Joe Pesci

Mm-hmm.

Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Sylvester Stallone, James Gandolfini.

These are actors? I've literally never heard of any of these people.

[laughs]

Though I know that much.

[laughs]

Oh, very quickly, I was gonna say, in all the years of cinema, uh, since the Lumières curated it, how, how have we never had Danny DeVito and Joe Pesci as opposite each other, as like brothers? 'Cause they're both like little spunky Italian guys.

That's right.

What did he win his second one for?

It's his first movie with Joe Pesci.

Oh, of course, Raging Bull.

Raging Bull, John Cho, Raging Bull.

Scorsese knows what he's doing, or did.

You know what's crazy is that my introduction to Joe Pesci was literally Lethal Weapon 2 and then Home Alone and then My Cousin Vinny, The Super.

And then

after

Scorsese knows what he's doing, or did.

You know what's crazy is that my introduction to Joe Pesci was literally Lethal Weapon 2 and then Home Alone and then My Cousin Vinny, The Super.

And then after I saw like those four movies, then I saw Casino and I saw Goodfellas.

He is such an incredible actor that at no point did I feel like it was cartoonish that he was this, you know, muscle.

And then that, you know, that became too jokey.

And like, "No, we just, we want him really psycho scary, but, but enjoyably so." Like a little, you know, um, um, Pesci, Joe Pesci from Goodfellas kind of crazy.

Yeah.

I mean, we had a b- I had a blast and you know, I kind of pa- patterned his design on, um, Richard Widmark from Kiss of Death, which, you know, that was an inspiration.

In case any of my books ever become videos, I'll have the right.

They can have Joe Pesci play me for all I care.

I don't care.

That's right.

I think Hugh Jackman is more likely for you, Guy, but we can go with Joe Pesci too.

Or Jackie Chan.

Up next on Remarkable People.

he was a working actor with real credits who had for complicated reasons made a specific choice to step back from the industry for a period the carpentry was deliberate he'd gotten frustrated with the lack of control the instability coming into star wars the way he did not as someone desperately auditioning not as someone with a career calculation running in the background but as someone who was genuinely just there who picked up the pages without the specific hunger of trying to get the job gave him something a looseness an absence of the thing actors do when they're performing their suitability for a role rather than just being in one and that looseness is han solo the smirk the sense of a man who's evaluating whether any of this is worth his time if ford had been auditioning properly strategically with his career on the line in the normal way i don't know if you get that pacino as han solo is an intellectual exercise i return to sometimes usually late at night when i should be doing other things pacino and seventy seven was coming off the godfather part two and dog day afternoon he was operating at an almost unreasonable pitch of intensity and solo is not an intense character and solo is a man who uses lightness as armor i cannot make pacino's particular gifts map onto that no matter how i try ha the injury replacement that most altered a film's final form is probably raging bull but not for the reason most people cite robert de niro's preparation for that film the weight gain the boxing training the years of research is well documented enough that it's entered the mythology of method acting but there's a less discussed casting moment earlier in the picture's development John Turturro has spoken about auditioning for Joey LaMotta, the brother.

Joe Pesci got the role and what Pesci brought to Joey, a specific kind of Italian-American volatility that comes from somewhere genuinely personal, a quality of loyalty expressed through aggression, is so specific to Pesci that the scenes between De Niro and Pesci have a texture that wouldn't be there with a different actor.

Pesci had almost left the industry.

He'd been a working actor with limited success, had gone back to restaurant work, and Martin Scorsese found him through De Niro, who'd seen Pesci in a small independent film called The Death Collector.

know um eddie does this sell in conservative talk show world where he's like i've got to annihilate 80 million people uh as the iranian ambassador looks on like mortified as he's being described as sending his entire nation to hell does this sell in right-wing radio in america

So to quote the great Joe Pesci in Casino, he says, if you could have done it, you would have.

And he didn't.

And, you know, it's hard to come out and make policy at a, in my opinion, sort of a value neutral organization that represents all the countries.

pulling an audience and manipulating an audience and making you go see what he wants to see this fucking lady next to me yelled two times that scared me more than what was happening in the fucking movie it was a little distracting I was like lady relax but some good jump scares super funny I also I loved Austin Abrams I love a fucking bumbling guy who's swearing and the effect is you it's like you're watching someone play the game really badly and and and you're hanging out with them and his muttering reminded me of like popeye walking around sage failure and i just love when he's like shit i suck at guns and but the way the

movie what what they real quick the muttering reminded me also of uh joe pesci's character oh yeah yeah i

got it i got it i got it i got it yeah uh and he's just like freaking Fuck, fuck, but that's exactly...

I fucking suck at guns.