollout last weekend earned $4.6 million at the domestic box office, its performance on HBO Max underscores an important advantage the WarnerMedia platform has against its competitors — the ability to resuscitate its deep bench of adult-skewing, culture-defining series.
An origin story behind a young Tony Soprano and his father figure Dickie Moltisanti, “Many Saints” finished last weekend as the top performing film title on HBO Max — netting more than triple the audience of the next most viewed title, the streamer said. The movie has also outperformed other comparable films in its budget range, including recent releases like Hugh Jackman’s “Reminiscence” and Clint Eastwood’s “Cry Macho” (both underperformers at the pandemic-stricken box office).
More interestingly, perhaps, is that the nearly 15-year-old “Sopranos” broke HBO Max records for weekly viewing of a series, and nabbed the highest daily viewership in service history last Sunday. The Emmy winning show, topped by the late James Gandolfini, rose 65% in week-over-week viewing as “Many Saints” became available to subscribers. As with all streamers, exact viewership was not available and cannot be independently verified.
“We knew there would be interplay, but we were surprised. ‘The Sopranos’ is such a popular series. It pops in and out of the Top 10 from time to time, and it’s not a juggernaut like ‘Friends’ in terms of breadth, but it does very well,” Andy Forssell, executive vice president and general manager of WarnerMedia Direct-to-Consumer, told Variety.
The executive added that “Many Saints,” produced by New Line Cinema, provided an opportunity “for people to be introduced to the series, or in many cases reintroducing it. It was absolutely the highest week for ‘Sopranos’ ever on the service. Im not shocked by that, but Im quite surprised that it topped that much that fast.”
While much of this year’s conversation about HBO Max has been in relation to WarnerMedia’s seismic decision to release all of the 2021 Warner Bros. Pictures film slate concurrently in theaters and on HBO Max, the release of “Many Saints” and boon for “The Sopranos” provides a case study in how the company can leverage its creative assets.
Read on for a Q&A with Forssell:
“The Many Saints of Newark” was greenlit before the day-and-date strategy for HBO Max came about. Did you know early on it would have this kind of dual effect?
I think independent of the day-to-day strategy, it’s kind of a no brainer for us to feel passionate about this. People want more “Sopranos” in whatever form that David feels there is a good story. We were super excited long before this, but it is a really good fit with day-and-date. All of the complexities of getting to the strategy that this year imposed, we want people to see this. Plenty saw it in theaters, a much larger amount saw it on the service and will continue to see it on the service. It’s a really good fit in this context.
Opening weekend ended with your announcement that David Chase has signed a new creative deal. What can we expect?
I’ve heard a few of the ideas but nothing we can talk about publicly other than that he’s earned the right to realize whatever ideas he has, and we’re excited to see him do that.
To touch on marketing, the campaign for this movie added the phrase “A Sopranos Story” to the title only a few weeks before the release. Was that intentional and did it affect performance?
There was an uptick from marketing because it was a really helpful and appropriate framing from [Warner Bros. worldwide marketing head] Josh Goldstine’s team. I have a large content marketing organization that is historically HBO, and they work closely with Josh. We drive a lot of what we call “growth science.” Like, how do you use the data to be really smart about how we’re fielding media? How we’re testing and doing loops there? That piece you saw was some great creativity from Josh and team that really paid off. Really simple framing.
“Many Saints” is very close to an original film while still being related to a big TV property. Obviously, you’re dealing with several iconic libraries. Is the larger strategy to exploit these?
It’s in the eye of the beholder. There’s a large audience that would agree that the HBO team has decades of muscle memory, doing what they do so well. It’s an interesting mix in that we have the HBO library and all that represents, and then we have the Warner Bros. TV library. We feel very lucky. It makes weeks like this very fun because there are so many diehard fans of “The Sopranos,” but that show is being discovered by high school and college kids right now. I’m not sure why. “Friends” swept middle schools a decade ago, and it’s interesting to see those things happen.
In terms of engagement, there’s also a built-in game for diehard “Sopranos” fans of identifying younger versions of their favorite characters in “Many Saints.”
