Loyalty and Betrayal: The Story of the American Mob

A

DOCUMENTARY

MINI-SERIES

Emmy Award winning

episode 1

Directed, edited, written

by Gary Weimberg

Capone, Bugsy, Lansky, Luciano – a frisky, modern look at the classic turn-of-the-century American Mob
“Revealed with panache…the snappiest of the genre.” NYTimes
a 4 hour Fox mini-series about organized crime in America, in all it’s raw bloody drama

New York TImes

Entertainment Weekly

Grade: A

“Unlike Hollywood which has added a patina of glamour to the Mob — Loyalty and Betrayal: The Story of the American Mob, does nothing to mask the murderers and their grisly violence. There are blood and guts, photos of the players, and elegant accompanying narration.

gary recalls:

GARY: I'd worked with the Executive Producer who put the deal together with Fox, and we knew each other pretty well so when called me and offered me the job, I asked, "What again? Another re-telling of old Mob stories?"

'Yes." he said. "Thats it exactly. That's what Fox does. When a story or a show does well, they do it again, the same thing."

"Okay, but why hire me? I hate the Mob. I hate crime and criminals and murder. I work on social justice films. Gangster docs are boring."

"Well then, maybe you'll make a better one."

That was a good answer.

I took the job and set off to do exactly that. Plus, it was my first network directing/editing job offer, so pretty hard to turn down. In the end, it worked out. The show did well on Fox. I won my second national Emmy. Win-win all round, you'd think, except ...

The funny thing? By the time I won my Emmy, no one at Fox cared. All the Fox execs who had green-lighted the program were gone. There was no one left there to tell. A Puerto Rican receptionist took my call. She was delighted and gave me her warmest congratulations - in her hysterically high-cute voice that sounded like a young Rosie Perez.

Other than her, my big Emmy win was accompanied by a deafening silence from the network.

As Orson Welles once said, “Well, that’s Hollywood.”

At least the New York Times liked it. "Among the snappiest of the genre..."

But no rush of phone calls. No agents. No job offers. No truckloads of money.

Just the lovely emmy statuette, the good wishes of a Puerto Rican receptionist, and an ever stronger desire to make my own films, choosing my own subjects.