Garnering attention

We told you Jim Sheridan’s film about Whitey Bulger is on the back burner, but now another Irish director is looking to make a movie about Boston’s Irish mob. Director Tom Collins is in Southie to meet with onetime wiseguy Pat Nee. Collins, whose 2007 film “Kings’’ won all sorts of awards in Ireland, is interested in Nee’s 1984 attempt to smuggle seven tons of assault rifles to the IRA on board the Valhalla, a fishing trawler out of Gloucester. (The plan was scuttled when British intelligence was tipped off by an informant in the IRA’s Kerry Brigade.) Nee, who served several years in prison, is the author of “A Criminal & an Irishman: The Inside Story of the Boston Mob-IRA Connection.’’

Marianne Leone’s untitled memoir about her late son, Jesse Cooper, will be published by Simon & Schuster next year. Leone - who had a recurring role on “The Sopranos’’ as Christopher Moltisanti’s mom - got the news while in traffic waiting for the hearse carrying Ted Kennedy’s casket to pass on Route 3 in Kingston. (She lives there with her husband, Oscar winner Chris Cooper.) “You’re thrilled that someone has validated your voice,’’ she said, “but at the same time the book chronicles a loss.’’ Jesse, who was born with cerebral palsy, died in 2005 at the age of 17. Leone said the idea for the memoir grew out of an essay she wrote for the Globe a few months after her son’s death. “I was brutally honest in the book and I hope parents of special-needs kids will appreciate that,’’ she said. “It was hard to relive some of the painful parts of his life, but it made me joyful to feel other people would get to know him.’’

The city’s foremost flack, George Regan, will be feted by the Anti-Defamation League next week, and an overflow crowd is expected. Invited guests include congressmen Bill Delahunt, Stephen Lynch, and Ed Markey; Hizzoner Tom Menino, Senate President Therese Murray, House Speaker Bob DeLeo, Treasurer Tim Cahill, Pats poobah Robert Kraft, and construction king John Fish. Presenting the award to Regan will be his buddy, LA police chief Bill Bratton, who’s flying in for the shindig with wife Rikki Klieman.

Can’t wait until the Patriots’ season opener to see Tom Brady again? Tune into “Ace of Cakes’’ next week, when No. 12 will be hanging with host Duff Goldman. (The episode airs on the Food Network at 10 p.m. Thursday.) Earlier this summer, Duff helped make a cake at a Best Buddies event hosted by Brady, and the cameras were there to capture the QB.

Bay State rockers Shadows Fall made their network television debut Thursday on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.’’ The band from Springfield is promoting its new CD, “Retribution,’’ which comes out Sept. 15.

The former home of Henry Beetle Hough is not in Edgartown’s historic district. So there wasn’t much neighbors could do when the new owner, an investment banker with Goldman Sachs, bought the place on Pierce Lane for $4.2 million and announced plans to demolish it. “They have a right to spend their money any way they want,’’ says neighbor Donald Shanor, referring to the London-based banker John Waldron and wife Amanda. “But the town really should take a look at its historic district laws or we’re going to look like Colonial Williamsburg instead of Edgartown.’’ Emotions on Martha’s Vineyard are running high because Hough was the much-loved publisher and editor of the Vineyard Gazette and a noted conservationist. He wrote several books in the house, the best known of which was 1940’s “Country Editor.’’ Waldron, who couldn’t be reached yesterday, wants to tear down the house and replace it with two structures - a single-family house and a carriage house. Shanor, a retired correspondent for UPI, said it’s likely too late to save the Hough house. “But this is happening all over town,’’ he said. “The town should do something.’’

Don’t hate Frank Black because he likes to make money. The Pixies will be paid very well to perform “Doolittle’’ on their upcoming tour, and Black says that’s nobody’s business but the band’s. Speaking to Rolling Stone about the band’s plan to play its seminal 1989 LP in its entirety, Black acknowledges that the big payday was appealing. “For every time you get paid a boatful of money, there’s a hundred times you were paid virtually nothing. It’s like someone saying, ‘You don’t have the right to go up there on a stage and sing your songs.’ My response would be, ‘Go [expletive] yourself,’ ’’ says the artist formerly known as Black Francis.