Interview with 'Kill the Irishman' star Ray Stevenson

By Pete Roche

It’s only fitting the producers of Cleveland-centric mob movie KILL THE IRISHMAN came to our fair city March 9^th to premiere the film.  Perhaps even more apropos was the location of the press stop just hours before the Cedar Lee screening event.   Cleveland Movie Blog caught up with actor Ray Stevenson—who plays titular, Celtic-crazy gangster Danny Greene—in the basement of a west side Irish pub on a drizzly Ash Wednesday—one week prior to St. Patty’s Day.  The West Park neighborhood has always boasted a strong Irish presence; many homes off Rocky River Drive are occupied by third or fourth-generation cops and firefighters.  And most of these families hold their Catholic faith and emerald isle ancestry close to their hearts. 

Kill the Irishman

Review by Charles Cassady Jr.

I've applied for scores of jobs of every description here since the 1980s. It's quite crushed my spirit, unending boot-stomp-in-the-face employment turn-downs in work for which I was highly qualified. In my imaginings, there would be a job that required a successful applicant have (1) MY Social Security Number, (2) MY name, (3) MY iris pattern, (4) MY fingerprints, (5) MY ribonucleic acid-DNA sequences. Human Resources would still hire someone else. Most likely, given what I've observed, someone else who was a young female.

So it was with grim satisfaction I learned the true-crime drama KILL THE IRISHMAN, a 100 per cent Cleveland-content feature, set in Cleveland, based on a Clevelander's book, telling a great Cleveland saga...had rejected this city in favor of shooting almost entirely in Detroit, where a special Michigan film tax at the time offered more incentives to the production outfit. I did jam a little on the idea that Cleveland, source of my despair, got the same leper treatment. Maybe "The LeBron James Story" will lens in Akron and Florida, deciding his Cavaliers period was not worth mentioning.