They may not compare favorably with Marlon Brando and Rod Steiger, but tough guy actor Steven Seagal (left) and dock workers’ union boss Frank (Red) Scollo (right) have been cast as co-stars in a courtroom enactment of the film classic, "On The Waterfront."

Seagal, a hulking martial arts expert and star of violent action flicks, and Scollo, a pint-sized International Longshoremen’s Association official known to his mobster cohorts as "The Little Guy," will take center stage on Jan. 6.

Seagal was the alleged victim of a $700,000 extortion plot that is a major part of two pending trials in Brooklyn Federal Court.

Scollo, an ILA vice president and president of ILA Local 1814 in Brooklyn (the largest in the country), has admitted selling out his men for years and agreed to testify that he funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars in payoffs to the Gambino family.

Seagal, 51, and Scollo, 75, will debut on the witness stand at the labor racketeering trial of Gambino family boss Peter Gotti and six other wiseguys, including his brother, Richard V. Gotti, and Richard’s son, Richard G. After testifying against the last Gotti vestiges of the tattered Gambino family, the Mutt and Jeff odd couple is set for an encore against Julius and Vincent Nasso, Staten Island brothers charged with extortion against Seagal. 

"Steven Seagal is a narcissistic liar," said lawyer Barry Levin, who represents Vincent Nasso and has charged in court papers that Seagal is the target of the

feds in Los Angeles. "I look forward to Steven Seagal, and examining him about his bizarre lifestyle and his outlandish allegations against his former business partner." During a 12-year relationship, Julius Nasso produced 10 Seagal movies that grossed hundreds of millions of dollars.

Seagal was implicated in Los Angeles federal court documents last week in an alleged plot by an ex-con and a celebrity private eye charged with threatening a Los Angeles Times reporter working on a story about him last June. The actor has denied involvement in the threats.

In both trials, the focal point of Seagal’s and Scollo’s testimony will be Gambino capo Anthony (Sonny) Ciccone, (right) the crime family’s man on the docks for two decades, the real life Lee J. Cobb character in the 50-year-old movie classic that was inspired by investigative stories in the old New York Sun. Ciccone, 68, is the hands-on, down and dirty gangster who directed the family’s waterfront rackets with an iron hand, and huge monster-size mobsters.

Peter Gotti, (left) who took over as family boss when his brother John, the onetime Dapper Don, died in June, is the lead defendant in the main event.

When Scollo told Ciccone that a rival union leader was "changing rules on the piers," Ciccone told his hulking 200-pound right hand man Primo Cassarino to pay him a visit with 350-pound enforcer Richard (The Lump) Bondi.

“Get Richie,” said Ciccone. “Stop by, ring his bell, and just tell him, ‘You know what? You’d better stop it…Otherwise you know what’s gonna happen here.’

And that’s all.” That night, as Waterfront Commission investigators hovered nearby, Primo (left) and The Lump (right) did as they were told. So did the union official.

In another illuminating conversation, when Scollo, a union official for decades, asked if he could fire a union delegate, Ciccone reassured him: “Kick him out. Fuck him. Let him come to me.”

The April 18, 2001 talk illustrates one difference between the reel life version and the ones that will play out in the courtroom of Brooklyn Federal Judge Frederic Block. There was no X-rated language in the movie classic. Virtually every taped conversation in the case contains salty language.

In the second trial, prosecutors Andrew Genser, Katya Jestin and Rick Whelan will use the same two witnesses and many of the same tapes against Julius and Vincent Nasso, who were cut from the Gotti trial. Judge Block ruled that a trial that included the Nasso brothers, even though it would require no additional testimony or evidence since Ciccone is charged with the exact same crimes as the Nassos, would be unmanageable.

In one count, about which Scollo is prepared to testify, Ciccone and Vincent Nasso, a reputed longtime mob associate, allegedly extorted $400,000 from an ILA benefit fund that gave a three year contract to a Nasso-controlled pharmaceutical supply firm that supplied prescription drugs to union members.

Ciccone and both Nassos are charged with extorting $150,000 a picture from

Seagal. Along with Cassarino, Ciccone and the Nasso brothers traveled to Toronto and allegedly threatened Seagal in December 2000, while he was on location shooting "Exit Wounds."

Once, according to court papers, when Ciccone asked Julius Nasso (left) why he hadn’t yet told Seagal to fork over $150,000 a picture, as agreed, Nasso replied that threats were Ciccone’s job: "YOU really gotta get down on him… Cause I know this animal, I know this beast. You know, unless there’s a fire under his ass…."

In January 2001, Ciccone – with Cassarino and the Nassos in attendance – met Seagal in the back room of a landmark Brooklyn eatery, Gage & Tollner, and threatened him again, according to court papers.

A few days later, on Feb. 2, Cassarino, Ciccone, and Vincent Nasso were overheard joking and laughing about how terrified Seagal was at the restaurant sitdown, according to court papers. Ciccone bragged, "I didn’t acknowledge the fuck," and noted that Seagal had been "petrified" during the session.

“I wish we had a gun on us, that would have been funny,” said Cassarino.

“It was like right out of the movies,” said Vincent Nasso. (right)

Now that Thanksgiving Day has come and gone – we hope the turkey and trimmings were great and that a Happy Thanksgiving was had by all – here are  a couple of books that Gang Land readers might like to give as gifts during the holiday season. (Some habits die slow. For Gang Land, the holiday gift-giving season begins with Santa's arrival at Macy's in New York's Herald Square.)

