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by Paul Lieberman,
L.A. Times
When Life Imitates a
B-Movie; Steven Seagal's ex- partner, accused of plotting with mob figures
to extort money from the star, calls their saga a 'magic carpet ride.'
The Los Angeles Times;
Los Angeles, Calif.; Jul 12, 2002; PAUL LIEBERMAN
(Copyright, The Times
Mirror Company; Los Angeles Times 2002 All rights reserved)
When Steven Seagal
first surfaced in Hollywood, as a ponytailed 6- foot-4 martial arts
expert, he offered a background story full of murk and menace. He hinted
in hushed tones of having done "special favors" for the CIA. Whether
anyone believed him hardly mattered-- what counted was how he put over the
tough-guy image in films that cast him as a lone avenger caught in ominous
conspiracies.
Julius R. Nasso showed
up in town as a wannabe of a different sort. He presented himself as the
poor immigrant from Brooklyn who started a pharmaceutical business with
$500 saved from a clerk's job- -in a church. Then he set out, like so many
others, to make movies. And for him, it happened.
During a partnership
that lasted more than a decade, Seagal starred in films that grossed
hundreds of millions of dollars, and Nasso helped produce them. They were
close, almost like brothers. Seagal bought the house next to Nasso's
mansion on Staten Island and they often dressed alike, all in black, just
in different sizes. Nasso was a foot shorter than the imposing actor.
Nasso also was the
easy one to deal with. Like many performers, Seagal could be self-centered
and moody--"a stubborn, maniacal idiot," as he once described himself. But
it was hard to find anyone who didn't like Nasso. "I would go in," he
said, "and clean up the mess."
Yet it was worth it,
he insisted. Every minute with Seagal.
"I went on the magic
carpet ride with him," Nasso explained.
He says that even as
the magic carpet threatens to land him in prison.
Nasso is free on
$1.5-million bail, preparing his defense against a federal indictment that
depicts him as an associate of the Gambino crime family, ruled in recent
years by John Gotti and his kin. Last month, prosecutors revealed that a
microphone planted to get evidence of mob influence over New York-area
docks had picked up a meeting in a restaurant between the 49-year-old
Nasso and a local Mafia captain.
Their alleged topic of
conversation? A scheme to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars from "an
individual in the film industry" who was not named but whose identity was
no secret: the don't-mess- with-me actor who broke noses and bones on
screen.
Only a few snippets of
dialogue have been released, but one has Nasso saying to the mob capo,
"Tell me what I have to do and I'll do it."
It seemed like a plot
turn out of the thrillers that earned Seagal and Nasso their stripes--and
another chapter in the long history of mutual fascination between
tough-guy actors and their real-world counterparts.
Seagal, who is
expected to be a key prosecution witness against Nasso and reputed mob
enforcers, is talking only through his lawyers- -who insist he had no
knowledge that his partner might have had such friends.
Nasso, even while
denying any wrongdoing, wonders how Seagal could profess ignorance on that
point. Didn't he know the kind of people Nasso grew up around? Wasn't one
of Nasso's brothers married to a Gambino?
"How could he not
know?" Nasso asked.
So Nasso sat down
recently to fill in what Hollywood calls the "back story" to a
relationship he uses a film analogy to explain.
"It was like 'Fatal
Attraction,' " Nasso said, "without the sex."
Where Did They Meet?
What attracted him
first was Hollywood. He noticed right away how "anyone could walk around
and say, 'I'm a producer.' " He sensed that to become a real player, "you
have to do your time." He saw Seagal as his way to do it.
Nasso has often said
he met Seagal in Japan, while on business for Universal Marine Medical
Supplies, his Brooklyn-based company that sells pharmaceuticals and health
gear to cruise lines and merchant ships. Nasso said he needed a translator
and looked up Seagal, who was fluent in the language: He'd been married to
a Japanese woman and had run a martial arts studio in Japan.
Nasso sometimes told
people he and Seagal were distant cousins. They're not, and the whole
Japan story is "puffery," Nasso now acknowledges.
He now says they met
in Los Angeles in early 1987.
Nasso had been bitten
by the show biz bug seven years earlier, when Italian director Sergio
Leone came to Brooklyn to film the mob saga "Once Upon a Time in America."
Actor Danny Aiello, who was in it, said that Nasso caught on as a
translator and gofer for the director. Nasso, whose parents emigrated from
Italy when he was 3, spoke Italian and English with equal ease.
