Rick Porrello has been waiting more than 10 years to see this happen. Next month, the Lyndhurst police chief and author will finally see his book, “To Kill the Irishman: The War that Crippled the Mafia”, take the big screen. “Kill the Irishman”, starring Ray Stevenson, Vincent D’Onofrio, Val Kilmer and Christopher Walken, tells the true story of Danny Greene (Stevenson) as he rises to become one of the Cleveland Mafia’s biggest targets in the 1970s. “Danny Greene was such a fascinating character,” Porrello said. “In the world of organized crime — in particular, Italian-American — no one went after them except the police. Outsiders didn’t go after anybody. Danny did.” The mobster grew up in a Catholic school; he was a member of the Boy Scouts. What truly defined his identity, though — at least, according to Porrello — was his Irish genealogy. Porrello suggests that reading about his Irish roots caused Greene to think of himself as a kind of modern-day Celtic warrior. “He was very proud of his Irish heritage,” Porrello said. “He read a lot of books about Irish and Celtic history and quizzed his guys on Irish history.” When Greene’s apartment on Waterloo Avenue was blown up in 1975 —by the Mafia, naturally — a witness said they saw him running from the building. When he spoke to the newspaper about the incident, he made it very clear that he did not run away. “It really reflected this warrior mentality — that you didn’t run away from anything, that you stayed and fought,” Porrello said. “That was the way he viewed himself.” And that’s the Greene many will come to see in “Kill the Irishman”, which will be out in limited release on March 11. Porrello said he’s very pleased with how things turned out. “My wife and I would joke about who we thought would be Danny Greene, but after a while so much time had passed that we stopped talking about it,” he said. “But I’m thrilled with [the casting].” Porrello and his wife have been talking about it since a movie deal was negotiated for his book in 1998. The deal came after director Tommy Reid, an alum of OSU and the New York Film Academy, got wind of Porrello’s book release. Reid, a New Jersey native and gangster film fan, first heard the story of Danny Greene while attending Ohio State. He says he was particularly interested in learning more about Greene and the Cleveland Mafia war because of his own Irish and Italian heritage, but he couldn’t find much literature on it. After moving to Los Angeles, Reid received a copy of a local newspaper article about Porrello’s upcoming book from a buddy. “I flew out to meet Rick Porrello, and we essentially closed our deal on St. Patrick’s Day of ’98,” says Reid. “It just took me basically 13 years to find the right producing partners and the right elements to make this movie happen.” Reid says the journey came with a lot of obstacles — primarily, finding the right writers to turn the fact-based book into a screenplay. He landed on Jeremy Walters and Jonathan Hensleigh, who also directs the film and who’s responsible for action flicks like “Armageddon” and “Die Hard With a Vengeance”. About five years ago, Reid brought Code Entertainment on board for production and things started to pick up speed. “In early 2009, [my agent] Peter called and said ‘They’re going to film your movie,’” Porrello recalled. “It was incredibly exciting … Tommy’s goal was to see the movie on the big screen. Not made-for-TV, not made-for-cable. And he did it.” Now that the process is over, both Porrello and Reid can sit back and enjoy the fruits of their labor. “It’s such a great story to bring to the big screen,” Reid said. “I’m just thankful that it’s never been told before.” Reid even goes as far as to state his favorite mob film used to be “GoodFellas” — before the release of “Kill the Irishman”. “It takes a very long time to make a good movie — and that’s the key phrase: a good movie,” he said. “We wanted to make a top-quality movie, and I think we did so with everyone involved … Everyone in Ohio should be really proud about it.”