Since we have pushed our own – Mob Star, The Complete Idiot's Guide To The Mafia, and Murder Machine – all year, we'll resist the urge to recommend them again (although, of course, they would make great stocking stuffers) and mention a couple of others we enjoyed. You can get them at your local bookstore, or Gang Land's favorite, Amazon.com.

"The Wiseguy Cookbook," By Henry Hill and Priscilla Davis is an entertaining and informative read. It's everything you wanted to know about Hill's rituals and recipes for cooking that he learned from his mother, as well as the innovative culinary skills he picked up along the way, whether it was doing time or laying low in the Witness Protection Program.

His mom's Italian heritage couldn't get him made, but the mob couldn't keep him out of her kitchen. She taught him well, although every so often he found a better way. Like with cutlets, for example. This applies to veal, chicken, pork. Eggplant too. His mom dipped them in egg and then in flour and breadcrumbs before frying.

According to Henry, the opposite way, flour and breadcrumbs first, then egg, makes for more mellow cutlets. Also, with his mom's way, "some of the breadcrumbs always fall into the oil and burn, so you have to start over with a new batch of oil after a couple of rounds of frying."

Sprinkled among staples like Pasta e Lenticchie (lentils) and Pasta con Sarde (sardines) are plenty of anecdotes about wiseguys like Paul Vario and Jimmy The Gent Burke, cooking in the Army, and in prison. And for Gang Land readers living in the heartland, Hill tells how to improvise and use substitute ingredients. From his days in the witness program, Hill knows how difficult it is to find arugula, let alone people who know what it is, in places like Omaha, Nebraska and Butte, Montana.

"Brooklyn: A State of Mind," edited by Michael W. Robbins & designed by Wendy Palitz, is a must read for anyone who was born or raised in Brooklyn, or spent a few years there, or, like the rest of the world, wishes they were.

Published last year, the book is a collection of 125 original stories and a gazillion photos that bring to life people and places that have shaped the Borough of Churches over the last 100 years. Words and pictures of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Norman Mailer, Carmine Persico, Nathan's Famous, Jackie Gleason, Jackie Robinson, the Brooklyn Paramount, Abe Reles and the Half Moon Hotel, the Poet Laureate of Brooklyn. Interviews of Mel Brooks, Leonard Garment and Spike Lee. And much more.

Of special interest to mob buffs, and Gang Land, is a joint interview of Brooklyn Federal Court Judges I. Leo Glasser and John Gleeson about the 1992 trial of John Gotti. Glasser, the trial judge, and Gleeson, the lead prosecutor, were interviewed – the only out-of-court comments they have uttered – in 1999, a year before star witness Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano was arrested for drug dealing, charges for which he is doing 20 years.

While neither judge said anything outrageous, even in hindsight, Gang Land is sure each wishes they had declined to discuss the case. For example, Gleeson, who was less restrained in his remarks than Glasser, described Gravano as "the best witness of all time .... He looked evil. Then Sammy flipped and I spent a great deal of time with him. Literally hundreds of hours. I got to know him well. I laughed with him. He was smart, engaging and funny."

Glasser, asked to describe the kind of man Gravano was, never gave his view, noting only that jurors and investigators had "found him sincere when he said he was attempting to put the life of organized crime behind him."

Asked about criticism that his five year sentence was too lenient, Glasser acknowledged, " I took a beating for that." But he ducked the real issue, never explaining how he justified it in his mind. Instead, he blamed the media for not  publishing the sentencing memo he had "worked many hours preparing."

Glasser loosened up, however, when asked if there were "occasions for wit" in the Gotti trial. Often described as a grouch or curmudgeon, his response indicates he may also have loosened up at least once during the very tense trial.

"I suppose I had to use my wits one day when I received a note that some of the jurors, who'd been sequestered for weeks, were requesting conjugal visits. I called the only other federal judge I knew who had sequestered a jury. He said, 'What are you going to do, judge?' I said, 'I think I'll allow it.' He said, 'Good for you. I think that's what I would do.'"

Mob Star: The Story of John Gotti

The complete saga of John Gotti, from his treacherous rise to his defiant downfall, is here – Mob Star: The Story of John Gotti – the book it took yours truly and Gene Mustain 17 years to do! Although we didn't know it at the time, we began working on "Mob Star" in 1985, when we began covering the Gotti story as news reporters.

The first edition came out in 1988, and we finished this new edition three days before Gotti died in June. We added a postscript, and Alpha Books has distributed it to the nation's bookstores.

With a 40,000-word update, the new edition contains the entire Gotti saga right up to his time in prison and his death from throat cancer.

The 378 page, full-size book uses eight additional chapters, a prologue and an epilogue to complete the story we began telling (better than any other reporters, we might add!) when we covered the Gotti-orchestrated, midtown Manhattan assassination of former Gambino boss Paul Castellano.

For the last and best words on Gotti, this is the book to have. It is specially priced at Amazon.com at $11.87, more than five bucks off the suggested retail price.

    Not Really For Idiots

Whether you're a Gang Land regular or an occasional visitor, you'll enjoy  "The Complete Idiot's Guide to The Mafia," a book I wrote for Alpha Books that was published in December. It's filled with real stuff about real wiseguys and insight about the ways that mobsters make their money. It's 343 pages of true stories of life and death, honor and betrayal. Get it at your local book store, or at Gang Land's favorite, Amazon.com, where the powers that be have knocked the price down to $13.27, so low I am concerned that the Godfather of online booksellers has forgotten about my end.