After that, when Nasso
came to L.A. on business, he would look up actors from his old Brooklyn
neighborhood.
One was Jimmy Baio,
who had gotten his break in the spoof sitcom "Soap."
Baio said Nasso was
wide-eyed around anyone on TV and in the movies, and jumped at the chance
to attend sitcom tapings.
Baio said he brought
Nasso to a party where Seagal was a guest, and the two hit it off.
In later years, Nasso
led friends to believe he "created" the star-to-be, molding everything
from Seagal's squint-eyed stare to his pulled-back hairstyle.
In reality, Seagal had
long-standing Hollywood dreams of his own. His first wife, Miyako Fujitani,
recalls him plotting out script ideas after they met in 1974, when he was
23. "He developed a story about a foreigner becoming a dojo master, then
went on to the U.S.," she said.
By the time Nasso met
him, Seagal had a new Hollywood wife, actress Kelly LeBrock, and a
powerful booster, "superagent" Michael Ovitz. Ovitz's agency set up a
demonstration so Warner Bros. executives could see Seagal flip aside a
parade of attackers. The result was his screen debut, at 37, in "Above the
Law," about a former CIA operative who discovers nefarious plots in the
agency.
Before it hit theaters
in 1988, Seagal was profiled in a Times piece that cast a skeptical eye on
his vague stories of having a "CIA godfather" in Japan. But it also found
the gun-enthusiast actor a plausible rival to such reigning action kings
as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, and he was: "Above the
Law" brought in 2 1/2 times its $7.5-million budget.
Nasso describes
himself as basically an unpaid intern on Seagal's first movies, learning
what he could with one goal: "recognition."
One thing he was able
to do for Seagal, friends say, was set up a dinner with Leone during a
promotional trip to Italy. Nasso also invited the actor to spend time at
his waterfront house, "the most beautiful home in Staten Island," Baio
said. One room was filled with glass-enclosed models of the Titanic and
other ships.
"He did want to
impress Steven, and it worked," Baio said.
When Seagal decided to
form his own production company, it became Seagal Nasso Productions.
Nasso got his first
credit on Seagal's third movie, "Marked for Death," as an associate
producer. He moved up to executive producer on "Out for Justice," which
was filmed in 1990 on his old turf, Brooklyn.
Nasso was ready for
his recognition. A New York public relations man pitched him as "a Horatio
Alger character."
Three newspapers did
profiles tracing his rise from humble roots, one account saying he had two
doctorates, apparently not realizing that Nasso proudly counts a 1979
testimonial dinner at Fordham University as the equivalent of an honorary
degree and bases his other on a membership certificate from the
Connecticut Pharmaceutical Assn.
Another profile
mentioned that his early jobs included pouring concrete for an
"influential uncle," with no mention of how the elder Nasso's name had
come up at a 1980s mob trial. According to testimony, the uncle attended a
meeting with the then-head of the Gambino crime family to discuss the
contract to pour concrete for the Jacob Javits Convention Center.
Later, when Spy
magazine questioned such ties, Seagal filed a suit--eventually
dropped--claiming false and defamatory statements, one being that he was
"friends with individuals who have ties to the 'Mafia.' "
If Seagal wanted to
distance himself from such associations, other actors have flaunted their
hobnobbing, from early screen hoodlum George Raft, who grew up alongside
the real thing in New York, to James Caan, Sonny Corleone in "The
Godfather," who traced his friendships with mob luminaries to "research"
for his films.
"Am I rubbing their
elbows or are they rubbing mine?" asked Salvatore "Bill" Bonanno, the
69-year-old son of the late mob boss Joe Bonanno, one of many onetime wise
guys who have gotten acting work.
One of his gigs: a bit
part in Seagal and Nasso's "Out for Justice."
In 1992, after Seagal
scored his biggest hit with "Under Siege," he and Nasso planned a
mob-themed picture, "Man of Honor," about the son of a Mafia kingpin who
becomes bodyguard for a beautiful informant. But their backer, a Saudi
prince, stopped funding. In litigation with the prince, Seagal and Nasso
presented themselves as unsophisticated about the business.
"I'm an artist,"
Seagal said in a deposition, adding that when the prince asked to fund the
movie, "I said, 'Great. Talk to Jules.' "
View From the Studio
But studio veterans
who worked with Nasso viewed him more as a talent manager--and
benefactor--for Seagal than as a typical producer. Nasso later said he
loaned Seagal $3.2 million over the years.
