UPDATE: Gotti Box office news click here.

“Gotti” starring John Travolta is just as bad as you might imagine, and then some. I can’t say I blame director Kevin Connolly, who took over from a long series of unfortunate incidents that led to this production. Connolly was hamstrung by Travolta, by a really grossly bad script, and a series of producers some of whom had criminal records.

Last night’s premiere of “Gotti” was entertaining more for the celebrities who showed up:  Regis and Joy Philbin, Susan Lucci and husband Helmut Huber, former police commissioner Ray Kelly and his wife Veronica, and their broadcaster son Greg among them.

I don’t know what those people thought of “Gotti,” but in our packed overflow screening room, many in the audience fled the theater before the movie was over. (My friend said, “It’s late, maybe they were hungry.”)

“Gotti” has around 28 producers and looks like the all you can eat buffet version of a gourmet Martin Scorsese movie. You only realize how amazing James Gandolfini was in “The Sopranos” by watching Travolta act with his chin, the same way he portrayed Robert Shapiro in the “OJ” mini series. Between Travolta and real life wife Kelly Preston, who plays Mrs. Gotti, the movie is like an infomercial for wigs. (The only person they were missing was Joyce Bouffant– that’s a joke. Get it?) I guess Scientology is like the Mafia, so the Travoltas know their material.

Much of “Gotti” is Travolta acting against himself, although sometimes in scenes he has the kid playing John Gotti Jr, Spencer Rocco Lofranco– who acts as if in another movie, maybe on Lifetime. The screenplay is so bad that there’s no sympathy or interest in anyone else, although I did kind of like the supporting work of Pruitt Taylor Vince, Stacey Keach, and Chris Mulkey. Like director Connolly, they made their best effort.

At some point in the PR for this film, there was a lot made of Travolta’s daughter Ella being cast. But she’s not in credits and not on screen. I have no idea what happened there.

The movie’s entire goal is to exonerate, absolve, or explain the life of John Gotti Jr., who gave up the mob and walked away in exchange for his freedom. The thing is, I’ve meet him recently a few times, and Mr. Gotti Jr. is totally affable and extremely friendly. The movie is based on his book, and I can’t tell if he’s totally happy with it. But his father is dead, and he’s trying to live his life.

But the obstacle is that his father was a vicious animal. We can’t get around that. All the people who worked for him were no better. The fact that Lem Dobbs and Leo Rossi wrote a non existent screenplay about these hideous people doesn’t help. It jumps back and forth, there’s no way of knowing what’s going on, where we are in the time line, who’s whacking who, etc.

“Gotti” has a zero far on Rotten Tomatoes. I’d give it a 10 or 15. As a New Yorker and a fan of “The Godfather,” I dig the mob lore, the Little Italy social clubs, and the whole story of the Castellano hit at Sparks Steak House– but as fiction, not as real life. But the gratuitous violence– hey this stuff really happened, and it wasn’t funny to the victims. And it’s not so funny seeing it rationalized here.

Note to John Travolta– no one buys the wigs in real life. I know you’re all Xenu and everything, but take them off already, buddy. Not doing you any favors.

The American Film Institute made an interesting decision yesterday in the face of deteriorating finances and the current political climate: they laid off their only black executive, a woman, who was popular and talented and highly regarded.

Ousted is Jacqueline Lyanga, head of the AFI Film Festival, who’s been with the Institute since at least 2005. Her job goes to Michael Lumpkin, who was already head of AFI Documentaries, a lower position. She was the only black executive in the AFI hierarchy, but paid so little already that she didn’t make their mandated list of top paid execs sent to the IRS annually.

Lumpkin, according to the IRS Form 990 that is published, made over $120,000 in 2016. Lyanga’s salary was so low it didn’t even merit reporting.

AFI CEO Bob Gazzale makes $567,000 a year.

Also quietly gone in the last year is a…woman, of course. Liza Ameen, chief of marketing, made $170,000 a year.

Of course, the AFI has already had some problems with women, and they’re not pretty. (The accusations, that is.)

Gazzale’s efforts to lower salaries seems to be getting rid of female execs, and in Lyanga’s case, the only woman representing diversity. Lyanga was born in Tanzania, raised in England and Canada, and provided the only refreshingly non-Caucasian perspective to programming the AFI Film Festival.

What’s kind of interesting is that on the 2016 Form 990, Lumpkin– who is only being promoted to director of AFI Festivals– was already listed that way. Lyanga, according to the filing, didn’t even merit that distinction.

I told you last week when they were busy honoring George Clooney in a show that will be aired next week on TNT, that the AFI finances were shrinking at an alarming rate.