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Documentary about former congressman James A. Traficant Jr. details his rise and fall
AKRON
Even though he’s dead, James A. Traficant Jr. still draws a crowd.
“Traficant: The Congressman of Crimetown,” a 90-minute documentary on the former congressman’s life, had its premiere Saturday night at the Akron-Summit County Main Library. At times the film caused audience members to laugh as if many of them couldn’t believe his antics were real.
As part of the Cleveland International Film Festival, the film was to be shown at a 150-seat theater at the nearby Akron Art Museum. Because of greater demand to see the documentary, it was moved to a 400-seat theater at the library. Nearly every seat was taken.
“It’s all very surreal,” said Eric Murphy, the film’s director, producer, writer and editor, after the screening. “I’ve been sitting in a dark room with this for six years, and now people have seen it.”
When asked about his next project, Murphy said, “A glass of whiskey and a nap.”
The film starts with Traficant’s time as a quarterback at Cardinal Mooney High School in Youngstown and the University of Pittsburgh and then moves to the closing of the steel mills that devastated the Mahoning Valley’s economy in the late 1970s.
Against that backdrop, the documentary details Traficant’s rise, first as Mahoning County sheriff and then as a congressman, as well as his fall when he was convicted in 2002 of 10 federal felonies, including racketeering, bribery and tax evasion, and his expulsion from the U.S. House that same year.
“Where else but Youngstown could that happen?” asked actor Ed O’Neill during the film. O’Neill grew up in Youngstown and knew Traficant, one of the Valley’s most-controversial politicians.
The film uses interviews from numerous others, including Youngstown native Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini, filmmaker and former world champion boxer; U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Howland, D-13th, who worked for Traficant; Vindicator columnist Bertram De Souza, who covered Traficant during much of his political career; Jim Tressel, Youngstown State University president and its former football coach; former Youngstown Mayor Pat Ungaro; and Vic Rubenstein, a local political consultant.
James Wright of Akron knew little about Traficant before seeing the film, but said he enjoyed it and learned a lot.
“It’s really pretty interesting,” he said. “It would make for a good motion picture.”
Kaitlin Dockry, formerly of Austintown and now living in Kent, said, “I was really impressed by it. I was looking forward to seeing it, and it was very good.”
Like Wright, Karen Gil of Hudson knew little about Traficant before seeing the film.
“It was a very good movie,” she said. “I didn’t realize he campaigned so hard for the people of Youngstown.”
The film will be shown at 4 p.m. today and at 11:55 a.m. Monday at the festival’s main location, Tower City Cinema, 230 W. Huron Road in Cleveland.
Some lines in the film drew laughs, including a few of Traficant’s one-minute speeches on the House floor in which he would inject humor to attract attention, and remarks from those interviewed about the area such as a car bombing being known as a “Youngs-town tune-up.”
Murphy said the film has “dark humor” in it that while serious is also funny.
Leo Glaser, a juror who found Traficant guilty and later said he would have changed his mind if “all the evidence was presented,” was at the premiere.
“I was disappointed they didn’t show more of Traficant except TV clips,” he said. “It was more government propaganda.”
Murphy said he wanted to interview Traficant, but the former congressman insisted on control.
“As a documentarian, you can’t have your subject dictate the film,” he said. “I wasn’t going to make a Michael Moore film where I picked a side and argued it.”
The film discusses in detail Youngstown’s history of organized crime; Traficant’s first federal trial in 1983 in which he was acquitted of taking bribes from the mob; his populist style of politics; and his longtime feud in the 1980s with then-Mahoning County Democratic Party Chairman Don Hanni Jr.
The film makes only a brief mention of his seven years in federal prison — he was released in 2009 — and his failed 2010 political comeback.
The film was largely finished when Traficant died Sept. 27, 2014, as a result of injuries he suffered in a tractor accident on his Greenford family farm four days earlier. Murphy chose to include Traficant’s death as part of the film, causing a delay. Traficant’s death, however, takes up only a tiny portion of the movie.