The Weekly Screed (#931)

The Unthinkables

By David Benjamin

“I’m gonna tell you something. Somebody messes with me, I'm gonna mess with with him.”

                                                   —Al “Scarface” Capone

“When people wrong you, go after those people, because it is a good feeling. And because other people will see you doing it. I always get even.

                                                   — Donny “Pink Eyes” Trump

MADISON, Wis. — One of the pastimes of the idle intelligentsia is dredging up cinematic parallels for the current White House melodrama. In the past, for example, I’ve found eerie similarities between the George W. Bush administration and the cast of outsized and lachrymose characters in Gone with the Wind. 

In his turn, Barack Obama — the cool, competent and articulate Negro assailed by the bigots and bluster of Donald Trump’s birther movement — evoked Sidney Poitier in In The Heat of the Night.

Trump’s bombastic evocations of impunity and vendetta — not to mention his baggy suits and a bloated face reminiscent of Marlon Brando as Don Corleone — have cast him, in many observers’ imaginary movies, as a mob boss. The preferred parallels are The Godfather and Joe Pesci’s pathological bully in Goodfellas. 

My choice for the nearest Trump facsimile is Robert DeNiro’s portrayal of Al Capone in The Untouchables. The scene in which Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) confronts the dapper Big Al on a hotel staircase— sending Capone into a volcanic rage that erupts into a pyroclastic flow of death threats — is a cinematic forerunner of the daily tweetstorms spewed into cyberspace by Donny “Pink Eyes.”

Indeed, when we compare the style of various mob bosses over the years, we can discern two rough templates. One is the quiet, stoic approach, embodied in Brando’s Don Corleone. He sits Buddha-like in his shadowy office, surrounded by underlings, served slavishly by a brilliant consigliere (Robert Duvall), never photographed and barely recognizable by anyone save his confederates and the FBI. Among the real-life mobsters who mastered this style were the reclusive Ray Patriarca and the forbidding Whitey Bulger. 

The contrasting style — flamboyant, foppish, voluble, populist — was favored by the likes of Bugsy Siegel and John Gotti, but invented by Capone, who is credited with a hundred witty quotes. My favorite, after the one about “a smile, a handshake and a gun,” is: “Capitalists believe they can take everything at the table as belonging to them. Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class.”

I suspect that if Donny Pink Eyes had a favorite Capone line, it would be “They can’t collect legal taxes from illegal money.”

The Big Al analogy comes even clearer if you picture Donny Pink Eyes in the banquet scene in The Untouchables. It unfolds just after one of Capone’s caporegimes (played by John Bracci), has lost a huge shipment of booze to Eliot Ness. In my revised version, Donny Pink Eyes roams behind the table, where all his underbosses, capos and soldiers are decked out in tuxedos. The fat Bracci has been replaced by a tall, rail-thin character whom we’ll call Jimmy Emails.

Donny Pink Eyes forms a circle with his thumb and index finger, and speaks…

“A man,” he intones, “becomes pre-ruminant, he’s expected to have enthurserisms. Entoominasms, enthuzumzum…zum. (Short, dramatic pause.) What are mine? What draws my amination? What is that which gives me joy?”

Here, “Bible Mike,” his groveling lieutenant, hands Donny Pink Eyes a Louisville Slugger. 

“Baseball!” declares Donny Pink Eyes. “A man stands alone at the plate. This is the time for what? For individual achievement. There he stands alone. And tremendous! I was — tremendous. Beautiful. Everyone said! The best player in Queens, Long Island, New York, anywhere. If they hadn’t begged me, on their knees, to come to Wharton, I coulda been…”

Donny’s consigliere, “Mickey Four Eyes,” whispers in the boss’ ear.

Donny Pink Eyes pauses, “Right. Where was I?”

“In the field,” whispers Mickey Four Eyes.

“Yeah! In the field, what?” Donny Pink Eyes continues. “He’s part of a team. My team! Teamwork… Looks, throws, catches, hustles, finds me women. Part of one big team.. Team!”

A murmur swells around the table, Donny Pink Eyes’s loyal suck-ups softly saying, “Team… team…” Jimmy Emails rolls his eyes.

Donny Pink Eyes rambles on: “Bats himself the live-long day, Baby Ruth, Yogi Esperanto, and so on. If my team don't field for me… what are they? Human scum! You follow me? It’s a sunny day, the stands are full of fans, thousands, millions of ’em, ten times as many as ever came out for all those Kenyans and little men who count my money and wear beanies… Invaders, rapists. Pussy! Covfefe!”

Another whisper from Mickey Four Eyes.

“Okay, right. Got it,” says Donny Pink Eyes. “So, what do all the players on my team have to say? I’m goin' out there for myself? No! I get nowhere unless the team wins. And whose team? My team. Who do they field for? Me. Catch for? Throw for? Me. Who do they defend? Me! My game. I alone, am baseball.”

In the revised Untouchables,the climax comes with Donny Pink Eyes standing behind his failed capo,Jimmy Emails. But, this time, Jimmy Emails feels the breeze from Donny Pink Eyes’ backswing and he shifts niftily to the left. The Louisville Slugger comes down not on the intended skull but on the table, with a resounding crash. “Oops. Missed me,” says Jimmy Emails. 

A second swing goes over Jimmy Emails’ head as he ducks. “Strike two,”he says, as he darts from his chair and out the door before Donny Pink Eyes can try again. Seething with rage, Donny Pink Eyes scans the table for a fresh target. He fixes on “Feebus” Priebus, who sees what’s coming, dives under the table and crawls out of the banquet hall. 

Frustrated, Donny Pink Eyes begins flailing wildly, attacking anyone within range. But one by one, “Rex Drills” “Mad Dog,” “Machine Gun Kelly,” “Jeff Cookies,” “Jewboy” Cohen, the whole “team” flee the room to save themselves from the orange wrath of Donny Pink Eyes. 

Standing still, gasping for breath, he spots his most abject flunky, “Apple Cheeks” Graham, sidling toward the door. He gives chase and almost catches him. “Et tu, Cheeks?” Donny Pink Eyes wails as yet another underling forsakes him.

Finally, he sees that Mickey Four Eyes has stood by him through it all. It was Mickey who, without meaning to, blurted to Eliot Ness where to find Donny’s warehouse full of Ukrainian moonshine. Brandishing the bludgeon, Donny Pink Eyes, his three-foot tie askew, his hair standing on end, his fly open and toilet paper stuck to his shoe, closes in on his last loyal soldier. 

Mickey Four Eyes, backed into a corner, has no way out. 

Here, the director has a choice. Donny Pink Eyes could spare Mickey. But how then could he show to the world what a terrific hitter he would’ve been, if only the Southern District of New York had not conspired to keep him out of the Major Leagues.

(Besides, The Untouchables is a Brian DePalma film. DePalma has never been known to pass up a bloodbath.)

“Take off your glasses, Mick.”