THE IRISHMAN, A Martin Scorsese Picture with de Niro, Pacino, Pesci, Keitel

love when u show up to call people poseurs

― Jordan Pickford LOLverdrive (Neanderthal), Monday, December 2, 2019 5:09 PM bookmarkflaglink

On that Sopranos tip, it was good to see Robert Funaro and Kate Narduzzi. I also got a real "declining Uncle Junior" vibe from the brief Joe Kennedy scene, kinda wonder if that was Dominick Chianese in an uncredited cameo...

― henry s, Monday, December 2, 2019 4:53 PM (fifty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

also always fun to see paul herman aka beansie as one of deniro's first mob victims.

Oh yeah, I forgot about Beansie!

Is Jerry Vale famous?? I’ve never heard of him. I did spot that was meant to be Rickles doing the comedy though so swings and roundabouts.

He was. He was also in both Casino and Goodfellas as himself.

He doesn't perform much anymore tho. Possibly because he's dead.

#14 US hit, 1956

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3RKMuyG_G4

I can't stand that comic who plays Rickles, but the rhythm and material were a pretty good rip, as one can compare the mob jokes here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5_V9RT8aR8

https://news.avclub.com/martin-scorsese-politely-reminds-everyone-the-irishman-1840154689?rev=1575321645319&utm_content=Main&utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_campaign=SF

In reality it was Peter Lemongello who was singing that night at the Copa that Crazy Joe dropped in. Lemongello has an interesting story himself, see Wiki.

btw kid next to me on the subway was watching the film hunched over his phone … skipping 30 seconds ahead frequently (any domestic scenes)

from Wiki:

Earlier that evening, the Gallo party had visited the Copacabana with actor Jerry Orbach and Orbach's wife, Marta, to see a performance by comedian Don Rickles and singer Peter Lemongello.

kinda wonder if that was Dominick Chianese in an uncredited cameo...

thought the same but it's credited to 'eugene bunge'

I agree with Marty that Marvel garbage is not cinema but I am watching the I-man on my phone in hour long intervals over a couple of days (and it’s great)

Eugene Bunge totally seems like a made-up name but I'll take Marty at his word...

sounds like a serial killer that Macabre wrote a song about

i keep thinking about Frank not wanting to be cremated. he wants to be put inside a metal box in a building because it’s less final. And even insisting on keeping the door open at the end. which i get is a hoffa nod but also feels like a resistance against finality too.

it’s like, for all his sociopathic tendencies & general matter of factness about the death of others, it’s an interesting contradiction that he’s so precious about his own end.

Since when is there WiFi in the subway??

xp That's a great point... he doesn't seem like a very bright guy, and he's been m/l a pushover his whole life, his "friends" just used him, there is something in the literalism of his final wishes, like how he goes "you know just in case, I don't want to be burned up, you never know..."
he has a very common and not particularly sophisticated fear of death, the ultimate unknown.

Its been like two years! Not reliable but still.

de Blasio needs to drop out so can he fix the fucking wifi in the subway

he's been m/l a pushover his whole life, his "friends" just used him

this is rly key i think. what he's been is an employee.

i kept thinking about the different relationships to work the fish conversation reveals: one guy who'll drive a fish around on command without even wondering about its nature; another who thinks he's a bigshot because he knows the names of fish; a third who says, have you ever even fucking fished. only hoffa has performed the act of will, at the very point of production, that is actually fishing. the others just take orders, one of them proud to understand them a little better than the other.

but what silent frank knows that hoffa does not is that hoffa is really the fish, the already-dead thing in the back seat the driver doesn't even wonder about. frank is an unfree instrument who pales beside the image of his promethean worker-hero as a free and open-eyed wielder of power, but he has helped to reduce the actual man to a tool like himself. and the man doesn't know it and keeps on talking like he's a fisherman.

frank chooses one father over another but he also chooses to be a model employee, and stays one for so long that, at the end, when everyone is gone, even (as kevin points out) his greatest benefactor (his boss), and there's no one left he's working for, his will is nevertheless completely atrophied, and he does not even have a self left to be. (i thought the narration was to us-- that is, to no one-- rather than to the priest, but idk.) i think there is actually a lot going on in the movie re: what organized labor was vs what the mob made of it, tho it is couched in this personal story.

