I Heard You Paint Houses

Can we all agree that Hollywood is truly screwed-up when a legendary film director like Martin Scorsese can’t get a theatrical distribution deal? Nowadays, a big-budget drama doesn’t stand a chance, and multiplexes are awash in virtually identical superhero franchises, cross-overs, origins stories, and reboots. They make billions, but it’s come at a cost to thought and intelligence.
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Scorsese found a home for his $100-million Jimmy Hoffa story, The Irishman, at the place that reinvented what was known as “television” – Netflix. His gangster epic, The Irishman, based on the Charles Brandt book, I Heard You Paint Houses, tells the story of Jimmy Hoff’s mysterious disappearance. Robert DeNiro plays Frank Sheeran, the man who claims to have murdered the union boss (played by Al Pacino). Oscar winner and fellow Scorsese alum Joe Pesci came out of retirement to play the role of Russell Bufalino.

"I heard you paint houses" were the first words Jimmy Hoffa spoke to Frank "the Irishman" Sheeran. For those who didn’t grow up mob adjacent, to “paint a house” is to kill a man. The paint is the blood that spatters on the walls and floors. Over nearly five years of recorded interviews, Sheeran confessed to he handled more than 25 hits for the mob, and for his friend Hoffa. 

Below, author Charles Brandt (right) talks yo Frank Sheeran.

Sheeran told Brandt that he learned to kill in the U.S. Army, where he saw 411 days of active combat duty in Italy during World War II. After returning home he became a hustler and hit man, working for crime boss Russell Bufalino. When Bufalino ordered Sheeran to kill Hoffa, he did the deed, knowing that if he had refused he would have been killed himself.
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Take a look at the real people. 

Now check out their on-screen doppelgangers.

The Irishman start streaming around the world in 2018. And before Pacino becomes the definitive Jimmy Hoffa, let's take a moment to recall Jack Nicholson in 1992's Hoffa.