That’s one fun thing about this. Obviously, to some extent, it’s an origin story for Tony and by the end of the film you understand a lot more about how he became who he became. But ultimately, it’s a fascinating character in Dickie Moltisanti. It’s so much fun to draw lines across the generations. That could’ve been done as caricatures, but David navigated that so well.
What does a movie like “Many Saints” mean for what HBO Max considers an original film?
In the traditional theatrical world, studios support movies and they either win or lose. In our world, there is some element of that, we want the title to be great and want it to perform. But it’s also part of our day-and-date slate this year. Our viewers have clearly voted that they come in for the slate, there are a couple of titles that attracted them, but the slate alone is a reason for them to stick around. At the end of the year that will start to wain, it’s not 17 or 18 films anymore, it’s just the tail. But we’ve seen that clearly and “Many Saints” fits into that as a great part of the mix. The slate has been invaluable for us in a big way, especially in a year when SVOD and all TV where new shows hitting any service were light because of the shadow of the COVID production shutdown. The film slate has value.
The other angle to look at it from is the interplay between a great film like this and a long-running series like “The Sopranos.” As users, we love those characters and those worlds. Sometimes, we sit down and sign up for two or three hours of a story well told. There are other times when what we want is a service to provide us many weeks or months of enjoyment watching something episodic. “Many Saints” was number one — by a long shot — as the biggest title on the service. That’s a great combination and its going to continue for weeks, so its going to have longer legs because of that interplay.
From playing Henry Hill in “Goodfellas” to Aldo “Hollywood Dick” Moltisanti in “The Many Saints of Newark” — the prequel movie to “The Sopranos,” which opens Friday in theaters and on HBO Max — Ray Liotta knows a thing or two about wiseguys.
But don’t let the thuggishness fool you: In real life, he’s more of a gentle fella.
“I don’t go around beating people up,” Liotta, 66, told The Post. “I’ve never been in a fight. I avoid it at all costs.”
Still, after starring in Martin Scorsese’s 1990 classic “Goodfellas” — considered one of the best mob movies of all time — Liotta is back with “Many Saints,” which traces the roots of Tony Soprano’s rise to power. Given that “Goodfellas” inspired “The Sopranos,” playing Hollywood Dick — the grandfather of Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli) — is a kind of full-circle moment for the Union, NJ, native.
The role fulfills a long-standing desire that Liotta had to work with “Sopranos” creator David Chase, who also served as a writer and producer on “The Many Saints of Newark.” “David Chase is a special, intense talent,” he said.
In fact, Chase once pursued Liotta to play Ralphie Cifaretto on the mafia drama, but the actor passed on the role that ultimately went to Joe Pantoliano. This time, though, it was Liotta who was doing the pursuing.
Ray Liotta as Hollywood Dick (center) with Joey Diaz and John Borras in “Many Saints.” AP
“I flew myself out, and had lunch with David and Alan [Taylor, the director],” he said, “and by the end of it they asked if I would play Hollywood Dick.”
Although his “Goodfellas” co-stars Imperioli and Lorraine Bracco appeared in “The Sopranos,” Liotta didn’t really watch the game-changing HBO series. “I had seen bits and pieces of it when it first came out,” he said. “But at that time in my life … you’re out doing things. And then I was just like, ‘I don’t know if I wanna watch it.’ ”
Nor did Liotta feel the need to go back and binge “The Sopranos” to create Hollywood Dick. “[The series] didn’t inform my decisions whatsoever of what to do. It was all in the script,” he said. “Because I didn’t watch the series, I didn’t feel like I really missed a lot of the stuff because I didn’t know what they were talking about. This movie stands alone.”
Although he wasn’t a “Sopranos” fan, Liotta was intrigued by the idea of James Gandolfini’s 22-year-old son, Michael, playing a young Tony Soprano in “Many Saints.” “That’s gotta be a trip,” he said. “What is interesting is it wasn’t like a young version of exactly what James did. It wasn’t this big, hulking Tony Soprano that we know from the series. There was an innocence to [him].”
