Jules Nasso
Renata Lorenc
While an actor’s career has a shelf life, a producer can keep leveraging new talent and churning out new films for as long as they have the interest, without having to be typecast to an exclusive genre. Often overshadowed by directors and misunderstood by actors, producers normally stay behind the scenes, producing film after film. Few have been featured as prominently as producers Harvey Weinstein, Ismail Merchant , Robert Evans and Jules Nasso.
Nasso has produced films in Hollywood and independently for more than twenty years. His diverse production credits — Narc, One Eyed King, Prince of Central Park, The Patriot, The Chameleon, Fire Down Below, The Glimmer Man, Under Siege 2, On Deadly Ground, Out for Justice, and Marked for Death to name a few — have grossed hundreds of millions of dollars.
Nasso started in the business from the bottom and worked his way up. He owns a medical supply company, but he loves films.
Years ago he heard that Sergio Leone was looking for a part time assistant who was Italian and English speaking. The job was only for a six week program. Nasso took the job as a gofer for twenty-five dollars a day and was enlightened about filmmaking by the master. Sergio Leone was taking several medications for his ailments such as diabetes, high blood pressure and glaucoma. When he saw Leone open up his pill box and swallow all his pills with one glass of water he went up to Leone and told him that it was unhealthy to do that. Leone asked him in Italian what credentials he had to tell him how he should take medicine. When Leone found out about Nasso’s medical background, he wanted to know what Nasso was doing here. Nasso told Leone that actually love is making films. Leone took him under his wing.
I met Jules Nasso on September 8, 2005, at a party he was hosting at his multimillion-dollar beachfront estate, Villa Terranova, in Staten Island. Over the years, many film companies have come and gone, but I always noticed Nasso at every Cannes Film Festival and AFM consistently making new deals and hanging around good buddies like Danny Aiello, Harvey Keitel and Chazz Palminteri.
The gala affair was to launch his new company, Cinema NASA Film Studios. He was genial, hospitable and very popular with his guests. Although I didn’t get to meet Puff Daddy and Kylie Minogue who were no shows, there were plenty of fascinating people. I spotted Hotel Rwanda director Terry George, A&E reality show star and novelist Victoria Gotti, and famed fashion photographer Peter Beard. Multi-platinum recording artist, jazz star Chuck Mangione and his band tearing it up in a large tent set up in the backyard and the lavish Gucci firework display on the beach was a rare treat to experience in New York. Nasso had a lot to celebrate as Cinema NASA Film Studios is already in production for King of Sorrow Starring Billy Zane, Michael Madsen and Chazz Palminteri. Also, the party was a chance for Nasso to celebrate his release from prison and to mark a new beginning in his life after having just served nine-and-half months of a one-year federal prison sentence as part of a plea bargain he made to avoid a long and costly trial.
The whole Nasso/Seagal story is complex and rivals any soap opera blockbuster: it involves a sixty million dollar law suit, a Tibetan religious sect, betrayal, extortion, Mafia, FBI and Hollywood. “But I survived,” he told me. “I’m not a publicity hound; I’m a down to earth guy.” However, Nasso added that he’ll soon announce a deal for a book and a movie about his prison experiences. The saga ended a productive partnership between Seagal and Nasso that produced six action adventure hits in the early nineties, beginning with Marked for Death in 1990.
The trouble started when Steven Seagal accused Nasso of trying to extort money from him. In fact what Nasso had done was sue Seagal for sixty-million dollars for breach of contract. Seagal had agreed to make four new actions films with Nasso. Nasso had presold territories all over the world. However since joining a Tibetan cult, Seagal had decided he was not going to make any more of the violent films that had made him rich and famous. The reason? A Buddhist spiritual adviser named Mukara allegedly persuaded Seagal to cut ties with his children from two previous marriages, his movie production companies and Nasso, or he would not get to keep his coveted status as a reincarnated lama, or “Tulka,” which makes him a sacred vessel of Tibetan Buddhism. Naso had to return millions of dollars to foreign buyers who had presale deals.
The suit alleges that Seagal was ordered to cut ties with “his children from two previous marriages, his movie production companies and others.”
Some might laugh, but not UCLA doctoral student Kevin Fischer, who spent the past three years working on a book about the strange spiritual trends that have captivated Hollywood’s impressionable minds. It is a project that has given him a certain sympathy with the insecurities that plague those who see their names in the lights.
“Becoming a star is basically like gambling,” he observed. “When you finally get it, it’s like the finger of God came down upon you. So there’s a real urge to find the reason you’re a star,” said Fischer.
Suggestions that Seagal’s fortune helped elevate him to the Himalayan status of Tulku are not completely discounted even by some adapts and initiates says Christopher Higgins, reporter for Vanity Fair.
By pleading guilty, Nasso not only avoided spending a lot of money on legal fees, but he received only a sentence of one year and a day in a low/minimum facility and a fine of only $75,000. Nasso did not want to spend a lot of jail time and that is why he took it upon himself to take a plea and move on with his life.
Nasso wants to be known for his film work and is tired of being called a mobster.
“I’m as much a gangster as much as you are Osama Bin Laden’s girlfriend,” he said to me.
Motive: 60 million dollars. The lawsuit is still going on. They keep trying to drop it. By getting Nasso arrested, they thought that it would go away… But will it?
Only time will tell. We have to wait for the sequel.