The ‘80s is a time where you can show more of them in the streets. Paul Castellano got killed in the middle of Manhattan at Sparks Steak House. There were a lot of killings going on in the ‘80s. Guys were more out in the open, and there was more stuff happening. “If you think of ‘The Sopranos’ - which was a show that I was on - it started in like 2000, and it showed how the mob was depleted and that they were meeting in malls and that they were kinda hiding out more as opposed to the ‘80s, the John Gotti era. “The reason I picked the ‘80s was because it was the heyday of the mafia,” he said. “Gravesend” also explores a different time period than the HBO saga. Literally, it was a dangerous place to be.” The actions and the clothes and the music and the neighborhood, the people on the streets, the kids getting ice cream, the people outside of Coney Island, all of that, with the diners and the testosterone level. There are people that are very similar to these characters. “All of those characters and the things that happened back then are very realistic to the way it really was. Subscribe HERE to the FREE Media Play News Daily Newsletter!ĭeMeo said he chose to wear multiple hats for the series because he wanted control over a story so close to him. “’Sopranos’ was New Jersey, and with all respect to Jersey, Brooklyn is Brooklyn.” You can’t change the genre, so you try to come up with different scenarios and circumstances,” he said. “There’s Westerns, there’s movies about law enforcement. But DeMeo stressed that “Gravesend” mostly just shares the same genre. In “Gravesend,” DeMeo plays Benny Zerletta, a young soldier in the Colezzo crime family circa 1986, who is conflicted, but entangled in the life - much like Tony Soprano in “The Sopranos.” (DeMeo starred as one of Paulie Walnuts’ crew, Jason Molinaro, in “The Sopranos.”) One similarity between the two series is that Soprano has a confidant in his therapist, and Zerletta talks over his problems with the statue of St. If you crossed certain people, there was a problem.” They were some really dangerous, uncertain times. “The younger guys coming up wanted to prove something. “I can name 20 mobsters off the top of my head, very well-known mafia figures, who all came from this area, and they were all around and there was a lot of testosterone around,” he said. Having acted in such productions as A Bronx Tale, “The Sopranos” and Gotti, DeMeo is no stranger to mafia stories, and Brooklyn in the 1980s was teaming with them. “The name was pretty cool, too, because in the life of the mafia, the grave is usually the end of the road.” “Gravesend is a section in Brooklyn where I grew up where a lot of these mobsters come from,” he said. Though he toyed with the title “The Neighborhood,” the writer, director, star and executive producer settled on the name of his hometown. He wanted to recall his neighborhood in the 1980s - the music, the cars, the people and the mob. William DeMeo went back to his roots for “Gravesend,” a four-episode series streaming now on Amazon Prime and distributed by Virgil Films. William DeMeo in "Gravesend" Executive Producer Revisits Brooklyn in the ’80s in Mob Series ‘Gravesend’ Streaming on Amazon
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