Liotta holds court as Aldo “Hollywood Dick” Moltisanti in “The Many Saints of Newark,” along with Joey Diaz as Lino “Buddha” Bonpensiero (from left), Corey Stoll as Corrado “Junior” Soprano, Samson Moeakiola as Salvatore “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero and Billy Magnussen as Paulie “Walnuts” Gualtieri.AP
While Liotta wasn’t able to give Gandolfini any advice — “I barely saw him at all — I never worked on the days that he worked,” he said — he still hopes to bond with the young actor about his “totally” promising career and how he dealt with the trauma of his father’s 2013 death.
“I’d love to talk to him just one-on-one,” he said. “He was the one in Italy with his dad [when he suffered a fatal heart attack], and all of a sudden something like that happens when you’re 14 years old, that’s a really innocent age.”
For his part, Liotta — who was adopted from a Newark, NJ, orphanage before moving to Union — is enjoying a career renaissance at 66. He’ll also be playing new villain Gordon Evans in the third season of the Amazon Prime drama “Hanna,” which premieres in November. And he’s also wrapped the role of Big Jim in the upcoming Apple TV+ limited series “In With the Devil,” starring Taron Egerton.
“Yeah, I’m not complaining. But I worked for it,” he said. “I had to live through a period where things were down instead of up. I’ve definitely had an up-and-down career. But I’m extremely persistent and competitive where I just wanted to get to a certain place again.”
And he likes the fact that he can now bounce between TV and film in a way he couldn’t do in his early days. “If you were doing television [before], then maybe your career as somebody in movies was slipping,” said Liotta, who also co-starred with Jennifer Lopez in NBC’s Brooklyn cop drama “Shades of Blue” from 2016 to 2018. “It’s much more open, less snobbish.”
Whether on the big or small screen, Liotta is happy to “just keep playing pretend” well into his senior years: “I still feel extremely young, even if I am in my 60s.”
Photo Credits: Sony Pictures / Columbia (“Venom: Let There Be Carnage”); United Artists Releasing (“The Addams Family 2”); Warner Bros. (“The Many Saints of Newark”)
This October’s box office has often been circled on the calendar as the start of the next phase in domestic box office recovery. With the month officially beginning this weekend, the time has come for Venom: Let There Be Carnage, The Addams Family 2, and The Many Saints of Newark to begin making that important impression on moviegoers and the industry at large as 2021 enters its final quarter.
Sony’s Venom sequel is the obvious frontrunner commanding the lion’s share of attention this weekend. Following multiple delays during the course of the pandemic, few movies have been shuffled around the calendar as many times as the anticipated follow-up to one of 2018’s autumn breakouts.
As discussed in our recent analysis, Venom scored a then-October-record $32.5 million opening weekend and crushed all expectations as part of one of the strongest fall box office slates in history. The Tom Hardy-franchise is back with a core younger demographic to drive it, a crucial audience that has represented a high share of returning patrons at cinemas during the pandemic rebound.
Comparisons are still limited, but Let There Be Carnage has been trending strong in the final days before release. Combined social media impressions and pre-sale gauges have the Sony sequel far ahead of the pace of August’s The Suicide Squad (which opened to a disappointing $26.2 million), while not far behind that of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. The latter, of course, has been a bastion of the post-summer market following a Labor Day record $75.4 million three-day opening and subsequently strong chase weekends.
Carnage is also comparable to this year’s F9 in some ways. The latter franchise has been known to pace more back-loaded in audience interest and pre-sale activity relative to many comic book franchises. However, the first Venom was an outlier in that regard itself thanks to diverse audience appeal of a makeup slightly different from Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. (Remember: Venom is part of Sony’s off-shoot Marvel franchise and, to this point anyway, has no substantial connection to the Disney & Marvel Studios franchise.)
Whether that back-loaded and casual audience turnout plays a factor again with Carnage, or if it proves to behave more in line with a typical comic book sequel, is one of the few remaining questions. Reviews had also been a question with an embargo in place until two days before opening, but the sequel is standing at 74 percent from 53 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes as of early Thursday afternoon. Of this film’s many strengths, appeal to young male audiences is on fire — a crowd the first film dominated with via a 60 percent gender split, coupled with an overall 71 percent under-25 demographic breakdown.
The first Venom was more of a crowd-pleaser than a critics’ darling, but it was also front-loaded in its box office run with considerably less competition in later weekends than Carnage will face. The trade-off this time, though, is the long awaited first appearance of Carnage, played by Woody Harrelson, a very popular character within comic book fandom.
