James "Whitey" Bulger, the notorious Boston gangster who was found dead Tuesday in his prison cell, reluctantly had his pop-culture breakthrough in 2015's "Black Mass," portrayed by one of the biggest stars in the world, Johnny Depp. Bulger, who eluded authorities for 16 years before being captured and convicted of participating in 11 murders in 2013, wasn't a fan of the performance. Depp donned heavy prosthetics, stained his teeth yellow and wore blue contact lenses to capture Bulger's stare in the gritty role. The actor said his aim was to bring out Bulger's human side. “It would have been easy to dive into this thing as if it were just simply a gangster film,” Depp said when "Black Mass" was unveiled at Toronto International Film Festival. Director Scott Cooper made it "a story about people," Depp added. "Present the people, warts and all, and then allow their personality, their way of life, to reveal themselves.” High-profile figures, especially those spending the rest of their life in prison, will often meet with a high-profile star to discuss aspects of their lives. Not Bulger, who was 86 and in a Florida prison when "Black Mass" hit theaters nationwide. He refused to meet or correspond with Depp during filming. He let his defense attorney, Hank Brennan, do the talking. Brennan compared Depp's portrayal to the star's fantasy role in "Alice in Wonderland." “Johnny Depp might as well have been playing the Mad Hatter all over again as far as James Bulger is concerned,” Brennan told People. “Hollywood greed is behind the rush to portray my client, and the movie missed the real scourge created in my client’s case, the real menace to Boston during that time and in other mob cases around the country – the federal government’s complicity in each and every one of those murders with the top echelon informant program.” More:James 'Whitey' Bulger, notorious Boston gangster, found dead in prison Director Cooper and Depp both tried to delve into Bulger's life to understand the mob-boss who used his leverage as an FBI informant to brutally take out his rivals — as depicted in "Black Mass." “Both Johnny Depp and I reached out to Whitey and he explicitly denied us,” Cooper told Deadline.com. “He denied he was ever an FBI informant and that’s where the film got gray. He was certainly an informant but the question was, how much was he giving them?" Family members of Bulger's victims attended the Boston world premiere and told the director he had captured the complicated man. “They thought it was an extremely accurate portrayal, as hard as it was to see the events take place and reopen wounds that were probably will never heal,” Cooper said. Depp received critical plaudits for the role and was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for best actor but missed out on an Oscar nomination. Jack Nicholson's crime boss Frank Costello was based on Bulger in Martin Scorsese's 2006 drama "The Departed," which won four Oscars, including best picture.<doc-sep>James “Whitey” Bulger is dead, but the notorious crime boss will live on in the popular imagination and on the screen. Bulger, 89, was found dead in a West Virginia prison today, according to various reports. He was serving two life sentences for 11 murders, and had just been transferred from a facility in Florida to the high-security prison in West Virginia this past week. The New York Times reports that he was beaten to death by two mob-affiliated inmates, citing two unnamed prison officials. It’s an ignominious end for the Irish-American gangster, whose wild, stranger-than-fiction life before and after he went on the lam in 1994 and became one of America’s most wanted criminals has been written about extensively (including in a biography by two Boston Globe reporters), and depicted on screen several times. While many American “mob boss” characters today are based loosely on Bulger—or are composites of famous American mobsters, including Bulger—two major Hollywood productions and a documentary feature Bulger prominently: Black Mass The most recent—and direct—adaptation of Bulger’s story is Black Mass, the 2015 biopic starring Johnny Depp in a role that earned the actor a Screen Actors Guild award nomination. Reviewers said the role was one of the best in many years for Depp, who donned a fake receding hairline, bad teeth, and bright blue contacts to become the infamous mobster. The film picks up in 1975, when Bulger was already the head of the powerful Winter Hill Gang crime organization in and around Boston. Joel Edgerton plays John Connolly, an FBI agent who grew up with Bulger