Richard Egbert, the quintessential super-tough defense lawyer, has died at age 61. Over the years, he represented a number of clients in Rhode Island, including, of course, Buddy Cianci during his Plunder Dome trial in 2002.

As part of a profile written before the trial, I met with Egbert in his Boston office and gleaned a telling detail that wound up in Mike Stanton's The Prince of Providence

Someeone heard that Steve Laffey was seen breaking bread at Fleming's a few weeks back with Buddy Cianci and Joe Paolino.

Buddy (on whose radio show I am an occasional guest) yesterday told me that, as he recalls it, the chat took place during "Meatball Mondays," one of the weekly events held at former aide Artin Coloian's Sidebar bar & grill.

Whether telling Mike Stanton to play in traffic or plotting to buy the ProJo, Buddy Cianci is not given to small notions.

So it's not surprising to learn that he's pushing his own movie version of his colorful story.

No diss to Oliver Platt, who did well as George Steinbrenner in ESPN's The Bronx is Burning, but I still like Michael Chiklis [above] , or even Paul Giamatti, to play Buddy.

Filmmaker Michael Corrente tells the ProJo's Michael Janusonis that his long-delayed Buddy Cianci movie, based on Mike Stanton's The Prince of Providence, is set to start production on RI locations in August:

Corrente verified a report that appeared in the Hollywood Reporter that director Steven Soderbergh, whose films include Ocean’s Eleven and Twelve, would be the executive producer of The Prince of Providence and that Oliver Platt would play the former mayor.

Dan Barry, former ProJo scribe-turned-NY Times reporter-and-acclaimed author, makes another one of his occasional forays back to Rhode Island, offering a sharp column today on Buddy Cianci and his perch at WPRO:

At first, Mr. Cianci says, “I was rather docile on the air,” calling a couple of new buildings ugly, criticizing a tax break.

Darrell West, who came to Rhode Island in 1982 and is departing in June for a job at the Brookings Institution, also stopped by the Newsmakers' set today. Like journalists, West has had a rich vein of fodder here, and he says the Ocean State will stay with him after he moves to DC.

Among the highlights of his exit interview:

Seth Gitell has a tasty post up on his blog: Buddy Cianci analyzing the fall of Eliot Spitzer and diagnosing his future prospects.

Of course, it's natural that Cianci's story makes political reporters (see here and here) invoke F. Scott Fitzgerald. Gitell, formerly a political scribe for the Boston Phoenix, does this, too.

In a performance straight from Politics 101, Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline this afternoon took responsibility for the city's troubled response to last week's snow storm and outlined steps that he said will prevent a future repeat of the same thing. The ultimate goal, of course, is to put the whole episode in the past.

From City Hall:

PROVIDENCE – Mayor David N. Cicilline will announce a series of action steps the City is taking in response to the findings of a week-long review into the circumstances surrounding the release of Providence school children during the December 13th winter storm. The news conference will be held on Thursday, December 20 at 1 p.

Conspicuously absent from today's ProJo coverage of John Simmons's ascension to the top job at the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council is any mention of the recent Fund for Providence issue. Buddy Cianci and Dan Yorke, who have used this topic to deem Simmons unfit for the RIPEC job, will no doubt focus more criticism on this development today.

Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline suggests that he doesn't concern himself much with criticism of his administration by Buddy Cianci, who has ramped up his talk-radio based critiques of Cicilline in recent weeks.

Speaking this morning during a taping of WPRI/WNAC-TV's Newsmakers, Cicilline said he doesn't listen to Cianci's late-morning talk-radio show.

John Simmons's salary as director of administration for the City of Providence is fully paid by the City -- and it has been for about two-and-a-half years, according to Karen Southern, spokeswoman for Mayor David N. Cicilline.

As I blogged earlier today, the issue of Simmons' salary was raised yesterday by Buddy Cianci on his WPRO-AM radio show.

UPDATE: As I've subsequently posted, Cicilline spokeswoman Karen Southern says the city pays 100 percent of the salary for Simmons's work for the city.

. . . .

Speaking of Yorke, the WPRO talk-show host has long been critical of the Cicilline administration's use of a fund at the Rhode Island Foundation to help pay for the services of director of administration John Simmons.

The DVD-release party for Cherry Arnold's Buddy Cianci documentary will be held tonight, appropriately enough, in the ballroom of the Providence Biltmore. Doors open at 6:30. Tickets are $40.

The highlights, Cherry says, will include:

* The last showing (7 pm) of this award-winning movie on the big screen, with a post-film party

The City of Providence's effort to revoke the $64,000-a-year pension of former police chief Urbano Prignano Jr. is among the topics slated for tomorrow's meeting of the Providence Retirement Board. Also slated for consideration are the retirement benefits of Buddy Cianci and his former right-hand man, Frank Corrente.