In terms of tracking against the predecessor itself, Carnage hasn’t been at the same level but it seems to be retaining a large block of the target audience interest that boosted Venom. Last minute surges in pre-sales in the middle of this week are also boosting expectations even more, but it’s important to remember we’re still in the midst of an evolving recovery market.
Of note, the first film had an inflated Sunday due to Indigenous Peoples’ Day landing on Monday, meaning an extended weekend for teens in grade school. That won’t be the case this time as the holiday will land one week later on October 11.
With all of that in mind, however, it’s been nearly one full month since audiences had a brand new, widely appealing tentpole film to draw them to theaters. That should play to Carnage‘s favor in a major way this weekend despite the road ahead, including direct competition from films like No Time to Die (October 8), Halloween Kills (October 15), and Dune (October 22).
Sony is distributing the sequel at 4,225 domestic theaters, including all IMAX and Premium Large Format screens. Previews begin Thursday at 4 P.M., one hour earlier than the first film’s start time three years ago this same weekend. It will also be exclusive to movie theaters, marking yet another advantage for box office performance.
For a welcome change of pace, this weekend sees two other nationwide releases as counter-programmers to the main comic book sequel event. It’s arguably the most mainstream-friendly variety the industry has seen from a collection of new releases during the pandemic so far and is likely to rival or outperform the doubleheader of A Quiet Place Part II and Cruella over Memorial Day weekend.
Up first, United Artists Releasing is sending The Addams Family 2 to theaters in a day-and-date strategy that also sees the animated sequel streaming as a paid PVOD option at home. The latter move was only made in recent weeks as it became clear that parents and adult women remain the most cautious returning to theaters, in large part because children under the age of 12 aren’t yet eligible for vaccines. That’s obviously Addams’ core crowd, so any comparisons to the previous film’s $30.3 million opening weekend two years ago aren’t particularly useful or valid here.
Nevertheless, The Addams Family 2 is trending relatively well compared to recent animated releases. For parents and kids who are choosing to safely return to cinemas, the sequel presents one of the very few family options in the market lately. Brand awareness and a lack of competition helped Paramount’s PAW Patrol: The Movie beat expectations late in the summer with a $13.2 million debut (despite Regal not screening the film at its theaters) after the likes of The Boss Baby: Family Business and Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway captured similar box office results earlier in the summer.
Those are the most apropos comparison points for the Addams follow-up, but pent-up demand and increasing comfort level of audiences since those releases could arguably help it come in on the high end of expectations — especially with Halloween season in full swing as October begins.
Warner Bros. is also back at it this weekend with their prequel to The Sopranos series, The Many Saints of Newark.
As another day-and-date SVOD release, though, expectations have significantly diminished from what they once were. After the likes of Downton Abbey and Black Mass proved successful at the fall box office while courting a similar adult viewer base, recent Warner Bros. performances from Cry Macho, Reminiscence, and Those Who Wish Me Dead have shown that the target older audience has been opting to watch these movies for free at home on HBO Max.
Newark could outperform those films just by nature of being part of a well-known and respected intellectual property, but otherwise, its impact is increasingly expected to be diminished considering its based on a series fans already spent years dedicating to watch on their television screens.
Elsewhere this weekend, Lionsgate and Kingdom Story Company will release The Jesus Musicat 249 locations, a film that has shown solid pre-sales signs in recent days, while NEON will open Titaneat 562 theaters. Both, particularly the former, are contenders to crack the top ten this weekend.
Overall, the coming frame figures to be one of the busiest of the pandemic era yet. Only three weekends since March 2020 have exceeded $90 million combined at the box office, those being Labor Day weekend for Shang-Chi‘s release ($108.3 million), Black Widow‘s ($117.5 million) July debut frame, and F9‘s ($97.1 million) starting weekend in June.
Depending largely on Venom: Let There Be Carnage‘s ability to hit or exceed expectations, this weekend is on pace to rank somewhere among those three pandemic era benchmarks.
