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Narc producer finances Code Of Silence Trilogy

Pair poised to produce slate of films By Shelley Marsden - 21/11/08

Michael Z. Gordon’s My Own Worst Enemy Productions, the production and finance company behind the highly acclaimed film, "Narc," has inked a joint-venture pact with up-and-coming Boston area writer-actor Mike O’Dea to finance his latest screenplay, “Code of Silence”.

The mid-range budget, Irish mob trilogy is set to begin filming in Somerville, Massachusetts on Saint Patrick's Day for four weeks. The ultra-violent movie is described on its website as "the most realistic mob movie ever."

O'Dea, a soft-spoken Irish-American with piercing blue eyes, caught the attention of Gordon with a gritty trailer video on Youtube of his Irish mob flick "Townies" set in Charlestown, Massachusetts.

The no-budget 2007 production of Townies was ultimately shut down halfway through when O'Dea and his two accomplices were surrounded by the Massachusetts State Police and news cameras after firing prop guns in public without proper permits.

The incident aired on WHDH 7 and Fox 25 Boston for a week straight and with that attention O'Dea was ordered by a Charlestown Judge to pay a hefty fine and serve twenty-five hours of community service. O'Dea planned to reshoot Townies with Gordon, that is until Ben Affleck announced "The Town," a similarly titled and themed movie also set to be filmed in Charlestown in 2009.

Even though O'Dea claims his story idea was unlikely stolen and that he set his movie to be shot in Charlestown four years prior to Affleck's, Gordon and O'Dea made the decision to hand Charlestown over to Affleck.

They retitled their movie and moved the production to uncharted territory in Somerville, Massachusetts, home of the infamous Winter Hill Gang.

"It was ultimately O'Dea's idea to change the title and bow out of Charlestown and I think it was an artistic statement," said Gordon. "He knows he has a great script and it doesn't matter to him where we shoot the movie, as long as we shoot it, he knows it will be great."

Mike O'Dea's story will be the stuff of urban legends we'll hear about though a "friend of a friend" who knew O'Dea when he was an unknown, living in a dark, grimy basement for years plotting his plan and then suddenly rose out of the ashes to make his mark in the movie industry.

O'Dea is currently revising the Code of Silence script and is also set to star in the film as a professional boxer, Mickey Callaghan, whose father is a feared Winter Hill mob boss. After the father is sent to prison, Mickey must learn the ways of his father in order to survive a bloody mob war.

The O'Dea-Gordon team has already aimed their sights on Ray Liotta to support O'Dea's role in the film as a boxing coach and manager, which would make this Gordon's second time working with Liotta since Narc.

FOR OUR INTERVIEW WITH MIKE O'DEA LAST YEAR, CLICK HERE.

Pic by Nicole Tammaro.