Mickey Rourke is in a race against time to get the mafia movie, “The Ice Man,” made.

‘The Ice Man,’ the true story of hired killer Richard Kuklinski, is based on the bestselling book of the same name by Philip Carlo, who is suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease. Rourke, who is cast as Kuklinski, told the New York Post he wants to get it made while Carlo is still alive. He said the greatest challenge of making the movie was “getting it released in time” for Carlo, because, “He doesn’t have much time.”

Rourke talked to the Post at a party celebrating the author’s latest book, “The Butcher,” a biography of another hit man, Tommy “Karate” Pitera. Carlo attended the party in a wheelchair.

Other non-fiction works by Carlo include ‘Gaspipe: Confessions of a Mafia Boss,’ about the life and crimes of Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso, the head of the Lucchese family; and ‘The Night Stalker: The Life and Crimes of Richard Ramirez.’ Ramirez terrorized Los Angeles County for fourteen months in the 1980s, stealing into homes in the middle of the night and taking twenty-nine lives. Carlo spent over two hundred hours with Ramirez on San Quentin’s death row.

According to his own website, Carlo was raised in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, “ground zero for the New York Mafia” and as a youth was “literally surrounded by mafiosi.” When he was sixteen years old, Carlo was shot in the head in a gang war on Avenue X.  He was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s in 2004 and wrote both ‘The Butcher’ and ‘Gaspipe’ while suffering from the disease. He is currently writing ‘Killers,’ which is “an intimate look at how he managed to get all these criminals to talk to him while being stalked by the grim reaper himself.” He is also researching a book about Colombian drug lord Juan Carlos Abbadia, aka “Lollipop.”

(Photo by PR Photos)