Cheech and Chong did a bit about Santa Claus- as a musician- “yeah, I played with that dude”- well, many of us in the Class of 1980 played with Rick Porrello- who was the superstar drummer- and now is the Lyndhurst police Chief- and the writer behind the coming movie “The Irishman”

From the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

The film stars Irish actor Ray Stevenson as Greene, Vincent D’Onofrio as Nardi, Paul Sorvino as mob boss Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, Val Kilmer as a Cleveland detective, and in a stroke of inspired casting, Oscar-winner Christopher Walken playing Birns.

it is based on the book “To Kill the Irishman: The War that Crippled the Mafia” by Lyndhurst Police Chief Rick Porrello. A new edition of the book will also hit stores next March….

Porrello, who grew up in Cleveland Heights, had his own colorful past. He toured the world as a drummer for Sammy Davis Jr., and later became an author with the book “The Rise and Fall of the Cleveland Mafia,” which featured his own grandfather and great-uncles as players in the bootleg wars of the 1920s and 1930s.

But Porrello was also a kid who longed to be a cop, ever since his parents gave him a police scanner for Christmas when he was 10. His day job for the past 22 years has been on the Lyndhurst police force.”

As Reid pitched his movie dreams in Los Angeles, Porrello waited. And waited.

“There were times when I was on the road on the midnight shift, I’d go sit on that spot where Danny was killed and have coffee and I’d wonder, ‘Will that movie ever get made? Will they be filming right here in this parking lot?’ ”

via Cleveland gangster Danny Greene’s explosive life captured in ‘The Irishman’ and two docs | cleveland.com.