Forecast Ranges
The Addams Family 2 Opening Weekend Range: $13 – 18 million Domestic Total Range: $40 – $60 million
The Many Saints of Newark Opening Weekend Range: $7 – 12 million Domestic Total Range: $15 – $35 million
Venom: Let There Be Carnage Opening Weekend Range: $60 – 80 million Domestic Total Range: $140 – $170 million
Weekend Forecast
Boxoffice projects this weekend’s top ten films will increase between 180 and 220 percentfrom last weekend’s $35.8 million top ten aggregate.
Film
Distributor
3-Day Weekend Forecast
Projected Domestic Total through Sunday, October 3
Location Count
% Change from Last Wknd
Venom: Let There Be Carnage
Sony Pictures / Columbia
$71,000,000
$71,000,000
4,225
NEW
The Addams Family 2
United Artists Releasing
$16,100,000
$16,100,000
4,207
NEW
The Many Saints of Newark
Warner Bros. Pictures
$9,000,000
$9,000,000
~3,300
NEW
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
Disney / Marvel Studios
$6,200,000
$206,100,000
3,455
-52%
Dear Evan Hansen
Universal Pictures
$2,800,000
$12,200,000
3,364
-62%
Free Guy
20th Century Studios
$2,300,000
$117,600,000
2,545
-44%
Candyman
Universal Pictures
$1,500,000
$59,200,000
1,745
-41%
Jungle Cruise
Walt Disney Studios
$900,000
$116,300,000
1,375
-48%
All forecasts subject to revision before the first confirmation of Thursday previews or Friday estimates from studios or alternative sources.
Theater counts are updated as confirmed by studios.
In the late 1960s, the Newark, NJ, mob was in disarray. Its leader, Anthony “Tony Boy” Boiardo, suffered from crippling ulcers. His father, family capo Richie “The Boot” Boiardo, nearing 80, wanted to retire, care for his garden and lounge at his gargantuan pool. But he kept getting pulled back in to help his son, who was disliked by fellow gang members. At least two of them — soldiers Angelo “Gyp” DeCarlo and Anthony “Little Pussy” Russo — were caught on FBI wiretaps gossiping about the likelihood of Tony Boy getting killed by one of their own.
If this setup sounds familiar that’s because the Boiardo crime family inspired the HBO TV series “The Sopranos” and its new prequel movie “The Many Saints of Newark,” which drops in theaters and on HBO Max Oct. 1. The latter, set in Newark amid the 1960s race riots, tells the story of a young Tony Soprano as he began to make his bones. In the film, Tony is portrayed by the late James Gandolfini’s 22-year-old son, Michael.
The Boiardo crime family of Newark, first led by Richie “The Boot” Boiardo (center) and then his son, Tony Boy.Getty Images
“Sopranos” creator David Chase revealed to New Jersey Monthly in 2002 that while “90 percent of [the TV show] is made up . . . it’s patterned after this family.”
Many names and situations on “The Sopranos” and in the movie are dead ringers for real Jersey mafiosos. Riffing off Anthony “Tony Boy” Boiardo, in “Many Saints” Tony Soprano’s father is called Johnny Boy. Reality and fiction both feature thugs nicknamed Big Pussy (the true genesis of John “Big Pussy” Russo’s nickname: he was a successful cat burglar.) And real-life Tony Boy as well as TV’s Tony Soprano both suffered due to their devious lives. They were wracked by emotional maladies with physical repercussions (ulcers for Tony Boy, panic attacks for older Tony Soprano) and hired psychiatrists to cope.
While Soprano’s sessions with Lorraine Bracco’s Dr. Melfi are well known to fans, those of Tony Boy, who witnessed his first murder at 14, are less so. “Tony Boy worked with a therapist who had been a military doctor, specializing in PTSD,” Robert Linnett, author of “In the Godfather Garden: The Long Life and Times of Richie ‘The Boot’ Boiardo,” told The Post. “Tony Boy was dealing with the stress of being the Boot’s son and running a mob family, which he was ill-equipped to do.”
