Sonny Grosso interview

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Continental Profiles (Continental Airlines inflight magazine; November 1989). By Frank Lovece. On the producer ("Cops") and former real-life "The French Connection" detective

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P R

o

F

L E

Police Story
Tbe real-ltfe Frencb

Grosso (contimtedfrom page 3l)

other people's money" in production budgets. "That's not bad," he aptly notes, "for a company based in New
York City instead of L.A." It's not bad, period, and the privately held conrpanv's undisclosed producing fee should be mostly profit since GrossoJacobson is so lean: about 20 employees total at its Manhattan headquarters and its Toronto and Los Angeles satellites. They own no studio, ernploy free-lance

Connection cop moues bebind tbe ca,mer66.

IYo tuondq Grosso bolds a

I

parry euely ueek
it's Tuesday, it must

be Puglia's. And it is, so it is. Ex-cop Sonny Grosso

has commandeered his usual two long communal

be's in lVeut York.
production cl'ews, and shoot relatively
inexpensively. And indeed, there's always something or another shooting. Grosso-Jacobson's late-night CBS series NightFleot has just finished its fifth seAson and now heads for lucrative syndicated reruns. The lighthearted detective series Diamonds

tables at this raucous pasta house in New York
City's Little ltaly, where the food is less important

than group sing-alongs and old-timey Italians working accordions as out of tune as their voices. It's the one place where nothing starts until the fat
lady sings. All the regulars here know Sonny. All the regulars euerywhere know Sonny. That's what happens when you spend some 20 years as a New York City police detective-1(You got keys," says Grosso metaphorically, "to every door in the city." Add the facts that Mrs. Grosso's son Salvatore was one of the two cops who broke the infamous "French Connection" drug ring, and had both a best-selling book and an Oscar-winning movie made about him, and, picks up the check, and you're guaranteed a crowd.

and the action-adventure Strike Force both run on cable's USA Network in the U.S. and as prime-time shows in Canada. Thirteen episodes of a new action
series, Truck One, are slated as an NBC back-up. The upcorning TV-m ovie F amily Man, starring Robert Mitchum, is the pilot for a new NBC sitcom . CopTalk: Behind the Shield, a sort of police officer's Donahue that Grosso hosts, plays in syndication nationwide. And there's always a TV-movie ol two. No wonder erosro holds a party every week he's in New York. "The choices after y<lu retire as a c,)p," he announces in the Manhattan-native version of a Bronx accent, "are you open llp a gin mill or you beconre a bank guard. So this," he understates, oowas a welcome opportu-

But comfortably mixed in with Grosso's friends are actors, actresses, directors, and screenwrit-

ers-because good old Sonny is half of Crosso-Jacobson Entertainmeqt Corp., perhaps the biggest little production company in TV and film. "This season," says partner Larry Jacobson, "we're laying out fi62.5 million of (contirutndonpage64)

Bu Frank Louece

nity."
CONTINENRT PROFILES NOV 1989

CONTINENTAL PROT.U,ES

NO\i I9tt9

PROF
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Not that it's changed him much. At his modest Manhattan office, Grosso is still a polyester prince who punctuates every other sentence with an unconscious "Y'know what I mean?" At 54 and
never nrarried, he is surrounded by sentimer"rt: autographed pictures, police memorabilia, and an alternate movie poster for The French Connection (in which Roy Scheider played a fictionalized version of Grosso).

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Sonny Crosso still thinks and breathes cop-a world view that, up to now, has helped him exorcise Hollywood's fantasy police from his TV shows and movies. "l try to be conscientious when somebody gets shot in any of these
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[TV shows and movies], that the guy has some kind of an emotional reaction, that it's not just blowing smoke out of your gun and putting it back into your holster.

"

Being able to articulate these kinds of epiphanies helped Crosso rise above every other detective who's absolutely sure his or her stories would make a great movie/book/TV show. Few ever get further than "technical adviser," where they quickly learn that when fact and fiction go up against the wall, fact can't

even get arrested. Even for Grossowho with his partner seized $32 million
worth of heroin in what was dubbed the "French Connectiop" ssss-it was almost a decade after he became a celebrity cop that a producer finally tapped him as a technical consultatrt.

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This was Philip f)'Antoni, who'd optioned the movie rights to Robin Moore's rrtrnfiction book, The Frerch Connection. Yet soon after D'Antoni and director

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Sonny, they found the flamboyant detective could do a lot more than sniff out gaffes in the script.

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"Anytime you're shooting in a city you don't know," says Grosso, "it's difficult. Now, I know New York. So I helped get
locations, set up scenes-l was kind of a

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PROFILE

R

o

Grosso (contiru,edfrom page 68)
trotrbleshooter on the set." Friedkin aplrreciatecl the help. Not only did he give (,rosso a cameo a5-vvlial else?-a poli<'e cletective but he also helped launch
Sunnr''s second career.

\s Grosso remembers, "'We were on Ranclall's Island [off Manhattan in the
l-ast River], finishing the last scene, and Billv at lunchtime says, 'Get in the car.' :() \r'e went over to Second Avenue, to the
F

ducer is to acquire some literary property. The unusual first step is to write the property yourself. Grosso ground out a novel, Murder at the Harlem Mosque (1977), and, with co-author Philip Rosenberg, the nonfiction book Point Blank (1978). Sonny's attorney, Michael Colyer, whom he'd met through D'Antoni,
looked around for development deals. Colyer at the time also represented the now-defunct American International

chunk of shows' revenues. Grosso-Jacobson entered into successive umbrella deals with Time Inc., Co-

lumbia Pictures, and Century Insur-

ance's short-lived Counterpoint
division. But they chafed against the
added layer of constraints and approv-

als. By 1984, the two had decided to
close the umbrellas. From now on, each financial partnership would be project-

ilnrways studio, which is a big super-

by-project.