"Jules was giving him
money out of his own pocket. He treated [Seagal] like he treated his own
son," said Aiello, who became friends with Nasso. If Nasso sensed that
Seagal was upset, he would fly to California "on a moment's notice,"
Aiello said.
Nasso said he believed
he was assisting "the next John Wayne."
But the magic carpet
began to turn downward about the time Seagal made his directing debut in
1994's "On Deadly Ground," in which he battled a corrupt oil company.
While the film opened atop the box office chart, critics chided Seagal for
becoming preachy, giving himself a 10-minute save-the-environment speech.
Later that year,
filming of "Under Siege 2" was marred by clashes between the star and
production personnel.
Nasso said Seagal
became depressed on that shoot and started gaining weight after he was
served with divorce papers by LeBrock, with whom he'd had three children.
In a lawsuit over the
eventual breakup of their partnership, Nasso complained that Seagal soon
came under "the active interference of a Buddhist spiritual advisor known
as Mukara [and] a clandestine and unorthodox Tibetan sect," some of whose
adherents camped in tents at Seagal's Los Angeles home.
Although a lawyer for
Seagal called the allegation "absurd," the actor's religious life drew
headlines in 1997, when a well- recognized Tibetan Buddhist leader named
him a "tulku," a reincarnation "of the [17th century] treasure revealer
Chungdrag Dorje."
Seagal heard the
jokes. "They think the lamas are taking bribes," he said during a Buddhist
retreat in Colorado. "Well, lamas don't have TVs and they don't know what
a movie star is ... and they have said there is no doubt that I am tulku."
That year, Warner
Bros. ended its exclusive production deal with Seagal and Nasso, with a
studio executive saying, "This guy has been on a downhill run."
According to Nasso's
subsequent suit, that provided the opening for him and Seagal to "develop,
produce and market" projects on their own. He said he bought scripts and
went overseas to sell $25.3 million in foreign rights to four films, "all
of which stated that he [Seagal] was to be the star."
But only one was made:
"Prince of Central Park," with Nasso's 13- year-old son playing an abused
child who flees to the park. Harvey Keitel ended up playing the gnome who
befriends him after Seagal "refused to appear," Nasso complained.
Seagal's lawyers say
there was no "enforceable contract" requiring him to act in those films.
New York attorney Martin L. Perschetz said there also were "solid business
reasons" for Seagal to move away from his partner. Nasso had proved to be
"unproductive and unprofessional ... like showing up late on the set" and
was "rude and boisterous toward other people," another Seagal spokesman
said.
Seagal may simply have
had better offers.
Although he was
nearing 50, getting on for an action hero, Warner Bros. gave him a
comeback shot in "Exit Wounds," with rapper DMX. Seagal was slimmed down,
and without his ponytail, for the filming in Toronto in August 2000.
Soon after, Daily
Variety ran a short item reporting that Nasso was "moving away from action
pics to softer fare" and forming his own company in New York. Seagal
closed their L.A. office.
Federal prosecutors
said that's about when the mob began conspiring to extort "a figure in the
motion picture industry."
Conversation Taped
After a team of FBI
agents arrived at Nasso's front door with handcuffs, at 6 a.m. on June 4,
attorneys for the producer offered their own explanation of the charges:
retaliation by Seagal.
In March, Nasso had
filed his suit seeking $60 million in damages for the actor's failure to
do the four films. "Do you think it's a coincidence that this happens
after that?" asked Nasso's civil lawyer, Robert J. Hantman.
But federal
prosecutors said it was coincidence--almost a fluke, in fact, that they
uncovered the plot against Seagal.
Assistant U.S. Atty.
Andrew Genser said a three-year investigation had targeted mob influence
at the waterfront all the way up to the latest leader of the Gambino crime
family, Peter Gotti, brother of the late "Dapper Don." The indictment
named 17 higher-ups, soldiers and associates of the family, including
members of the strong-arm crew run by Anthony "Sonny" Ciccone, a 67-year-
old mob captain who allegedly called the shots at the dockworkers' union.
FBI agents monitored
the phones of Ciccone's men and planted three bugs at tables at Brioso
Ristorante in Staten Island, one of which recorded a man identified as
Nasso speaking with the capo last year.
