Getting to Know: Joe Pesci

Few actors have had to wait as patiently for their overnight success as Joe Pesci. He had been trying to make it in show business for almost 20 years before he finally broke through. But fame isn't everything to the seventysomething New Jerseyite, as he has spent much of the last two decades in early retirement. Cinema Paradiso takes a look at the life and career of one of American cinema's least conventional stars.

Joe Pesci isn't one for the limelight. 'I'm a bore,' he once said. 'I save all my energy for my characters.' Oliver Stone clearly knows what he means, as he claimed that Pesci was like 'a Tasmanian devil' the moment he called 'Action!' on the set of JFK (1993). While playing potential conspirator David Ferrie, Pesci repurposed Winston Churchill's quotation about the Soviet Union by stating that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was 'a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma'. But this isn't a bad description of the 5'5" actor, who has very much gone his own way since first capturing the public imagination in 1980.

The Long and Winding Road

One of three children, Joseph Frank Pesci was born in Newark, New Jersey on 9 February 1943. Mother Mary worked part-time as a barber, while father Angelo had three jobs, driving a forklift by day for General Motors and spending his evenings bartending or labouring at the Anheuser-Busch brewery. Having known poverty, Angelo was so keen to ensure that Joe had a chance of making something of himself that he paid for acting, singing and tap-dancing lessons. He also encouraged his son to play the guitar and was delighted when he started appearing on Broadway from the age of five. Indeed, by the time he was 10, Joe had landed a recurring slot on the WNBT TV show, Star Time Kids.

Reflecting on his experiences year later, Pesci complained, 'I grew up in the business. I had no choice.' Yet, while he might have wished to do something 'more calming, in a different area where I did not have to use my emotions', he remained intrigued by performing and played such an important role in introducing friends Frankie Valli and Tommy DeVito to songwriter Bob Gaudio that he became a character in a Broadway musical about the formation of The Four Seasons. In Clint Eastwood's 2005 film version of Jersey Boys, Pesci is played by Joey Russo, who even gets to repeat the actor's famous line from Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas (1990), 'Funny how?'

While Valli and DeVito went off to enjoy a string of hits, Pesci began playing guitar with Joey Dee and The Starlighters and can be spotted strumming away in Greg Garrison's Peppermint Lounge musical, Hey, Let's Twist (1961). As the Sixties started swinging, Pesci adopted such stage names as Jonathan Marcus, Joey Prima and Joey Cannon before releasing the 1968 album, Little Joe Sure Can Sing!, under the name Joe Ritchie. Several of the tracks were Beatle and Bee Gee covers, but the LP made little impact and Pesci was forced to follow his mother into barbering.

The roar of the greasepaint remined strong, however, and Pesci decided to form a comedy double act with fellow singer, Frank Vincent. Exchanging insults and quickfire repartee, Vincent and Pesci borrowed heavily from the likes of Don Rickles and Bud Abbott and Lou Costello. In 1975, they got their big chance on Broadway, only for their show, The New Vaudevillians, to close after a week. Undaunted, the pair landed roles in Ralph De Vito's The Death Collector (aka Family Enforcer, 1976), a low-budget crime movie that is available to rent from Cinema Paradiso.

It's well worth checking out, as it so impressed up-and-coming director Martin Scorsese that he cast Pesci in Raging Bull (1980). Indeed, he recognised the chemistry and Pesci and Vincent during their abduction scene and reunited them as Joey LaMotta and Salvy for a brutal scrap on the Copacabana sidewalk, which he followed by having Billy Batts needle Tommy DeVito into taking murderous revenge in GoodFellas. However, Scorsese allowed Vincent to win one bout, as Frank Marino swings a baseball bat at Nicky Santoro in Casino (1995). Back in 1976, however, such scenes seemed a world away, as Pesci's big-screen acting bow caused so few ripples that he found himself digging ditches for $15 a day during a fruitless stint in Hollywood and Las Vegas. He returned home on hearing that his father was dying and spent the next three years managing and living above Amici's Restaurant on 187th Street in The Bronx.

