BUDDY MOVIE Mamet faces challenge in Cianci movie BY BILL RODRIGUEZ

So the screenwriter for the film based on Providence Journal reporter Mike Stanton’s bestseller on Buddy Cianci is going to be David Mamet. Poor fellow. How, for all his skill in writing tough-guy talk, is Mamet going to do better than such Rhode Island originals as Tommy Ricci? "All I did was give kickbacks," the Providence contractor whined in Stanton’s The Prince of Providence: The True Story of Buddy Cianci, America’s Most Notorious Mayor, Some Wiseguys, and the Feds (Random House, 2003). "Is that a crime or what?"

Michael Corrente, who will be directing the film, announced Mamet’s involvement on Saturday, June 12, at a Newport International Film Festival press conference. Cianci, who gained a fair share of popular credit for the Providence renaissance, is serving time until 2007 in a federal prison at Fort Dix, New Jersey. He was convicted in June 2002 on a single count of racketeering conspiracy.

Politics, drama, and comedy, Corrente noted, have been prime elements in Mamet’s film writing. His screenplays have been twice nominated for Academy Awards, for The Verdict (1982), in which Paul Newman portrayed a down-and-out lawyer, and the satirical Wag the Dog (1997), in which Dustin Hoffman played a Hollywood producer turned political media manipulator. Corrente and Mamet met when Corrente directed the 1996 screen adaptation of the writer’s iconic play American Buffalo, which was filmed, much to Providence mayor Cianci’s chagrin, entirely in Pawtucket. Corrente has been negotiating for a year with Mamet, who he said was his first choice as screenwriter. The Cianci movie will be filmed in Rhode Island, as was Corrente’s 1999 Outside Providence.

Corrente first encountered Cianci as a result of Corrente’s directorial debut, the gritty Federal Hill (1994), a film about a petty thief, his friend, and their Mafia milieu. "[Cianci] was never pleased with me making that," the director says. The mayor didn’t appreciate depictions of Italian-Americans as criminals. "I can’t imagine that Buddy is too thrilled that I’m the one that’s going to be making this film."

Corrente says that he and Mamet are interested in Cianci as a person of contrasting traits: "He’s a man who’s been governed by his spleen. He just can’t control that, from everything I’ve seen and heard and know. He’s a visionary; he did amazing things for Providence — and that’s the good side of Buddy. And then there’s the other side of Buddy that goes into dark places. A lot of people know that firsthand, and a lot of people don’t. It’s a fascinating character study."

Both Corrente and Mamet see Cianci as not just another dime-a-dozen corrupt politician. The director noted that Stanton’s book proposal was summarily rejected while making the rounds of New York publishing houses, until it got to Random House. "Why?" Corrente asks. "Both the publisher and chief editor went to Brown. They knew!"

As for who will play Cianci, Corrente points out, "It’s easier to make a young actor look older than to make an older actor look young." The director mentioned Paul Giamatti, from American Splendor, and Michael Chiklis, of the FX series The Shield, as active candidates for the lead.

If the project proceeds on track, filming will take place by the summer of 2005.