Tbirteen years

aftq

puttingaway bis
badge, Sonny Grosso still tbinks and breathes cop.
rnarket now, and they're shooting thrs rrrovieo TheGodfather.So he took me over to meet fdirector Francis] Coppola, and oYou can't shoot a

Whenfactand fiction go up against
tbe wall,_fact cAn't euen get arrested.

Pictures, and he introduced Grosso to

AIP executive Larry Jacobson. The two
hit it off, but then AIP's parent company
got sold. "They wanted to shut down the New York operation and move the whole

French Connection Grosso lDent on to The Godfather, selaing as tecbnical aduiser and pla,ying a bit part.
This was less the result of brilliance than of serendipity. "CBS approached uso" Grosso recalls, "about producing a show for late night,'i that tl:30 p.M. slot split between Johnny Carson on NBC and Nightline on ABC. CBS, dying there, needed something other than the late, late show or network reruns, but
just as cheap to produce as a talk show or
a news show.

\frer The

lre told Coppola, rnor.ie in New York without Grosso and his gorillas!'The next day I went to work lirr Coppola."

The FrerrchConnection (1971) went on to rvin five Oscars and much praise for its

realistic look. Grosso went on to The
Godfather (1972), serving as technical arlviser and playing another bit part (in a

thing out to the West Coast," Jacobson ooNow, I didn't want to move remembers. to the West Coast. Sonny doesn't even like going to another borough." In 1980, the two formed Grosso-Jacobson Productions with their own savings and Jacobson's AIP contract settlement.
'oWhen we started

it,"

says Jacobson,

s('erle where vicious cop Sterling
Havden bashes Al Pacino). Then, with the 1970s' cycle of gritty New York police-detective movies, Grosso kept busier than a vice cop in Times Square: ?he Sercn-Ups (1973), Report to the Comrnissioner (1975), the TV-movieThc MarcwYelson Murd,ers (1973), on which the se-

"We said, 'Oh, we're gonna stay completely independent.' Then all of a sudden," he adds chuckling, "you see how
fast the money goes!"

Luckily, their first project-a Barney Miller clone called Baleer's Dozen, starring Ron Silver-beat the odds and
made it onto CBS's prime-time schedule. While it ran only a single month in 1982, the show brought Grosso-Jacobson to the attention of the major TV studios, who often enter into exclusive "umbrella" deals with independent production companies. The studios provide working space, pitch the networks, and handle distribution in return for a good
(contintrcd onpage 72)

Grosso-Jacobson had by now acquired a reputation for fast, cheap, and good, with TV movies such as A Qu,estion
B

of Honor (1982), based on the book Poirt lanlo, and Tradrdnun: F ind,ing thn Goodbar Killer (1983). "So they said," Grosso

ries Kojalc was based, and the first
seasons of that show and Baretta. By 1976, when a two-story fall from a broken stairwell bannister prompted his retirement on a medical disability, Grosso lrad the hots for Hollywood. The usual first step to becoming a pro-

continues, o'you guys are good with cop things. Why don't you take a camera crew, go to a precinct, and when an arrest happens, film it. But the lawyers and the insurance companies and every-

body went berserk, saying'You can't show people getting arrested, for ertertainment!'And now today there's that
(cortinu,ed on page 77)
CONTINENTAL PROFILES NOV. 1989

CONTINENBL PROFILES NOV. 1989

PROF
( continu,ed from page 72 ) show, Cops," he marBroadcasting] [Fox

I'L E
William D'Angelo as company officers. But for all his success, Grosso is still out
there keeping patrolperson's hours, as much a troubleshooter for his productions as he was for Friedkin's and Coppola's and everyone else's.

Grosso

vels.

Bread and circuses aside, GrossoJacobson suggested that the showeventually called Night ltsql-fis lons

cheaply enough-about $600,000 per hour show, as opposed to the usual $l million-plus-that other late night dramas have since flourished.

with actors in a quasi-documentary style. 'oSo we started with that idea,"
Grosso relates, "and as it kept going and things kept getting added, we ended up

with these characters and a regular story line, which they loved. But then CBS's late night budget fell through." The show was saved when the Canadian production company Alliance Entertainment Corp. had them rework it for Canada's CTV network. But since CBS o'We had a financial stake in the project, had to tie it back with them, and get the two networks to work in tandem, which had never been done before, in a time slot that [for first-run drama] didn't exist before!" It all worked well enough and

"If doing ))our job means 10 boLrs a day or 20 hours a day, that's what you do."
So has Grosso-Jacobson Productions,

"The people who become partners with you and give you the money to let
you do it, what they want is your involve-

ment," Grosso states. o'That's what they're paying for, y'know what I mean?
like a detective who doesn't have to be watched every second, you go out and do your job. And if doing your job means l0 hours a day or
So conscientiously,

20 hours a day, that's what you do.
Y'know what I mean?" We know what he means.

n

which in l9BB became a division of
Grosso-Jacobson Entertainment,
a

mostly paper reorganization that brought in veteran producers Alan Wagner and

Frank Louece, co-author o/Hailing Taxi, uitesfrequently aboutW and
entertainm,ent.

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