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"Rat Pack" Attack
Story has it Tina Sinatra, Frank's brassy kid, sent the head (plastic or fiberglass, depending on the account, but definitely not real) to Liotta during the shoot of The Rat Pack, the HBO movie about Ol' Blue Eyes and his all-star Sands Hotel cronies, debuting on the pay cable channel Saturday night.
Now, the horse head was a gag, see?
"It was in fun," Tina Sinatra told Daily Variety.
One problem: Liotta "didn't get it."
Excuse the Goodfellas star for being jumpy about Godfather gags. (And, for the record, HBO says he did get the joke.) But taking on the Frank Sinatra legacy, not to mention the Frank Sinatra clan, isn't something entered into lightly.
When the telepic, costarring Joe Mantegna as Dean Martin, Don Cheadle as Sammy Davis Jr. and Angus Macfadyen as Peter Lawford, went into production earlier this year, the Sinatras were--how should we say?--not pleased. (And this was even before their patriarch's death.)
The family, led by Tina, prevented HBO from dipping into the vaults and using real Sinatra tracks and original arrangements in the movie. (Hence, the sound stylings of one Michael Dees coming out of Liotta's mouth instead of Francis Albert.)
Nancy Sinatra went on the offensive via her Website.
"According to the script, [the movie] is obviously based on cartoonish, ill-conceived caricatures that would be out of place even in a Simpsons episode," she wrote in an editorial that also slammed Martin Scorsese's once-planned Dean Martin big-screen biopic.
As it turned out, the critics have not entirely disagreed. The New York Times found The Rat Pack, which focuses on the gang's dealings with that Holy Trinity of contemporary tabloid culture--JFK, Marilyn Monroe and the Mob, "a tinny echo of the era and its stars." It also cited the soundtrack's underwhelming music and "uninspired imitators."
Daily Variety lit into Liotta saying he had "none of the Chairman of the Board's swagger, confidence or, most significant, charisma."
For that notice, Tina Sinatra sent the Hollywood trade paper a note: "There is a God!"
To be sure, the filmmakers didn't give themselves an easy task: Duplicate the elusive, martini-cool ways of Sinatra, Martin, Davis, et. al? Order up look- and sound-alikes for everyone from Joe DiMaggio to Ava Gardner to Bobby Kennedy?
At least some stuff was easier to match--like, Frank and Dino's clothes, made from the original patterns.
Perhaps anticipating the inevitable knocks, director Rob Cohen let it be known that he wanted to recapture, not imitate, the spirit of Rat Pack.
To that end, Tina Sinatra's horse head just might have provided the project's quintessential moment.
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