As far back as audiences can remember, Robert De Niro has brought new life to the gangster genre.
Thirty-five years after playing Jimmy Conway, De Niro is reuniting with “Goodfellas” co-writer Nicholas Pileggi and producer Irwin Winkler for “The Alto Knights” to play a “Jekyll and Jekyll” pairing of mafiosos.
The Barry Levinson-helmed film, hitting theaters this weekend, stars De Niro in dual roles as childhood pals-turned-mobsters Frank Costello and Vito Genovese. Their somewhat symbiotic friendship turns sour when Genovese orders a hit on the former, turning the streets of New York into a duplicitous battleground for survival.
“We all sort of felt that Frank would be the character that I would play, and so who would play the other part?” De Niro, 81, tells the Daily News.
It was 93-year-old Winkler who suggested the actor try his hand at both roles. Winkler and De Niro’s collaborations include “Raging Bull,” “The Irishman” and 1971’s “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight,” co-written by former News columnist Jimmy Breslin.
After mulling over the “interesting” proposal for a few days, De Niro opted in.
“It also helps with the justification for doing another gangster film, even though I’m working with everybody who I’ve known for decades, worked with many times, and have a great relationship with, and it’d be like … home week. And I’d probably do it anyway, even if we did get somebody else for Vito,” said De Niro, who won his first Oscar 50 years ago for playing another Vito — Corleone — in “The Godfather Part II.”
Another justification for jumping back into gangster territory? The Costello-Genovese civil war culminates in the 1957 Mafia summit known as the Apalachin meeting.
“It just exposed this world, this underworld that existed for so many years, from Prohibition on, with all the corrupt politicians and all the corrupt police departments all over the country. … The only reason it was able to prosper [was] because the FBI pretended, [J. Edgar] Hoover pretended it didn’t exist,” 92-year-old “Wiseguys” author Pileggi told The News alongside Winkler. “This meeting proved that it did, and everything changed.”
“The first thing De Niro said to me when he read the script was — after ‘Hello’ — he said, you know, this story’s about the end of the mafia,” said Winkler, who joked his favorite part of the film was the sighting of multiple Daily News headlines. “They never really recovered from it.”
“That’s why I wanted the story. And it was really Frank’s story, until you realize, no, no, it’s the two of their stories,” explained Pileggi. “They went into virgin past. It’s almost as thought they had set it up for a movie.”
As De Niro put it, Vito’s “explosive, impulsive” demeanor contrasts with the “more modulated kind of CEO type” that is Costello.
“He’s low-key,” said De Niro. “Wants to just get things done. He doesn’t want to have a… no drama, no hassle.”
But, Winkler insists, their dynamic proves less Jekyll and Hyde than they’re “both Jekylls.”
The Corleones might suggest keeping friends close and enemies closer — a rule of thumb that proved prudent for Costello as well.
But when it comes to the screen, a close friendship like that of De Niro, Winkler and Pileggi might just lay the foundation for some of the gangster genre’s most memorable works.
“The Alto Knights” hits theaters nationwide on Friday.