Martin Scorsese’s epic mob drama film The Irishman manages to stay in the news for various different reasons. This time, it is for the wrong ones as the stepson of the real life Chuckie O’Brien (the foster son of Jimmy Hoffa), Jack Goldsmith, has publicly called the film “high fiction”, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter
In an editorial published in The New York Times, Goldsmith said that O’Brien was the “most intimate associate of Jimmy Hoffa.” The author of the book In Hoffa’s Shadow: A Stepfather, a Disappearance in Detroit, and My Search for the Truth, Goldsmith called the film “by far the greatest depiction of the false charge against my stepfather.”
The Irishman is based on the book I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt and follows the story of Teamsters official Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) and his relationship with Hoffa (Al Pacino). It also shows his involvement in Hoffa’s 1975 disappearance and supposed confession to his murder.
In the film, Goldsmith is portrayed by Jesse Plemons who drives Hoffa and Sheeran in a house where Sheeran shoots and kills Hoffa.
Goldsmith said: “I’d like to get hold of that Scorsese and choke him like a chicken. And then after I get through with him, I’d grab that other pipsqueak, the guy who played the Irishman.” He also added, “Chuckie is too frail for this to be a threat, and indeed he clearly did not mean it as a threat. It is an end-of-life cri de coeur by a man whose being has been enveloped, and destroyed, by demeaning public untruths that he lacked power to rectify.”
The Irishman started streaming on Netflix from 27 November and has met with critical acclaim, receiving several awards and nominations.