The Scorsese Connection

As Cinema Paradiso noted in its Instant Expert's Guide to Martin Scorsese, the director of Taxi Driver (1976) and New York, New York (1977) feared he had ruined his career by overdosing in 1978. However, frequent collaborator Robert De Niro was determined to get him working again and a grateful Scorsese agreed to make his friend's pet project, Raging Bull. While famously piling on the pounds to play Jake LaMotta, De Niro roomed with Pesci so that they could develop a fraternal rapport. In rewriting the screenplay, Paul Schrader had restored Joey to the LaMotta circle, as his sibling had excluded him from his memoir. Joey's role is to watch Jake's back as he rises up the ratings, but Pesci suffered for his art, as De Niro accidentally broke a rib during a sparring scene that made the final cut.

Joey also keeps an eye on his sister-in-law, Vickie (Cathy Moriarty), and her flirtation with Salvy Batts (Frank Vincent) sparks Pesci's show-reel highlight, which undoubtedly contributed to him being nominated for Best Supporting Actor. He lost out to Timothy Hutton in Robert Redford's Best Picture winner, Ordinary People (1980), but Pesci had announced himself as a talent to watch. We'll see below how he fared over the next decade, but our focus for the moment remains on Pesci's collaborations with Martin Scorsese.

Even though Scorsese had vowed not to make another gangster picture, he had been so taken with Nicholas Pileggi's Wiseguy that he knew he had to film it. He worked with the reporter on 12 drafts of the screenplay, which incorporated dialogue provided by the GoodFellas cast during rehearsals. As Tommy DeVito (who was modelled on real-life hoodlum Thomas DeSimone), Pesci based his standout 'Funny how?' speech on his time as a waiter, when he had attempted to ingratiate himself with a gangster customer by complimenting him on his wit. He brings a touch of pugnacious authenticity to the rise Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) through the ranks of the gang run by Irishman Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro) and he was rewarded with the Academy Award after beating off competition from Bruce Davison in Norman René's Longtime Companion, Andy García in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part III, Graham Greene in Kevin Costner's Dances With Wolves and Al Pacino in Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy, all which are available on high quality disc from Cinema Paradiso.

Another Pileggi tome, Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas, provided the inspiration for Pesci's next Scorsese assignment, Casino. While he played Nicky Santoro, a made man not dissimilar to mob enforcer Anthony Spilotro, De Niro was cast as Sam 'Ace' Rothstein, who was based on Frank 'Lefty' Rosenthal, who had run a string of casinos for the Chicago Outfit in the 1970s. Once again, Pesci oozes swaggering malevolence, as he falls foul of the Vegas authorities while carrying out De Niro's dirty work. When it came to awards season, however, critics and peers felt they had seen it all before and only Sharon Stone received an Oscar nomination for her work as Rothstein's put-upon wife, Ginger McKenna.

Mr Wonderful

As is often the case when confronted with a unique talent, Hollywood wasn't really sure what to do with Joe Pesci. Having been well down the cast in Jack Hofsiss's Valium addiction drama, I'm Dancing As Fast As I Can, Pesci played a bowling alley manager who moonlights as a lounge singer in German director Peter Lilienthal's undervalued Dear Mr Wonderful (both 1982). Following an edgy teaming with Rodney Dangerfield in James Signorelli's Easy Money, Pesci was lured back into a life of crime to join Mickey Rourke in trying to muscle on to gold prospector Gene Hackman's turf in order to open a casino in Nicolas Roeg's Eureka (both 1983), which was based on the 1943 murder in the Bahamas of mine owner Sir Harry Oakes.

The mob also beckoned when Pesci was reunited with De Niro in Sergio Leone's troubled epic, Once Upon a Time in America. Despite his billing, Pesci makes only a brief appearance in the 1933 segment as Frankie Minaldi, who hires lifelong buddies Noodles (De Niro) and Max (James Woods) for a jewel robbery in Detroit. He signed up with another Italian icon, Alberto Sordi, for Everybody in Jail (both 1984), but didn't make another movie until French director Élie Chouraqui cast him as CIA agent-turned-bodyguard Scott Glenn's buddy in Man on Fire (1987). But Pesci was struggling to find a niche, especially as his stint as private eye Rocky Nelson had been so short lived in the TV series, Half Nelson (1985).

