“We just played around”: The movie Joe Pesci called “the most fun I’ve ever had”
By Hollywood’s typical standards, because he’s not a very tall man and he doesn’t have a very deep voice, convention indicated that Joe Pesci would be in serious danger of being typecast as motor-mouthed comic relief were the industry to stick firmly to type.
Fortunately, he was far too good an actor for that fate to befall him, with his diminutive stature perfectly complementing the torrents of charismatic rage he would regularly unleash to such spectacular effect. Pesci wasn’t intimidating by the usual definition of the term, but he was damn sure terrifying when he wanted to be.
No movie encapsulated that feeling better than Martin Scorsese’s seminal gangster classic Goodfellas, which deservedly saw Pesci go home with an Academy Award for ‘Best Supporting Actor’. Tommy DeVito is a tightly wound ball of simmering fury, ready to either explode at a moment’s notice or lull the people within close proximity of him to believe that it’s lurking just around the corner.
He was a dab hand at comedy, too, with new generations being introduced to Pesci’s scene-stealing shenanigans for the last three decades after Home Alone instantly took its place among the pantheon of Christmastime classics. That wasn’t the most fun he ever had on set, though, with that distinction being reserved for another light-hearted turn that was as far away from Goodfellas as it got.
Although he was only introduced in the second instalment, Pesci’s Leo Getz became a staple of the Lethal Weapon franchise, even if the sequels made it increasingly clear the character worked much better in small doses. In the second entry, he was the perfect foil for Danny Glover’s buttoned-up Roger Murtaugh and Mel Gibson’s wild-eyed Martin Riggs, turning a dynamic double-act into a top-tier trio.
Notoriously publicity-shy, when Pesci embarked on his first extensive interview for a decade with Empire, he made a point of noting how celebrating Lethal Weapon was a key part of the deal. “I finally decided I should do it, because I owe a lot to Mel and Danny and Joel Silver and Dick Donner,” he explained. “Besides, making the Lethal Weapons was the most fun I’ve ever had. We just played around, you know?”
Improvisation was a key part of his performance, especially when it came to Leo’s unforgettable tirade after getting the wrong order from a drive-thru, which he used as the perfect example to sum up his approach to going off-script. “If there’s something I can grab onto and beat the shit out of, I’ll do it,” he said. “I remember being pissed about drive-thrus, because they do actually fuck you. You go home and there’s no fucking ketchup in the bag. And you can’t go back, because there’s always a long line. So you’re fucked!”
It was drawn from real experience, then, and any self-respecting Lethal Weapon who ever gets the wrong order has only had one go-to response ever since Leo first arrived on the scene.