Underboss of Martin Scorsese’s Queens-based mob when Paul Sorvino was offered the role of Paul Cicero “Goodfellas” (1990), He didn’t want to accept it. In the first place, he was a proud Italian-American. A lover of Italian culture, especially food and music, he did not tend to play Mafioso. In addition, Sorvino, who died on Monday at the age of 83, was a whimsical man who liked to play a whimsical man. Pauly was mainly brick. In the early scenes of the movie, much is done about how most of the criminal’s instructions were carried out with a mere nod.
He accepted the role anyway and went into rehearsals. A few days before the shooting began, he called the agent and asked if he could be released on bail.and 2015 panel At the Tribeca Film Festival, which commemorates the 25th anniversary of “Goodfellas,” Sorvino enjoyed a bit of the people who praised him for his “choice,” which became one of his signature roles. He mocked the idea of ”choice” and claimed that “I found the man and he made the choice.”
“It was very difficult,” Sorvino told panel moderator Jon Stewart. “I’m a poet, an opera singer, a writer … none of them are gangsters.” But then, for Solvino, a moment came. In his story on this panel, it was when he was straightening his tie. In other stories, he had some spinach removed from between his teeth. In both versions, Sorvino looked in the mirror. And there was a fixed frown to meet him.
“I saw this guy.” And that was it.
Solvino’s vision of Pauly was an incredibly subtle nuanced depiction of a man on the page who was as simple and unpleasant as a sudden death. In the non-fiction book Wise Guy, which was the basis of Goodfellas, author Nick Pilage said, “It was understood on the street that Paul Vario had been renamed the gangster for the film.” I am writing. The toughest and most violent gangster in York. In the city’s Brownsville-East New York area, “there are always a lot of bodies, and in the 1960s and 1970s, Vario thugs did most of the powerful weapons work,” Pillegi added later. I did. A head beaten by a picket line, a businessman squeezed by loan shark payments, an independent person straightening on the territorial line, a witness who could be killed, and a stool pigeon buried. “
Vario was a middle manager in the mayhem at the time. Sorvino acts as a man who keeps him calm, tried To line up his subordinates.
Paul Sorvino (1939-2022)
The tough guy actor best known for his role as gangster Paul Cicero in “Good Fellows” died at the age of 83.
Many of “Good fellas” (streaming HBO Max) Is devoted to how the three subordinates, played by Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro, were not lined up. Pauly can be a tolerant and affectionate “dad”. Sorvino takes advantage of his natural warmth when greeting “earner” Jimmy (De Niro) at the casino in the back room early in the film. Later, he oversaw an elaborate dinner in prison and had a special system for slicing garlic, and when selmate Henry (Liotta) brought in wine and scotch, he said, “Now we are. You can eat it. ” Uncle Pauly, who presides over the celebration of Henry’s liberation from the joint.
But Sorvino kills when he is playing the bricks. At that celebration, he takes Henry to the backyard. Henry was dealing with drugs in prison with Pauly’s tacit approval. Now in fixed frown mode, Pauly tells Henry “away from the trash.” When Henry is ridiculous, Pauly doesn’t have it. “Don’t make fun of me. Just don’t do it.” Without losing the intonation on the outside of the character, Solvino cuts out the words to snap his neck.
Henry and his cheerful man pay a portion of the profits they didn’t get or lie to his face in honor of Pauly.The dynamics of these characters are complex — Pauly is too sharp No I know he’s been fooled, but what can he do about it? One of the things he can do is to remove Joe Pesci’s Tommy from the group and use his brother Taddy Cicero (Frank DiLeo) as his deadly agent.
Pauly’s last words to Henry- “Now I have to turn my back” -is as chilling as any of the movie’s most terrifying sights.
Sorvino’s decades of career have been checked. One of his first protagonists was the highly misunderstood role of a male rape victim in his ABC Movie of the Week in 1974. “It couldn’t happen to a better person.” 1974 edition of “Gambler” ( Rent or buy He played a bookmaker named Hip, a character adjacent to the first mob (on major platforms), but this character wasn’t Pauly.
For another taste of the more capricious Solvino, his turn as Curtis Mahoney is a federal investigator disguised as an investigative journalist on Mike Nichols’ highly malicious 1974 The Day of the Dolphins. Kinonau), Worth investigating. Far from a skilled mole, Mahoney is a too talkative bumper. Sorvino is also memorable as Edelson, commander of William Friedkin’s “cruising” (since 1980) undercover police officer Burns (Al Pacino). Rent or buy On major platforms). Assigning his subordinates to work in the underworld of a gay sex club in Manhattan looking for a murderer, Edelson examines Burns’ sexual history with the dullest questions he can imagine, rather than hitting his eyelashes.
Both before and after “Good Fellows,” Solvino regularly appeared in a photo directed and starred by Warren Beatty, more recently “Rules Do Not Apply” (2016).Sorvino’s Filmography after “Good fellas” goes back and forth between solid character roles in indies such as “The Cooler” (2003) and James Gray’s “The Immigrant” (2014) and regular gig actor Dreck. Did.
In 2018, the world learned that the passionate Sorvino is off-screen.In response to the shameful mogul Harvey Weinstein, Sorvino’s enduring abuse and blackball exposure by his daughter, actor Mira Sorvino Told TMZ He wanted Weinstein to spend his time in prison: “Otherwise he would have to meet me.” Sorvino was then involved in uncertain words about what would happen. did not.
The role of a proud father, driven by resentment and justified anger, was well suited to this performer. But I hope he wasn’t obliged to live it.
Glenn Kenny is a critic and author of “Made Men: The Story of’Goodfellas'”.