Tony Boy Boiardo (left) took the reins from dad Richie “The Boot,” and like TV’s Tony Soprano (right) had to hire a therapist to manage stress.Getty Images; HBO
Like on “The Sopranos” when Tony took the reins from a jailed Corrado “Junior” Soprano, things weren’t going well for the Boiardos in the ’60s. IRS agents were investigating The Boot — nicknamed for his bootlegging prowess — and feds had begun closing in. DeCarlo was battling cancer while serving a 12-year prison sentence for numbers running. Life magazine ran an exposé on The Boot, his “brazen empire of organized crime” and 30-acre estate in Livingston, NJ, with a home described as “Transylvanian traditional.” The unwanted publicity led to kids throwing cherry bombs over the fence. Frustrated, The Boot actually took potshots at two trespassing kids.
Weirdly, in the midst of all this, he encouraged his teenage grandchildren to patrol the grounds with long guns. “We hunted there and people thought we were bodyguards,” grandson Roger Hanos told The Post. “We kept guns close in case we saw rabbits or squirrels.”
Before their world began to crumble, though, the Boiardos ran Newark. For decades, the clan controlled the city’s crime scene and benefited from racketeering, loan-sharking, theft, gambling and no-show jobs along with other criminal enterprises at the Port of Newark. “It was and is a candy store,” a law-enforcement source told The Post. “The Port is a magnet for criminals. We’ve highlighted 500 longshoremen getting paid a total of $417 million for work that will never get done.”
When Richie “The Boot” (left) stepped aside, he became increasingly detached and paranoid — the same as TV boss Corrado Soprano (right).Roger Hanos; HBO
The family’s lucrative, illicit trade started out innocently, however, with milk.
It all began with a pre-capo Richie delivering the wholesome beverage. His family immigrated from Italy to the United States in 1901. And his parents, who adopted the boy they called Ruggerio at age 6, mostly lived on the straight and narrow, but Richie had other plans.
Around 1915, having worked in construction and already saddled with a bust for running an illegal gambling joint, Richie, then in his 20s, secured a Newark milk route. In short order he became more than a milkman. “He had contact with households and started selling [illegal] lottery tickets to the families who also bought his milk,” Hanos said. “It was a simple way to make extra money.”
It also solidified his criminal reputation.
In 1920, Prohibition hit and Richie took to producing and peddling bootleg alcohol. He learned the business through a gang headed up by John and Frank Mazzocchi. By the early ’30s, The Boot assembled his own crew and dealt with the competition in classic mob style. “He executed the Mazzocchi brothers,” added Hanos, who avoided the family trade and is now retired from his job as director of human resources at a New Jersey university. “Then my grandfather became a bootlegging king of Newark.”
John “Big Pussy” Russo (left) got the moniker by being a cat burglar, just like TV’s Sal Bonpen-Siero (right).Roger Hanos; HBO
Over ensuing decades, The Boot made millions by being shrewd and murderous. On a wiretap, gang members laughed about The Boot hammering “a little Jew” in the head before Tony Boy shot him. But he also had seemingly legit contracting businesses that thrived via sweetheart deals from politicians who received kickbacks.
When things got messy, The Boot had a way of destroying evidence. “You’d hear about him burning people, alive or dead. That was weird and scary,” said Linnett, referring to what went down in a large fire pit at the rear of The Boot’s property. “Usually mob guys just put a bullet to the ear. There were not many mob bosses with their own crematorium. That’s brutal.”
However, his son, to the manor born, lacked The Boot’s cunning. Tony Boy, after a brief and unsuccessful military stint, got involved in crime in the early ’50s by working as a frontman to obtain a liquor license for his dad’s restaurant. He quickly worked his way up the ranks as a mobster, but many thugs disliked him.
“Tony Boy was raised with a silver spoon in his mouth. He raced around in fancy cars and threatened to kill people,” said Linnett. “Little Pussy, Gyp and others resented it.”
According to Linnett’s book, an FBI report noted, “As soon as Boiardo [The Boot] dies, his son will not have long to live.”
Richie “The Boot” Boiardo had a large swimming pool located at his Livingston Estate. He held parties almost every weekend. Roger Hanos
It didn’t help that Tony Boy famously screwed up. In the early ’60s, left in charge by an aging Boot, he organized a meeting that turned to mayhem. It began when he called numbers runner Pasquale “Smudgy” Antonelli to the Fremont Club in Newark for an early morning sit-down. The place was closed and Tony Boy was with Big Pussy and Jimo Calabrese, a Boiardo lieutenant and prolific killer.
