Big trouble
Brian Scannell went from the gutter to Hollywood glitter. Now sober, he's got a TV show, new movies, and a lot of people to thank.
Brian Scannell is one scary dude. He's sitting in a beat-up bar in Uphams Corner where other misfits are drinking cheap liquor and playing Keno in the middle of the afternoon. There's stubble on his face and malice in his eyes. His sleeveless shirt exposes biceps and tattoos. He has only one adjective in his vocabulary, and it can't be printed here. And it looks as if he's gonna kill Casey Affleck with his big bare hands.
But suddenly a younger, skinnier Affleck clocks him, pistol-whipping him over a table. A stunned Scannell drops, spitting a tooth onto the bar's grimy floor.
The real Brian Scannell, sitting in his seat at the Boston premiere of "Gone Baby Gone" last week, laughs as he views the scene. "That was gum," he whispers. "Not a real tooth." He's dressed in a pinstriped suit and red tie and couldn't be more polite.
Scannell, 41, has a small but memorable scene in a movie made in Boston by one Boston boy - director Ben Affleck - and based on a book by another Boston boy, writer Dennis Lehane. Because Affleck hired so many local actors and extras, the accents are as authentic as the gritty neighborhoods.
"It's bizz-ah the way things have happened," Scannell says earlier that day, sipping coffee in the living room of his parents' Foxborough home. He's talking about his long journey from the gutter to the glitterati. He has a recurring role on a hit television series and has appeared in several feature films. "As an ac-tah, I think I have a face for radio. When I listen to how hahsh my accent is, it's hahd on my ea-ahs."
That Scannell plays Lenny, a lowlife barfly in "Gone Baby Gone" is an irony not lost on him. He was a drunk before he was old enough to drink legally. He began when he was 12 or 13, downing 16-ounce Heffenreffers until he blacked out, then moving on to the hard stuff, along with cocaine. Lots of kids in his West Roxbury neighborhood were getting into trouble, and Scannell started going to funerals young. One teenage friend was shot in the head. Another died after choking on his own vomit.
The fact that Scannell's father was a Boston police officer didn't deter his behavior a bit. In one night, he lost a full hockey scholarship to Stonehill College and was thrown in the Easton jail for creating "mayhem" after raucous partying and fighting during a campus concert. Another weekend, when his parents went to Florida and his Aunt Beth was baby sitting the five Scannell kids, Brian stole the family car and stayed out a couple of nights, hammered the whole time.
His aunt made him go with her to the airport to pick up his parents. "I have a problem drinking," he told them. "I'm out of control."
Not that his frantic parents didn't realize it. "I didn't think he'd live beyond 21," says his mother, Anne Scannell, a retired nurse. "I used to chase him down Washington Street at 3 in the morning."
His sister Amy, who still lives in West Roxbury, remembers her older brother's escapades. "My grandfather called him 'Trouble.' That was his nickname. The neighbors used to think we had more than one Brian because my mother was always screaming his name."
At 19, Scannell entered Spofford Hall, a private residential detox center in New Hampshire, where he stayed a month to dry out. "I thought my life was over, but it was just beginning," he says. Still, there were detours.
After detox, he moved to a halfway house in South Boston, in a room with "three older guys who were whacked out." He slept with a knife under his pillow and attended a 12-step recovery program. Most of his friends were in college. "I was [ticked] off. I was stuck in this meeting in an uncomfortable chair in the basement of a church. My sponsor says to me, 'There's only one thing you can't do in life. You can't drink. If you don't drink, your wildest dreams will come true.' "
But he did drink again. He had been sober three years when a co-worker introduced him to hallucinogenic mushrooms. He took them with a large side of beer and tequila. "I drank that weekend like I'd never drunk before," he says. When he sobered up two days later, he made a beeline for his sponsor's home. It was March 5, 1988, and he has not had a drink since.
He was 22 years old, by now a licensed electrician. His friends had finished college while he'd lost his scholarship. One winter it snowed 100 inches in Boston, and Scannell would find himself at the crack of dawn, brushing snow off trucks in the electric company's yard. His father, Joe, recalls one particularly brutal day: "I picked him up that night and he said, 'Dad, I'm not doing this my whole life. I'm going to college.' "
Scannell entered UMass-Boston to study international business and relations. After graduating, he drove cross-country with the Dropkick Murphys, whose lead singer, Kenny Casey, is a close friend.
But it was time to grow up. He took a job in sales with
Scannell got the acting bug, began taking lessons and auditioning for parts. Five years ago, he quit his EMC job. "I was a wreck," says his mother.
But Scannell says his sponsor was right on both counts: He can't drink, and his wildest dreams have come true. He's living in Hollywood, making it as an actor. "The ride's been great," he says. "I haven't had to wait any tables."
He's got a recurring role in the hit Showtime series "Brotherhood." Set in Rhode Island, the story centers around two Irish brothers, one a powerful politician, the other a mob boss. Scannell plays the part of Silent John, a taciturn, cold-blooded member of the Irish mob who knows where all the bodies are buried.
As he relates one of Silent John's recent hits, which included dismembering the corpse and pulling its teeth, his mother says: "I'm happy for him. He's successful. But the show itself is not my style."
In "Gone Baby Gone," he shares the scene with five other guys he's known for years, from Southie or Dorchester. "Every one of us in that scene were drinkers and are now all non-drinkers," says Scannell. "I said to Ben [Affleck], 'This is a tell-tale sign of how authentic this scene is. You'd better hope none of us really start drinking, or we'll never stop.' " He laughs. It is a sign of how far he's come that he's now able to joke about the addiction that nearly ruined his life.
In the upcoming movie "The Alphabet Killer," the true story of a serial killer, Scannell plays a victim's father. In "Black Russian," due out in the next couple of months, he plays a suave gangster living in LA. He's a thug in "Pineapple Express," a dark comedy coming out this summer.
Joe Scannell, who has been a police officer for 37 years and now works out of District 4 in the South End, interjects: "He plays good-guy roles, too."
It's clear that "Gone Baby Gone" has captured Brian Scannell's heart. Filmed in his hometown, with many of his friends, the movie, he says, captures the essence - and the darkness - of the city that he loves. He's walked the red carpet twice now, in LA and in Boston, and had the paparazzi call out, "Brian, here! Brian, over here!"
Yes, he's still paying off his student loans. And he rents an apartment. But he says he's never been happier. "I thank God for all of it because it certainly could have gone another direction," he says. He's starting a scholarship in honor of his sponsor, who died alone in a motel room of an overdose. And he's working on a memoir.
At the Boston premiere of "Gone Baby Gone," Scannell took his entire family except his older brother, Mark, who is on his second tour with the 82d Airborne in Iraq. His "Irish twin" Sean, 11 months younger, is a Boston police officer with the K-9 unit. His younger sisters Amy and Maura were there, and his parents. Aunt Beth flew in from Ann Arbor.
His mother cringed when he got decked on screen. His father gave the movie "five stars." His sisters loved it. His brother joked that their mother should ground him for his onscreen language.
Anne Scannell laughed. "I couldn't ground him when he was 13," she says.
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
