JOE’S BACK!
The Irishman marks the glorious return of Pesci
Much ado has been made about Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, from its marathon run-time of three and a half hours to the uncanny technology used to deage its stars to the fact that most viewers will watch the master director’s epic on Netflix instead of in a movie theatre.
Heck, even Scorsese’s feelings on Marvel movies — spoiler alert: He’s not fond of them, a fact that should shock no one but seemed to shock everyone — entered the dialogue surrounding this flick.
In all this, we’ve overlooked one of the most exciting aspects: the Joe Pesci of it all. Because
Joe Pesci is back, baby!
Look, we pop culture writers love to declare that someone’s having some sort of renaissance, which we often celebrate by taking an actor’s name and adding -aissance to it. That’s how this reporter came to write about the Keanussaince and the Goldblumaissance, even though Keanu Reeves and Jeff Goldblum had never actually disappeared for a significant portion of time.
It may seem, like Pesci is one such case. He’s been a constant in many of our lives. Can you count how many times you’ve seen Pesci’s face on your TV in those decades? If you’re anything like the rest of us lazy early-afternoon or late-night cable surfers, then just between Goodfellas, My Cousin Vinny, a Lethal Weapon or two and Home Alone, that number probably flirts with triple digits.
But Joe Pesci is having a comeback. Since 1998, he’s appeared in three major projects: a small role in 2006’s The Good Shepherd, the second film directed by his friend Robert De Niro; 2010’s Love Ranch, about the couple who opened the first legal brothel in Nevada; and (his voice in) 2015’s animated A Warrior’s Tail. (For comparison, in 1992 alone, he appeared in four movies and a TV show.) And now, he has been nominated for a Golden Globe for his role in The Irishman.
In some ways, his life seems like a Sisyphean exercise in attempting to avoid working as an actor. The New Jersey-born Italian-american actor entered show business earlier than most of us enter school. As a five-yearold, he acted in plays around New York City. By 10, he regularly appeared on TV’S Startime Kids.
After a brief stint in Hollywood, during which he appeared in the 1976 indie The Death Collector, Pesci moved to the Bronx to manage a restaurant named Amici’s. That little movie caught the eye of Scorsese and De Niro, however, and he was pulled back into show business with his role in 1980’s Raging Bull.
Then, he became a true actor, with parts in Once Upon a Time in America, Man on Fire and even Home Alone while continuing to work with Scorsese in such classics as Goodfellas and Casino.
Then the typecasting began.
He’d always played Mafia types, generally unhinged psychopaths who went from zero to murder in a second. That Italian Brooklyn accent. That kinetic energy packed into his short frame. That near-manic voice. All of it combined in the hands of a skilled director. That’s what makes his “You think I’m funny? Funny how, like a clown” speech so powerful in Goodfellas and his lawyer such a hilarious fish-out-of-water in My Cousin Vinny.
Soon, though, every time any second-rate director needed a “Joe Pesci-type,” they simply typecast Joe Pesci. After 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag and Gone Fishin’, the man was done.
In his own quiet way, Pesci showed fortitude. He walked away to play jazz and golf. He didn’t return in a major project until he could do something he felt was important, or at least until he was pestered enough.
He reportedly turned down the role in The Irishman a whopping 40 times before De Niro persuaded him to join. “We’re friends and he loves Marty and I said, ‘Come on, this is it, let’s do it, let’s try and do it,’” De Niro told The Hollywood Reporter. “He understood, he loves Marty and wanted the experience of working with him again and me and Al.”
The Irishman is about growing older, perhaps growing irrelevant, and looking back at the all the choices that make up a life.
Pesci gives a phenomenal performance as Russell Bufalino, a mobster who takes hit man Frank Sheeran (De Niro) under his wing. Unlike the characters of his past, Pesci’s Bufalino is a somewhat quiet, measured man. Business is business, but there’s no personal score settling, no nonsense.
After nearly a decade, Pesci returned with the most thoughtful, restrained performance of his career.