What did you say about my SISTER? What did YOU say about my sister? WHAT did you say about my sister?
Bear with me.
I’m practicing my line for the movie, getting ready for my audition.
My people are talking to his people.
Movie star Harvey Keitel won’t know what hit him.
When he comes to Scranton in March to film his new movie, “Matter Of Honor,” I’ll be standing on the corner of East Gibson and North Irving, flipping a coin with a toothpick in my mouth.
I’ll wear my wide pinstriped suit - maybe my black chooch hat with the brim flipped up.
I could play the role of a nightclub bouncer, a role in which I have real experience, or maybe an Irish gangster, an enforcer, a real hooligan.
Whatever role I play, I’m expecting an Oscar.
I wanna be a contender.
I have to admit, though, that I got a bad taste in my mouth about the moving picture business. I got a bone in my throat about tough guy movie star Paul Sorvino not having finished the movie he filmed in Scranton.
We coughed up 500,000 clams in public funds for his expenses and are still waiting for the return on our investment.
The movie’s called “The Trouble With Cali.”
Sorvino better understand that if that film doesn’t hit theaters soon he’s gonna have some trouble with Corbett.
What’s he think we are, chumps that fell off the coal truck?
I don’t think so.
If taxpayers don’t get their money soon, I’m coming looking for Paulie.
First words out of my mouth when I see him?
What did you say about my sister?
I made up the line special for Keitel’s movie – supposedly an “Italian crime drama” in which a Roman Catholic monsignor from Scranton gets whacked.
Keitel will understand my talent as well as anybody when I unleash my acting passion and deliver the words, spitting them like bad seeds from sour grapes at a mob-controlled vineyard in Palermo.
I got some theater experience, too. I used to hang out with the late great Jason Miller and even persuaded him to use Stegmaier beer cans rather than Schlitz when he presented “That Championship Season” in a tent on Montage Mountain that got hit by lightening on opening night. I starred in a major feature role during my senior year in high school when I played one of the guys who raised the American flag on Mt. Surabachi. And I was the singing star of “Cowboy on the Moon” when I was in the first grade and still have the costume that my mother sewed and kept and I didn’t have the heart to throw away when she died in 1988.
Hey, Keitel, what more do you want?
What was that?
What did you say about my sister?
Sorvino recently sounded like a wiseguy when he said that he’ll finish his movie when he finishes it.
I mean our movie.
I expect better from Keitel. He knows the mean streets better than Paulie anyway.
And I know Scranton.
Paige Balitski of the Greater Scranton Film Office said yesterday on “Corbett” that we should maybe “do lunch” and talk about it.
Yeah, yeah, then we’ll take a meeting.
I know the mean streets in my hometown better than all them New York goodfellas put together. And I can offer them protection - in exchange for a piece of the action, of course.
Sue Henry