I was wondering a bit, does he have a union pension? Or does he lose that when he goes to jail?

idk! movie seems to make a lot of hoffa's keeping it in jail being unusual, but i prob under-understood this.

he has helped to reduce the actual man to a tool like himself

sry should have added: or even less, to a resource.

dlh you’re a poet man

yes to Hoffa as "the fish"

I am watching the I-man on my phone in hour long intervals

u can go str8 to hell

yeah great post dlh.

That's a great point... he doesn't seem like a very bright guy, and he's been m/l a pushover his whole life, his "friends" just used him, there is something in the literalism of his final wishes, like how he goes "you know just in case, I don't want to be burned up, you never know..."

I saw the fear of his final wishes as an extension of his pushover personality. He's so completely passive and accustomed to never making choices, accepting the finality of death is like the ultimate act of will, which he cant muster. His whole life has been about just kind of hanging around and being available to allow larger outside forces to work on him/through him, even in death his mindset is "let me hang around in case something important happens to me."

yeah I realized the other day that the coffin is the only real choice he makes semi-independently in practically the whole movie

Hence why his daughter's decision to avoid contact flummoxes him: an act demonstrating more will than he's ever shown. Even so, he's obv hurt, but he's so passive he's like "What are ya gonna do?"

Made even more vexing by the fact that she is so warm towards Hoffa, who Frank sees as a peer / no more compromised than him

anthology films just sent this out; it's a 10 year old writing a classroom paper after a trip to the (NY independent art) theater

Independent vs. Corporation
By Nadia (5th grader, NY public schools)

"Imagine you are walking down the street, and you see a ginormous movie theatre. On one of the signs, it says that a new movie is coming out starring one of the most famous actors. Everywhere you go, you see ads for this movie. That is a corporate release, and all though we all take part in it, it is kicking independent and experimental artists aside.

A lot of the movies we see are sponsored, or repeatedly played, meaning that they get a lot of attention. These movies are called Major Motion pictures, and most movie theaters in New York show these Major Motion pictures. On the other hand, there are very few places that screen the independent movies in New York. But do the independent artists care?

A lot of the independent films are experimental, meaning that they are not necessarily only about the public’s take on it, but it is mostly about finding the things you can do on film. For example, these films may never be as famous as major motion pictures, but the artist still gets something out of making it. A lot of artists don’t make art to make money, but to be happy, or experiment with art.

Some artist's entire career is to make high budget movies. Those movies usually get more attention, money, and are featured in more discussions. The creator of the high budget film gets more famous. Those people’s objective in life is to become a famous movie creator, so they aim for corporate releases, while independent artists aim to expand what film can be.

These independent artist’s films are as important as any other artists films are. But one of the problems is that a lot of independent artists get shoved to the side by major motion pictures. That is why it is so important that archives such as Anthology Film Archives show these independent films, and support these independent artists. So let me leave you with a question, if you wanted to be a movie producer, would you be an independent artist, or a corporate artist?"

https://i.imgur.com/79Lh452.jpg

Nadia (5th grader, NY public schools) otm

Finished this last night, did you guys talk about Bronsonliño yet?

i mean.... he's like, in it? Though to be fair he has more lines than Paquin, so

I'm amused that half of Bobby Cannavale's lines came while chewing.

