To most people, Buddy Cianci is the name of the junior high school in Family Guy‘s fictional Rhode Island town of Quahog.
To residents of the non-fictional Rhode Island, from where Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane originally hails, Buddy Cianci is a colorful and controversial (to put it mildly) politician who was twice removed from his position as mayor of Providence for various illegal shenanigans.
Having already been the subject of a documentary that made the festival rounds last year, Cianci’s story is in the process of becoming a major motion picture, entitled appropriately enough Cianci, with Michael Corrente directing and David Mamet providing a screenplay from Michael Staton’s biography of the twice former mayor. Oliver Platt is signed to star as Cianci alongside Dermot Mulroney, Adam Goldberg, Bradley Cooper and Edward Burns. The Hollywood Reporter stated today that Robin Williams is currently in negotiations for a role, schedule permitting.
Cianci was born and grew up in the Providence suburb of Cranston, around the same time my mother did. In fact, Cianci was a teenager in the mid-1950s when my grandfather was a one-term mayor of the town. Did that have anything to do with how Cianci turned out as a politician? I certainly hope not. But it does mean that this is a project whose development I will be keeping an interested eye on.