In a summary submitted
at a bail hearing in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, prosecutors said
Ciccone plotted to use the mob's muscle "to pressure the [film figure] to
either pay money or include J. Nasso in the individual's film projects."
He also told Nasso to "demand that the victim pay Ciccone $150,000 for
each film the individual made," the document said.
Genser, the
prosecutor, said in court that Ciccone was caught "admitting on tape that
he's been threatening to kill this individual."
Court papers make no
mention of Seagal paying extortion money, but say Ciccone "on more than
one occasion" met with the intended victim.
Seagal told
authorities that one such visit was in Toronto, during the making of "Exit
Wounds."
Attorneys for Nasso,
who is charged with conspiracy and attempted extortion, have not heard the
tapes. But they have already floated another defense: that the actor knew
these people on his own.
"Steven Seagal is a
mob nut," criminal lawyer Barry Levin said after Nasso's arrest.
The actor's lawyers
angrily accused Nasso's side of trying to smear the victim in the case.
But they acknowledge
that Seagal may have met organized crime figures while interviewing
"various people for authenticity" for the mob movie he and Nasso worked
on.
As to whether Seagal
knew of Nasso's alleged underworld connections, the Seagal camp allows
that Nasso at times "acted as if" he knew mob figures but "no one believed
him."
Such talk was
dismissed, a Seagal spokesman said, as "people trying to get attention in
Tinseltown."
Friends say they
understand how Nasso could wind up at a table with Sonny Ciccone's crew.
Aiello said it was
impossible not to meet "these people" in certain restaurants around New
York. "If they walk over, what would you say, 'Get away'? "
When Nasso was asked
how he wound up at that table, he said, "It's the neighborhood. I know
them 30 years."
His lawyers would not
let him talk about the restaurant conversation or those acquaintances. But
Nasso went on for hours recently about his Hollywood career. Even with
what's on the line-- "my freedom, my life"--he was eager to be seen as a
legitimate player in that world.
Nasso has compiled a
list of moments: a 1991 lunch at Le Cirque with Terry Semel, then chief
executive of Warner Bros.; accompanying Donald Trump to the 1993 opening
of the studio's store in Manhattan; going with Seagal to David Letterman's
show to promote "On Deadly Ground." And on it goes.
He produced
proclamations praising him for bringing filming to local streets, one
declaring "Julius Nasso Day" on Staten Island. He reached in his wallet to
show his Directors Guild card. "You don't get one of these," he says,
"hanging around a cafe."
He is not the only one
in his family embroiled in the criminal case. His brother Vincent, 43, is
accused of paying the mob $400,000 in kickbacks in return for a three-year
contract to administer a union prescription plan.
A second brother in
health care, a chiropractor, was not implicated. He's the one who in 1989
married a daughter of Johnny Gambino, an imprisoned mob captain.
Nasso says he and
Seagal were so close by then, "he escorted my mother up the aisle ....
Steven was the star of the wedding."
Seagal's camp says
that he is "still a big star," with two new films in the can and two more
on deck. He also produces soothing herbal "essential oils," which are sold
worldwide, on his Diamond Lotus Ranch near Mt. Shasta.
As for Nasso, he can't
help worrying whether his magic carpet ride is over--with his
pharmaceutical business. Since his arrest, "it's down 50%," he says.
But Hollywood?
"Something like this makes you bigger out there," he said, with amazement.
How dare the
prosecutor describe him in court as a "self-styled" producer?
As friend Aiello sees
it, the great irony was in what Nasso did after the split from Seagal.
He made movies.
One, called "One Eyed
King," is in the can. Nasso also was a producer of "Narc," shown at the
Sundance Film Festival in January. That film, starring Ray Liotta, goes
into nationwide release this fall. Tom Cruise signed on as an executive
producer.
Nasso wouldn't miss
the premiere if his life depended on it.
"Why wouldn't I go?"
he asked Thursday. "The film is a Julius R. Nasso Production."
***
Times researcher Tracy
Thomas in Los Angeles and staff writer Mark Magnier in Tokyo contributed
to this report.
[Illustration]
Caption: PHOTO: Steven Seagal, left, and Julius R. Nasso on location in
Colorado for 1995's "Under Siege 2." No longer working together, both have
films in the can.; PHOTOGRAPHER: JOEL DAVID
Credit: TIMES STAFF
WRITER
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