Salvation came in the unlikely form of a guest slot as crime boss Frankie Lideo in the 'Smooth Criminal' segment of Michael Jackson's vanity project, Moonwalker (1988). The same year saw Pesci play author John Dos Passos in José María Sánchez's TV-movie, The Legendary Life of Ernest Hemingway, which starred Victor Garber in the title role. But the Jackson gig put Pesci back in the spotlight and he seized the opportunity when Richard Donner cast him as Leo Getz, the yakkety federal witness who helps LAPD duo Martin Riggs (Mel Gibson) and Roger Murtaugh (Danny Glover) nail South African diplomat Arjen Rudd (Joss Ackland) and security agent Pieter Vorstedt (Derrick O'Connor) for their part in smuggling gold krugerrands in Lethal Weapon 2 (1989).

Indeed, Pesci was such a fast-talking hit that he was invited back to help the soon-to-retire Murtaugh sell his house in Lethal Weapon 3 (1992). However, he winds up playing a key role in the apprehension of cop-turned-arms smuggler, Jack Travis (Stuart Wilson), while in Lethal Weapon 4 (1998) he proved useful in the Chinatown dental office where Riggs and Murtagh are interviewing Benny Chan (Kim Chan) about triad involvement in a people trafficking racket. But Pesci was back on the wrong side of the law with his unbilled, if sizeable cameo as Leo Carell (Joe Pesci), the mobster who plans the hit witnessed by conceptual artist Anne Benton (Jodie Foster), in Catchfire (1990), which Dennis Hopper had credited to Alan Smithee until he signed the extended director's cut, Backtrack, which has barely been seen since premiering on American television.

Alan Alda latched on to Pesci's comic talents in casting him as his brother-in-law in Betsy's Wedding, a much-maligned family farce that follows the efforts of Alda's Long Island builder to give daughter Molly Ringwald a day to remember. Pesci amuses as Madeline Kahn's wheeler-dealing sibling, but the critics turned so viciously on the film that both Ringwald and Ally Sheedy (as her older sister) were nominated for Golden Raspberry Awards. By contrast, gong season proved kind to Pesci, as he won his Oscar for GoodFellas. Moreover, he scored one of the biggest box-office hits of his career as Harry Lyme, the housebreaker who gets more than he bargained for when he attempts to break into a seemingly empy Chicago abode in Chris Columbus's Home Alone (all 1990).

Pesci would reunite with Macaulay Culkin's Kevin McCallister and Daniel Stern's hapless accomplice Marvin Murchins in Columbus's Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), which sees the tweenager confounding the fugitive duo's bid to rob Duncan's Toy Chest. By the time he made the sequel, Pesci had already excelled in the scene-stealing role of conspiring pilot David Ferrie in Oliver Stone's JFK and further demonstrated his comic chops as shyster landlord Louie Kritski in Rod Daniel's The Super (both 1991). He also did a nice job of playing Leon 'Bernzy' Bernstein in Howard Franklin's The Public Eye (1992), which was set in New York in the 1940s and drew inspiration from the career of legendary shutterbug, Arthur 'Weegee' Fellig. Sadly, neither of the latter pictures is currently available on disc, but they attest to the fact that Hollywood was still finding it difficult to accommodate an idiosyncratic talent.

Slipping From View

Although he was primarily seen as a character actor, Pesci did snag the occasional lead. However, screenwriter Dale Launer wanted Robert De Niro to play Vincent LaGuardia Gambino in Jonathan Lynn's My Cousin Vinny (1992), in which a personal injury lawyer from Brooklyn heads to Alabama to defend cousin Bill Gambini (Ralph Macchio) after he has been wrongfully accused of murder. The role was perfect for Pesci and his courtroom exchanges with judge Fred Gwynne and district attorney Lane Smith are hilarious. Yet, he was upstaged by Marisa Tomei, who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, even though the studio had considered ditching fiancée Mona Lisa Vito during shooting.

