Netflix
John Gotti’s designer suits, perfectly coiffed hair, and in-your-face cockiness made him a media darling, as did his reputation—due to three separate courtroom acquittals—as “The Teflon Don.” The Gambino crime family boss was in fact such a 1980s fixture on the news and in the New York City tabloids that he became a national celebrity, complete with Time magazine plastering an Andy Warhol-created portrait of him on its cover, and show business luminaries flocking to his side. According to Netflix’s Get Gotti, those included David Bowie, Anthony Quinn, Mickey Rourke, John Amos (“I just like the way he carries himself”), and Brooke Shields, who one Gotti associate claims—in the docuseries’ most stunning anecdote—gave the godfather her number.
Whether or not this is true, Sebastian Smith’s three-part Get Gotti (Oct. 24) paints its subject as a new type of mob boss who viewed himself as akin to a Hollywood A-lister. Signing autographs for fans, soaking up reporters’ consideration, and flaunting his wealth and power whenever possible, he went out of his way to become a public figure. According to Netflix’s latest, that was both the key to his initial success as leader of the Gambino clan and the reason for his downfall, as he attracted such attention, and put such a giant bullseye on his back, that he united America’s disparate law enforcement agencies while bringing la Cosa Nostra out of the shadows and into the light, where it couldn’t hope to survive.
Get Gotti begins with Gotti, a lifelong member (and eventual “made man”) of the Gambino family, ascending to the throne by ordering the in-broad-daylight Dec. 16, 1985, murder of boss Paul Castellano. From the get-go, it was no secret that Gotti was behind the hit, but knowing things and proving them turned out to be two very different things for the FBI and the Organized Crime Task Force (OCTF). In the wake of this brash assassination, both the feds and the OCTF set their sights on Gotti, albeit separately. Courtesy of interviews with members of both squads, Smith’s docuseries lays out the two organizations’ heated competition to nab the mafioso, which led to a lack of cooperation that, in some cases, allowed their target to walk free.