Sean Penn, El Chapo and Hollywood’s mutual fascination with Big Crime -By Ann Hornaday

Movie star Sean Penn detailed his secret October meeting with Mexican drug lord "El Chapo" in a Rolling Stone article published Jan. 9. Here's what you need to know about it. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)

 

It may be tempting to chalk up Sean Penn’s recent encounter with Mexican drug lord and prison escapee Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán to the actor’s long-standing penchant for inserting himself into the heart of geopolitical intrigue. But the episode continues a well-established tradition of symbiotic codependence and mutual regard between Hollywood and organized crime.

Like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (“He gives her class, and she gives him sex”), organized crime and Hollywood have given each other what they needed most, whether in the form of capital, muscle and the alluring aroma of danger on the one hand, or legitimacy, proximity to celebrity and a glamorous public image on the other.
From the days when Charles “Lucky” Luciano and Al Capone battled over Hollywood turf, to Chicago mob associate, lawyer and legendary fixer Sidney Korshak pulling strings so that MGM would let Al Pacino play Michael Corleone in “The Godfather,” show business and the mob have fit together like a brass-knuckled hand in a silk opera glove. The relationship goes back at least to the 1920s, when the Chicago “outfit” — which controlled the labor unions — arrived in Los Angeles to help studio executives ride herd on their crews. As Gus Russo, who wrote about Korshak in his book “Supermob,” told me, Hollywood “was a mob town” for decades, possibly into the 1980s.

“Many of the movies you know and love were brokered by the Chicago outfit, with their extensive labor pull,” Russo said. A particularly toothsome bit of legend and lore has it that Jill St. John got her role as a Bond girl in “Diamonds Are Forever” thanks to her friendship with the intimidatingly well-connected Korshak — who, let the record reflect, was never indicted or convicted for any crime.

Sean Penn and then-fugitive Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán on Oct 2. After a long dinner and conversation, Guzmán granted Penn’s request for a formal interview, which was published in Rolling Stone. (Courtesy of Rolling Stone)

“Let’s just say that a nod from Korshak, and the Teamsters change management,” the producer Robert Evans wrote in his book “The Kid Stays in the Picture.” “A nod from Korshak, and Santa Anita closes. A nod from Korshak, and Vegas shuts down. A nod from Korshak, and the Dodgers can suddenly play night baseball.”
Perhaps the most valuable things organized crime and Hollywood have given each other, of course, are stories. From Jesse James and Capone — whose underlings reportedly consulted with “Scarface” screenwriter Ben Hecht — to “Bonnie and Clyde” and “Goodfellas,” the exploits of criminals and outlaws have been Hollywood’s most reliable fodder, with the miscreants themselves being the movies’ most ardent audience. As “Godfather” author Mario Puzo told Vanity Fair’s Nick Tosches in 1997, “The word ‘godfather’ had never been used in a Mafia sense.” But after the book and the movie were released, he said, “they even started calling themselves godfathers. It’s a fairy tale.”
In the case of Penn and Guzmán, that fairy tale has taken a pointedly surreal turn, the result not just of Hollywood’s congenital fascination with tough guys, but also a media culture in which heroes and villains are now empowered to be their own Brothers Grimm. Whereas 1931’s “The Public Enemy” was adapted from an (unpublished) novel by two former colleagues of Capone’s, and both “Goodfellas” and the book that inspired it were written by journalist Nicholas Pileggi, such formalities are laughably obsolete in the era of Twitter, citizen journalism and PR-savvy self-branding.

Culled from Washington post