and eventually became his handler as an informant. Connolly was effectively handled instead by Bulger, becoming his eyes and ears inside the bureau and helping the mob boss undermine rival gangs, as well as covering up murders he was involved in or ordered. The real-life Connolly is currently serving out the remainder of a 40-year sentence issued in 2008, after he was convicted of second degree murder. Depp reportedly watched FBI surveillance footage of Bulger and spoke to his former attorney to nail the man’s mannerisms. (The film itself received middling reviews from critics, but Depp’s performance was praised.) Black Mass can be viewed on Amazon, YouTube, or iTunes. The Departed Martin Scorsese’s 2006 crime film, which won the Oscar for best picture the following year, was loosely based on Bulger and his Winter Hill Gang. The film legend Jack Nicholson plays Frank Costello, the leader of a crime syndicate in Boston, while Matt Damon plays Colin Sullivan—Costello’s mole inside the Massachusetts State Police, who’s clearly inspired by Connolly and his relationship to Bulger. The Departed was originally an adaptation of the 2002 Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs, but Scorsese said Nicholson wanted an extra element to make the story more immediate. That’s when screenwriter William Monahan came up with the idea to base Nicholson’s and Damon’s characters on Bulger and Connolly, respectively. Leonardo DiCaprio plays a young state trooper who goes undercover in Costello’s organization as he races to discover Costello’s mole before Costello realizes he’s a cop. When the film was released, Bulger was still on the run. He was reportedly seen watching The Departed in a movie theater in San Diego that year, a tipster told the Boston Globe. The Departed can be viewed on Amazon, YouTube, or iTunes. Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger Three years after Bulger was captured in 2011, and a few months following his sentencing of two consecutive life terms in prison, CNN Films co-produced this documentary about the mobster’s life and various trials. It premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and received solid reviews from critics, though they noted that Bulger’s life of crime was perhaps too sprawling for any one documentary to cover completely. Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger can be viewed on Hulu and Amazon. Other roles inspired by Bulger A number of major television characters are based in part on Bulger. These include: “Sully Sullivan” in the Showtime crime drama Ray Donovan (played by James Woods) “Paddy Doyle” in TNT series Rizzoli & Isles (played by John Doman) “Raymond ‘Red’ Reddington” in NBC crime series The Blacklist (played by James Spader) The film that never was Fellow Bostonians Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were reportedly working on a film with Warner Bros, scripted by Terence Winter (the creator and writer of Boardwalk Empire), but it did not move forward after Black Mass was released in 2015. “We had a very different take on it,” Damon told the Hollywood Reporter in 2015. He said that he and Affleck had received a letter from a South Boston author that made them rethink the project. “It was a really moving letter that basically said: ‘Don’t glorify this man any more. Please stop.’ And this is to take nothing away from Black Mass. I hear the movie’s great. But Ben and I agreed with the guy who’d written us. And so we came up with this idea of doing it more like an anti-gangster movie. Make it look like what it was: something grotesque.”<doc-sep>UPDATED with details of death: James “Whitey” Bulger, the one-time leader of the South Boston mob who became a controversial FBI informant and was played by Johnny Depp in Scott Cooper’s 2015 film Black Mass, was beaten to death this morning by fellow inmates in a high-security West Virginia federal prison. He was 89. Bulger had just been moved on Monday to the U.S. Penitentiary Hazelton in Bruceton Mills, where he was found at 8:20 a.m. ET. The FBI is investigating his death, according to a statement released by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (read it here). It added that no other inmates or staffers was injured. Bulger ran the Irish mob for decades and was on the run from authorities for 16 years — and on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list for a dozen of those — before being arrested in Santa Monica in 2011. At his ensuing trial, he was convicted of 11 murders in three states and sentence to life in prison Depp as Bulger in Black Mass He inspired a number of characters in Hollywood films and TV shows. Along with the Black Mass film, Jack Nicholson’s Frank Costello role in Martin Scorsese’s Best Picture Oscar winner The Departed was based on Bulger, as was James Woods’ Sully Sullivan in Ray Donovan. Another Showtime drama, Brotherhood, about a state politician whose brother was a crime boss, was inspired by Bulger and his brother Billy. Other shows with characters tied to Bulger include NBC’s The Blacklist and TNT’s Rizzoli & Isles.