Name: Joe Pesci Pissed Off A Real Life Goodfella | Letterman
Uploaded: 2023-10-16T22:00:08.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Pesci Pissed Off A Real Life Goodfella | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-10-16. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Pesci Pissed Off A Real Life Goodfella | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-10-16. Transcript available.

Ladies and gentlemen, here now I'm going to read you just a handful of the Joe
Pesci films,
and I think you'll get a sense of what I was talking about.
I believe his first film, Death Collector, I'm not familiar with that work.
His second film, Raging Bull.
How would you like that to be your second?
Once Upon a Time in America, Lethal Weapon 2, Goodfellas, Home Alone, Home
Alone,
like the biggest grossing motion picture ever.
The Super, JFK, and then he goes into JFK, another blockbuster powerhouse movie,
Lethal Weapon 3, and his current film, The Public Eye, and Home Alone 2,
which is, I guess, going to be released about the holiday season, I would hope.
Our next guest, an Academy Award winner and one of the busiest actors today.
A couple of the films I mentioned, Goodfellas, Home Alone, and The Public Eye,
his newest, which opens across the country October 16th.
Ladies and gentlemen, here he is, Joe Pesci.
Nice to see you.
You could break the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar record.
I don't think so.
For long ovations.
How you doing?
Good.
Pleasure to meet you.
You know, I watched that Goodfellas movie.
Man, man was that scary.
What an evil, scary, nasty guy.
I've heard that about you two.
Are you enjoying yourself at Saturday Night Live?
Are you having fun there?
Not yet.
Yeah, okay.
Not yet.
Have you, have you, any time in your career,
I know you've been in show business since you were like five years old.
Right.
Yeah.
Any time in your career, have you done stand-up comedy
or comedy in front of a live audience?
I've done comedy in front of a live audience,
you know, sketch type comedy.
In what form?
Were you a part of a group, part of an act?
I was part of a group.
Yeah.
I was playing guitar and singing,
and my partner in the band was sort of a stand-up comic,
and he was an insult comic.
He would insult the audience,
and I got tired of it after a while.
I started insulting him.
The crowd liked it, so we left them the act.
What year was this?
In the 70s.
Yeah.
And you, it was going to be like a Smothers Brothers sort of thing,
that sort of deal?
I think it was something like that.
Did you ever get in trouble insulting anybody in the audience?
Yeah, sure.
What would happen?
Were you ever, anybody ever come after you?
Well, I think there was one time,
which is probably known,
that was a sort of a wise guy, I guess,
like you in the movie Goodfellas.
Sort of, like that, yeah.
Oh, man.
Oh, God.
And I think it was his wife or something.
I told her, shut up.
See, you know, and that's brainy stuff, too, Joe.
It's not your run-of-the-mill insult.
It's a, shut up.
Yeah.
Well, I wasn't a comic, so.
Pretty good zinger.
I didn't know how to stop hecklers, you know,
and so it wasn't,
and she was doing something in the middle of one of the things that I was,
she just kept going on and on.
I didn't know what to say other than shut up.
And somebody, a friend of her husband or her husband shows up?
Well, yeah, we got, you know, on the intermission,
we got off the stage, the club owner said,
and you know who that was?
No, I don't know.
I don't care.
Yeah.
That kind of thing, you know,
but the I don't care turned into,
well, look, I didn't mean anything.
I mean, come on.
Can't they take a joke?
Hey, we're top-notch comics here, you know.
A guy there wants to see about taking the crease out of your slacks.
Now, you know,
and I found this surprising when I learned of it this afternoon,
and you mentioned it here yourself,
that you did kind of a music elect.
You played the guitar and you sang,
and at one point in your career,
you actually recorded an album,
maybe more than an album.
Was it just the one?
No, I did, there was some singles before that,
and the album was the last thing I did.
Yeah, and was your thinking in those days
that you might just become a musical act,
or were you acting at all then?
I wasn't acting at all,
other than the sketches, you know,
that I was doing.
I couldn't get any work.
And what kind of music were you singing?
It started off to be just rock and roll in the 60s,
and, you know,
turned into more of a jazz kind of thing, jazz blues.
Now, you know, Joe, we have the album here.
Could I buy it?
Could I get it?
Right here.
It's, uh,
and then do you mind if we play a selection?
It depends on what selection you want.
Oh, let's see here.
You know, I have no idea what we're going to...
Got to get you into my life.
All right, here we go.