Also re: the two titles

It’s interesting to me that Marty hasn’t had a bold, post-rock band-ass title since “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” Pretty much everything in the last 45 years for him has just been plain, matter-of-fact titles about what the film is about ie, Goodfellas, Casino, The Aviator, Joker

Between Bronson in The Irishman and Necro in Good Time its a boom time for the goon cru at the movies

I saw the fear of his final wishes as an extension of his pushover personality.

yeah I realized the other day that the coffin is the only real choice he makes semi-independently in practically the whole movie

Hence why his daughter's decision to avoid contact flummoxes him: an act demonstrating more will than he's ever shown

yes! at the beginning when pesci asks him point blank if he was afraid of dying he not only describes becoming passive in the war but then immediately begins stammering for the first time as if for fear of having to describe without euphemism orders he has taken:

once i saw that i was getting through the war, i looked around me, and i said, i said, from now on whatever happens happens... you know, y-you got orders, you follow them. they tell you to bring some prisoners into-- prisoners into the-- into the woods, yknow? a-a-a-and t-t-they don't tell you what to do. but. they just say, you know, hurry up.

it's a movie about being a postwar company man. he even gets a watch!

re the title i was in the honolulu airport bookstore the other day and they had the sheeran memoir, but of course it had been retitled THE IRISHMAN, and i kept loling at the unfairness somehow of making it look like someone had written a book about themselves and called it THE IRISHMAN

see? He was too passive to even approve the title change.

they tell you the, they tell you the title's gonna cause confusion, yknow? and they don't tell you what to do, but

lol

thought it was interesting that after a long period of shooting strictly in 2.35:1 cinemascope scorsese went back to the non-anamorphic 1.85:1 for this, which he last used for goodfellas.

not sure it has any non-technical reason (like, maybe 1.85 was better for the cameras that were used to do the de-aging shit), but had me wondering if it was meant to draw a visual-language line back to goodfellas, which this film is certainly in conversation with

A little more on the Walnut Creek thing

https://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/irishman-bufalino-true-story-mob-hit-walnut-creek-14875864.php

re the title i was in the honolulu airport bookstore the other day and they had the sheeran memoir, but of course it had been retitled THE IRISHMAN, and i kept loling at the unfairness somehow of making it look like someone had written a book about themselves and called it THE IRISHMAN

Funny, when someone watching the movie cold would assume from the opening and end that it's called I HEARD YOU PAINT HOUSES (really liked those three opening titles).

This film has many flaws, but - a couple of days after viewing - it also has a really haunting quality that stays with you and grows within you. Pvmic, but this is definitely Scorsese's ghost movie - DeNiro, pale white like a ghost by the end. I think it really helped that I finally got around to watching the Rolling Thunder documentary the night before; In Sight and Sound, Scorsese says that some of the things he'd experimented with in Rolling Thunder bled into the way he went about making The Irishman, and that's really true - not only thematic links - death of the dream, something rotten at the heart of the American empire etc etc - but many stylistic similarities too, especially the way that found footage is used in both. There's a lot about masks and truth (surprise) in Rolling Thunder and I'm charitably taking the almost disastrous de-ageification effects here as a continuation of that conversation - DeNiro, Pesci, Pacino wearing masks of their own younger selves, death masks.

just read the whole thread, great posts throughout. bg's "no one left to throw him away" and dlh's "postwar company man" takes stand out right this second. i saw this on sunday on an enormous screen at the Belasco Theatre (normally a stage-show venue - a very cushy movie experience i gotta say!) and haven't been able to stop thinking about it. didn't feel the length at all. agreed that not giving a little more context to organized labor feels sort of irresponsible, like scorsese is basically ceding all political ground to the creators of anti-labor political cartoons. but it's a movie about men more than movements, or maybe men who belong to organizations would be a better way to put it. and hoffa (as the one who has caught fish) is the only person who can see himself outside the organization, or at the top of one (it's MY union).

this is another way to frame hoffa's inability to grasp that what frank is telling him is "if you do this they will murder you," and frank's inability to pose this explicitly despite all their years together. frank, and bufalino, are speaking in company lingo (the mob equivalent of AT&T's "men with bell-shaped heads" - men with gun-shaped heads perhaps), and hoffa is speaking as an individual. this does not make him heroic; it just explains his doom. the tragedy is like the kind you learn in high school... nobody changes, they are exactly the people they are and this leads to why they die the way they die. frank lives to the end almost by accident but also partly because of who he is in a similar way, i think.

"it's what it is" was my favorite piece of dialogue.

because you sensed Hoffa might have understood, but that he also might not have understood the gravity, to your point.