<doc-sep>Black Mass type Movie genre Biography Crime James “Whitey” Bulger, the notorious Boston gangster, has been found dead in a West Virginia penitentiary, according to the Associated Press. Bulger was found unresponsive Tuesday morning at the facility, where he had just been transferred, but authorities have not yet confirmed a cause of death. He was 89. After serving as an informant for the FBI, Bulger was a fugitive for 16 years, labeled one of America’s most wanted men, before being arrested in Santa Monica in 2011. He was sentenced in 2013 to two consecutive life sentences plus five years for a multitude of crimes that included 11 murders. Bulger’s infamy inspired several Hollywood films, TV shows, and characters across pop culture. Most recently, Johnny Depp portrayed Bulger in Scott Cooper’s 2015 drama Black Mass, which was based on a 2000 true crime book by Boston Globe reporters Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neil. Other characters, including Jack Nicolson’s Frank Costello in Martin Scorsese’s 2007 Best Picture winner The Departed and James Woods’ Sully Sullivan in Ray Donovan, emulated Bulger’s penchant for intimidation and violence. Multiple crime drama series have also used Bulger as a blueprint for their main characters. Most notably, NBC’s The Blacklist partly based its lead, Red Reddington (James Spader), on the mobster’s history, specifically his experience as a criminal-turned-informant. The Showtime series Brotherhood also has a Bulger-inspired character in its primary cast: Jason Isaacs plays Michael Caffee, a brutal offender whose brother Tommy (Jason Clarke) is a state politician. The opposing siblings are based on Bulger and his younger brother Billy, 84, a lawyer and longtime leader of the Massachusetts Democratic party. Despite his murderous reputation, Bulger-like characters made it into comedic projects as well. In 2016, Bulger’s likeness made a cameo on an episode of The Simpsons in which Homer and Bart visit Boston and are introduced to its culture by the mob boss himself.<doc-sep>
Boston gangster James ‘Whitey’ Bulger, who was found dead in his prison cell on Tuesday, was not a fan of Johnny Depp’s portrayal of him in 2015’s drama, Black Mass. Bulger, who was convicted in 2013 for his part in the murders of 11 people, also inspired Jack Nicholson’s character in Martin Scorsese’s 2006 Oscar-winner, The Departed. Depp’s performance as Bulger was seen as a comeback for the actor, who’d spent many years up to that point playing larger-than-life characters in big-budget fantasy films. He wore heavy prosthetics, stained his teeth and altered his voice for his performance, for which he received multiple accolades, including nominations at the Critics’ Choice and SAG awards. “It would have been easy to dive into this thing as if it were just simply a gangster film,” Depp said at Toronto International Film Festival screening of Black Mass. But director Scott Cooper made it “a story about people,” Depp added. “Present the people, warts and all, and then allow their personality, their way of life, to reveal themselves.” Bulger did not meet with Depp to consult about the role. His lawyer, Hank Brennan, compared Depp’s performance to his work in Alice in Wonderland. “Johnny Depp might as well have been playing the Mad Hatter all over again as far as James Bulger is concerned,” Brennan told People. “Hollywood greed is behind the rush to portray my client, and the movie missed the real scourge created in my client’s case, the real menace to Boston during that time and in other mob cases around the country – the federal government’s complicity in each and every one of those murders with the top echelon informant program.” Bulger was found unresponsive in his cell by guards at a West Virginia prison. He was captured in California in 2011 after a 16 year manhunt. He was killed on the same day that he arrived from a Florida prison. The Boston Globe reports that an inmate with mafia ties is being investigated for the crime. Bulger was severely beaten. He was 89. Follow @htshowbiz for more ott:10