This is, this is the album.
Just a little bit, though.
No, no, no.
We're going to put the whole thing.
No, no, no.
This is Little Joe,
is what you were calling yourself then?
Yes, Little Joe.
Okay.
All right.
Now, we're going to hear a little of
Got to Get You Into My Life.
Here we go.
Enjoy.
Ooh, you were meant to be near me, ooh, and I want you to hear me say
We'll be together every day.
Gotta get you into my life.
I don't know, they sound similar.
I'll give it to you.
Congratulations.
Now, the first film you were in was, was I right there?
It was Death Collector?
Well, Death Collector was the first one that I had a speaking part in.
And were you, in a movie like Death Collector, were you a bad guy or a good guy?
No good guys in that film.
I was a bad good guy.
And then the second one was Raging Bull.
Well, now, there's quite a big step.
How did you get that part?
Who saw you?
Did somebody see me in Death Collector?
Well, they were casting for, they were, Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese and
Cis Corman were casting for Raging Bull.
And they were looking for someone to play his brother and another part that was
in Pete Savage.
So they screened Raging Bull.
I'm sorry, they screened Death Collector.
And for another guy to play Pete Savage.
And Bob and Martin wanted to know who I was.
Yeah.
And they were interested.
What were you doing when they were looking at this film?
I was managing a restaurant in the Bronx.
It's one of those great stories, isn't it?
They called you up at the restaurant?
There was a phone call when I was out during the day and a waiter gave me a
message when I had gotten back.
He said, Robert De Niro called you.
Call him.
And I said, get in.
Yeah.
But it turned out to be Bob.
Yeah.
That was great.
A great part, great film, and a great career.
Joe Pesce is here.
You know, it occurs to me, we've been talking about all manner of other things,
Saturday Night Live and other films you've done in your recording career.
We have not mentioned the newest motion picture opening in a week or so,
whatever.
What did I say?
It's opening October 16th.
October 16th.
That's right.
It's called Public Eye.
Public Eye.
What is it about?
It's based loosely on the life of a famous paparazzi, one of the originals, in
New York in the 40s.
Ouija was his name.
Very famous crime scene photographer.
Right, right.
And it's, you know, it's about the life that these artists live sometimes.
You know, things they go through to get their shots and things like that.
All right.
And we have a clip, a few minutes of this film and yourself, Barbara Hershey,
is in it.
Right.
Who else?
Some new actors, really good.
Well, what about a part for me someday?
I think so.
Okay, fine.
I don't see why not, Dave.
Here we go.
Let's take a look now at The Public Eye with Joe Pesce.
Watch closely, folks.
You know what we're going to see here?
Let's just take a look.
Yeah, I heard this guy's walking around a meat cleaver sticking out of his head.
Get the hell out.
One shot.
Keep an eye on him.
Throw a sheet over him.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Excuse me.
You better uncover him now, son.
Wait a second.
What was the deal with your character in JFK?
What was the deal on your hair there?
Well, it was kind of orange, yellow-orange, right?
Well, what it was was the character I was portraying, David Ferry, had no hair
at all in real life.
He wore this terrible-looking wig, and all the wigs we had made, I could never
make Oliver Stone happy.
He said, oh, it's not bad enough.
It's not bad enough.
So I grabbed a stretch wig, a girl's stretch wig, a red one, put it on.
We chopped it all up and glued it down.
And he said, that's it, that's it.
Every time you would be in the scene, you ended up looking at your head, and
you just thought, well, I guess he's nuts.
I guess the guy is nuts.
He was crazy.
And you did some time as a barber yourself, huh?
Right, I did.
So you pretty much done it all.
Joe, have a great weekend.
Thank you.
And good to see you.
Thanks very much for your time.
Pleasure meeting you.
Joe Pesci.
Hello, I'm Joe Pesci, and I'm hosting Saturday Night Live this week.
During my career, I've worked with such great names as Mel Gibson and Robert De
Niro.
Now I've got these two idiots.
We're out of time.
I want to apologize to Jeff Stilson, a comedian who was supposed to be with us
here this evening,
and we ran out of time, and it's my fault, and I apologize to Jeff and also to
the folks
tuning in to see him, and we'll have him back just as soon as we possibly can.
My thanks to Joe Pesci, who was here, and Phil Hartman as well, and tomorrow,
kids,
Jay Thomas, Blue Rodeo, and Manon Rayom, the goalie.
Have a nice evening.
Good night, everybody.