Despite her success, Tomei vetoed a sequel that would have brought the pair to Britain. But Pesci sort of revisited the role six years later, when he released his second album, Vincent LaGuardia Gambini Sings Just For You, which included the single, 'Wise Guy', which reworked Blondie's 1980 hit, 'Rapture' into a gangsta rap. Music has continued to play a role in Pesci's career, as he guested in Chang Yoon-ha's Jimmy Scott documentary, I Go Back Home (2016), and recorded a third album, Pesci...Still Singing, in 2019, which contains a duet with Maroon 5's Adam Levine on the Stevie Wonder classic, 'Ma Cherie Amour'.

Prior to their reunion on Martin Scorsese's Casino, Robert De Niro had given Pesci a small, but significant role in the funeral sequence of his directorial debut, A Bronx Tale (1993). This is available on both DVD and Blu-ray from Cinema Paradiso, while Casino is also on 4K. Nowhere else offers renters such a wide choice when it comes to how best to enjoy their screen favourites. Why not tell your friends?

Frustratingly, it's not currently possible to see Pesci's performance as the homeless Simon Wilder teaching Harvard law students Brendan Fraser and Patrick Dempsey some home truths in Alek Keshishian's With Honors (1994). But Cinema Paradiso users can enjoy his partnership with Christian Slater in Barry Levinson's Jimmy Hollywood (1994), which sees washed-up Hollywood actor Jimmy Alto assume the identity of crime vigilante 'Jericho' in order to record crooks in the act and turn the tapes over to the police. Jimmy emerges from his adventures unscathed, but, while making Casino, Pesci managed to break the same rib that De Niro had busted on Raging Bull.

Two years passed before Pesci returned to the screen, although the gap was lengthened by the studio deciding to cast Sinbad as Myron Larabee, the Minneapolis mailman competing for a Turbo-Man with Arnold Schwarzenegger in Brian Levant's Jingle All the Way (1996). He made up for his absence, however, with a seething display of comic villainy as mob hitman Tommy Spinelli, whose luggage gets mixed up in transit with that of Mexico-bound tourist Charlie Pritchett (Andy Comeau) in Tom Schulman's cult favourite, 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag. And Pesci enjoyed hooking up with Danny Glover for Christopher Cain's Gone Fishin' (both 1997), which sees a pair of old friends become involved with a suave British con man during an angling trip to the Florida Everglades.

But acting wasn't providing the same buzz as it had before and the Razzie nomination for Lethal Weapon 4 seemed to be the last straw. 'I love to star in movies,' Pesci had told an interviewer in 1992. 'But I want to have good roles. It doesn't help to get starring roles in something that's no good. I mean, that will just kill you.' During the same year, he had a strange experience on the golf course. While lining up a shot on the first tee, Pesci had pulled away in a daze. 'I didn't know who the hell was about to hit that golf ball,' he told the Baltimore Sun. 'Was it Leo Getz or David Ferrie or Tommy or Harry or Joe? I've spent so much time as somebody else, and so little time as myself, I lost sight of who I was for an instant.

Tired of giving up his life to chase success, Pesci took a sabbatical that gradually became a form of semi-retirement. De Niro coaxed him back in front of the camera for a cameo as Joseph Palmi, a mobster based on Sam Giancana and Santo Trafficante, Jr., in the espionage saga, The Good Shepherd (2006), which examines the origins of the Central Intelligence Agency. Taylor Hackford also made an offer that Pesci couldn't refuse when he paired him with wife Helen Mirren in Love Ranch (2010), which provides an à clef account of how Joe and Sally Conforte opened America's first legalised brothel, the Mustang Ranch in Nevada, which had featured in Don Siegel's crime drama, Charley Varrick (1973).

In 2011, Pesci sued the makers of Kevin Connolly's Gotti (2018) for breaking a promise to cast him as Angelo Ruggiero after he had gained 30 pounds for the role. The real-life mobster was eventually played by Pruitt Taylor Vance after Pesci had settled out of court for undisclosed compensation. However, he was in no hurry to return to work and, having voiced a flatulent mosquito in Maxim Fadeev's A Warrior's Tale (2015), he turned down the role that went to Alan Alda in Louis CK's 2016 web series, Horace and Pete. But we hadn't quite seen the last of Joe Pesci, as Martin Scorsese finally got his man (reportedly after over 40 refusals) to play Russell Bufalino in The Irishman (2019), Who knows where he might pop up next?