Exactly what happened next is shrouded in mystery. But it ended with Tony Boy, Big Pussy, Smudgy and Calabrese all with bullet wounds and needing medical care. Tony Boy was spirited to Florida. An associate of Smudgy was murdered a day later. Needing to clean up the mess, The Boot jetted home from an Italian vacation with his sweetheart.
“I would say he was pissed,” Linnett said. “The innocent bartender who witnessed everything was killed. That was a case of The Boot’s brutality spilling over into the civilian world.”
Throughout that decade, the family business got driven into the ground. Little Pussy, an associate named Jerry Catena and The Boot all landed behind bars on various charges. “My grandfather went to prison, for a little over a year, in November 1970,” said Hanos. “I felt bad about it. I drove my mother and aunt there to visit him in Leesburg State Prison. I fed his dogs and checked out his house. They let him have his own garden at Leesburg.”
‘Sopranos’ (cast pictured above) creator David Chase says “90 percent of [‘The Sopranos’] is made up . . . [but] it’s patterned after the [Boiardo] family.”
Alamy
Tony Boy died of a heart attack in 1978, at age 60. His father passed six years later, due to heart failure at 93. By then the Boiardo crime family was skeletal, but it did not mark the end of Newark’s mob.
“I fully believe there is an organized Newark mob,” said ex-Secret Service agent Jan Gilhooly, allowing that cameras everywhere complicate being a crook. “But organized criminals spend 24 hours a day thinking about how to steal things. The Port is still heavy in loan-sharking and gambling. Plus you now have street gangs that need to be dealt with.”
According to the law-enforcement source, “organized crime remains alive and well. The mob had a check-cashing place [in the Newark area] through which they laundered $1 million per day. A container full of perfume got stolen [from the Port]; that was worth another million. There was a [wiretap] bug [on which gangsters] talked about NJ belonging to the Genovese family.”
On another tap, they jawboned about something more relatable. “Guys were arguing over which ‘Sopranos’ character is based on who,” said the source, adding that the guys also appreciated the show’s realistic portrayal of their backstabbing loved ones. “Even family members will try to do you.”
Yes, 14 years after HBO’s groundbreaking drama series “The Sopranos” aired its final episode — controversial to this day — its movie prequel “The Many Saints of Newark” premiered Wednesday in New York.
Fans packed every seat of the Beacon Theatre, and the dress code was “business.” Some ticketholders interpreted that as Tony Soprano-style tracksuits. They must’ve thought the invite said “family business.”
movie review
Running time: 120 minutes. Rated R (strong violence, pervasive language, sexual content and some nudity.) In theaters and on HBO Max Oct. 1.
Before the movie started, there was intensely moving applause for the late James Gandolfini, who died in 2013, and his 22-year-old son Michael, who’s taken the reins from his pop and is now playing young Tony Soprano.
A man up in the balcony screamed at Michael onstage, “We loved your dad!”
By the time the credits rolled, we loved his son, too.
“Many Saints of Newark,” written by genius “Sopranos” creator David Chase and directed by series stalwart Alan Taylor, had a tall order. The film needed to complement what even a Himalayan hermit could tell you was the show that changed television forever. It does. And in abandoning the tube for the big screen, the movie had to compete with mafia classics such as “Goodfellas” and “The Godfather.” Sorry, it’s just not on that same level. “Many Saints” plays like solid TV.
Michael Gandolfini makes his mark as he takes over the role of Tony Soprano from his dad James, who died in 2013, in “The Many Saints of Newark.”GC Images
Nonetheless, the tale of how Tony Soprano’s early life led him to become the capo of the DiMeo crime family in New Jersey is smart, entertaining and brutal. Signature Chase. His blend of humor, terror, psychological complexity and oddly compelling domestic chores is alive and well here. Many characters, however, are only alive for a brief period of time.
The blood-soaked movie starts during the Newark race riots of 1967 and mostly follows Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola), the father of Christopher (Michael Imperioli narrates a bit) and favorite uncle of Tony (first William Ludwig then Gandolfini), as his city and the mafia are dragged kicking and shooting into the modern world.
He’s part of a new generation poised to take over, along with Corrado “Junior” (Corey Stoll) and Johnny Soprano (Jon Bernthal). They clash with Harold McBrayer (Leslie Odom Jr.), a black gangster who works for Dickie but has his own grander aspirations. The best of the lot, though, is Ray Liotta as Dickie’s father Aldo. He is absolutely hysterical. Reprehensible, but hysterical.
The same is true of Vera Farmiga, who expertly plays Tony’s kvetching mother Livia. It’s fascinating, if you know the show, to watch the power hungry Livia and Junior interact with a growing Tony.
Unlike what you’d assume, Tony isn’t the main event. He’s more of a wide-eyed observer — aware of what the eccentric men in his family are up to but naive to the grisly details. He adores Dickie, not knowing that he’s a murdering racist with a mistress on the side. Obviously this guy rubbed off on Tony.
Gandolfini, though, nails the most important aspect of his dad’s iconic role — the shy sensitivity. In his therapy sessions on the show we learned there was more to this mafioso than a gun and a greasy white tank top. “Many Saints” adds layers upon layers to that. There is a moment in which the young Gandolfini proves his gravitas when we sense that a kid who could’ve taken a very different path — artist, writer, scientist — chooses a life of crime instead. The audience deservedly applauds it, if not the entire movie.
When you make a film out of the greatest TV show of all time, there’s bound to be a hint of disappointment. What you’re getting here is a very enjoyable mob movie that can be appreciated by anybody, but will undoubtedly be preferred by “Sopranos” fans. “The Godfather IV,” it ain’t.
No matter your nitpicks, though, you can sleep well knowing that “Many Saints of Newark” does not end with the song “Don’t Stop Believin’.”
Fourteen years after The Sopranos finished its groundbreaking run comes this blistering prequel. Fans of HBO’s New Jersey mobster saga can rejoice; The Many Saints of Newark is everything you’d want it to be.
The story covers the mid-’60s to early ’70s, when Tony Soprano is still at school (well, when he’s not grifting), but clearly soaking up everything his older relatives do. Tony’s played by William Ludwig and, later, Michael Gandolfini – son of the late James Gandolfini, who so memorably originated the role. Both are great, with Gandolfini catching some of his father’s mannerisms; but with Tony’s father (Jon Bernthal) in jail and his mother (Vera Farmiga) at her wit’s end, the spotlight falls on Dickie Moltisanti (Alessandro Nivola), the man young Tony looks up to.
As fans know, Dickie is the father to Christopher, whom Tony similarly took under his wing in the show. The plot kicks in with Dickie’s violent father Aldo ‘Hollywood Dick’ Moltisanti (Ray Liotta) returning from Italy with a new bride (Gabriella Piazza), but it’s a marriage that won’t last. In a grasp for power, the volatile Dickie is horrifying in his actions.
The narrative dovetails with real-life as the 1967 Newark Race Riots erupt on the streets. Racial tensions between the Italian-American and African-American communities boil over, symbolized by Dickie’s conflict with Harold McBrayer (Leslie Odom Jr.), a hired gun who becomes dangerously entwined in Dickie’s personal life.
Co-scripted by Sopranos creator David Chase and Lawrence Konner (who penned a number of episodes), it’s a highly compelling origin story. Nivola and Liotta are standouts in a first-rate cast, while younger versions of familiar characters – Uncle Junior (Corey Stoll), Silvio Dante (John Magaro) and Big Pussy (Samson Moeakiola) – weave in and out of a story that simmers for the first hour, before escalating, thrillingly, in the final stages.
A slightly bizarre idea sees the film narrated from the grave by Christopher (Michael Imperoli). It doesn’t entirely work, but then The Sopranos itself was never afraid to try out oddball dream-like moments. For the most part director Alan Taylor (Thor: The Dark World), another Sopranos veteran, doesn’t put a foot wrong, recapturing the show’s spirit.
With Tony a rebellious schoolkid who dreams of playing in the NFL, he’s an observer to this mob life; but key to the film’s success is how deftly it establishes the world of explosive violence and easy money to which he will ultimately be swayed.
The Many Saints of Newark reaches UK cinemas on September 22 and US theatres on October 1. The Sopranos movie will also be streaming on HBO Max at the same time as in theaters – get the best HBO prices here.
